[00:00:00] Richard Ellis: According to a study from the International Journal of Leadership Studies, Teams led by transformational leaders reported a 22 percent increase in employee satisfaction and a 22 percent increase in productivity.
[00:00:19] Richard Ellis: Welcome to Some Goodness, where we engage seasoned business leaders and experts to share practical guidance and tips to help new and future C level leaders maximize their impact. My guest today is Larry Sweeney, back again, one of the most innovative sales leaders and just fun guys who combine storytelling, personalized coaching, and strategic thinking across his team as SVP of global enterprise sales at Nerdio.
[00:00:42] Richard Ellis: He's known for creating high performing sales teams through a unique blend of engagement. And accountability, Larry, welcome back.
[00:00:51] Larry Sweeney: It's good to be back, Richard. Thank you very much.
[00:00:54] Richard Ellis: We did some storytelling in our last episode, and I thought we could just double click and do a little bit more. We had so [00:01:00] much fun.
[00:01:00] Larry Sweeney: Sounds good.
[00:01:01] Richard Ellis: Okay. Well, for this one, I wanted to just get into kind of establishing your own personal style as a leader. We touched on a little bit of the elements and characteristics that you bring to your leadership. One of the things that I think you've developed as a leadership style is just this idea of consistent praise and recognition.
[00:01:22] Richard Ellis: Can you walk us through kind of how you arrived at that approach and what makes that maybe different from traditional sales leadership that you've seen?
[00:01:29] Larry Sweeney: Yeah. And you know, what's right for me may not be right for everyone, but it works for me. And I've had people tell me that my style is a little bit different, but I think the results have spoken for themselves over the years.
[00:01:41] Larry Sweeney: But fundamentally, I believe Richard, it starts with the golden rule, right? And the golden rule is you treat others the way you want to be treated. And that's not to say that you have to be overly nice all the time. Sure, or overly harsh, you know, when those moments are [00:02:00] there, some people feel like managing through fear and just being a leader gives them the reign to treat people poorly.
[00:02:07] Larry Sweeney: And I see it sometimes and you know, man, it just stinks. So creating a culture of fear, people close up when they close up, they perform worse. They get beat up more and then the cycle continues. So I think I've adapted my style to really try to put myself in the shoes of the folks on my team, whether it be another leader or a rep and really work with them on their side of the desk and help them solve problems, prepare for another day.
[00:02:36] Larry Sweeney: And honestly, when people need a kick in the butt, kick them in the butt. Sure, sure. But treat people the way you want to be treated.
[00:02:42] Richard Ellis: Well, and as I think about some of the leaders that I've worked with and worked under in the past, I don't think some of those that don't do that well do it intentionally. I think they just kind of over rotate on, hey, I've got to be the motivator and the hard charging leader, and I've got to be out front, right?
[00:02:57] Richard Ellis: And they just kind of under appreciate that, hey, it's okay to [00:03:00] be human. It's okay to back up a little bit and maybe collaborate more. They're just a little bit of an over rotation there rather than intentionally trying not to be nice or treating others like they want to be treated.
[00:03:11] Larry Sweeney: Yeah, I think you can get lost in the moment, especially if it's in the context of a difficult situation or a quarter that's not going well, right?
[00:03:21] Larry Sweeney: There's a lot of already built up tension there. As a leader, you can't let that emotion take over because when it does, conversations don't go down productive routes. Everybody leaves angry and everybody wakes up the next day. With, uh, Oh, geez, you know, what are we going to do today? Here we go again. So it's really focusing in on the person and solving whatever problem it is that's specific to them at that point in time, not always delivering the same exact feedback to every single rep during a quarterly business review, as an example.
[00:03:55] Richard Ellis: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think you mentioned this in our last episode, but one of the [00:04:00] things that you're known for saying is celebrate in public and coach in private. And so how does this idea translate to some one on ones just practically speaking?
[00:04:08] Larry Sweeney: Yeah, the one on one, first of all, like every manager of a person needs to have a weekly one on one with their direct report.
[00:04:18] Larry Sweeney: And what I've seen happen over the years too, I've seen two things happen and they need to be stopped. Number one, one on ones are the first meetings to get pushed if something else quote unquote more important comes up. Yep. Newsflash, nothing else is more important than you and the relationship you have with your manager.
[00:04:37] Larry Sweeney: It's M& Ms, Richard. Money and managers. That's what keeps people in their jobs. They're making good money, they got a good manager, then all is well in the world. M& Ms. So I had a leader one time and that's where I learned it from this guy, that one on one was the most important to me is that meeting never got canceled, never got pushed.
[00:04:56] Larry Sweeney: And me as their direct report, I wasn't dumb enough [00:05:00] to ever ask to have it rescheduled or moved or anything, but it really was the most important thing. Then the other thing about the one on one, I've seen some go the wrong way where a leader will say, Hey, look, this is your time. This is your time. You tell me what you want to talk about, but that's counterproductive because what happens is.
[00:05:17] Larry Sweeney: It puts all the stress and the pressure. On the direct report to show up with an agenda, you can't do that. Going back to what we talked about last time around predictability in a one on one. These are the 10 things we're going to talk about. So come prepared with a story for these 10 things. And we'll say 15 minutes at the end for whatever you want to talk about.
[00:05:36] Larry Sweeney: But these open ended situations where, okay, I'm here. Tell me what it is that's on your mind today. That doesn't really work. It's unproductive and it creates unnecessary tension.
[00:05:46] Richard Ellis: I totally agree. In fact, one of the things that will encourage our clients to do is adopt a simple coaching call prep worksheet, right?
[00:05:55] Richard Ellis: Because this is not natural for managers to spend 10 or 15 or 20 minutes ahead [00:06:00] of a coaching call thinking intentionally about what you want to talk about. Where does your individual contributor or your manager under you or whoever it is you're coaching, where do they need to improve? Where do they need some coaching help, right?
[00:06:12] Richard Ellis: And so just putting a simple tool in front of them to say, Hey, For each one of these, you're going to spend 10 minutes and you're going to prepare by filling this out and coming to the table with, okay, I've got some topics in mind because it's not a habit. It's not natural.
[00:06:26] Larry Sweeney: Yeah. I just put the agenda in the meeting and right with you don't have to hit every single thing every single week, but some of them are going to be important.
[00:06:34] Larry Sweeney: You may spend a one on one just talking about one of those things. But it's important that you prioritize those sessions because that's your time with your manager or your direct report. And you've got to prioritize that.
[00:06:47] Richard Ellis: Well, and as I think about, you know, just my growth over my career, the better managers and the ones that really became true mentors were those that led the way on those coaching calls.
[00:06:59] Richard Ellis: And they did [00:07:00] exactly like you said, they said, we'll reserve 10 or 15 minutes at the end for anything you want to talk about. But here are the three things I want to start with. And I appreciated that because I don't know what I don't know, right? They see so many sales reps, or in this case, so many other sales managers.
[00:07:14] Richard Ellis: What am I missing that I'm not doing well, or where can I improve? You tell me. And I really appreciated that guidance when they did that.
[00:07:21] Larry Sweeney: And they may bring a new idea to the one on one and say, Hey, have you thought about what if we reconstructed your team to look like this? Or what if we reconstructed your territory to look like this?
[00:07:31] Larry Sweeney: Priming the pump and think about what that looks like ahead of time.
[00:07:34] Richard Ellis: That's great. That's great. I love that preparedness, that manager led approach. I think that's very much one of your styles. Another that we already kind of highlighted at the beginning of this episode was your storytelling approach.
[00:07:45] Richard Ellis: When I think about Larry's leadership. Style. He tells great stories. And so tell me a little bit about how your storytelling approach works in team presentations or meetings or things like that. How do you use it to convey points or messages or motivate the teams?
[00:07:59] Larry Sweeney: I think it [00:08:00] was probably triggered from years of sitting in a meeting or sitting in an audience, listening to a 20 slide presentation.
[00:08:10] Larry Sweeney: Just dying, um, and, and looking at my phone and texting my buddy saying, when is this going to be over? Right. And when a storyteller gets on stage, I'm hooked, man. Like especially if it's a good story. And I said, you know what, I'm going to practice doing this. And I started it probably 10 years ago or so.
[00:08:30] Larry Sweeney: And I was like, you know what, this is more fun. You know, it takes some thought to get the story right. Cause you need a story that's going to make your point. Sure. You know, I might catch some flack for this. Most people that know me well know that I'm a huge fan of the Walt Disney Company, Walt Disney World, right?
[00:08:44] Larry Sweeney: And some people think my house is full of like Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse dolls, but it's not But the Walt Disney Company, Walt Disney World, I mean, they are the premium example of customer experience and storytelling Nobody in the world does it any better. [00:09:00] And the thing about their movies and their stories is they take you on Emotional rollercoaster.
[00:09:05] Larry Sweeney: It's emotionally up, emotionally down, back up again, back down again. And Disney's world renowned for, you may not know or remember all of the details, what was in the story, but you remember one thing. Mm hmm. How you felt when you walked out of that movie theater, or how you felt when you were done hearing the story.
[00:09:27] Larry Sweeney: So when I try to come up with my story to illustrate a point, that's my intention is I want them to feel a certain way. Because am I going to download 20 slides and 10 bullets that's at 200 data points to an audience of a few hundred reps in an hour? No. Will they remember two or three things and leave feeling excited and invigorated and motivated?
[00:09:48] Larry Sweeney: Heck yeah. That's what we're trying to do.
[00:09:51] Richard Ellis: That's awesome. Well, and I want to highlight something you mentioned so that it doesn't get missed and that is you said about 10 years ago, you decided I'm going to be a better [00:10:00] storyteller and your whole intention about learning how to do it and practicing it.
[00:10:04] Richard Ellis: I think the misnomer or storytellers are just natural at it, but that's not true, right? You can become a good storyteller with some practice and intentionality.
[00:10:13] Larry Sweeney: You know, the one thing I'll say on that now that you mentioned it is I took a big risk because I had to be super vulnerable and I told a story, a very personal story, multiple.
[00:10:24] Larry Sweeney: Well, the very first one I'll remember was a very personal story about my family and one of my kids and about how it made me feel. And how it made them feel, and it was a difficult story to tell, but it was proving a point. And while I was on stage doing it, I had no idea if it was going to land, but Richard, what I saw was every single person in the audience looking at me and they were hooked on what was going to happen next.
[00:10:54] Larry Sweeney: And after it was done, I had a line of people at the stage saying, [00:11:00] that was one of the most awesome things that I've ever heard in my life. I needed to hear that today. Thank you. And the specific content that I was giving was around an issue. You know, one of the members in my family was having. And somebody else came up to me and said, you know what?
[00:11:15] Larry Sweeney: I'm having the same exact issue. Like how specifically did you fix it? And I gave them the steps on how we fixed it. And they were like, you may have just changed my family. Wow. And I'm like, Holy moly. Like now I'm up there. Now I'm telling stories forever. Wow. Yeah, that is really cool. That's inspirational.
[00:11:33] Larry Sweeney: That's what I needed to give me the confidence that this is what was going to work on into the future.
[00:11:37] Richard Ellis: Well, and to be able to impact people, not only professionally, but personally at the same time, how rewarding.
[00:11:42] Larry Sweeney: Unintended consequence. So cool. Yeah. Yeah. The best.
[00:11:46] Richard Ellis: Well, I almost hate to go to this next topic because that was so feel good and touchy.
[00:11:51] Richard Ellis: The, what I think about, you know, the theme of today is kind of developing your own or establishing your own personal style. And I'm thinking about some elements. That you bring to the [00:12:00] table that seemed to be a little bit unique or different, or that you've really leveraged to your and your team's benefit.
[00:12:05] Richard Ellis: And one comes to mind around quarterly business reviews, right? I mean, the idea of quarterly business reviews is nothing new, right? Everybody does QBRs, but I've seen, I've seen them be horrible waste of time. It's very engaging and collaborative and productive and anything in between, but I'd love for you to just kind of give us your take on what you've learned works really well and is consistent with kind of your leadership style.
[00:12:30] Larry Sweeney: I think one time you asked me, Larry, how do you prepare for a QBR? And the answer is simple. You don't. And that's strange, right? I go into the QBR, and when a person is up there presenting, I personally turn off my phone, I take off my watch my Apple watch, because I don't want the stupid thing buzzing I don't want to be distracted I shut the lid of my laptop, and I take out a notebook and pen, and I'm ready And I listen [00:13:00] Intently and when that person is telling their story, their QBR, I am 100 percent focused on what they're saying.
[00:13:07] Larry Sweeney: I'm consuming every single word and I dig in and I help. Sometimes it doesn't turn out well because if the person presenting, say it's a sales rep who threw their QBR deck together the night before and if they've done a string of those QBRs you were talking about that were kind of boring and terrible and a waste of time.
[00:13:26] Larry Sweeney: They're just throwing the presentation together to get through the 45 minutes. Yep. But because I'm consuming every word and I'm so intently listening, with the perspective that they have, I can snip out lack of preparation within about a minute and a half. And it gets really uncomfortable and it gets really embarrassing.
[00:13:46] Larry Sweeney: I don't want to embarrass that person in that moment. I'll save my kicking butt for the private time. But what I do have to do is sit back in my chair, be quiet, and let them finish. And when people see that [00:14:00] happen, they know what's happening because, you know, if they didn't take the time to prepare to really get the most out of their QBR, then I'm not gonna give them my time to help.
[00:14:10] Larry Sweeney: At least not in that moment. The silver lining is it only has to happen once because it's really comfortable and it's really crummy and everybody wants it to be over. Like just go to the last slide, go to the issues for management attaches. I'll just get this over with. You can bet your bottom dollar that they come prepared the next time because I'm there to help, right?
[00:14:31] Larry Sweeney: I'm, I'm there to help. And I hope that I'm setting the example for the other folks in the room so that they can listen intently. It's exhausting. You know, it's exhausting if you do six to eight of these a day, but really being present in the moment, turning off all the technology, using the old school pen and notebook.
[00:14:48] Richard Ellis: So refreshing. I've seen too many second or third line leaders participate in a regional QBR and come in and out. And what does that say to the team? Right? They're not important, but it's not a priority, but just to set [00:15:00] expectations, say I'm going to be in here, laptop closed, I'm putting my watch in my pocket and I'm here for you and we're going to go over your business together.
[00:15:08] Richard Ellis: I think that just sets a great tone of collaboration and support that's needed from the leadership.
[00:15:12] Larry Sweeney: Yeah, you're setting the tempo, you're setting the culture, people are going to do what you do.
[00:15:17] Richard Ellis: Yeah, yeah. And I also like the idea of your lack of preparation means you're not coming in with preconceived notions, right?
[00:15:23] Richard Ellis: With, okay, you know, they're going to report on this and I've seen all their slides and so now, you know, I've already made my decision on some critiques I'm going to give and some challenges I'm going to give, and I'm not even going to really listen to them when they got their slides up, right? Because I've reviewed them in advance.
[00:15:37] Richard Ellis: I like kind of that fresh approach of, well, preconceived notions. Let's hear your story
[00:15:42] Larry Sweeney: and maybe a bit of advice for other sales managers and leaders out there. Force yourself not to give the same advice twice in a row, because when you do, you're going to lose people. . You're just going to keep doing that same thing and it's meaningless.
[00:15:54] Larry Sweeney: Got it. Got it.
[00:15:55] Richard Ellis: Now, that's really good. Well, one more area I thought we could dig into, [00:16:00] and I was just reflecting on our last discussion, you talked about fun, right, as part of the culture and the way you like to lead, but also I know that you're really big on accountability, right? And so sometimes that can be a little bit, well, how do you do both, right?
[00:16:15] Richard Ellis: So I'm just curious on how do you bring fun, but also strong accountability and expectation settings at the same time?
[00:16:23] Larry Sweeney: Yeah, I think that the reason I'm able to get away with kind of that fierce accountability, we'll call it. Yep. In which the people around me know that I do demand a lot, but I think I'm gifted that because of the baseline culturally that I try to set.
[00:16:39] Larry Sweeney: And you know, culturally, we want to be here and we want to have fun and we want to have fun together. How do you bring fun? Will you bring fun by sprinkling in some cool stuff in a virtual meeting? Whatever that cool stuff might be. For Halloween, for example, I was Fred Flintstone, right? I was awesome. I was the only person, well, there were a couple other people, but like a super important [00:17:00] team call.
[00:17:00] Larry Sweeney: Everybody's there with their shirts on. I'm Fred Flintstone. Why the heck not? Like I may change clothes three times during a call. I'm trying to bring, I'm not talking about playing Angry Birds for 30 minutes right? Right, right. But you do want to bring a little bit of levity.
[00:17:16] Larry Sweeney: People calm down and it helps them open up. And it sets you up to be able to ask for some really difficult things.
[00:17:23] Richard Ellis: Yeah, I like that because I think a lot of times, you know, the idea of levity or having fun can almost make people think you're soft, right? But Larry's anything but soft. I love your phrase, fierce accountability.
[00:17:36] Richard Ellis: If you talk to anybody, they'll say, Hey, he expects high performance. But he's very fair, right? We have a good time meeting those high performing expectations. And I think that's a great combo and it's a delicate balance to strike. Um, yeah, well, that's awesome. Lots of good stories today. Unfortunately, again, we're out of time, man.
[00:17:54] Richard Ellis: Time flies when you're having fun. And I sure had a lot of fun with you today. Should we wrap [00:18:00] up with some goodness outside of the work realm?
[00:18:02] Larry Sweeney: Yeah, so goodness for me, um, I'm probably going on solid two years of doing it and this probably falls in the category of crazy, but I get up at 4 30 in the morning, six out of the seven days of the week, including the weekends, uh, I'm in bed by nine, nine 30, uh, but I get moving.
[00:18:18] Larry Sweeney: I love Orange Theory Fitness, man. It changed my life. Lost 60 pounds last year. Wow. And it gets my day going. I'm done working out at Orange Theory by 7am. I got my coffee. Sit down at 7. 30 and we're off and running. It's not even so much the physical, man. It's the mental. Like, it just gets my mental game straight.
[00:18:37] Larry Sweeney: And, man, I love it. I absolutely love it. And it's competitive, too.
[00:18:40] Richard Ellis: Yeah, absolutely. I'm a huge fitness guy as well. I got to find time to get into the gym at least five days a week. And like you said, I mean, the health benefits aside, it's more of a mental break and kind of a stress release. It's some me time, just me and the weights.
[00:18:54] Larry Sweeney: You're thinking about the business too. You're thinking about what you're going to do , like there's a lot going on. During that time period too.
[00:18:59] Richard Ellis: [00:19:00] Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you again. That's a great one. A challenge to everybody out there to have some kind of physical activity during their days.
[00:19:07] Richard Ellis: There's tons of benefits to it. We could geek out on that, but again, thanks for being another guest for us on our episode.
[00:19:14] Larry Sweeney: Yeah. Thanks for inviting me. I enjoyed doing it. And, um, to the next one,
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