E11: Dan Ralphs - Dream Manager

The biggest problem facing manufacturers today, apart from supply chain issues, is the labor shortage. In light of the Great Resignation and a number of other factors, manufacturing leaders are increasingly struggling to fully staff their facilities. Today’s guest, Dan Ralphs, is an expert in improving employee retention. He believes that people quit leaders, not companies, and the best way to keep your employees, and to keep them productive, is to be a dream manager. Dan joins us to explain that the best way to create and generate loyalty and commitment from employees without having to break the bank, is simply by asking them what their personal dreams are and then helping them to achieve them. Tuning in you’ll hear how Dan became a dream manager, the benefits you can gain just from asking people what their dreams are, and what to do once someone has told you their dream. To find out how manufacturing leaders can implement this practice to generate loyalty, how to make your company stand out and be attractive to potential employees, and where to find other helpful resources on this topic, tune in today!

Transcript

EPISODE 14

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:02] MH: You’re listening to The Industrial Movement, where we discuss the people, the processes, and the equipment that drives American manufacturing. If this is your first time listening, then thanks for coming. The Industrial Movement podcast is produced every week for your enjoyment, and the show notes can be found at our website at www.theindustrialmovement.com.

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Now, let’s get on to the show.

[EPISODE]

[00:00:40] MH: Hi, folks. Welcome back to The Industrial Movement. My name is Morty Hodge, and with me as always, my trusty sidekick, Greg Smith.

[00:00:47] GS: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the show.

[00:00:48] MH: Today, we are honored to have a very, very special guest. Dan Ralphs is a dream manager, who joins us on the show to talk a little bit about some hiring and team member retention, one of the top two issues all manufacturing leaders are facing in today’s economy. Dan, welcome to the show.

[00:01:07] DR: You guys, it is an absolute pleasure to be here. For those listening, they don’t know this, but I’m a huge fan of Morty and Greg, and they might not even know it, but I’m a fan.

[00:01:18] MH: Well, thank you so much, Dan. We appreciate it. I don’t know how honest you’re being there, but we’ll accept that.

[00:01:25] GS: We’re taking it.

[00:01:26] MH: We’re going to accept that. Very good. Dan, like I said in the intro, the two main issues that manufacturers are faced with today is, number one, shortages and number two supply chain issues. We are going to get your input on supply chain issues just off the shelf. So Dan, tell us how we solve that?

[00:01:46] DR: Yeah. My quick answer to that is, I would recommend not having any issues with supply chain. I think that’s probably where I would start, is just by avoiding all issues. Do you have any other questions we could talk about?

[00:01:58] MH: Yeah, we do. Very good. Probably number one on everybody’s list is a labor shortage. This is really a twofold issue. A lot of people I’ve talked to said, supply chain issues are really caused from the labor shortage issues. If we solve that crisis, or at least partially, we can really knock out two birds with one stone. The labor shortage or the labor crisis is really caused by a couple of different things. Number one, we have a very small talent labor pool at this time, for whatever reason. I’ve heard all kinds of different ideas. Maybe Dan, you could talk a little bit to that?

And then, manufacturing has increased exponentially over the last few years. Regardless, take aside the Great Resignation, they were already in a position where they needed to hire more talent to come in and help them produce more goods. Then you introduced the Great Resignation into that, and now we have a situation that’s really become a perfect storm for manufacturers. Dan, tell us a little bit about your thoughts on the Great Resignation, and where we stand as an economy right now?

[00:03:05] DR: It’s an incredible phenomenon that’s happening right now, and it’s not just in the industrial world, it’s across all industries. And almost everyone I talked to, is having the same question, which is how do I find? How do I retain? How do I keep talent around in a much better way? There’s something that’s happening, it’s in the ether right now. I think we’re just seeing the beginning of something, not the end of it, not the peak of it. I think we’re seeing the beginning of something, a little new revolution that’s happening in the United States where people, employees, the millennial generation, these new generations that are coming into the workforce, they feel free. They feel free to choose, and to operate as free agents in the workforce.

My granddad, who worked at Firestone, I think I told you before, grew up and felt like the path for an adult human was get a job, settle in, work there for 40 years, retire, and play golf. That was the plan. But this new generations coming into the workforce, that’s not their plan. They expect to have five, or six, or seven or eight different jobs and they want those jobs to be meaningful, and fulfilling. And they want to be able to live in a van and travel around it, right? They want all of these things as a part of the path of being an employee. As a result, we’re entering a little bit of what I would call like a free agent market, where NBA free agency happened. And then all of a sudden, the teams all of a sudden had started catering new and different ways to the players, that they didn’t have to before.

I think in some ways, as companies, we have to figure out ways to change the way we lead, change the way we appeal to the potential prospects in our markets and say, “Hey! We’re going to respond to this new generation of employees and what they’re expecting. Now, some of you are hearing that you might say, “Wait! You want me? What do I have to do? We’re already strapped. There’s not a lot of extra budget.”

What I want to talk about today, and I think we’ll get to it is, how do we create and generate loyalty and commitment from our employees without having to break the bank, without having to implement very expensive new policies and benefits packages? How can we still create the loyalty that Firestone enjoyed for my grandfather all those years ago?

[00:05:39] MH: So the book I read years ago, based on a recommendation of my friend, Dan Ralphs was The Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly. Dan, over your time, you have become an expert on this book and this book has really helped you develop a process for all the things you just spoke about. How you can help to retain team members, engage them in the company and the vision that the leadership is trying to move forward with for a low cost, for all of the things you just said.

[00:06:14] GS: One, how did you become a dream manager? Where did this all start for you, and how can we get this into the minds of manufacturing leaders?

[00:06:24] DR: Yeah. I was working as a sales guy in a software company, when my leader calls up and says, “Hey, Dan! I have some bad news and I have some good news.” I said, “Oh, yeah.” He said, “Bad news is, I don’t think you’re going to be on our team for very much longer.” “That’s probably not great bad news to start with,” and I said, “What possibly could be the good news?” He said, “Well, I just found out they’re going to be hiring a dream manager at our company and I think you’re going to be the guy.” I’ve always had a heart for helping people.

Maybe for those who don’t know, let me explain what a dream manager is. A dream manager is essentially someone within a company whose job it is to help the employees of the company to identify, articulate and then accomplish their personal dreams. I’ll explain why this makes sense in just a minute. But that’s the idea, is that I would wander around the company, kind of like a corporate fairy godmother and I would say to people, “What’s the dream?” And then I would help them kind of make progress towards those dreams. As part of my work, we help people accomplish incredible dreams. Everything from riding elephants in Thailand, to adopting children, to starting companies, to playing golf at Pebble Beach, to starting a career as a standup comedian, like everything along the way. We help them accomplish things that for them personally, were wildly meaningful.

[00:07:49] MH: The first step you said is to articulate. The question would be, especially in an industrial environment, how would you start to get team members to articulate their dreams?

[00:08:00] DR: You know, it’s funny. You think it would be hard, but as a dream manager, one of the luxuries I’ve had when people would say, “So what’s your job?” Start that small talk. I would say, “Well, my job is to be the dream manager.” They would go, “What’s that?” I said, “Well, I help people with their dreams, what’s yours?” Every time, every time they usually had an answer. It happened mostly in Ubers as I was traveling around the country, and they would answer, “My dream is to become a professional bowler. My dream is to start a basket weaving thing. My dream is to open my cattle ranch in Africa. My dream is –.” Everyone has seemed to have one. I’ve yet to ask the question where there wasn’t a response. I think the better question is, how do we just start gaining the courage to ask the question? As leaders, you’ve come to find that people are holding in this secret, dying to share it with someone who cares. 

Step number one, as a leader is, first become a person who cares if you’re not yet. And then second, then to ask the question.

[00:09:07] MH: Once you have engaged your team, and they have shared with you their dream, what is the next step and why is that important?

[00:09:15] DR: Yeah. Honestly, you’re going to gain tremendous benefit, even by just asking the question. It’s a funny question, because it’s kind of asking – if you could tell me one thing about your best self, what would it be? They get to share something that for them is their best self and we get to communicate, and I guess that’d be the next step, is we get to communicate belief in that person. That’s one of the challenges to be honest, some people will share a dream with you and you kind of go, “I want to be president of the United States.” And you go, “Listen, pal. I’ve met you, you can barely run that machine over there, and I’m pretty sure that –” like it’s hard to communicate belief sometimes, because people will give you evidence not to believe in them. But if you can communicate belief in that person, when they share a dream with you, you’re going to build tremendous trust with that person. And you’re going to begin to grow in your influence with that person. That belief, that trust is the beginning of the loyalty that we talked about.

[00:10:19] MH: Greg?

[00:10:20] GS: The first step is to ask them what their dream is. I guess the next question would be, okay, now I have that information. What do I do with it? How do I manage that?

[00:10:29] DR: Yeah, it’s a great question. Here’s the thing. Let me teach you. This isn’t going to answer your question directly, but I think we’ll get there. Why don’t people pursue dreams. I thought for a while, that when I hung up my little shingle, and it said, “Hey! I’ll help you with your dream. Come on in.” I thought it would be easy. I thought people would come in and they’d say, “I want to go to Africa, and we’d look up plane tickets and we fly to Africa.” What I learned was that for the most part, the reason people don’t pursue their dreams is because they’re afraid. It’s because they’re scared. It’s because they don’t believe that they can, and they’re afraid of what will happen if they do. For the most part, my job as a dream manager at that time, or leading this dream program was to one, help people believe that they could, and help people to overcome fear. What would that look like in a practical sense?

Well, hey. I walk up to Dave and I say, “Dave, what’s the dream?” He said, “Man! My dream is to be on The Voice. I want to perform.” “You’re a singer? What? That’s amazing. Dave, dude, you could do that. Why don’t you do that?” “Well, I don’t know. I’ve only sing around my family.” It’s they’re afraid. The thing I can do as a leader that will endear me to Dave for all time is I can say, “Dave, you can do this. Let’s take a look. Let’s just look at what the first step would be.” Dave says, “Are you sure?” “Yeah, man. Just come over here. Well, I’m pulling up my phone right now. We’re going to look and see how you apply.” Does that make sense? Honestly, it’s just saying, “Hey, Dave! Let me help you take the first step.” I assume as leaders, you’re capable, and smart and can solve problems. You can figure almost anything out. There’s nothing too hard. If you can’t figure it out, you can think, “Man, I know how to figure out how to figure it out.” And you can help Dave take that step.

[00:12:32] MH: Dan, do you mind speaking a little bit about the story in the book. I don’t want to tell the story or give us synopsis. I’d love to hear it from you, because in my opinion, the story that’s told in the book is directly aligned with manufacturing.

[00:12:49] DR: The story is based on a true story, so it’s not the actual story. But I’ve had a chance, it’s based on a company out of Cleveland, I think and they run their commercial cleaning company. So they’re dealing with people who maybe are at the beginning of their careers, and they have a tremendous turnover problem. The cleaning industry is just notorious for having 200% turnover in a year or something like that. Ridiculous amounts. A leader there he goes, “Well, where can we begin? Let’s start digging into this problem of why people are leaving.” He finds out, “Oh, man! There’s some people who can’t even get a ride to work. He said, “Well, let me get you a bus. We’ll bus you in, man. Anything to keep you here. Anything to keep you from leaving.”

And he asked more and more questions, and he continues to ask, “How can I help? How can I serve my employees in a meaningful way?” As he continues to do so, they continue to stick around, they continue to perform at a higher level, until eventually he starts asking the ultimate question, which is, “What’s your dream?” A woman says, “My dream is to buy a house.” He contacts a mortgage guy, and they work with it and eventually the house is purchased. Can you imagine the story that gets spread throughout that little company that Dolores bought her first house? Can you imagine like the pride that people feel when they walk into that building when they know that this is my kind of company, is the kind of company that makes dreams come true? Can you imagine Dolores telling all of her friends, cousins, neighbors, aunts, tias, all of them? Hey! I work for the best company in the world, and all of the good will that comes from the community, all the new applicants that start showing up. It’s that kind of virtuous cycle that started happening when we turned the equation from how can you help me to how can I help you.

[00:14:55] GS: For listeners out there and are manufacturing leaders that says, “Okay. This sounds incredible. This is exactly what I need to implement. I’m up to my ears and work and I don’t have enough people. How do I do this?”

[00:15:05] DR: Yeah. First, solve your supply chain problems. Second, just kidding. Honestly, it is really – it really could happen with a very light touch and it doesn’t need to require a lot of time. But the thing it buys you is it buys you time. It’s like anything, right? If I can increase the productivity of my team, all of a sudden, I get a few extra minutes. If I reinvest that, those few more minutes into the productivity, happiness, wellbeing of my team, I gain a few more minutes. If I can keep that guy around, so we don’t have to go through the hiring process again, I’ll save a few more minutes. That’s the mindset I would take with it, right? Is, “Hey! I’m going to go invest, so I can get a return and the return eventually is going to be a return on time for me.” So, where would I begin?”

Well, I would begin, Greg, just like you suggested, which is, Hey! I’m just going to go ask the question. I’m going to go ask my team, I’m going to communicate two things. Number one, I’m going to communicate one, even though I’m overworked, you’re overworked, I care about you and I want to serve you as your leader. One of the ways I can do that is just say, “Hey! Are there some dreams you have as a team, something that would make your life better, something that would make your life easier? Can I do it for you?”

I watched this happen for a guy who ran roofing crews. He came through my Dream Manager Certification at one point. He said, “I’m going to take this back to my roofing crews.” The first thing he did is he went out, and he was a new supervisor on the job, he ran out to his crew and he said, “Hey, crew! What can make your life better, essentially?” He asked everyone individually. Their response was, “We don’t like drinking water. That’s all we have to drink is water.” Next day he showed up with Gatorades for everybody. And all of a sudden, his whole crew was like, “Oh! This guy cares about us.” When we talked right in the beginning, the goal is to generate and craft loyalty in a free agency market. Goal is to craft loyalty and free agency market. I have the choice to go wherever I want. I can get better offers. I can make more money. What will make me stay? The answer, loyalty. How do we generate loyalty? We generate loyalty by demonstrating and building a real relationship with those that we lead. We can do that in every interaction. Every interaction we have with our team, every time I bump into someone, I can add that flavor to our interactions.

[00:17:35] MH: In the book it says, “Zero turnover should never be the goal.” I think it was assuming there’s a healthy number of turnover. In your experience, what is a decent number or a healthy number for turnover?

[00:17:47] DR: Yeah. I don’t know that I have a specific number because it’s really going to vary industry by industry and position by position, right? There are going to be some positions are going to have a higher turnover percentage than – hopefully, your executive team isn’t turning over as high as your front line, right? But here’s what I would say about it: I mean, I remember I would always chat with people about the streaming program. CEOs, executives and leaders. And they would say, “Dan, I love the idea. But what happens if my front desk person’s dream isn’t to be a front desk person? What if I teach them to dream and they leave?” I always say, “Your goal is to keep them mindless and subservient so they stay?” And of course, it’s not, right? Of course not. Of course, that’s not our goal, but a little part of us goes, “Man, what if I inspire them and they leave?”

I’m telling you what, when you can create an environment where people are inspired and motivated— Because I’ve always believed, I’d rather have somebody alive, and energized, and motivated and loyal for three years than someone like stumbling into work, coming late, avoiding work for five. You know what I mean? I’d rather have the three than the five. That’s the first thing that you get the benefit of, is you get full productivity versus partial productivity. I’d rather have full productivity. I’m willing to sacrifice maybe a couple of years on the end, to get a good, healthy, productive employee while I have them. 

Then the second thing that comes is that loyalty that we generate by caring, and asking about dreams and helping dreams be accomplished. The loyalty we gain gets invested in our employment brand. So all of a sudden, I have a list of people to replace that person with when the time comes. But at the company I was at, we were at one point harder to get into than Harvard. Meaning for each open position, we had almost like some crazy number of applications, right? Hundreds of applications for every open position. That’s the kind of employment brand that you really want to start thinking about and caring about and it’s the outgrowth of these kinds of programs.

[00:20:01] MH: What would be a couple of resources that you would recommend to manufacturing leaders, whether it be books or different podcasts?

[00:20:07] DR: Yeah. I mean, there are so many great resources. Matthew Kelly’s book, The Dream Manager will get you the spirit of it. I really think that’s probably a good place to start. You can visit my website, dream leadershipconsulting.com and I’ll just chat with you. We can have a conversation. I can try to help where we can. There are other great works that kind of get you in the spirit of it, like Liz Wiseman’s book Multipliers. There’s a book, anything by the Arbinger Institute, like Leadership and Self-Deception is a great book to again, get you in the right mindset that will help you be the type of leader who generates this kind of loyalty in a very competitive market.

[00:20:48] MH: Dan, is there any books or any other resources that are kind of on the horizon that would really be a benefit to manufacturing leaders?

[00:20:55] DR: You set me up and I totally missed it. I am writing a book at the moment, and I don’t even have a working title. It’s that early on in the process, but the spirit of it is this. The spirit of it is to try to help leaders understand how to lead powerfully without in this kind of new free agency market. Because here’s the truth, there are three different ways that we can try to control or we can try to get people to do the work or get people to be productive. Way number one is we can use force. If you don’t, I will. That’s been a pretty popular one. It’s definitely popular among parents. It’s definitely popular, right? If you don’t, I will.

The second one is fair exchange or utility. Hey, if you do, I’ll give you this. If you do, I’ll give you that. The only trouble with the first two is that, number one, the first one makes people want to run away. And in the free agency market, that’s not going to work, right? If you’re going to run away from your job, you’re going to be able to find another one, especially in the current market. The second one only teaches people to ask for more. Hey, I’ll give you a bonus, I’ll give you a reward, I’ll give you a raise. Then if a better offer comes along, I’m also leaving. It’s more effective than the first.

The only one that really works is when we use love and that love generates loyalty. I know, is love to froofy to say on – but it’s like, man, no. It’s like, “Hey! I stay because I love the people I work with. I stay because I love my leader. I know my leader cares about me. I don’t know that I’ll get that somewhere else, no matter how much they pay me.” When we can generate and create that, that’s where the magic will happen. That’s what my book is going to be about. I’m going to try to like helpfully help leaders who are trying to be loving and trying to do it the right way, but maybe don’t quite know how. And hopefully convince a lot of leaders that these old ways of force, the carrot and stick aren’t going to work in the new market.

[00:22:55] GS: We’ve talked about, how do we utilize the Dream Program to keep the people we already have to stuck with us, right? But the other issue is, but we still need to hire folks and that hiring pond is pretty small. How do we make our company different, and standout and attractive to those folks so we can bring them in? How could the dream manager kind of tie into that as well?

[00:23:17] DR: It’s a beautiful question. The truth is, in amazing ways. We would regularly have, because obviously, on our hiring website, what was one of the featured items, right? We have a dreaming program. We help people accomplish dreams as a part of coming to this company. When I’m cruising across 100 similar looking companies, and I see that it really stands out in a way that makes people take notice. Because again, let’s think about those millennials, especially those millennials who are now in the thick of their working careers, and even the generation coming up behind them. What are they on the hunt for? 

I want to do meaningful work. I want my life to not only be about getting a job and eventually living my dreams when I retire 40 years from now. I want to live my dreams right now. So when we can add that to the to all of our hiring materials, we’re going to have a better chance. 

I have many people that came and said, “Dan, the reason I’m at this company is because of you. Is because when I heard of you had a dream program, this was where I had to be.” My opening line at our new employee orientation was like, “How many have ever worked at a company that had a dream manager before? Nobody, right? Nobody. Nobody. How many of you have ever worked at a company that had a dream crusher before?” Everyone raises their hands. I mean, people are running away from companies that are crushing dreams and they’re running toward companies that are helping their dreams come true.

[00:24:42] MH: Do you think that the dream manager program can increase productivity? If so, how would it go about doing that?

[00:24:48] DR: Yeah, for sure. The statistics are, it’s been a while since I’ve looked at them, but the last time I looked it was like, they’re about 66 percent of employees are disengaged. And then another half of those are actively disengaged at work. Actively disengaged means, it’s me and my high school math class, where I’m not only not doing the work, I’m trying to make it harder for everyone else to get the work done, right. I’m actively like goofing off in a way that’s distracting everyone else from getting work done. When you think about it, you have a third of your employees that are actually trying hard. You have a third of your employees, they’re trying to get out as much work as possible and you have another third that are trying to make it hard for everyone else.

Can you imagine what would happen of we could simply increase the loyalty and commitment of those employees to actually try? How much more math could we get done if we had a math class full of people that said, “All right, math teacher, I’m here simply because I like you, and I know you care about me and I know you want what’s best for me. Even though in all my other classes, I’m the goofball. Greg, I know that was you. I am on board. I’m on board. I’m on board to learn, and I’m on board to try”? That alone can have dramatic impacts on teams.

[00:26:16] MH: A lot of people are waiting for the labor pool to fill back up when these people “come back to work.” There’s other people who say, “This is it.” Some of these people aren’t coming back. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think that they’re coming back?

[00:26:31] DR: The freedom that has been felt during the pandemic, meaning people, everyone reconsidered, why am I working? Why am I showing up to a job every day? Can I do the work I do remotely? Should I be living in my town? Everything was turned upside down. The one thing I don’t think will change is people will continue to feel free to make choices on where they work. Companies will evolve because of this, even if it’s a temporary downturn, good companies will evolve towards being able to attract the best talent. And when the shortage and those companies will have an advantage in any environment, because they will constantly be the ones where people are trying to get in the door, and they’re trying to stay rather than the companies where they’re trying to get out and they’re trying to run away.

[00:27:30] GS: Dan, outside of the dream manager program. Do you have any other hiring retention advice you would want to share with the manufacturing leaders?

[00:27:38] DR: Yeah, number one, retention advice is, been said before, but it’s true. People quit leaders, not companies. If I were sitting in a chief executive officer position, or a chief people officer position in a company, I would be very, very serious about leadership development. I would be very, very serious about like monitoring whether or not we had a leader who had a higher exit rate than other leaders. I would get really committed to that, because I understand that the real reason people stay, and this is kind of my old theme, is because they have loyalty to a leader and they feel connected to their team. And not because they feel connected to my company or any other HR policy that I could possibly invent. 

That would be number one, I get really committed to leadership development. Really, really committed to making sure that the micro communities in my company were healthy and happy and well taken care of.

As far as how do we attract more talent, how do we recruit? The answer is, do part A well, where people are super happy at your job and people will come flooding into your company. It happen to me all the time, right? My wife would be chatting with someone else’s wife and they get chatting about their husbands. And all of a sudden, my wife had come home and said, I told Sarah’s husband that she should apply at Infusionsoft, because how much you love your job and he’s miserable. Word gets out when you have a cool company, where people are happy. Word gets out and you’ll have people come running.

[00:29:14] MH: What does dream leadership consulting do? And if a manufacturing facility was interested in working with you and your team, what are some of the services you could provide for them?

[00:29:23] DR: Yeah. When I was working my company, we only had about 500 employees. But I realized, the only way to scale the program was to train other leaders how to do it for their teams. That’s when the magic really happened for us as I helped our leaders to become dream leaders of their own little groups and teams. Whether you’re in the middle of company, and you have a small team, and you want to improve your little community, or if you’re at the top, you’re the CEO, we can work together to help incorporate some of these principles into your company. Even if it’s principles as simple as how do we demonstrate more care and, and create better influence amongst our leaders all the way to how do we develop and design a full-fledged dreaming program. I can share with you everything I learned. I work one on one with companies to help them increase productivity, retention through dreaming programs and helping to train leaders how to care better.

[00:30:19] GS: You got manufacturing executives out there or leaders. How do they pitch this to the rest of the leaders and get them their buy in?

[00:30:26] DR: Yeah. I think my favorite words when we’re pitching something new is pilot and test. The way we would start is, I would go to a leader and I’d say, “Hey, listen! I’ve got this new retention idea. I’d love to pilot it on my team. Would you feel cool with that?” “How much does it cost? How much time is it going to take?” And you’d say, “Listen, it honestly is not going to take any time at all and the cost is really minimal. It really shouldn’t interrupt anything. I just want to let you know I’m doing it. In fact, if you want to read more about it, here’s this book called The Dream Manager.” And I would hand it to him, and I’d say, “If it’s okay with you, I’m just going to give it a go.”

Now, if your leader is like, “No, we hate our employees. Keep them subservient.” Then quit your job and go find a new place to work, but I don’t think that’ll be the case. Most people will be open to a pilot or a test, especially if it’s low cost and doesn’t impact the day-to-day productivity. And then maybe reach out to me and I can give you the next pointers just by visiting dreamleadershipconsulting.com. Have a whole list of things to do once you’re ready to say, “Hey! I’m going to start this on my little team and we can help you get started.”

[00:31:32] MH: Dan, have you ever been faced with the challenge of pitching the dream manager program to a group of temps?

[00:31:41] DR: I think temps showing up are expecting to be treated a little bit like a commodity. When you can cut through that, and just get really human with them and the dreaming questions are really fast ways to do that. I’m sure there are others. Almost immediately, those temps are now going to feel very different. When they go home that night and wife goes, “Hey! How’s your day?” They’ll say, “Man, honestly, like my leader was cool. I really like my leader. He’s a good dude.” That’s it. That’s all you got to do. Just got to win that conversation right there. “Could you see yourself working there long-term?” “Actually, yeah. I can kind of see it. I could see myself being there. They’re a cool company. I really felt great about it.” All I did was, “Hey! Tell me about yourself. Tell me about your dreams. What’s going on in your life? Who are you?” Oh, you’re a human. Let me like treat you like one.” It’s so basic. It’s so simple. And yet, all of the forces kind of move us away from that. All of the pressures of work move us away from those simple kindnesses.

[00:32:42] MH: The terms love, care, dreams, they don’t enter the industrial sector too often. But this is without a doubt the wave of the future. If you want to become a talent beacon, if you want to retain the team that you have, those terms need to be – your leaders need to become very, very comfortable with using them and implementing them.

[00:33:04] DR: Yeah. It’s already like – it’s obviously already hit the West Coast. It’s already hit Silicon Valley. They get, “I got to win the talent thing.” I’m buying, putting up cereal bars. But even there, it feels like more flashy perks. They think the flashy perks are what’s winning. It’s not what’s winning.

[00:33:22] MH: Dan, thank you so much for joining us today. If some manufacturing leaders out there interested in reaching out to you to learn more, what is the best way for them to connect with you?

[00:33:31] DR: Yeah, probably best way is just to go to my website, fill out the contact you form, contact us form. It’s dreamleadershipconsulting.com, and those go straight to my inbox. So you know you can hear from me.

[00:33:44] MH: Dan Ralphs, the dream manager. Thank you for joining us on The Industrial Movement today.

[00:33:48] DR: It’s been a fine pleasure, so thank you so much.

[00:33:52] GS: I’m looking forward to the book. I can’t wait to read it.

[00:33:55] MH: I do have a recommendation for the title. Have you considered the Dreamweaver?

[00:33:59] GS: Dreamweaver. You’d have a theme song built in already.

[00:34:03] DR: If the book could sing as people walk by, I think you’re right on.

[OUTRO]

[00:34:07] MH: Well, folks, that’s it for this week’s episode. Be sure to visit our website www.theindustrialmovement.com to view today’s show notes and get more golden nuggets of value that we have collected from manufacturing industrial professionals in our archived episodes.

On our website, you can also sign up for our newsletter and find links to join The Industrial Movement community on Facebook. The Industrial Movement podcast is where we discuss the people, the process, and the equipment that drives American manufacturing. I’m your host Morty Hodge, wishing you great success.

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