This week we have Monte Wyatt on the podcast to talk about choosing a culture to create and refine during work from home. Monte goes into details about how to do this well. From making consistent efforts to having one on ones to engaging your team through virtual team building. Monte recently also wrote a book titled Pulling Profits out of a Hat. He talks a bit more about the book and what inspired him to write it.
Find Monte on his website!
Full transcription below: (may contain typos)
[00:00:00] Monte: [00:00:00] That, that's a fabulous question because. Leaders of business needs to need to coach their team on how to work through mentally this aspect of it.
And when I say mentally it's getting people to share what's concerning them and too many times managers, business leaders, whatever they. They don't have time for that. We have to make time for what are your concerns right now? And how can I help you through that? That's a big piece of leadership.
Keerstyn: [00:00:29] hi Monte. Welcome to the podcast.
We are so excited to have you here today to learn a bit more. Bit more about what you do and how you got involved in the work. Do you want us, or do you want to give us a little bit of a brief bio intro of how you got involved in your work and what you do
Monte: [00:00:45] now? Sure. I'm a farm boy from Iowa, my dad and my brothers still farm corn soybeans and hogs.
And I actually went to Iowa state and studied agricultural business. And I spent 14 years in agricultural [00:01:00] industry in different positions from sales, training, sales management, marketing management lived in five, six places around the country. The downside of all that is I traveled most of my time.
So in 2004, I said that was enough. And because of my career path that I had in that organization, and some of my ambitions, I chose to be a, an executive leadership coach back in 2004. And so the last 16 years have been focused on helping CEOs and executives, teams bring clarity to how they lead and manage their organizations.
And focus on helping them to think differently, act differently and create greater discipline in their organizations. So how about that as a start? That
Keerstyn: [00:01:46] sounds great. So the first question I have for you are when your clients come to you, obviously they have a few problems. What are those problems that they're experiencing?
There may be more than one. Do you want to just explain a few of those [00:02:00] and those pain points that they're struggling with?
Monte: [00:02:02] Sure. I've, I'll give a couple of examples of clients. I had one that I'll give a couple here. One is they approached me and said, do you help with customer service?
And I said, absolutely, of course. And so I sat down with the CEO and the executive team and dug a little bit deeper into what they were thinking around customer service. And it was actually. It's really much deeper than customer service. And became about their culture. It became about do they have goal setting?
It came about that they've been stagnant in their growth. And so it was a number of things, but they saw it as a surface issue of customer service. And we found a number of ways that we're going to improve that another client They were getting ready to transition the company.
One gentlemen was going to retire as he was leading the company. And another gentleman was moving into that chair. And so they wanted a clear strategy. And so a lot of what I do is I help people create their strategy and [00:03:00] help them implement it. But the strategy encompasses their people side. It encompasses who we are, where we're going and how we will succeed.
Keerstyn: [00:03:10] Yeah, absolutely. So during this COVID-19 thing, what has, is Ben, some of those issues, I guess we could call them that they have experienced to transition to this new, normal, so to speak. And how have you successfully done that?
Monte: [00:03:27] Think every business on the planet is in this place right now where they have to reevaluate their strategy.
And what I mean by that is, what are the products and services that we're offering? And who is the core customer, especially as we're coming out of this and opening up the world. We really have to be more specific on who do we want to be talking to? Who do we want to be interacting with?
And so that we are focused and who is the right audience that want our products or need our products at this point in time. So I'm [00:04:00] focusing every one of my clients and even prospects to, to really rethink what is our strategy of how we're going to win. Because that includes our services or products or core customer and how will we fulfill it?
Because we have to think differently on how we're fulfilling our products and services. It may be more remotely. It may be more carefully. However, we need to look at that. So it's a really rethinking everything in this new world.
Keerstyn: [00:04:27] Yeah, absolutely. And then in terms of that employee engagement side too, is what have you been doing in that realm to really engage those employees?
Get them on a new level of engagement too, because I'm sure that many of them are not used to working from home or being so technologically
Monte: [00:04:45] involved. Yeah, that is an interesting thing. And every business is so different when it comes to the team. But what I'm focusing on again is what is the culture that we're choosing to create through this?
And when I say culture, we choose it [00:05:00] and then we have to change our behaviors to try to really implement it. Right now, communication is probably the biggest thing that every business needs to focus on. Not just communication of how should we be wearing the mask and how do we interact with other people, but communication on what we're doing as a company to ensure that we are sustainable longterm.
And that is communication is so powerful right now in some organizations that's the big challenge for them. And it really doesn't take that much. It just takes some thinking and some some consistency that, that needs to be done regarding communication. So I think that's a big one, but I also believe that.
A company needs to help the employees understand that we care about them during this time. And if a company isn't showing that we care about them and their safety and their health, we're making decisions based on that. That's good. And I impact engagement and let them share their [00:06:00] frustrations.
That doesn't mean their frustrations are wrong. And that doesn't mean they're right, but people need and want to be heard and then we can take their inputs and see how does that help us continue to grow in how we interact and communicate. So I think that's a big part of his listening, communication, communicating, and showing that we care, especially right now.
Yeah,
Keerstyn: [00:06:24] absolutely. So that almost goes into coaching to coaching your team. Not necessarily you, you are coaching because you are a business coach, but also then helping your, the teams understand how to coach, what have you been doing in that realm?
Monte: [00:06:39] That, that's a fabulous question because. Leaders of business needs to need to coach their team on how to work through mentally this aspect of it.
And when I say mentally it's getting people to share what's concerning them and too many ...
