IDL116 Season 3: Focus On Purpose with Davin Salvagno

What is the simple equation for leadership success? How can you create a space for growth in business? Why is entrepreneurship more closely tied to traditional work now more than ever?

Today I have an awesome conversation with the insightful Davin Salvagno. Today we’re talking about what we’re doing; what we’re doing in our life, what we’re doing in our job, and how we go about making purpose. We reflect on how organizations can support the growth of a person, and Davin also shares his perspectives on HR.

Meet Davin Salvagno

Davin Salvagno is an inspirational speaker and author known for connecting purpose, people, and performance. Having spent nearly two decades serving in various leadership roles in human resources, operations, marketing, and finance with Fortune 500 companies, his insights and talks have helped hundreds of organizations across the world engage their purpose and inspire their people.

Davin is the Founder & CEO of PurposePoint, the Cofounder of The Purpose Summit, an honored member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches, a channel partner of The Ken Blanchard Companies, and member of C12 Business Forums.

Davin’s first book “Finding Purpose at Work” was published in 2019, and his second book “The Thief of Purpose” is expected to be released in late 2023.

Visit DavinSalvagno.com and connect on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• Now is the time for purpose - 04:00

• The rise of entrepreneurs - 06:47

• Creating place for growth in business - 13:02

• The simple equation for leadership success - 23:44

Now is the time for purpose

Purpose has become a huge buzzword, and not for no reason.

In the years before the pandemic and subsequently after, the idea of “purpose” has grown so much importance in people’s lives because they have come to appreciate and understand the value of their time and energy.

People do not want to waste time.

People no longer want to work in a job that doesn’t align with them if a better option is out there, and it’s not because they are ungrateful, but instead because they value themselves and want to be in an environment where it’s true.

The rise of entrepreneurs

Millennials to Gen X and Gen Z learned that it matters where you place your priorities. If you leave them in the hands of your bosses or the banks, it’s not guaranteed to be safe. The safest hands that you can keep your passion and direction are your own.

Therefore, a change started in people. They began to shift away from putting in the time to build a career based on someone else’s model to creating their own way of doing, creating, and living out business.

Creating place for growth in business

There are three economies at play in modern businesses:

-        The purpose economy

-        The experience economy

-        The [side] gig economy

A lot of people have to work a job and a side hustle as well, or start their own streams of income beyond work, to stay afloat financially.

Often, it is that side hustle that’s their passion project or their dream job.

The wave of shifting the workforce and the workplace was already in play before the pandemic.

However, a match has been struck, and now people from all different generations and backgrounds want to make an active role in their lives and how they spend their time.

This is what leaders need to be aware of, and they need to figure out how to retain their employees as part of the company while allowing – and encouraging – them to pursue their individual lives as well.

The simple equation for leadership success

1 – Treat your employees like human beings

2 – Love and care for them

3 – Invest in their development

Avoid the common mistake of leadership failure which is when things get difficult in business, and leaders start to treat their employees like numbers instead of people and quit investing in them.

That will tank your business fast, and the relationship you have with your people.

The fact of the matter is: when you create a great business built on a great relationship that you have cultivated with your employees, then they will want to be there, and they will want to work with and for you.

Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:

BOOK | Davin Salvagno – Finding Purpose at Work

BOOK | Aaron Hurst – The Purpose Economy: How Your Desire for Impact, Personal Growth and Community Is Changing the World

BOOK | B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore – The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage

BOOK | Brian Bosché & Gabrielle Bosché – The Purpose Factor: Extreme Clarity for Why You're Here and What to Do About It

Visit DavinSalvagno.com and connect on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

Impact Driven Workshop over the 8th and 9th of May 2023: www.impactdrivenworkshop.com

Sign up for the roundtable at: hello@theimpactdrivenleader.com

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www.tylerdickerhoof.com

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About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast

The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.

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You really need to have your head in the sand to not realize how critical the topic of purpose is, not just in life, but in business and in every aspect of life.

Davin Salvagno

Podcast Transcription

[TYLER DICKERHOOF] Hey there. Welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader Podcast. I am excited for you to be here. I need to dial pack. I just got done with my conversation with Davin Salvagno, and we got a little excited. Oh, we had to dial it back a little bit. We talked a little bit about intensity. I gave a special clue how to deal with intensity, but it wasn't intense. It was passionate. It was exciting. Today we talk about purpose. I'm thankful for the connection I have with Davin. Our good friend John Eids invited us both to speak earlier in the year, and I was enthralled by his conversation, one, because of how he presented it in his experience, but also the timing. The timing, where we're at in the world, where everyone's trying to figure out what are we doing? What are we doing in our job? What are we doing in our life? How does it make sense? We dig into that a lot. We talk about how organizations today are trying to help the people that work in their organization find their purpose, but we're also cognizant there's a lot of challenges. There's some leaders in organizations that are strong army, forcing people back into the office or forcing people into work conditions that are maybe less than ideal, haven't shared some stats. We also discuss experiences from his HR perspective. I think it's actually tremendously enlightening and with that, I want to invite you to the Impact Driven Workshop. It's going to happen on May 8th and 9th. It's a virtual workshop from 12 to 2:00 PM Pacific Time. Go learn more about that workshop at impactdrivenworkshop.com. Register for it there. I'll be sending out invites via email. What I want to do with that workshop is really to talk to the person that Davin was. Davin was an HR director, and he shares in this interview, ooh, if he had only known how to do it differently. He's learned that. Excited to share that. Buckle up. Get ready for this conversation with Davin Salvagno, the leader of purpose point. One last thing. If you get value from today's episode, please share it. Rate, review, help this message get to more people. What Davin is sharing deserves to get to more people. I'll catch you at the end. [TYLER] Davin, thanks for joining me, man. I appreciate it. We've already had a couple minutes of a fun conversation. We're going to have more. I'm thankful that our mutual friend John Eids got us connected. I'm excited to have this conversation, much like the fun we just had. We talked about I'm from Ohio, you're from Pennsylvania originally. Neither one of us live there, there, but our roots are still there. But we got into something that I think is a great jumping off point because it's also the crossing point of pre and post, when purpose really meant more to me. That's what I look at it. You're a purpose guy. You've written about purpose, you've spoken about purpose, you have the purpose summit and there was this cascade of driving of the importance of purpose pre Covid. Now, I think you have to be really an ostrich with your head in the sand to not see that purpose is very meaningful. Is that appropriate? [DAVIN SALVAGNO] That's perfectly well said, Tyler. I'm excited to be, to spend this conversation together. Grateful for the instruction from John, but you could not have said that any better. I mean, honestly, purpose, one of my favorite cartoons that I've seen out there is in a book called The Purpose Economy, written by Aaron Hurst in 2013. He talked about this day and age of where purpose was going to be a fundamental topic of every aspect of not just life, but of business was coming and that he had the foresight to see that 10 years ago and Covid really accelerated that. Now we're on the other side of it. To your point, you really need to have your head in the sand to not realize how critical the topic of purpose is, not just in life, but in business and in every aspect of life. [TYLER] So how did we get here? [DAVIN] That's a very, how much time do we have? [TYLER] Yeah, alright, let's --- [DAVIN] How long do listeners want to listen to this? Because that's a really long answer. [TYLER] Well, I mean, chop it up however you want, man. [DAVIN] So the short answer is this, in many aspects, we've always been here from a standpoint of purpose being essential to the conversation of life and business. It just wasn't always the most essential one. People have been asking, what's the meaning of life, what's the purpose of life since the Greeks? It's a thousands of year old question. The reality is that we have been in a society that has prioritized processes and performance and profitability and success and the tyranny of the urgent and the tyranny of the more has always outshined this topic of purpose. So how we got here started really in 2008. What happened is you've got four generations that are in the marketplace. You have baby boomers, you have Generation X, which is our generation, you have millennials and then you have Generation Z. So baby boomers and Generation X, we were just told put your head in the sand, go to school, get a great education, work hard for 30 years of your life, retire at 62 and a half, get the gold watch, then start living your life, delay gratification, all of these things. So we, in many ways, a lot of our goals, dreams, the things that we had that we wanted to achieve, our bucket lists, if you will, we put on hold because --- [TYLER] Can I hold you there? There was one other element there that I think is, it's really pivotal now. We were told go to college or else. [DAVIN] Yes, a hundred percent. It wasn't an option. I mean, you went from people celebrating being the first of their family to go into college, that being celebratory to almost being ostracized if you didn't go to college. I mean, that pendulum swung really, really quick. And nothing against colleges. I speak at colleges all over the country and I have a great affiliation with many of them but there was this, oh my gosh, I hope one day I could go to you better go. That was a big, big piece of the conversation when we were growing up. So boomers and millennia, boomers and Generation X kind of, we had this mindset that was thrusted upon us and somewhere there was this element of but I don't want to fit into the mold. I want to be entrepreneurial. I have goals, dreams, I have things that I want to live out. I have a purpose that I want to live out. We were kind of, sort of told to shelve that in so many ways and then what happened is, in 2008 when the bottom fell out, millennials, they were in, they were tweens and early teens, and they watched the equation fall apart. They watched all of the money that their previous generations were socking away for some day disappear overnight. What had happened is, subconsciously they realized that the equation didn't work. They started to prioritize time over money. We prioritized money over time. We said you know what, I'll work 50, 60, 70 hours and we can get the double time, overtime, triple time and sock it away and the next generation coming into work for us said, no, no, no, I'm not going to do that because I can't get time back. I could always make more money, but I can't get time back. And so they prioritized time over the money equation. And so as they started to come into the workplace, you know today they make up 60% of the workplace, by 2025, they'll make up 75%, this concept of time and purpose became more and more important. Then Covid happened, Tyler, and it was like throwing gas on an already blazing fire because for 18 months we all sat at home and thought, well, what are we doing with our lives? How much time do we have left? I don't know. You or I could die tomorrow. Was I living my purpose? Was I not? So now as we emerge out of it, purpose is the most fundamental thing to everybody and every generation, in every industry, in every part of the world. [TYLER] So there's two like pathways to go there. I think to add on one of them is for people that were like, ah, I'm trying to figure this out. Like, I need money to be able to enjoy myself. But then they were thrust into this, hey, go work at home, go be at home, and all of a sudden we have this time and we're like, oh, I like this. Like I understand what the millennials saw to that very point. We saw our parents work hard. Think that you spend time with a company for 20 years and that's a good thing where you have a generation that's in between. Like I have a younger brother who's, oh, what is he now, let me do the quick Math, 36. For him, he was always afraid of like, well, if I leave a job that's going to look bad. I'm like, but if you stay at a job you hate, like, come on dude. Like leave for good reasons. It's always challenging. It's always hard with that. I know your background in HR you understand that. We've seen that now almost to a point of, oh, well, if I don't find purpose quickly, if I don't find success quickly, I'll move on. So now on the backside of this, to your point, we're so much okay, we understand purpose, but are we allowing for the development of people to yield the purpose within them? I think that is the great, really sticking point today. It's our people, our leaders, the work that you do, the conversations you have, is it the ability to say, hey, we need to develop purpose first, rather than find people that absolutely fit the purpose because sometimes people just don't know yet. [DAVIN] Most of them don't, in almost every conversation that I have, Tyler, people are, I mean, they know they have a purpose, they know they want to live that out, and it's not just about spending time doing what you love to do, because that's not reality. It's spending time doing what you're good at, the others need, that makes an impact, that brings you fulfillment. Many people are looking for that in their work and it's not that it's not there, they just don't know how to access it. So this idea, I want to make sure for people who are listening to this, they're not getting the sense I'm saying, hey, go quit your job or go, everyone can't be a solo entrepreneur. That's not what I'm saying. In fact, I work with some really, really great companies who've done a really, really good job of really now prioritizing and saying, how do we help our people find purpose in the work that they do every day? How do we help them understand what their gifts, talents, abilities are, what their insights and experiences are, how they can bring those into their role? Or if they're not in the right role, how do we put them in the right role or create the right role that leverages those gift talents and abilities that aligns with the company's purpose so that it's a win-win situation? And there's a lot of companies that have figured that out, and they're doing that, and people are stepping into that and you see engagement numbers that are off the chart far greater than they ever were even before Covid. Because it's just a shift of the conversation. Rather than focusing on, hey, we're going to use people to create more products and services and increase our performance and profitability, it's no, no, no, we're going to use our processes, our profitability to actually help our people step more into their purpose and as a result of that, they perform it as a higher level and as a result of that, our company performs at a higher level and everybody wins. So some companies have figured it out, some people have figured it out, other companies are still trying to figure it out. There is a perfect marriage here. It's really getting away from this idea of two things. Number one, it's getting away from the idea of work-life balance. That has been a tradeoff conversation for decades where people feel like if they're at work, they can't live their life and that's not true. It's moving more into this concept of work-life integration. How do I bring all of who I am to all of what I get to do every day, and how do companies provide resources and amenities that allow me to not necessarily feel like I'm leaving my life on hold where I can actually step into work and access things that are part of my life? We could be here all day, but there's some amazing companies, some really big brand names that are doing some really, really out of the box stuff that when people come to work, they don't feel like they're coming to work. They just feel like they're living their life, they're living their purpose, but they're just at a different location, whether it's at home or whether it's at work. They have figured out the secret sauce [TYLER] To me, the, and I know you can relate to this, knowing your history and for myself, working for a corporation, then starting my own business. I believe the, almost the ideology that leaders need to hold onto is how do we create an entrepreneurial system within our organization? Because I think that's what people want. I think they, we look at the evolution of work and it's changed so much where people can do so many side hustles. They can do so many other enterprises and yet that is taxing in and of itself. I've started multiple of my own businesses. You've done it too. It's like, it's a blessing and a curse and it's great and it's not, but it's different. And I believe that's what our evolving workforce is looking for. Yet that mentality, as you know, as I know, is so different. It is like a massive switch that flips. [DAVIN] Huge. It's ginormous. I mean, you said something key there, and I said this earlier about Aaron Hurst's book, the Purpose Economy. There's really three main economies that all happened and converged right after Covid. You have the purpose economy, which I already talked about. You have the experience economy, which was actually a book written in the 80s that really talks about what do people want to experience. Then you actually have the gig economy, which was really, really being talked about just before Covid, where you had a lot of people who were, like you said, are gig workers, that they have their job, but then they're doing something on the side because they don't want to be capped at a certain income potential. They still want to live their life so they want to be able to be --- [TYLER] Or they're chasing their purpose. [DAVIN] Exactly, exactly. So the challenge to employers is how do I bring these three economies together into our ecosystem as a company? How do we provide a phenomenal experience for the people who raise their hand that say, hey, I want to be a part of your organization? How do we provide flexibility for them to also be a gig worker and allow them to do things outside of what we're employing them to do? And then how do we create an environment or a role that allows them to step into the fullness of their purpose at work so that they want to engage it more? If you could figure that out, and there are some companies that are doing that really, really well, you've figured out the master equation of not just how to engage the next generation. Because here's the thing, is this isn't a next generation conversation. It was a thought that was catalyzed by the next generation, but what happened is everybody else on the planet, regardless of what generation said you know what, I've always thought that way. I want a piece of that too. How do I do it? So now you have all of humanity thinking, I want to live my purpose. I want to work for a company that's going to help me do that. I want to have the flexibility to also be able to do other things, because I don't want to be capped on my potential, on my purpose, and I want to have a fantastic experience doing it. I want to be a part of doing something greater than myself making a difference with people who get it and who want to make a difference. [TYLER] Okay, now you say all that, and ideologically we agree, totally on the same page. There are organizations that you think, you've heard stories, and I've talked to people, Amazon pre-Covid, Google pre-Covid, "Hey, we'll give you a day. Work on whatever you want to work on. Use all the resources here." You know the interesting point though, some of those companies are the ones right now that are saying, you will not work for us unless you come sit your butt in the office five days a week in an office, in a cubicle, because there's a challenge here. And it's like, well, wait a second. You were leading that charge. You were allowing that, and now all of a sudden you've come full backwards and where's what got lost in translation? [DAVIN] Yeah, it's a rhetoric thing. Listen, I might be crucified for saying this because we're talking about some of the biggest companies on the planet, and what I'm about to say is not popular. But you know what, sometimes not popular is good. The reality is, here's what happened. Elon Musk put a charge out there and said, stuck a line in the sand and said, if you want to work for our company, then this is what you have to do. A lot of companies looked at that and said, this is our way back. This is our way back to having control. Because here's the thing is there's been a bit of a power switch. Up until about 2017, the company, the employer, and I'm not demonizing employers because obviously there's some really great companies out there doing some really great things but this is just, the reality is that the power to create supply and demand was always on the employer's side. You showed up at a job and you hoped that you got a second interview. You put your resume on papyrus paper and you did everything that you, laminated in triplicate to try and make that impression, to get that second job interview. Because the reality is that there was a scarcity of jobs. That's why jobs has always been such a big topic in the political landscape is because there was a shortage of jobs. How do we create more jobs? How do we create more jobs? How do we create more jobs? Then something happened in 2017. In 2017, for the first time in human history, there were more jobs available than there were people to work them. So the supply and demand equation flipped. Now what happened is, companies didn't realize this, but talent was interviewing them. We started to call it the war for talent and all of these different things, but the, and ghosting. So you had people that weren't showing up for second interviewees, companies weren't getting callbacks and the reality is that a lot of these companies who were guilty of doing some things of these very things to employees of not calling them back and telling them why they didn't get the second interview or not why they weren't getting the job talent was doing that the companies, they would just not call them back. They would not show up for their first day of work. Companies are going, well, what the heck? Because the shoes had flipped. So what's happened now is a lot of big companies have realized, okay, well if we could skim down the job availability, we could flip the equation back. That's what you're seeing happening. You're seeing a lot of the big companies saying, how do we get lean? I think Elon actually called it the year of efficiency and a lot of big companies said, if we could figure this out, if we could reduce the amount of jobs, we could reverse the power equation, if you will, and take that out of the talent pool's hands. But I got news for you, and this is where I might be crucified --- [TYLER] I think I know where you're going and I'm guessing I'm going to agree with you. [DAVIN] The talent has seen too much. They've seen behind the curtain. They've gotten a taste of you know what, I don't have to trade my life and my purpose for money. I could just choose to live at a lower standard. So if you look at what happened is, before Covid, a Gallup poll shared this, 75% of people quit their jobs and took less money for more flexibility, more autonomy, more purpose? Guess what? That's 85% today post-Covid. So the reality is what you're going to see happen is you're going to see more and more people if this continues in this direction, become minimalists. They're not going to care about the house and the car and all that stuff. They're going to say, how do I keep control of my time and make just enough to get by because I've seen the equation and the equation falls apart and I'm not going to trade all of this time and my purpose for something that's not going to last. [TYLER] Hey, a quick little advertisement here. Davin didn't ask me to do this, but I'm grateful to do it. Davin is hosting the Purpose Summit. It's going to happen at Notre Dame University on May 23rd and 25th. You can go to thepurposesummit.com or check the show notes. He's going to have past guests like Jade Gordon, John Gordon, the great Nick Buche, as well as himself, so many other great leaders speaking. To learn more about his event, the Purpose Summit, go to thepurposesummit.com. Alright, now back to our conversation. [TYLER DICKERHOOF] I take that agree with that. I think there's also another caveat to it. You have those companies that you've talked about that are doing it the right way, that are caring for people and saying, hey, you want to work remote? Great. No problem at all. We can create a culture, a system we can leverage that. We're going to give you the most people are willing to do more, perform higher, get paid well. So you have those organizations that are putting a hard line in the sand and they're going to quickly find out they lost because there's plenty of other people, there's other leaders that have grown that have embraced the idea that I need to be more development focused. Because coming back to the comment I made earlier if you look at your college education, the time of college education, my college education, you look at those couple things, guess what, it doesn't have any bearing on my career I'm doing today. I have an animal science degree. That's my degree. We're talking about leadership, we're talking about the classes that I actually failed in school, I failed psychology. Why because I just didn't do the reading. It's one of the couple that I feel you don't have to get a passing grade to learn a lot. But what I see there is so many organizations have realized too, oh, we have these college educated people with a ton of debt and they have no idea how to do anything. So now our charge is to develop them. Our charge is to train them, to give them those skills. Well, if we embrace that opportunity, not only is there this alignment together, but it comes back to this, the great point is, if you don't train the people that work for you because you're afraid they might leave, what happens if they don't? That's the crux for so many leaders that are like, all right, I have to do the work to make them better and if I make our organization, our culture, an environment what we're doing better, the right people will stay. [DAVIN] Yes. It really is that simple. It's actually mind boggling to me, the amount of books, the amount of talks, the amount of different ways that this has been shaped over the last decade, because the equation is really, really, really simple. It's A, treat your people like human beings, B, love them, care for them, and invest in them, and if you do that well, they will perform at their highest possible level and your company will reap the rewards of that. Both of you will be fulfilled. But for whatever reason, a lot of companies continue to make the tragic mistake of the second that things get tight they treat people like a number, they stop investing in them, they stop caring for them, they stop believing in them, and then when they leave, they wonder why all of a sudden culture, it becomes a downward spiral. You create fear, you create an absence of trust, you create a lack of dedication because all of a sudden the other people that you didn't let go of, they saw how you treated the ones that you didn't invest in that left. The opposite is true. The ones that if you do pour into that, guess what? They become your greatest advocates. They're not employees. They become walking billboards for your organization because you poured into them and there's an upward spiral. I mean, it's mind-blowing to me how simple this is and how so many people get it wrong. I'll say one other thing, Tyler. I love that your response to the last question was that the other end of this is that there are so many companies that are doing this right that, great, the companies that are drawing the line in the sand, that are thick in their strong arguments, they're going to lose the equation because there are companies that are doing it right. Well, here's the thing everyone last year talked about the great resignation. You don't hear a lot of about anymore. 42.1 million people quit their jobs last year. Over the last two years, a hundred million people have quit their jobs. Guess what, the rate of people quitting their jobs has not gone down. You hear a lot about the layoffs, the layoffs, the layoffs, the layoffs. I think there's been something around 300,000 layoffs a year to date. Guess what? 4 million people are still quitting their jobs every single month and they're not sitting at home eating bond bonds with bunny slippers on. Do you know what they're doing? They're going to companies who have figured it out. They're leaving bad cultures to go to good ones. They're leaving bad leaders or bad bosses to go to good ones. So it's a net zero equation. So you're not going to draw this line in the sand and think all of a sudden that you're going to strong arm humanity back into control. I'm sorry. It's not going to happen because there's too many companies using business as a force for good and too many people that want to work for those types of companies. [TYLER] Oh, I think the bigger piece beyond that is people realize they deserve it and there's no reason not to. So that's what we're going to go to. If I have to take a short-term backseat to get something better in the future, I'm going to do that for good reason, but I'm not going to do it just because, oh, you told me I have to. That's whether it's an enlightenment, whether it's a growth and evolution. I think a lot of it comes back to is why would I want to go down a path that is proven to fail over and over again? You talk about the work for a company for so many years, you get laid off, you get zero pension, your 401k, all the things that you are promised that you thought were going to be there, aren't there. Then you're like, who do I put the control of my family, my resources, my abilities? Who do I put that in? Well, people have figured out the best person to hold that control is yourself. So as we look at that, you mentioned control and I see this, I hear about this, I think the, you look at our age group. I described it this morning in something I wrote, we are the jelly in the peanut butter in between the two pieces of bread. We are the piece of bread. That's the older leadership that's like, well, we did this back in the, we did this in 2008, we did this in 1994, we did this whenever that we make the edict and people just respond to it. Then there's the younger generation, the millennials, the Gen Zs that are like sorry, too bad. We're again, that millennial, Gen X, the listener of this podcast, the listener of what you're doing, we're the jelly in the peanut butter in the middle trying to figure it out. I think what's coming there is, again, if you want control, you can't grab a hold of oil and control it. You can only hope to direct it and if you direct it, you're better off than saying, I'm going to strong arm this. I'm going to tell you have to be in the office. I'm going to tell you this and expect you to respond. Sorry, to your point, 82%, I think the number I read, 82% that people have left jobs did so because there was a better, they believed there was a better leader out there for them. [DAVIN] That's exactly right. I mean, what you just said about, because here, again, there's not a sacrifice here because someone's listening to this right now and saying, wait a minute, you're telling us that everyone should have the ability to determine where they can work, when they can work when they need to. But Davin, Tyler, we've got manufacturing lines, we've got storefronts, we've got restaurants. People physically have to be in a building. Not every job can be working and you're a hundred percent right, but here's the deal, there's a difference between telling people that they have to be somewhere or else. Or helping them see what they are a part of and what they can contribute to, and then what they get to come to and what they will want to come to. Because if you create environments like that, people will want to come to work. [TYLER] The right people [DAVIN] They want to work remotely. They will, the right people, they will want to be at the right place at the right time, because that's where they get to use their purpose and they get to physically see their impact. A big reason that depression and addiction and suicide and all of that went up during Covid is because we want to see the fruits of our labor. We want to see the difference we make, we want to see the work of our hands. We couldn't see that during Covid because we were working remotely. I would argue that a big piece of people who want to work remotely today, they're really just avoiding bad cultures and board bad leaders. If you've got a really good culture and a really great leader, guess what? They want to come to the office. They want to come to the factory. They want to come to the storefront. It's not a question of where the work can or needs to be done. It's a matter of what type of culture are you creating? What type of leader are you? And do I want to spend my time around you? If the answer to that is no, that I'm hiding saying I want to work remotely and I'm looking for other options of where I can work. It's that simple. That's where people want to come to. [TYLER] That's the piece that I think is going on that my encouragement, and I want to kind of, we've been direct and intense here, and I want to dial, we're going to laugh here. I'm fired up, man. Let's go. This is going to show up somewhere and someone's going to be like, "Davin, calm down, or I'm going to, there's going to be some company that I probably have a speaking contract that's going to say you know what ---" [TYLER] No, no, we're going to make it fun in just a second. Hold on. [DAVIN] It needs to be said. [TYLER] There's a piece here where I believe if we embrace this, I hired somebody in 2019 to do a job. Most likely, I have a friend that went, just went through this. He's a banking executive, had an assistant, was working the office, really struggled and ended up that person left. My encouragement to him is like, hey, it's okay. You hired them when the only option was to come to the office. Now the world is different. If they don't want to come to the office, it's not, you can't force them to. Say, "Hey, it no longer works for you. That's fine. I'm going to go find somebody that wants to work in an office, or I need to take the moment," like you just said. It's like, huh, what conditions did I create where they didn't want to be here. There's the element of, I call it the window in the mirror. We can look in the mirror as leaders and all we see is our reflection and that's our intentions. We need to go over to the window, stand in front of the window and say, Hey, what are my actions really saying? Because that's more meaningful. And I think we just, we got to go through this period of almost rehiring every position because it's different now. It's different for all the reasons we've talked about, but it's different. [DAVIN] Yes, yes. [TYLER] You ready for fun now? [DAVIN] What's that? [TYLER] You ready for fun now? [DAVIN] Oh yeah. [TYLER] Okay. So you mentioned something, and I think this would be hilarious. I'd love to go back into your time of being an HR, HR director. You did some hiring, you did those things and something that you mentioned, the people that would do all the things to get hired. There's got to be a couple good stories that you're just like, oh my goodness, I can't believe this happened. See, there are, there's some laugh there. I know there's a couple good stories. You're just like, okay, this is a learning moment. [DAVIN] There are. But you know what's interesting is you might think that I'm laughing at some situations that happened during interviews or how unprepared people maybe were coming into the interviews or are just, or just us really getting a bad read on a candidate or the vetting process. But that's not actually what I'm laughing at. What I'm laughing at is just how terrible my mindset was 10 years ago as an HR leader, as I was interviewing people. I can't believe how much I got it wrong. So I'm not laughing --- [TYLER] Please tell me more. That's good. [DAVIN] I'm laughing at myself. [TYLER] Good. I mean, to me that's, hey, my question led to that, which I think is going to be tremendous gold. So what was that? What did you get wrong that you look at it and now it's like, holy smokes, I can't believe I did that. [DAVIN] So when you think about it, every single person has a unique set of gifts, talents, abilities, skillsets, experiences, and not everyone's the right hire for the right job. But the reality is what happens is every single one of those interviews, I knew what I was looking for, I knew what we needed, I knew what the job entailed, and I knew the type of candidate, the level of competency, the level of competence, the level of experience, the level of knowledge, all of the things that they need to have in order for them to be the right candidate for this job. In the process of interviewing them, it was almost like checking, like, check, check, check, check. Yes, they had that, oh no, they don't have that and I didn't take the time to actually learn about them, the human being and the gifts and things that maybe they had that we could have used, whether that was in a different role or if there was insights or things that we could have learned. And I'm not saying you have to hire everybody, but I was so narrow focused on the type of person that I needed for this specific role with these specific competencies and this specific experience at this price range and all of these things that I shudder to think how many really good people did I potentially either pass on or that I didn't take the time to know as a human being who they were and what they had to offer because I was so narrow focused. How many opportunities did I miss? In my book Finding Purpose at Work, there's a part where I talk about buy in early on people and I talk about the next CEO of Microsoft or whoever could be sitting across from you right now and you missed it because you were so shortsighted on what you needed that you didn't really take the time to figure out what type of skillsets does this person have? What lights them up? What makes them come alive? What are some of the things that they're passionate about? What are elements of their purpose that they bring to the table that may be somewhere in our organization there's a compliment for, and we could all be better because of that, because I was so short-sighted and I didn't think about it. Now I look back at that and go, wow, so much missed opportunity. So much. [TYLER] So I'm grateful we got that from where I was going but I think it leads to this next piece. Great diversity in organizations come when we get off of the checklist. Our checklist is very homogenous to what we know already. If we focus on the checklist do they have this, do they have that, we're going to end up with a pretty homogenous, it's all going to look the same. But if we just set that aside and like, let me go find good people, let me go find good people that maybe are interested in what we do, we will figure out how and where they fit. To your point, and you share this a little bit in your book, I don't think you would've ever been hired for any of your positions if the HR director was sitting there with a checklist, right? [DAVIN] Absolutely not. Absolutely not. In fact, it's funny that you said that, Tyler, because the publisher of the book, when they edited, they actually sent me back because in chapter two, I talk about, you know Finding Purpose at Work has two different meanings. Yes, finding purpose in your work, but the other meaning of it, and I talk about this if you look back at all the things that happened in your life, all these moments that we call purpose points, these locations in your life where the everything just worked out and you're like, why did that happen the way that it did, you could look back and see, okay, this happened because that happened and then that happened because this happened. But in the moment you can't see it. You're like, why is this happening or why is this not happening? We're always questioning our present, but when we look back at the past, we can sometimes connect the dots. So I could see how all of my prior experiences led me to my next experience in my career history, but on paper, the editor of my book actually said, the uncanny ability for the author to attain roles and positions at companies for which he was not educated, nor had the experience for will not resonate with readers and we recommended it's removed from the book. That is what they told me. I kept it in the book because what I wanted to point out is that if you focus on purpose, I'm not saying that experience and education aren't important. They are. But the thing is, you could teach those, you could give people experience and you could teach them what they don't know. What you can't give someone is their sense of purpose, because that's in here. They bring that. So if you focus on that, you can mold that and shape that really into any role and position and then equip them for what they don't have. And that was the point that I was making. [TYLER] I think the editor made the very point that we discussed earlier is in, when we hold onto that, it has to check all these boxes, we end up losing sight of what's the purpose. it's hold onto that job for 20 years. It's be there till retirement. It's go to college. It's check all the boxes. That's never going to give you the experiences that allow you to serve people and live out your purpose. It's never going to, because you're so focused on checking the boxes and not going forward so you can look back and connect the dots. [DAVIN] That's exactly right. That's exactly. And you could almost get predictive. When you look back and connect the dots and see what roles you stepped into, where you made a big difference, you made an impact, people thanked you or told you you were really good at this or really great at that and those moments lit you up and you found fulfillment in those moments, you can look forward and say, where are there opportunities to do that again? Where can I step into that? And now all of a sudden you're very, very clear about who you are, what your gifts, talents, and abilities are, what insights you have, what you bring to the table, and you look for moments to step in to make that difference, to make that impact. And it can be, it can become very prescriptive for you in terms of looking back and then looking ahead and saying, what's my next thing? Where do I step next? That's what people are missing because we have been conditioned to operate off of a checklist. [TYLER] Yeah, and even a younger generation, that's how they were educated. So again, you look at that younger millennials that were stuck in that, because that's how school was. It's hey, here's the checklist to pass. So now we've asked them to checklist and they're looking around saying, but the checklist isn't giving me results. That's where, again, comes back to, oh, you know what, we need to find purpose in what we're doing. We need to find fulfillment through our purpose, our structure, our gifts, our unique talents. It's not new. Peter Drucker talked about it decades ago. Other leaders have talked about it for so long. It's just now we're being faced with it, with an opportunity evolve and change and be better. [DAVIN] That's well said. So well said. [TYLER] Davin, thanks, man. This has been fun. This has been fun. I appreciate it. [DAVIN] Tyler, Thank you. I will tell you, this is probably the most honest and bold and aggressive that I've probably been on this topic, on any podcast I've ever been. I don't know what it is about you, but you brought it out. In my mind, I'm thinking about all the consequences that might come from this, but A, it's been fun. B it needs to be said because I think that there's so much potential in so many people and we tend to allow our circumstances or limitations to define us and then we leave so much on the table, we leave. There's so much that we end up looking back at our life and regretting and not stepping into and it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't. Every single person can step into the fullness of their purpose and potential if they choose to and every single company can create the conditions that allow them to make that choice. [TYLER] Man, that's awesome. I'm going to share one little tidbit for the audience. I'm an intense person. You might have gathered that. You're intense, you're passionate. One thing that I've learned, the greatest way to diffuse intensity is to do what you just did. Just smile. Your heart shows through. I appreciate it. Thanks for sharing your heart. Thanks for being with us. I appreciate it, man. [DAVIN] Thanks, Tyler. I appreciate you. It's my pleasure. [TYLER] Don't think it took you long to understand. Davin's pretty passionate about purpose. It's obviously impacted his life and he's seen how it's impacted thousands of other lives. Here's what I know, whoever you are or whatever you're doing, if it's finding your own purpose, if I think back to my friend Brian Bosché , who wrote the book, the Purpose Factor, and again, into this discussion about purpose, it leads us to where we're at today. We can do better. People around us deserve better. Let's stop with the checklists and let's look for people that have values, have a desire to contribute in ways that we're trying to make a difference. Really, it's being impact driven. It's the desire that I have to help leaders be healthier, to be better leaders that focus on serving people, helping them live out their purpose. One of the questions we got to is Davin shared about being an HR director, Human Resources director in those experiences and as I thought about that, how telling it is that the biggest thing that we need to do to be better leaders is stop with the checklist and putting people into boxes and just sit down with curiosity and fascination and wonder and see what greatness people hold. Then from there we'll find whatever opportunity and connection there is. It's something that really invigorates me. It excites me to connect the dots, but I understand, as he said, we can look back and connect the dots and then we can start to see opportunities to just try to sketch that out in the future. Thanks for being here today. One last thing, one last reminder, the Impact Driven Leader Workshop is on May 8th and 9th. If you listen to it after that, go to impactdrivenworkshop.com, register for the next event. I hope to see you there. I hope to help you and empower you as that person that's leading today, that's leading an organization that's leading with others. How do you figure out, as I mentioned in this episode, to be the peanut butter and jelly in between those two slices of bread? Thanks for being here. Until next time. Have a good one.