Soften your senses, ways to become a better speaker, listener and follower.
This episode brought to you by Roger Daviston and the Daviston Group, changing results by
changing the behavior.
Learn more at rogerdaviston.com.
All right, everyone, thank you for joining us once again on Did You Know?
The Esco HVAC Podcast.
So today we're hanging out with Roger Daviston.
Roger, how are you, sir?
I'm doing really well.
Thank you for having me.
Roger is a author of a couple different books, The Service Call Blueprint and Passing the
Baton and has a very catchy work phrase of change the behavior, change the results.
And I see you doing a lot of education on this mentality and you were at our conference
this year.
You had a great turnout for that and I think it's very important for us to talk about that
transition when especially a lot of us as technicians move into educators.
There's a lot to learn and one aspect that is never really taught to us is boundaries
and leadership.
I think it's a very important thing for us to talk about and this is something that's
a passion of yours.
So let's dive a little bit into this and see if we can help some people that are transitioning
into their education roles or into their business ownership and leadership roles to have a little
better understanding of actually communication skills is kind of what it comes down to.
It does.
And I appreciate your introduction.
It is a passion, but it's more than a passion.
It's something that I had to change in my life.
And I was a boundary-less person as a kid and as a young adult and in business that
didn't work very well.
I had a lot of problems in my personal relationships and in my business relationships because I
didn't know how to tell people no.
And it caused a lot of issues.
So this is something that I had to grow in.
I grew myself personally.
And interestingly, I wrote the service called Blueprint.
It's a process, field-tested strategies, how to run a service call.
And if people follow the process, technicians, they do much better.
Customers are satisfied.
We do a better job.
Average tickets go up two and three times.
And I would notice that some cultures I would go in, the service called Blueprint process
worked really fine.
And then another culture I would go in and I'd tell them the same thing and it wouldn't
work.
And I have a mentor.
His name is Dr. Michael Seaman.
And he's a counseling psychologist.
He does marriage and family therapy.
And he's the person that influenced me in this area.
Studied a lot of other people too since then.
But I began to...
He's my mentor.
I said, you know, I got these issues in these cultures.
What's going on?
And it all boiled down to boundary-less cultures.
And that's what I talked about in Las Vegas was boundaries for leadership.
And there's a lot of toxicity that can be in a system.
A company is a system of relationships.
And relationships don't work very well if you don't have good boundaries.
And so, you know, people come from their family system and they bring toxicity from that family
system into the company system.
And the culture can be worse than the family.
And what I learned is that, of course, we all know this idiom.
We know this idiom, the apple doesn't fall far from the apple tree.
So if we can get the leadership, the owner, to grow, the culture changes and grows and
becomes healthy.
Absolutely.
It all starts with the top of the hierarchy and trickles its way through.
It does.
Absolutely.
Correct.
So what are some ways that we can at least step back and take a look at our own leadership
design and ways to be able to analyze, you know, what am I doing right?
What am I doing wrong?
What do I need some help in?
That is a great question.
I like to answer that question this way.
If you own a business, you're going to get a combination of two things.
You're going to get a combination of what you built, what you wanted, and then you're
going to get another combination of things that you allowed that you really don't want.
So if you're an owner and you look at your business and there are things in your company
culture that you don't like and you don't want, you've got to ask yourself a question.
Why are they there?
And the answer to the question is, is because you allowed them to be there.
Yeah, absolutely.
So boundaries define four things.
Who you are, who you are not, that's number one.
What you're willing to do, what you're not willing to do, that's number two.
Number three is what you are responsible for and what you're not responsible for.
And number four is what you own and what you do not own.
So boundaries defines really the screaming message in boundaries is responsibility and
ownership.
And what you'll find in the business culture is a lot of people don't own anything and
aren't responsible for anything and things don't get done because we have not created
clarity in the system as to who owns what, who's responsible for what, what we're willing
to do, what we're not willing to do, and then really company identity.
Who are we?
What do we do?
And, you know, strong sense of this is who we are, this is what we do.
So just to give you an example, my company identity when I had my heating and air conditioning
business was we were really just a, how do I say this, a direct selling company.
We just happened to sell heating and air conditioning.
What we really did is we were really good at the sales process.
And so a boundary is an expectation that I had for the salespeople and the expectation
was you will be proactive.
This is what I expect.
And then I held them accountable.
I'm not going to allow you not to do that.
So one day, you know, we have this executive function meeting.
We had them every day so their brains would work.
I had to help them with boundaries with their brain because we've got to work as one big
brain.
And so in this short meeting every day, I say, okay, Justin, how many doors did you
knock on yesterday?
And I would get a really long story and I'd listen with empathy and compassion.
And after he finished, I say, that really sounds hard, but tell me how many was that?
Because I just need a number.
So what I'm doing is inhibiting his excuse making.
Right.
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm inhibiting his learned helplessness.
I'm inhibiting his victim mentality.
And so he's, you know, after five minutes of excuses and stories, I said, Justin Madison,
the number, how many was it?
And he said, well, I didn't knock on any doors yesterday.
I said, okay, is that a zero?
Yeah, that's a zero.
And then I would hold him accountable and I'd say, hey, Justin, can you fix this today?
Yes, I can fix it today.
But if I didn't do that every day and I was gone on vacation for seven days or 10 days,
that part of my business fell apart.
Because people need to be, a good leader has to help the system's brains work properly,
use executive functions, which we got to attend to what's important.
We got to inhibit things that we need to inhibit so we don't get attention deficit disorder.
And we have to do it frequently.
So we build our memory.
Those are three things in executive function that attend, inhibit and build our working
memory.
And a really strong culture that's really good at what they do, the leader creates those
boundaries for the system to work as one brain.
You can have a system with a lot of really smart people, but they're not attending the
same thing.
So it's like Apple computer company when they were not very successful.
I'm sure they had a bunch of smart people there.
Just not one together.
But you got to have all these smart people got to attend to what's important.
So we do these kinds of meetings in a service department for 15 minutes every day.
There's a high level functioning meeting that we do with the owner and other high level
people in the company.
We got to know how much revenue was budgeted for yesterday.
How much revenue did we do yesterday?
How much revenue have we done month to date?
Where's the variance?
Okay.
We see all this.
What's wrong?
We've had a change.
How are we going to fix this?
Maybe we don't need to fix anything.
Maybe the numbers are great.
But if you'll attend to what is important and inhibit what isn't and do it every day,
the system gets better fast.
Hmm.
Yeah, that's very intriguing because it's easy to get off track and it's easy not to
be focused on those things that can negatively impact the entire structure of your organization.
Allow me to give you another example just from this morning.
So I led an executive functions meeting this morning with some technicians from two different
companies and we do this on Zoom.
One technician is the way you do this, okay, somebody had a success, tell me your success
story.
We've got a technician telling his success story and he's giving details and while he's
speaking the other technicians are learning.
I'm not doing anything.
This is attending to what's important.
He's talking about process, what he did, challenges, how he overcame it.
So basically the service call was a no air conditioning call and the technician left
there with a $30,000 sale for two systems.
That's a really great call.
And so I asked the weak technician, do you have any questions?
This is what you got to do.
He needs to have a lot of questions because he's there.
His mentor's in front of him.
Right.
And here's what he said.
Well, I just don't get those kinds of opportunities.
I just get these opportunities, da da da da da.
And what he's doing is he's making excuses and being a victim.
So we had to stop right there and inhibit, hang on just a second.
Let's think through this.
Let's don't wish that things would change for you.
Let's don't wish your circumstances would change.
Let's wish that you would get better.
Because we can't do anything about your circumstances.
So in that particular example, we've got to inhibit excuse making.
Hmm.
Yeah, absolutely.
I actually just had this conversation with one of my own mentors last night about setting
personal boundaries pretty much for this exact same scenario.
We often will have positive and negative events in our life, and in all actuality, it's things
that we have allowed through our boundaries.
Yeah, you said no to them.
Exactly.
And I hadn't thought about it from that perspective before, and I had to sit back for a minute
and think about my own personal boundaries.
So there are things that I've allowed through my own personal boundaries by not saying no
that have had negative consequences, and it's understanding what those boundaries are and
how to manage those.
That's right.
That's a bit of a challenge.
It's very difficult.
When you're not used to saying no, when you start saying no to people, they're not going
to like you.
Yeah, absolutely.
And they're going to gaslight you, and they're going to blame you, and they're going to be
victim and you're the reason I'm this way.
I can't believe you did this to me.
I can't believe you.
Because a lot of times, no is a really hard word.
No represents disappointment.
No represents rejection for some people.
Some people think no means you don't love me, and no means none of those words.
No is just the way that I protect myself.
No is just a complete sentence.
It's just a boundary word.
No, I don't want to do that, or no, I'm not going to do that, or no, I'm not going to
allow that, or no, we're not going to do that.
But I guess the first place that I grew was learning how to hear no.
Just listening to it and perceiving it?
Got to be able to accept no.
You got to learn how to hear and accept no as an answer.
Because if I hear no, I'm going to be disappointed.
I might feel rejection.
I might feel like you don't love me, but I got to deal with that.
That's my problem.
That's one thing about boundaries.
They're emotional boundaries.
My disappointment is my disappointment.
I need to own that.
My boredom is my boredom.
I need to own that, and I need to respond to that in a healthy manner.
So when you hear the first place we grow as people is hear no as an answer.
Persevere through the no.
Understand that it didn't kill us.
And when we get to the other side of the no, we've built a little bit of character.
I was just sitting there thinking about the name of this podcast.
And I think hearing no as an answer.
Because that's a difficult thing, especially, and I don't want to stereotype, but I would
say that especially for men, no is not an easy answer to accept.
Tell me no.
Tell me why.
Tell me more about that.
I don't know.
I'm trying to study and learn that myself.
I think many times, I think as a man, you try to understand leadership roles and you
try to be a leader.
And I think sometimes if you hear no, you hear that as almost like a defensive mechanism
or is a noncompliance.
Well, in the context of business, it can be, but let's talk about the context.
So I believe that every one of us has the right and the responsibility to say no.
We have the right and the responsibility to say no.
And really without explaining our no and without feeling guilty.
No just means no.
It's just a complete sentence.
However, in the context of business, there's an authority figure in the system.
And the authority figure in the system asks you to do something.
If you don't want to do it, you really need to assert yourself and say, no, I really don't
want to do that.
But you need to explain yourself there.
The why.
Yeah.
You need to explain yourself to the authority figure.
An authority figure has a responsibility to listen.
And the way that you listen is to let go of your agenda and humble yourself.
So a good leader will humble themselves, let go of their agenda and really listen to the
person.
But the authority figure has the final say.
But the authority figure also has responsibility to really listen because we need to listen
and understand the people.
People need to feel heard so they'll feel understood.
And that builds for lots of trust in a system of relationships.
Now just because you were listened to and heard and understood doesn't mean you're going
to get your way.
Okay.
And this happens in cultures.
You're not going to get your way every time.
So you've got to humble yourself, go out of the meeting in unity with everybody else in
the system because unity must be more important than being correct.
I completely understand that.
Yeah.
Unity is where we get the prosperity.
It comes from unity being unified.
I mean, you and I and three other people could have a problem and we could have five solutions.
We can only pick one.
True.
And they may all five be good.
So it doesn't really matter how you get to the solution or how you solve the problem
or how you get to the outcomes.
Not near as important as getting there.
The only time for me it's important to really question how we get there is if it violates
some of my values.
You start pushing on my values and I get real obstinate.
I ain't going to do it.
That's just the way I'm wired.
Yeah.
I think I'm kind of wired that way too.
But I'll be honest with you and say, you know, I can't do that.
And here's why I can't do it.
It goes against my values.
These are my values and that's, you know, I can't want you.
And that's another good rule about boundaries.
When you do something that you don't want to do and you do it reluctantly and it violates
boundaries makes you feel guilt and shame and all this other crazy, terrible emotions.
That's a bad thing for you personally.
You need to shut that door because when you let the bad in, boundaries have gates, doors
and they're designed to let the good in, keep the bad out.
So if you open that door and let that bad in, that's not good.
Yeah, I completely get that.
Okay.
So it's understanding what those boundaries are, setting them, being aware of them.
And then also when we utilize those boundaries, having a response as to why.
Like if my response is no, what is the reasoning behind that?
Well you can explain your reason, but like, I mean, I've had situations in my personal
life where my explanation was not necessary in none of their business.
True, true.
Personally.
Absolutely.
But in a business context, if you've got somebody in authority that wants you to do something,
you probably need to explain this is why I really don't want to do that.
Let's talk through this.
And I think you might have responsibility to the people in your system that are below
you in authority to explain this is why I don't want to do that and this is why I want
to do it this way.
I think in that context it's very beneficial and needed.
You can't just, no, not going to do that.
Yeah, completely.
All right.
So I know you do a lot of business coaching for our audience.
What are good ways to connect with Roger Davison to learn more about building a productive
team inside of a business?
Go to my website.
It's rogerdaviston.com.
D-A-V-I-S-T-O-N.
There's tons of stuff to read, tons of stuff to watch.
There's a place on the right hand corner pops up.
You want to grab a time to talk to me.
You can.
If not, my phone number is there.
Send me a text message.
I'm really busy.
I don't have any spots for about three weeks.
That's a good problem.
It is a good problem.
I'm working a little harder than I want, but that doesn't mean I can't help you.
It just means that I'll have to figure out where to work you in.
I get that.
All right.
rogerdaviston.com.
We thank you, sir, for joining us today.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.