Accountability in Leadership: Robert Hunt

Summary

In this episode of The Chris Project, host Christian Brim speaks with Robert Hunt, author of 'Nobody Cares Until You Do.' They discuss the importance of accountability in leadership, the structure and benefits of peer groups, and the challenges entrepreneurs face in delegating responsibilities. Robert emphasizes the need for vulnerability and proactive accountability in leadership, as well as the significance of clear communication and effective delegation. The conversation highlights the journey of personal and professional growth that comes from being part of a supportive community.

Takeaways

• Helping people remove obstacles is my purpose.
• Peer groups foster accountability and support.
• Accountability is about freedom, not punishment.
• Actions have consequences in business and life.
• Leaders must be transparent and humble.
• Effective delegation requires clear communication.
• Proactive accountability helps teams succeed.
• Vulnerability is essential for authentic leadership.
• Peer groups provide valuable perspectives and questions.
• Creating a culture of accountability empowers employees.

Want to be a guest on The Chris Project? Send Christian Brim a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/chrisproject

Transcript

Christian Brim (00:01.673)
Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today, Robert Hunt, author of Nobody Cares. Welcome to the show, Robert. Do you want to fill in the last part of that? Because Nobody Cares sounds, you know, mean.

Robert J. Hunt (00:13.486)
Thank so much. Good to see you again.

Robert J. Hunt (00:21.26)
Yeah, it's really the book's called Nobody Cares Until You Do and it does sound a little negative if we stop short.

Christian Brim (00:28.445)
Yes, So you and I were talking in the green room about the origin of the show and you you had this response that I thought was spot on. You talked about these peer groups that you run. So tell us a little bit more about those peer groups. Why did you start them in the first place?

Robert J. Hunt (00:52.278)
It's my purpose in life. I got a job that allows me to live out my purpose in life, which is to help people remove the obstacles and keep them from being their best. And I never had a job that I could do that. I was a director of marketing and sales most of my career, but the companies I worked for never really wanted to be great. They just wanted to say they were great. And marketing can only do so much. Lipstick on a pig a lot of times. And when I ran into the person who owned the franchise here in Texas, I was enamored by the idea.

Christian Brim (01:14.015)
True.

Robert J. Hunt (01:21.71)
So people pay you money to come sit in a room and to be transparent and vulnerable to get the help they need to reach their goals. Yes. I gotta do that. That's the perfect job. And so I jumped on it, having no clue how to run that business. No experience being a facilitator. No, I've never been in a peer group. Frankly, I wasn't even that accountable in my own life. And that's.

Christian Brim (01:45.95)
Right.

Robert J. Hunt (01:46.552)
Part of what we talk about in our book is the way that we lived our life that was modeling the lack of accountability. But I love the idea of people coming together to help each other to create a world of accountability so they can get the things done that they wanna do. And the burden that a business owner carries is pretty enormous and I don't think many people understand what that's really like other than other business owners. And that's why we meet together to work through that.

Christian Brim (02:10.719)
So what franchise network is this?

Robert J. Hunt (02:14.946)
This is part of what used to be called Renaissance executive forums and now they just go by ref, which is like Kentucky Fried Chicken go by KFC, you know.

Christian Brim (02:20.401)
Okay, okay. Yeah, it's easier. You talk about accountability and I that that really resonated with me as you were talking about it because I think a lot of entrepreneurs are like me in that. I think my daughter calls it obstinate defiant disorder, something like that. You know, a lot of entrepreneurs are are

Robert J. Hunt (02:41.678)
You

Christian Brim (02:48.731)
start the journey of entrepreneurship because they don't want to be told what to do. They want to make the decisions. They want to control the outcomes. And that's not a bad thing to have. mean, you shouldn't be obstinate just to be contrary. You shouldn't not do something just because somebody told you to do it. But there is this characteristic of lot of entrepreneurs of self-reliance.

Robert J. Hunt (02:54.968)
Some, yeah.

Robert J. Hunt (03:06.733)
Right.

Christian Brim (03:17.375)
persistence and accountability doesn't necessarily play well with those things on the surface. Yeah.

Robert J. Hunt (03:27.886)
Well, in the definition that most people think of when they think of accountability, you're correct. However, we look at accountability as being punitive. Like, I'm going to hold you account, like it's a threat, you know? But really, accountability, at the heart of what it is, is the power to get things done. It's the freedom to live and pursue what you really want. The opposite of accountability is being a victim to everything that comes your way. So whatever happens in your life, in your business, it happened to you.

Christian Brim (03:36.457)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (03:44.529)
Mm-hmm.

Robert J. Hunt (03:56.8)
and my boss was a jerk and the customers are horrible and the market and darn tariffs. Pick your topic. People love to blame or make excuses, but the reality is if you're not doing it, that's on you. It's your business, it's your life. And that applies to everything. It applies to your marriage, it applies to your health. If I'm eating donuts for breakfast and I get fat, hmm, whose fault is that? The guy who sold me the donut or the guy who bought the donut and ate it?

Christian Brim (04:04.188)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (04:10.162)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (04:25.117)
It's the donut industry. It's a conspiracy.

Robert J. Hunt (04:25.324)
And so we've just created a society, clearly it's the donut guy. We've just created a society that in the last years, I don't even know how long it's been going on really, everyone loves to blame everything. Everyone's mad at everybody. And that's why we wrote this book after 2020 when COVID shut down the world and people drew lines and started just pointing fingers like crazy. Like we couldn't get anything done. Everybody was mad. You wear a mask, I hate you. You don't wear a mask, I hate you.

Christian Brim (04:48.636)
Mm-hmm.

Robert J. Hunt (04:52.108)
You know, you're coming to work, why you coming to work? You make us all sick, stay home. Why are you staying home? How do you not work? It was a nightmare. And we just step back and watch this. Something's gotta change in the way we look at life and how we need to own it. Your actions have consequences. Believe it or not, they do. And we have to go back to the days where people believed that their actions have consequences.

Christian Brim (05:08.991)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (05:14.227)
So does Ref work with exclusively the owners or also their key executives?

Robert J. Hunt (05:20.898)
Well, REF as an organization is targeting the business owner or other C-suite leaders. And not that we're opposed to working with anybody, but our desire is to have the most impact as possible. If I work with the CFO or a marketing manager and I help them pursue excellence in their business and their personal life, they still gotta go up to their boss and go, can we do this? And if the boss says no, then where are we going? So if we go to the top person, whatever title that is in the organization,

president, whatever, key executive. And we work with them. They can trickle down to the team all the things that we're learning together through our meetings. And we hope to have a greater influence that way.

Christian Brim (06:02.793)
So talk a little bit more about the mechanics of the cohorts. Is it a monthly rhythm? Are there one-on-one sessions? What does it look like?

Robert J. Hunt (06:15.214)
Yeah, we meet once a month in a private meeting. We take turns hosting at each other's company. gives us a chance to be a part of their business and learn what's going on and meet their people. Every month we come together. We do our check-ins. We do, what's been going on the last 30 days? What's new? What's on your plate? A lot of times that's when our issues come up that we want to work on that day. Someone will say, I've got a new employee, but I'm having all these problems. How do I integrate them into this? That becomes a thing that we work on as a group that day.

We usually have a speaker come in and talk about something. Last month was about contracts. Before that we had understanding tax laws and how it could affect you personally. Just stuff that we need to know as leaders to always keep learning and sharpening ourselves. We'll have lunch together. We'll go through fixing and working on issues. One of the things we don't do is tell you what to do. And in my particular groups, the way that I run it is...

Christian Brim (07:05.96)
Mm-hmm.

Robert J. Hunt (07:09.782)
I'm looking to build an environment where people feel safe enough to be radically transparent and vulnerable about their issues. And so you're in a very sensitive place when you're really being honest about stuff. And for us to go, well, you need to do that. It's gonna shut you down because A, we don't want anyone to tell us what to do. But also, I'm being really vulnerable and now you're gonna make me feel stupid that you're telling me what to do at this moment of vulnerability. So what we strive to do is have them self-discover their own answer. Because whatever you self-discover, you're more likely to do.

And if we chime in and say, you absolutely have to fire that guy, you're to be like, well, he's my brother. And what do I do about that? And so if we can ask enough questions where you self-discovered, then it's much better.

Christian Brim (07:51.136)
I'm looking at my phone here real quick because I don't remember the author's name. Michael Brody Waite, Great Leaders Do What Drug Addicts Do. Or I think the title of the book is Great Leaders Live Like Drug Addicts or something like that. This is the YouTube title. Have you heard of this guy? Yeah, so what you're describing

Robert J. Hunt (08:09.102)
Wow.

No, but I will check it out. That's fascinating.

Christian Brim (08:20.335)
Sounds a lot like EO forums. I don't know if you're familiar with the entrepreneur organization.

Robert J. Hunt (08:25.004)
Yeah, there's lots of peer groups out there. YPO, EO, Vistage, C12, Convene. There's lots of groups out

Christian Brim (08:32.103)
Right. So, so this guy is actually coming, doing a workshop here in Oklahoma city in February. And so the chapter sent everybody a copy of his book. And so I got it. I'm like, this is, I, got to read it based upon the title, right? You talk about good marketing and he, he talks about his life as a drug addict and then his

Robert J. Hunt (08:50.156)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Brim (09:01.119)
getting clean and then his success as an entrepreneur and comparing and contrasting life as a drug addict and how he lives as a recovering addict. But the first thing that he talks about is radical authenticity and how as an addict, and I think really, and he talks about this like everybody lives this way, whether

they're an addict or not, is they live life with a mask. And it really resonated with me because as an entrepreneur, we really have to fight to not wear a mask, right? Or I have, because there's this image I thought I had to put to not just my peers,

but my team, right? Like I had to have all the answers. I had to know what to do in any given moment. I had to have this clear vision of the path forward, right? But the reality is I didn't feel that most of the time, right? And wearing.

Robert J. Hunt (10:00.194)
Yeah.

Robert J. Hunt (10:15.854)
And that just creates an incredible burden for you to somehow amp up to be all those things. And now you're living under duress constantly.

Christian Brim (10:22.833)
Exactly. And it's wasted energy, right? Like you're putting all this energy in putting forth a persona. And this is where people talk about, you know, imposter syndrome. Well, of course you're living, you have imposter syndrome. You're hiding behind a mask. If you were authentic in saying, you know what? I don't know. I don't have the answer. Correct.

Robert J. Hunt (10:29.026)
It is.

Robert J. Hunt (10:49.166)
Which is the true answer because you can't know everything no matter how smart you are. You earlier you said a lot of people start their own business because they want to be able to make their own decisions, be their own boss. In my experience, which is just my experience, most of the people have started business because they were really good at something and it just grew. They didn't necessarily want to be their own boss but they loved doing what they did. But now all of sudden I got 30, 50, 100 employees and I don't like half of them and I don't know how to run this thing and...

Christian Brim (11:04.927)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Robert J. Hunt (11:16.066)
We know when it was just me and three other dudes in my garage, we were doing great, but now it's like this and I'm way outside my league. So to pretend that you know everything when all you were were a great painter and now you've got this whole company to take care of, it's naive. And so really smart leaders are willing to be transparent and humble enough to say, I hired all y'all because you're good and I'm let you do your job.

Christian Brim (11:30.878)
Yes.

Robert J. Hunt (11:40.812)
which takes the burden off of me as an owner to say I need to know everything. I don't know enough about cyber security to do the right job. I don't know enough about tax laws to do our accounting or even financial guidelines or HR or inventory. You have to know everything and be an expert? Come on, it ain't gonna happen.

Christian Brim (11:59.325)
No, but it's, it's, you know, at least my experience is, is that the expectation, well, I'll back up. Most, most business owners don't realize all the shit that they have to know, right? And they, they, they go through baptism by fire and they're like, shit, there's a lot of stuff I don't know that I need to know. Right. And so, I, for me,

Robert J. Hunt (12:23.202)
Right, right.

Christian Brim (12:28.507)
it was like I felt like it was my responsibility, right? Like I have to be, I have to know everything. And I've shifted that as a leader to, don't know, have to, I don't have to know everything, but I have to know enough. And, and that's, that's one of the things where I think you can go the other direction where and say like, well, I'm washing my hands of it. It, you know, I'm hiring you to do marketing, you got to do marketing and

Robert J. Hunt (12:56.888)
But you can't be ignorant about it because when put it in it says, we're spending two million dollars to build brand. I don't want to build brand, I want to get orders. And along the way we'll build our brand because we're getting orders. Don't give me this, I'm gonna build brand stuff. And so this is where you have to know enough to be aware of what the expectations are. But a good leader is constantly creating a conversation between the people that work for him of where we're going, why we're doing it, how's it gonna work, how do we measure it.

Christian Brim (12:58.395)
Exactly.

Christian Brim (13:04.819)
Right.

Robert J. Hunt (13:24.706)
And then you have to go back and ask other people who are doing it. That's why peer groups exist. Because you could be in a room and say, hey, this guy wants to a million dollars to build brand. And we'll all go, no, no, no. Get leads, sell orders, do closed deals. And then you'll build your brand. But you can have other people to bounce these ideas off of who are going through the same thing you're going through. And then you can get back to your team and go, well, I'd like to have some more measurables. How are we going to get a return on this investment? Let's set some.

steps along the way we can measure and have real deliverables.

Christian Brim (13:56.094)
Yeah, I mean, as an aside, brand is like you said, it's what happens along the way. You don't build a brand and then automatically you start sell shit. That's not the way that works.

Robert J. Hunt (14:03.789)
Right.

Robert J. Hunt (14:08.598)
Now, coming from a marketing background though, I met a lot of people who would say, yeah, we're doing all this to build our brand. And I'd be like, you're getting paid? They're paying you to do that? Good for you.

Christian Brim (14:15.409)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if for businesses that don't have any marketing acumen and and and they have the money that that's an easy thing to sell them because it's pretty. It's shiny. And yeah, exactly. So in your groups, do you do you purport any

Robert J. Hunt (14:29.548)
Yeah, right. It is shiny. That's exactly right.

Christian Brim (14:44.012)
specific systems like scaling up EOS like is there anything that you recommend in these groups for accountability and how to run the business?

Robert J. Hunt (14:53.9)
What we recommend for accountability is just being vulnerable and honest about what's going on. The systems and the processes that can be used as a tool to achieve your goals come up based on the need. We talk about all these things. I've had EOS implementers come in and present what that's about. I love working genius. We've had all kinds of different things. We did a session on scaling your business. It's just, it's a tool.

There's ideas out there and we're always talking about a new idea, but you have to have what fits for you. I think EOS is a great foundational system, but it doesn't go far enough in my opinion. I think they stay in their lane too much and they fall short of what needs to be done for a lot of leaders, which is to hold their hand and do more coaching all the way through, are you doing what you said you're gonna do? Meeting quarterly is just not what some leaders need. So you have to do what's needed for the type of leader you are and the business you're serving.

Christian Brim (15:27.113)
Mm-hmm.

Robert J. Hunt (15:51.0)
There's a lot of great tools out there. What we don't need is another tool. What we need is the determination to do what we said we're gonna do. And that really is created when you become accountable. And I know maybe just because I wrote a book on accountability, I'm not everything's accountable, it's the only thing I know. But I've watched this for 13 years now and I've seen people make really bad decisions because they refuse to be accountable. And I would be talking with them one on one. I do coaching as part of the offering I do.

And I'd say, look, you gotta bring that to the group because that just make sense to me. And they go, I don't know, I'll think about it. And then they'd come to the next meeting and they wouldn't say anything. And I'd go, hey, how can we bring it I'm not ready for that yet. Well, then time goes on and they made some really heinous decision. Now they gotta eat it. If they had just brought it to the group, the group would have said, no, you're out of your mind, don't do that. And they would have challenged them and hopefully spared them all that pain. But because they held onto it and kept it private, they ate it.

And I mean, it's like your story with Chris, you the same thing, you you can only speak into someone's life. They got to own it.

Christian Brim (16:54.375)
Yeah, and I find that a strange dynamic as an entrepreneur because, know, as visionaries, see things. Entrepreneurs see things differently, right? And so we see the possible where other people just see reality. And when you have a conversation with others, it's very easy for them to say, well, that's not the way things are.

Right? Like I see reality. You're talking about la la land. Right. And, and, and you, you have to let that in as an entrepreneur, as a leader, you have to let that criticism in because division may be a delusion, right? Like you can't, you, you can't always assume that what you're seeing is possible. But the flip side of it is, is that you have to have enough

Robert J. Hunt (17:26.904)
Yeah, right.

Christian Brim (17:52.468)
belief and passion in your vision that even if no one else says they don't see it or everyone says they don't see it that you still have the passion to move forward, right?

Robert J. Hunt (18:02.914)
You believe.

Robert J. Hunt (18:06.486)
Yeah, then all you got to do at that point is we're not questioning your vision. We're going to tactically ask, tell me how you're going to get there then. You have a vision to do something that we're like, that is ridiculous, but that's so cool. Let's go for it. How will you get there? Now the steps required to do something we could all agree upon because that's measurable. It's a process. But if your vision is I'm going to do something that's just going to happen and you don't have a plan for it, we can all tear that apart. We're not tearing apart your vision.

Christian Brim (18:13.022)
Yes.

Robert J. Hunt (18:33.752)
We're tearing apart the steps that you're gonna commit to, that you said you wanna do to achieve the vision. And we're not telling you how to chase the vision, this is your plan. And if you lay it out go, well, who's gonna pay for that? How long is that gonna take? How will you do this and spend more time with your kids? I because that was what you said last time, you're not spending time with your kids. And so now you've got something to go and guess what you shared last time. So we just ask questions and ask questions and then you go, okay, well, I'll do this and I'll set a measurable. And that's a good point, maybe.

But you're making the decisions as you chase your vision. We're just asking good questions. I think a good peer group is asking more questions than we ever tell people what to do.

Christian Brim (19:12.019)
Yes, and I love what you said about not telling them what to do. I say, you know, the EO mantra is we don't give advice, we give experience here, right? And it's the same concept because, you know, if someone tells you what to do in the guise of advice, you don't own the problem, right? You're just saying, well, Robert knows what he's doing. He's been there and done that before.

Robert J. Hunt (19:23.715)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (19:42.033)
So I'm going to do what Robert says. And if it fails, well, who do I blame? I blame Robert, right? I didn't own the decision, right? And as leaders, that's exactly the thing that we have to cultivate in the people that we're bringing up as leaders in our organization is like, you know, I'm not making this decision for you. I can give you my experience share. I can even give you advice to the extent of

Robert J. Hunt (19:46.03)
I'm going to blame Robert. That's right. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Brim (20:11.472)
I'll ask you questions about your plan. Like I can poke holes in it, right? But at the end of the day, it's your decision and you have to live with the consequences.

Robert J. Hunt (20:23.564)
Otherwise, you're taking the monkey back on your back. You've probably heard that phrase before, but we've even got to the place where when we say, okay, we've got an issue, our employees are coming to us asking questions and we're saying, okay, don't come to me anymore with these questions. Come to me with a solution. Tell me what you're gonna do. And the only time, and we used to say, hey, great idea, good luck. And we thought that we were really smart, but I took the monkey back because I said great idea. And so when it doesn't work out, they go, well, you said it was a great idea. What was your idea?

Christian Brim (20:25.915)
Exactly.

Christian Brim (20:50.962)
Right. Right.

Robert J. Hunt (20:52.194)
You know, so instead now we've told them ahead of time. So when they come to you with this great idea, the only thing I'm gonna say to you is, hey, that's wrong. If it's not wrong, I'm not gonna say anything. I'm gonna say have a great day. And so I'm not accepting the monkey back because people don't wanna make decisions. They don't like risk. They don't wanna get blamed for anything. But if you create a culture where it's okay to take a risk, where you're not punished for screwing up, you're punished for not doing something. That's where you need to get someone off their butt.

But if you made a decision on your own and you failed, then we'll roll with that. One of the things we created is this waterline concept. I don't know if you've heard of it before, but you know when a boat sits on the water, there's a waterline on the boat. Anything that hits the boat above the waterline, no big deal. Anything that hits below the waterline, we got a problem. And so what we've decided is we're gonna create a waterline for each company, and it's based on the core values, the vision, the mission, all that stuff is articulated on one page. And then we have our...

Christian Brim (21:33.628)
right?

Christian Brim (21:39.954)
Mmm.

Robert J. Hunt (21:51.05)
annual goals and the top policies that we want to reinforce like safety or, or take a risk or something that we're trying to build into the culture that year. Then everyone has a one page document that at any time, if you're not around, I'm not waiting on someone to tell me what to do. I know what you've asked me to do. And so I have to make a decision. I look at my core values. Does that align? No, that doesn't lie. Don't do it.

If I look at this and I say this is our mission and our vision or this year's goal is to save money and I have a chance that I think if I lock into a contract I can save 30 % but I got to pay all this money up front. No, we're saving money this year. You can make more decisions because you created a water line that everybody knows where we're going and how we make decisions. And we're empowering everybody to make their own decisions because we've created this tool. It's a very simple document but it's very powerful because we want people to own it and be empowered.

Christian Brim (22:43.248)
I love that because I've used a similar concept with my team using EOS. I tell the team periodically, I remind them like these are our values. This is our mission. If you make a decision using that as your filter, you're not going to make a mistake. You're empowered to make any decision that you need to make with that paradigm.

But I like your extending it to like because you know, they could make a decision that could have a short term impact that was not expected, right? Maybe financial. And so I like that idea of the water line. I also think that it's very nefarious. At least it has been for me. It's insidious almost that

You can pretend to delegate responsibility. one of the, I can see his face, I can't remember his name. The speaker at an event I went to several years ago, he talked about deputizing people, not delegating.

you deputize. And the analogy there is that the deputy, when they're on site, has the full authority of the sheriff, right? They are the sheriff when they're on site, right? And so this idea that you're not just delegating responsibilities, get this stuff done, you're also delegating the authority to get it done. And that's a hard thing to do. I mean, it really, for me, it has been because

I, I, I still find myself wanting to put my hands back on the wheel. Right. And the reality is, is that you can be very subtle in how you do this and not really delegating or deputizing. You, I, I, one of my peers who was, was very successful. had a nine figure exit. but he had

Robert J. Hunt (24:40.707)
Yes.

Christian Brim (25:03.363)
He admitted that he was the bottleneck in his organization because there was one process that still came to him and it was just a laying of the blessing like, yes, it's okay. Right. So it's very insidious where you can get sucked back into that approval of your leaders decisions.

Robert J. Hunt (25:29.506)
then you're really not delegating at that point. Can I take a minute to explain how we teach delegation in our groups? Delegation requires four things to be done effectively. The first one is rarely done. It's clear and compelling communication. We say, I want the report on by Friday and I leave. And then I come around at four o'clock, 4.58 on Friday, you're, you stroll in with a stack of papers, go, here's your report.

Christian Brim (25:31.452)
Exactly.

Christian Brim (25:35.028)
Yes.

Robert J. Hunt (25:56.556)
Dude, where you been? I've been calling you all day. I had my phone off. I was golfing with a customer. I needed that by one o'clock. You didn't say you needed it by one o'clock. You said you needed it by Friday. And then why are you giving it to me printed? I needed digital. And I have to send it to the customer. There's no photos in here. This guy feels like you're tearing him up, but you didn't say any of that stuff. And you weren't clear, and there wasn't a reason behind it. Therefore, I didn't wear a hard hat. I didn't put on a safety seatbelt.

Christian Brim (26:15.166)
Mm-hmm.

Robert J. Hunt (26:22.454)
I didn't do the things that we're supposed to do because I didn't think it was a big deal. It's not compelling. And we as leaders have not created the expectation that I will communicate with clear and compelling communication. If you were successful in doing that, then you got to give them the tools to do it as well as you do it. And the reason that we don't delegate is because you're slow. You don't do it as good as I do it. Well, I don't have the tools you have. I don't have all the knowledge. I don't have the computer you have. Mine doesn't work half the time.

I don't have all these documents that you've collected and known for so many years. That's a tool. And once you give someone the tools, which is hard to get documented and give to them, like an SOP or something that we use to guide ourselves, you gotta train them. Because even if you gave them all the paperwork and all the things and it was clear and compelling, there's still subtleties that we didn't mention. Well, when you send it to this guy, he doesn't like it in color. And when you do these guys, he likes doubles, because he's got a brother that works there. So there's things in there that are unique that we've gotta train and make sure that they do it well.

but they do it efficiently. If you can accomplish the first three, then you can do the fourth one, which is have accountability, where they can truly own it. And I can walk away and not helicopter in, not babysit it, not let it consume any part of my brain to continually think, I wonder if he's gonna do that. wonder how's that project would come along? How's the Johnson project? You need any help? I wanna walk away and never think about it again. That is delegation. And so we've gotta be really good as leaders to do the first three so we can enjoy the fourth one.

Christian Brim (27:44.52)
Yes.

Christian Brim (27:49.363)
Yes. And, and I'll, I'll, I'll experience share where I have failed in doing exactly what you said, with full knowledge of what you said was necessary. Like, so I knew everything you just said and I still failed, just this year. So, I realized that I was not after 28 years.

the right person in the right seat to head our marketing and sales efforts. I had been there by default, but it became clear to me that I did not know how to solve the problem of taking it to the next level. And that was a whole story on its own. But once I made that decision, I had a conversation with my marketing director and I said, here's what I think

I'm not the right person. Do you want the job? Do you want to step into it and come up to the leadership team and assume this role? And I knew that there were shortcomings, right? She'd never hired anybody. She'd never managed anybody. In other words, she didn't have any leadership skills, right? She didn't have any leadership experience.

But she was really good at marketing, right? Not really any experience at sales, but yet she was responsible for managing salespeople. So I knew all of these things and we had a lot of conversations around like, I don't want to set you up for failure.

Robert J. Hunt (29:42.734)
Yeah, intentionally.

Christian Brim (29:45.947)
Right. And, and, and, you know, I was very clear on the expectations of this is what needs to happen. If you accept this role, these are the outcomes that need to happen. And almost immediately, all of those deficiencies that I knew were there started showing up. Right. She tried to replace herself, hire another marketing director and it, it failed. she ended up having to fire her eight weeks later. Right.

And, so like my reaction over the last seven, eight months has been panic, right? Like this isn't working and, trying to help and manage her. I've really caused more anxiety and confusion. Right. And all of it is because of things that I knew were going to happen.

I knew they were issues, but I still proceeded and I still think we made the right decision, right? It's not the decision or the fact that she was going to have to learn these things and they were going to be difficult lessons. It was my reaction to it. Like my reaction was, you know, emotional panic, like fear, like this isn't working. No, no, I have not. What?

Robert J. Hunt (31:10.094)
What did you do to take it back?

Christian Brim (31:15.484)
What actually happened was the rest of the leader, it's been a growth for all of the leadership team too, because what had happened was when I sat in her seat, it was very easy for them to just say, well, that's Christians. I don't know anything about marketing and sales. If he says that they're gonna do it, they're gonna do it. And what it led to as a leadership team, there was no accountability.

But now that she was in there and it wasn't me, it was like, shit, we need to hold this accountable, right? Like if we're not performing, we need to figure out as a team how to make it work, right? And so it's been this growth process where the whole leadership team has risen. I'm not saying that we're there yet and successful yet, but we've turned the corner as a leadership team in understanding

It's you know, if marketing is lagging, it's the yes, that's that's person's job. But it's our job to hold them accountable and give them what they need to succeed, right?

Robert J. Hunt (32:25.134)
Let me challenge a little bit of that journey there. Accountability, one thing we need to start saying to ourselves, nobody can hold anyone else accountable. So when you say I'm gonna hold her accountable, that means that you're having an expectation that I'm gonna correct her when she's out of line.

What we want to do is to have real accountability is to be proactive in nature that says, okay, if I'm going to be accountable, I'm going to tell her upfront what this job requires and I'm going to notice that she doesn't have the leadership training that she needs to do her job. So before, or at least while she's developing this, she's going to go through a leadership development course to build herself up as a leader, focusing on radical candor, difficult conversations, whatever the things you see.

That is you being accountable to what you need to do proactively to help her succeed. She, on the other hand, needs to be accountable to say, I am not ready to take this job.

I know you want me to have it, but I'm not ready. And so to take the job and then to struggle with it, she could be responsible and try and fix everything when it goes wrong and apologize and work really hard, that's responsible. But accountable would say, look, there's no way I'm prepared to do this. Even if I want to, I don't have the skills you do. So let's put in this, let's work together on this, let me get this trained. Proactive nature of what we do is the only way we're gonna have accountability. And by you modeling it, you create a world where

Everybody else will want to be accountable. Thereby, have accountability in our company. But I can't hold anyone accountable because if they don't do it, I don't fire them. And I can't babysit them. I can't see everything they do. And so it just becomes down to we're going to proactively do something in the effort that we hope to get out of it.

Christian Brim (34:08.86)
love that statement because I've often thought about that in terms of accountability of like, what are you going to do, fire him? I mean, because that's really the only alternative, right?

Robert J. Hunt (34:19.65)
which is just you being accountable because you fired them. They're still taking their lack of accountability to the next company.

Christian Brim (34:22.234)
Exactly.

Exactly. Exactly. And it goes back to Lynch Yoni. As you mentioned, working genius. I love Lynch Yoni. What we we noticed through this process and was not with with her but her reports. One of her failures of leadership was that she tried to hold somebody accountable, her salesperson.

She basically said, look, we're doubling your quota. Like you got to do more. And the game's changed, right? Well, and I sat there with my HR person who's really not HR. It's really more about people and culture. And it's like after this, it was like, well, shit, you can't hold somebody accountable to something that they haven't agreed to, right?

Robert J. Hunt (35:22.734)
Right, and what gonna do to help them? If you say you gotta double your quota, then the conversation goes, here's what we're gonna do together to help you get there. You need to go get trained, you need to generate more leads, you need to do this. Somehow you gotta equip people, you just can't say you gotta do something. That's not accountable. That's really throwing something and there's no clear and compelling communication with the tools and training to do it. They're gonna fail.

Christian Brim (35:38.142)
Right.

Robert J. Hunt (35:45.868)
And so if you're gonna really expect someone to do whatever, you have the accountability that you model by there, you're proactively helping them succeed and setting them up with whatever they need so that they can be accountable.

Christian Brim (35:58.761)
Yes, and I would say all of this sounds really good when I'm sitting here talking, right? It's very easy to speak of these things in third person and more clinically. It's hard in the moment when the emotions and to me, I think that's where the peer groups really help is it gives you a place to clear those emotions out and really be clear.

Robert J. Hunt (36:04.598)
Hahaha

Robert J. Hunt (36:18.691)
Yes.

Christian Brim (36:27.9)
clear headed in thinking because it's hard when when you're looking at, you know, the bank balance going down every month and it's like, you know, the fear and and it's real easy when you've made a decision and you're you're questioning the decision to to want to pull it back to want to blow it up, right?

Robert J. Hunt (36:40.718)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (36:56.036)
And so I think you've got to get out of just yourself. I mean, I'm not strong enough of a person to do it. I haven't really met anybody that maybe one or two that are very exceptional people that have the internal self-awareness and fortitude to be able to do that without peers, but they're few and far between.

Robert J. Hunt (37:20.142)
Well, what are they leaving? I maybe they're not falling apart, but what could they be if they had other people?

We always talk about that we're going to give you more questions to your answers before you even get going because you already come in having to do this. I've got a person she's going to take over for me for marketing. And then we go, how long she'd been doing that before? What's her training? How does she do? And we're asking all these questions. You're like, Oh, I hadn't thought of that. I hadn't thought of that. And we're not shooting it down. We're just asking you questions and things you hadn't thought about before. Well, what would be the first thing she'd deliver on the first 90 days? How do you measure that? What's going to be the things that she'd do? And so I think having the ability to share with someone

who knows you and you trust them enough to be really truly honest about it is I'm not so sure she's going to succeed but I don't want to do it anymore and so then we can ask enough questions to help you see the things you hadn't thought of. I think that's another benefit of being in a peer group.

Christian Brim (38:11.27)
Yes. And to your point, you reference the man, the man or woman, I don't know, the person that you said, you had the one on one coaching call with and then they come to the peer group and they don't bring that you have to be vulnerable. And you have to understand that being vulnerable is uncomfortable. Like, there's there's no getting around that desire to put up that mask. I mean, that that that's always there of like, well,

Robert J. Hunt (38:22.893)
Yeah.

Robert J. Hunt (38:36.685)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (38:40.606)
I can figure it out. Like I got this right.

Robert J. Hunt (38:44.27)
And you could, you really could. You're very smart and you're very successful. You probably could figure it out on your own, but why? Why would you take all the energy and time and potential mistakes just so that you can have the ego that you didn't need anyone's help? I mean, you don't do your own lawyering. You don't do your own books. You don't do your own taxes. You don't do your own doctrine. What makes you so egotistical that you can't invest?

and let other people give you wisdom and guidance in the normal stuff you do, just so it'd be faster, easier, better, smarter, stronger, cheaper, all that stuff. Why would you not want that? That's just total ego. And that's why a lot of the times the things I bring to our meetings are just things to help people get used to being more real. We painted one time. I brought in a bunch of empty canvases and we just squirted paint on it and took a squeegee and made some cool designs. And then we voted on which one spoke more to our soul. And they're like,

Christian Brim (39:19.933)
Yes.

Christian Brim (39:27.262)
Love it.

Robert J. Hunt (39:38.19)
Every time I bring something and they're like, why you make us do this stuff? Well, because I want you to take a minute to be real. I want you to let your guard down a little bit. I want you to practice vulnerability and transparency and having emotions again and being free to begin. You get screwed so many times by people in business that you become hardened and distrusting and you guard yourself and you put up a wall because you've been screwed over so many times. We need to rebuild that because you're not bringing all of who you are when you live that way.

Christian Brim (40:05.98)
I love that. really do. I think, although we could probably go on this discussion forever, I'm going to wrap with that painting story. How do people find out more about Ref and specifically Nobody Cares, AKA Robert Hunt?

Robert J. Hunt (40:29.762)
Yeah, we're everywhere. We have our website, Nobody Cares Book.com, where you can learn more about the book. You can actually take the satisfaction assessment online and not have to buy the book because we want people to recognize where are you satisfied in life or not, and what are you going to do about it, and what are the excuses or blame that you make that hold you back as a victim. It's available on Amazon. We actually have an audio book now. It came out this year, we have an audible.

Christian Brim (40:54.386)
Did you read it? Nice.

Robert J. Hunt (40:55.52)
Yeah, Salem and I took turns reading it. That was a horrible experience. didn't like that at all. It is work. And I think I sound so nasally and awful in the book. It's just terrible. not to dissuade anyone, but that's how I felt about it. And then, of course, I'm on my own company website where I run peer groups and I do executive coaching and leadership development workshops. And that's REF Dallas, R-E-F Dallas dot com.

Christian Brim (41:00.018)
Let's work.

Christian Brim (41:20.552)
Perfect. Listeners will have all of those links in the show notes. If you'd like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. Until next time, remember you are not alone.