Author and Speaker Scott De Long

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for workplace wisdom, sharing insight, perspective, and best practices for creating the planet’s best workplaces. Now, here’s your host.

Stone Payton: [00:00:32] Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Workplace Wisdom. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. You guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast author, speaker, educator, entrepreneur with Lead2Goals, Dr. Scott De Long. How are you man?

Scott De Long: [00:00:52] I’m doing great, man. I really appreciate you having me on here. I just I just love talking about building better organizations.

Stone Payton: [00:00:59] Well, I have really been looking forward to this conversation. I got a ton of questions, Scott, and I know we’re not going to get to them all, but, uh, I think a great place to start would be if you could articulate for me and our listeners, mission. Purpose. What are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks, man.

Scott De Long: [00:01:18] And the real thing that we’re trying to do is to get people to recognize that work doesn’t have to be work. Work, work can be fun. And having people looking forward to getting into the office on Monday morning, or getting with their people, and then figuring out a way of making that work together so that, that that our our bigger purpose, the organization’s bigger purpose comes alive. Everyone’s on the same page and having a great time doing it.

Stone Payton: [00:01:47] Well, it sounds like noble work if you can get it. A fun and enjoyable pursuit. I got to know, man, what is the back story? How did you find yourself doing this and serving these constituencies?

Scott De Long: [00:02:02] Man, that’s going to be there is a story behind that. Um, I grew up, I’m 64 years old, so I grew up in the boomer generation and with all command and control leaders in my life, whether they were my coaches on the athletic field, the first bosses, even my father. Right. I had all these people that were just the smartest men in the room. You just do what they say. And then it would get done. And as I was starting out, my my business career, um, I kind of embodied that. I was I was that guy as well. And it worked for me. It worked for me in a sense that the work got done. It was about the time and unfortunately it took to late in my life. But about the time that I turned 50 that a light bulb came on and I realized that it’s that it’s not about being the smartest guy in the room. And it’s not about command and control, but it’s about the people that you’re with. I craved having people in my life, and I found that while I was while I was a value to them, whether it’s I’m helping them with their career or providing a paycheck or on the sports world, I could hit a tennis ball, you know, if I could help people when people were calling me. Something happened about that time I got injured and I couldn’t play tennis anymore.

Scott De Long: [00:03:25] And when I was getting phone calls daily about, hey, can you come out and play with me? Can you come out and help my team? Can you come out? All that I got hurt and the phone stopped ringing. And I realized that people weren’t around me for who I was. It was for what I could do for him. And that was tough. That was real tough. So I’ve been on this journey ever since to create this path for myself and then to transfer it to others to to get people to recognize and understand what true leadership really is. And we have a process that we call principled leadership. And there’s three elements. I mean, it has everything that that that transformational leadership has and servant leadership has. It has all of those things. You still need to be that type of leader. But there’s three principles that I came up with in my life that transformed who I was, how I go about things and my business. And those are humility, empathy, and probably the most controversial one vulnerability. Um, and I’ve been and I’ve been not just. Preaching those. I’ve been working to live those values, and I’m getting better at it, and I’m not where I want to be yet. 14 years later. But man, am I so much further up that path than where I started, you know, 14 years ago.

Stone Payton: [00:04:53] So as I understand it, one of the areas that you’ve developed some specific expertise and specialized knowledge in and have found a way to serve organizations and the people who lead them, is on this topic of bridging generation gaps in the in the workplace. Can you speak a little bit to what drew you to that, uh, that specific niche, I guess, and what you’re trying to do there?

Scott De Long: [00:05:21] Well, what drew me there was the need. It was what people were talking about. I hear so many people, especially older folks, whether those are in the gen older joke books and the Gen X or the boomers talking about the younger people, the millennials and the Gen Z’s, and and they talk about all the negative things about them. Right? They were the generations that had a trophy for everything. And and they don’t have a strong work ethic or not the same work ethic that that we had when we were growing up. And in fact, I’ve heard several people call them lazy and and I just don’t buy it. I don’t buy it. It’s not that these young people don’t want to work. They just don’t want to work for us, for the way that we thought work should be for that command and control structure. They’ve got more to their lives than that. So we take it even further. And I say that, listen, these Gen Z’s. Then they’re not just our our employees, they’re also our customers. So shouldn’t we have more of these folks around us to teach us what it is that our future customers are going to want? But even more than that, these Gen Z’s are more than just customers and employees. They’re our future. So my point is this that there’s a lot we can teach younger generations, no doubt about it. Right. The things that we learned growing up that that serve us well. But there’s so much more that we can learn from them, too. If we would just eliminate some of the biases that we have. And work and treating these people as who they are individuals and as people, not as a group of people. Right? You can make all kinds of of bias and prejudices against groups of people. We do it all the time, inadvertently or directly. We do that. These are human beings. And they’re individuals. They have individual talents. They have individual ideas, and those are ideas that we should want and we do need.

Stone Payton: [00:07:32] So I’m operating under the impression that a I don’t know if it’s fair to call it cornerstone, but an important piece of, uh, generating meaningful results with and through these individuals. An important piece of this must be the way we frame up our communication. And now I’m thinking, because I’m getting educated by you, not framing up our communication for a generation, but but framing up our communications so that it serves our intent with Susie. With Billy. Right.

Scott De Long: [00:08:05] Exactly. Exactly true. In fact, we’ve created something that we call the communication hierarchy. And the communication hierarchy suggests this, that the that the more the greater the potential for conflict. And and I and I use conflict a little differently. The conflict doesn’t have to be a war or a battle or fight. A conflict could be just be a difference of opinion. So the greater the chance of a difference of opinion, the higher up this communication hierarchy should go. The top of the of the top of the hierarchy is a face to face communication. It just is. And the reason for that is because I can see your body language. I can I can read your facial tone, see your body language. I can hear the inflection in your voice. All the things that that that are important for full communication. It’s not just the words I say, how I say them, and the actions and the and the emotions that are in my face or my body while I’m saying them. Below that is having a zoom call or a teams call where you have some kind of video transfer of communication. And the reason being is because I can still see your body language, your facial expressions, and I can hear your tone of voice. And if you can’t do either of those, then pick up the phone and call, because now I can at least hear the inflection, the pace at which you’re talking.

Scott De Long: [00:09:24] So we’re three levels down already on this communication hierarchy before we get to the fourth, which is the primary source of business communication today. And that’s email. Mm. That’s way down the list below that is text. Below that is smoke signals and carrier pigeons. And there’s even one thing below that. And that is making an assumption I know what you’re thinking or what you’re going to say. The lowest form of communication is assumption. Mm. So let’s take a look at the generational differences. So the Gen Zs and the millennials, the digital natives if you will, their preference is is texting right. Or SMS or typing with their thumbs on their phones. That’s just their preference. That’s what they grew up with. That’s what they know. And they’re not very good at that face to face communication, which boomers I mean, that’s what we prefer. We prefer getting in the same room with somebody and talking to them. So those are the kinds of things that we can teach them, which is the value of this face to face communication or being closer in proximity or not looking at a screen to talk to somebody but looking in somebody’s eyes. Certainly there’s some things that they can learn from us. At the same time, there’s things that we can learn from them.

Scott De Long: [00:10:46] Not everything has to be a face to face talk. We can use short message services and text and slack and things like that for non-controversial issues. And in fact, emails go to email. I’m not an anti email guy. I like email, but I think email, instead of how it is used as a primary form of communication, should be used to memorialize a conversation. I tell you, face to face is the top. The problem with face to face communication? There’s no written record of it, right? Yeah, people’s memories fade and all of that. So. So what I suggest to folks is that that if there’s a chance for conflict or a difference of opinion, pick up the phone, get on a zoom, or better yet, go face to face. And then afterwards send an email. Thanks for the call. Here’s the things we discussed. We agreed that you would do A, B and C, and I would do D, E, and F. I really appreciate your time. Thank you. That memorializes that conversation and it’s clear and. If I’ve got it wrong, if I didn’t understand. Which happens all the time in communications. Right? You you say something, I hear something different. If I’ve got it wrong, it’s there in black and white. And that person could pick up the phone and say, hey, hey, Scott, both of those points are right, but the other two, I’m not quite sure we’re on target.

Scott De Long: [00:12:05] Let’s talk that through. Right. So it gives us the tools. We have the tools available if we use them all in the appropriate manner to bridge some of these gaps that we have in communication and within the generations. So let me tell you, one of the things that I think is really important about how can a boomer, you know, get along with a Gen Z. Talk to him. Find out who they are, what makes them tick, what’s important to them, what do they like and what do they dislike? And not just on the tactical level, not just on the level that says, hey, here’s what we need to get done by Friday at 2:00. But to find out who they are and what makes them tick by asking them some open ended questions about them and what’s important to them. Treat them as people. Treat them as the people like you’d like to be treated. There’s the the golden rule, which you treat people like you want to be treated. Then there’s the platinum rule, which treat people the way they want to be treated. Find out how they want to be treated. And you do that through communication. It just it just sounds so simple to me.

Stone Payton: [00:13:11] Well, it does sound simple and maybe it is at some level, but in my experience, it’s not always easy. Well, now that you’ve been at this a while, what are you finding the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about the work for you? Ah.

Scott De Long: [00:13:26] I you know. I don’t do drugs, but when I get through working with clients and I see the light bulb come on with them, it’s like I’m high. It’s it’s it’s just so cool. I mean, when I first start talking with clients. I’m a little backwards in my thought process. To them they say, well, what are you talking about? This, this, uh, this open communication and stuff. Just tell people what you want them to do and they’ll do it. And I talk about getting commitment versus compliance and how to go about doing that. And and I’m very hard to argue with on these points, but it’s completely different than what people are used to doing in their business lives, especially managers. After three four weeks and I see the light bulb comes on and they say, wow, I tried that and I tried it at home. And boy, it worked at home too. Like it’s I get such a high from that. Like my heart just pounds. And I mean, there’s times like I was with a client this morning and my eyes welled up with something that he said about something that he tried and that it worked. Right. It was just so cool.

Stone Payton: [00:14:29] So how does the the whole sales and marketing thing work for a practice like yours? Like how do you get the new clients? Are you at a point now where they’re kind of coming to you, or do you still are you still out there shaking the trees a little bit?

Scott De Long: [00:14:44] Combination of both. Um, most of my clients throughout my career, um, doing this work have been come, come through word of mouth. Folks that I had worked with in companies that I’d worked with in the past saying, hey, you know, I got the guy for you. Um, or, um, uh, individuals that that know the kind of work, work that I do and say you need to talk to my boss, things like that. Um, but we still do social media marketing, and, um, we’ve got a couple lead funnel things that we do. We do webinars and bring people in and give them a taste of the work. Um, and then we have another thing that we use is what we call quiz funnel. So we, we produce these quizzes about either leadership ability or conflict resolution or dealing with with something in your workforce, whether it’s intergenerational or not. Uh, communications, all that. We have quizzes specifically for this, for you to rate yourself and to see where you fall as compared to other people in your line of work or in your in your position. And that provides a source of it’s kind of fun and it gives them some things to think about, but that those turn into leads. People read that and say, yes, this is interesting. I need to know more. And they pick up the phone and call and um, so we get some, some business like that. But honestly, most of it’s word of mouth people that have worked with me in the past will tell other people, I’ve got the guy for you, and especially when it comes to conflict resolution. I had one just recently where a friend of mine, um, who was a coach himself, was given this this guy and the guy as the guy was telling about his problems with his partner. The guy goes, yeah, you need to talk to Scott and how to work through the conflict between the partners. And so even people that are you’d consider my competitors will will hand me some folks that if it fits in my in the area that I, that they think I can help them.

Stone Payton: [00:16:46] Yeah. Doing good work is a marvelous sales tool and it’s got.

Scott De Long: [00:16:50] It seems to help. Yeah, it seems to help.

Stone Payton: [00:16:53] Well, let’s dive into that for a moment if we can. The work. And it sounds to me that you can address a broad array of issues, but let’s kind of go back to this generational thing. What would uh, especially I’m, I’m intrigued to know, like what the early steps of, I don’t know, I guess you’d call it an engagement. Like what happens? I guess you got to sit down with the the people in leadership first, right? You got to get them really bought into this for it to work and be sustainable. Yeah. Just walk us through a little bit about what an engagement might look like, especially on the on the front end.

Scott De Long: [00:17:24] They come one of two ways. And and the one that’s most typical. And I work with a lot of entrepreneurial companies, people with 50 to 200 employees. Mhm. And um, the entrepreneur who is great at launching something, getting it off the ground all of a sudden finds himself stuck, either doing too much work or beyond his ski, you know, out skiing out beyond his skis. So he starts hiring. He I say he it’s not always a he but women, frankly are better at this work than we are about this. The dealing with people than, than men are especially men that grew up with this command and control structure. So the CEO will call me and say, I’ve got a problem with this, with my team. I’ve hired some really smart people to do some of these management jobs, and they’re just not meeting my expectations. So we diagnose and figure out what some of the problems that that he’s experiencing are. And then I start working with the teams, usually in a group setting. I like doing the group setting, and we teach either a course or a workshop on whatever that issue relates to. If it’s conflict, if it’s teams, if it’s trust, if it’s communication. Um, we have about eight different courses that we teach, but during the course of that, uh, time that I’m together with their team, I come to find out these people all are smart and they all want to work, and they’re not the problem.

Scott De Long: [00:18:51] The problem is the guy at the top not letting go. Right? So those that almost while I’m getting hired to help the team, it almost always goes back into individual coaching with the C level person that hired me, because that’s the bottleneck of these people being able to really do what they want to do. And then one of the things that I teach is that no matter what the issue is, it is 100% on you to fix it, even if that other person is completely wrong. And you ask yourself this, what is my part in this? And then we work on that part, that thing that you could be doing better because you can’t control people, you can’t change people, but you certainly can influence people through your actions if your actions are appropriate. And when they’re not appropriate, you influence them in another way, right? It just gets worse. It makes the conflicts even even more difficult to deal with. So, uh, the other way that it comes in is, is the CEO say I will do some coaching, so we do some coaching and then he says, can you do this with my team too? And then we bring it down. And then with the teams it’s almost always um, in a group setting.

Scott De Long: [00:20:01] Although lately there’s been a few folks and this and this was interesting, there’s been a few folks that have asked me to work with some of their VP level folks to get them ready to take to get to the C level. And in three cases in a row they were all women. So it was really strange to have an old white guy write teaching young women 40 year old, 42 year old women. Where their power really lies. And it’s not. In the barrier has always been what it took for them to get to where they were and that this, this dominance that they had to, to, to do, to, to get there, to kind of live in this man’s world that they had to is not the thing that’s going to get them to the sea level. It’s the use their natural beauty, uh, talents and their femininity. And I’m not talking about sexual femininity. I’m not talking about flirting. I’m talking about the things that make women better at this than us. To get to that sea level, go back to your roots and get into that vulnerability, that that humility, that empathy, that there’s so much better than men are at anyway. And they break some barriers and then they get themselves freed up to get into that sea level. That’s really cool.

Stone Payton: [00:21:16] Well, it occurs to me, as you’re describing your work and I and I can hear the passion in your voice, and I know our listeners can as well, that the but it occurs to me that the, the more of this work that you do, the better at it you get, the more equipped you are to serve. And it’s like a flywheel, right? It’s it’s, uh, it’s that is uh, that’s got to be incredibly rewarding and a real, uh, ongoing growth process for you yourself.

Scott De Long: [00:21:45] It absolutely is. It does a few things. I’m a lifelong learner. I didn’t get my doctorate until I was 60 years old. Wow. Um, so I like education. So I approach my clients to find out what it is that that I can learn from them, too. That’s part of the humility piece, right? That and I define humility as this, that there is value in every human being. And I can learn something from everybody. I’m even talking about that homeless guy on the street. There’s something that that guy can teach me. And for me to go and learn from them is really important. So learning from my clients constantly and upping my game and just like. I believe we are smarter than me. So the combination of us. Right. So. So I ask a lot of questions. My my coaching is all about questions. It’s not about giving the answers. It’s about asking the questions. And in that two things happen. One, the people realize that they have it within them as well. And two, I get smarter in the process. It’s just a wonderful job.

Stone Payton: [00:22:52] So I’m going to switch gears on you for a moment if it’s okay, because I want to hear a little bit more about this book. I thought I was a leader and, uh, yeah. So what prompted you to to write the book? What’s it about? Tell us a little bit about that.

Scott De Long: [00:23:07] Well, it’s a combination of a lot of what we talked about already, but a combination of my journey and, and where I came from and this and this, um, always being in leadership positions and whether it’s on the athletic field where I was named the captain or the or in the in the business world, where at 25 years old, I was given a job where I was in managing people that had been with a company 25 years. Even at a young age, I was always in this leadership, in these leadership positions. About the second or third. Um. Page. In the book, there’s a line that I wrote and it goes along with I thought I was a leader. Dot, dot dot is what the is, what the cover says. But in the book I write, I thought I was a leader. It turns out I was just an asshole. And honestly, that was walking into the room believing you’re the smartest guy in the room and telling people what to do as opposed to helping them build up. I think there’s three functions of a CEO. I think. I think they’re there to help cast a vision that people can get excited about.

Scott De Long: [00:24:14] I think they need to provide the resources for the organization time, money, whatever it might be. And I think the third and maybe the most important of the three is for them to build future leaders. I didn’t do that in my early career. I didn’t build future leaders, I built people, I built followers, people that would do what I said I was going to do. And what I found in these past 14 years is that my life is so much more rewarding now with this new approach than it ever was before, when I was making money getting things done. I call it GSD getting stuff done. I don’t use stuff like that. But um, I was good at GSD and through other people fine. But that didn’t enhance their lives. It just got them their paycheck. And what I find is that when I’m when I have some influence with others and that it’s to their benefit as well, that’s when, uh, you remember the Grinch who Stole Christmas when the Grinch’s heart grew three times, you know, around Christmas. Like, that’s how I feel. That’s how I get to feel now.

Stone Payton: [00:25:24] Did and did.

Scott De Long: [00:25:25] It’s great.

Stone Payton: [00:25:26] Did you find that some parts of the book came together real easy for you, and you struggled with some other parts, and did it all come together easy for what was the process of writing the book like for you?

Scott De Long: [00:25:38] It it was a lot more difficult and encompassing than I thought. I am not a natural writer. I had to learn to write when I was getting my graduate degrees, but I was learning to write in an academic style. But writing a book, you know, 6000 words per chapter, getting ten chapters in plus an introduction. You’re putting 66,000 working the formula, understood the formula, but combining the lesson with the the right story and then putting it in the right order to keep and captivate the the reader’s imagination was difficult. It absolutely was. I thought, well, he could write 2000 words a day of chapter 6000 words. I can write a chapter every three days. No I couldn’t, it didn’t work like that. It it took almost a year for me to put this book together. And, you know, sometimes you just you go sit at the desk and there’s just this writer’s block. It’s like, I don’t know how to start. Right. And and there’s ways of getting around that. But but there’s days I just didn’t feel like it. There’s there’s times where I said, I wrote a whole bunch of stuff and I said, that’s crap. I had to throw it away. Um, I had I was fortunate enough to have a former client who is a writer who agreed to become a developmental editor with me, and so I would send her the work, and she just did such a great job of keeping me on task that I actually made her the coauthor. Uh, while the content is mine, she made it work better. She just did. And, um, and and Sarah became the coauthor. And when in fact, she was probably more of an editor. But but it helped me so much having that person there that I think she needed the credit or I believe that she needed to have credit.

Stone Payton: [00:27:36] Yeah, well, I got to believe that as much as this book is surely serving other people and organizations, I got to believe it. Probably living through that process of having to commit those ideas to to paper probably helped solidify and crystallize your own thinking and equip you to be that much better in the field. Yeah.

Scott De Long: [00:27:57] Absolutely. Agree, I no doubt. In fact, I talked to my wife about this all the time, you know, not all the time, but often. And she says you needed to write that book. It was good for you to do that. And I can’t agree any more than that, that it was good for me to write it. As much as I hated the process, I really didn’t enjoy writing it. I loved getting it done, but I didn’t like writing it.

Stone Payton: [00:28:26] So I don’t know when you’d find the time. I mean, you’ve got a radio show. You’re you’re an author, a speaker. Uh, but I’m going to ask anyway, outside the scope of the your field of work, hobbies, interests that you pursue that you know, my listeners know that I like to hunt fish and and travelers. There’s something that you nerd out about outside this space.

Scott De Long: [00:28:51] My my passion these days, and it’s been fairly recent is pickleball.

Speaker4: [00:28:55] Are.

Scott De Long: [00:28:56] I am getting out playing a couple hours a day, probably five days a week, just smacking the crap out of this little plastic ball and having fun. And there’s a community here in my town that, um, you know, I show up to the courts, there’s eight courts. There’s always people there. Put your paddle up and you get in a game and people welcome you. Like people are having fun smiling. I get some exercise, I get to chase a ball around. Uh, and I’ve been doing that for almost a year now, and, um. The learning curve was was steep and now it’s slowing down because the better I get at it, right. I’m not going to grow as fast as I did at at the beginning, and it’s just been a blast. I love we love to travel too. I mean, I love to go places and see things and see how other people live. Um, but pickleball is my daily, uh, passion. And then travel is my, you know, a couple times a year, get out and take extended trips and do some fun stuff.

Stone Payton: [00:29:55] Well, I’m so glad I asked. I do think, though, it sounds like you would you would second this emotion that giving yourself that, um, that white space I call it is important for, you know, the rest of your life and family and all that. But I think for me at least, it kind of, it sort of recharges me so I can get back at the core work and that much more energized. Is that true for you as well?

Scott De Long: [00:30:19] Absolutely. I there’s very little, very few things in my life now that I, that I have to do that aren’t fun. I love my work, I love pickleball, I love travel, I get to see kids and grandkids. That’s all fun. Yeah, you know, crap happens once in a while, but big deal. Just do that and move on. But most of my life is filled with things that bring me joy.

Stone Payton: [00:30:43] So, you know, I can’t just glide by the radio show thing when I was stalking you on the internet earlier. I learned that you that you have a radio show. Talk about that a little bit. What are you doing with that?

Scott De Long: [00:30:55] Well, it’s called the CEO podcast. And it started because a good friend of mine who’s actually a client, um, I had heard that he was thinking about moving on from his business, and I was trying to and he’s probably 14 years younger than I am. Um, so I thought, I’ll go over to his house. It was only a mile and a half away, go over his house, will share a beer, and we’ll have some conversation. And it was just such a great time. I hadn’t done that before with him. And we just we talked about business and personal and we just talked. Right. It was great. The very next week he said, we need to do that again. So he came over to my house and we sat in my backyard and same thing. Had a beer, um, had a bite to eat. And we were just talking halfway through that, uh, conversation. Was such intense conversation that I said, people need to hear this. They need to hear what we’re talking about. So we put together a podcast and we just finishing up our our fifth season. Wow. And uh, and it is it is called the CEO podcast. It was first cocktails entrepreneurs and opportunity. And we thought, yeah, we’re drinking too much. So let’s make it conversations with entrepreneurs about opportunity. And um, we just in the last two seasons we brought on guests about every other time as well.

Scott De Long: [00:32:15] So before it was just Vince and I having a conversation in the backyard. And then, uh, season four, we brought on guests, but they had to come to my house. Like, we had to be sitting around the cocktail table having, you know, coffee or a drink or whatever and having fun. And then this last season, we finally started doing some on zoom so that we didn’t limit our circle of who we can talk to. And so the guests reengaging and interesting is all it’s just, again, the starts. It’s not in detail. Interview. It’s a conversation, and it’s the kind of conversation you’d have sitting around the cocktail table with friends. But we talk about business stuff. Um, sometimes it’s nonprofit world, sometimes it’s the for profit world. Sometimes it’s about developing trust. Sometimes it’s about working with employees. There’s the conversations go from wide range events. And I are both entrepreneurial, uh, CEOs. And so we’ve we’ve had to wear all the hats in the company. We’ve been the janitor. We’ve been the guy that built the thing. We’ve been the sales person. So we have a wide range of experience. And then both of us kind of believe in this leadership philosophy that I espouse. And again, I call it principled leadership because of those three principles that need to be added in in order to really bring it to life. And again, humility, empathy and vulnerability are the key.

Stone Payton: [00:33:44] Well, I think it’s marvelous that you’re doing that. And I can speak firsthand at how rewarding it is to get on the air with smart, passionate people. You meet some terrific folks, you learn a lot. You capture a great deal of thought leadership that you can turn around and share with other people that can profit from it. So I’m gonna I’m gonna, uh, continue to follow your story and tap into that show as well. But before we wrap, I wonder if we could leave our listeners with a couple of actionable tips, and it could be around this bridging the the generational gap in the workforce or something broader, if you like. But I’d love to leave. Leave our folks with, you know, something to read, something to do or or not do, but just leave them with a little something. They can walk out of this and look, gang number one tip is reach out and have a conversation with Scott or somebody on his, uh, team and get your hands on his book. But, uh, yeah, let’s leave him with a couple of tips if we could.

Scott De Long: [00:34:44] Sure. And the things that I’ve already talked about, um, but I really want to reinforce, especially with this generational workforce issues that we have, you know, it’s so easy to point down and say, look at the problem with these people, right. Um. What we’re missing in that is that they’re people. So we need to treat people as individuals and not lump them into a group. Not everybody who’s in Gen Z has the same traits. These are individuals, so treat them as individuals and find out who they are. So that’s the first tip. The second tip is to think about this communication hierarchy and recognize that the the the greater chance for conflict or a difference of opinion, the less you want to send an email. At least pick up the phone. If you can get on a zoom call, do that. Better yet, if you can walk down the hall and go talk to them, go talk to them. The communication increases exponentially the higher up that communication hierarchy that you go. And while texting is great to say, hey, meet you at 5:00 or I’m five minutes late or just kind of noncontroversial things, it’s fine. But when you get into subjects that are deep, when you get into subjects that have emotion, when you get into subjects that have differing opinions, and especially if the stakes are high. Climb that ladder, go higher in the communication hierarchy and you’ll do much better.

Stone Payton: [00:36:15] Well, that is terrific, Council. I am so glad that I asked. All right. What’s the best way for our listeners to have a more substantive conversation with you or someone on your team? Tap into your work, get their hands on this book, get to the radio, show whatever coordinate coordinates you feel like are appropriate.

Scott De Long: [00:36:32] Yeah, there’s there’s lots of ways. I mean, my company is called Lead to Goals. Lead the number two goals. Comm you can get to the website on there’s phone numbers and emails and all those kind of things you can get in touch with. But I answer every email I get as well. Scott at lead Tools.com send me something. I will answer that. I’m also on LinkedIn. It’s Scott DeLong, PhD on LinkedIn. We have Instagram. Like there’s so many channels that people can get Ahold of us. Um, but I really suggest just sending an introductory email. Then we could pick up the phone or have a zoom call, and we can chat about whatever it is that you want to chat about.

Stone Payton: [00:37:14] Well, Scott, it has been an absolute delight having you on the program. Thank you for your insight, your perspective. Keep up the good work, man. What you’re doing is so important and we sure appreciate you, man.

Scott De Long: [00:37:29] Thank you Stone, I appreciate you inviting me on.

Stone Payton: [00:37:32] My pleasure. All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Doctor Scott DeLong. With lead to goals and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you again on workplace wisdom.