Trust in Leadership: How Adam Malone Sustains High Performance | Ep. 159

Adam Malone: 00:00:00

All great leaders also do some managing, but there are great managers who often fall down on the leadership aspect of seeing their job as taking people to a better place and inspiring them to go there.

Intro: 00:00:15

But I am the world's biggest super fan. You're like a super fan. Welcome to the Business Superfans Podcast.

We will discuss how establishing business superfans from customers, employees and business partners can elevate your success exponentially. Learn why these ads advocates are a key factor to achieving excellence in the world of commerce.

This is the Business Super Fans Podcast with your host, Freddy D.

Freddy D: 00:00:55

Hey super fan superstar Freddy D. Here in this episode 159, we're joined by Adam Malone, a leadership coach who helps high performing professionals evolve into great leaders of resilient high Trust teams.

VP, Adam made a bold pivot in: 2024

He now guides leadership teams and high level managers to uncover hidden barriers to performance so their teams can collaborate more effectively and thrive under pressure.

If you've ever struggled to keep your team motivated, cohesive or confident in challenging seasons, this conversation will show you how to build strength, trust and resilience from the inside out.

Freddy D: 00:01:51

Welcome Adam to the Business Superfans podcast. Great conversation that we had before we started recording. Welcome to the show, Adam.

Adam Malone: 00:02:00

Thanks Freddy. I'm excited to be here.

Freddy D: 00:02:02

Let's talk a little bit about what was your pivoting moment that made you switch from whatever you're doing before to what you're doing now, which is really talking a lot about trust in the business, especially in a leadership aspect and how that transcends the throughout the whole.

Adam Malone: 00:02:19

Business in terms of the career pivot.

ply chain executive in May of: 2024

And let's say that sustained idea where I differentiate myself and lots of other coaches or consultants. I think a lot of people know how to deliver high performance, but it has a shelf life. It can only last for so long.

And I think that's because the trust component is stripped out of it.

A big part of my work is working with high performing teams to build a culture established in trust that can deliver and sustain that performance for years and decades as opposed to weeks or months. Which is often how high performing teams operate. They have a spurt of great performance and activity. Then they have to rest, which is healthy.

I think rest is good. And then they can do another kind of sprint. But they aren't necessarily built for marathons.

The truth is we're all in the marathon business and we just need to run really fast sometimes during those races.

Freddy D: 00:03:34

You bring up a good point, is the fact that trust is the underlying factor in the whole equation. It doesn't matter whether you're the owner of the company or you're the janitor of the company. Everybody's affected by that.

Adam Malone: 00:03:48

It is pervasive. And some of its impacts are very obvious. And some of its impacts are not so obvious.

So helping teams see both the obvious and the not so obvious factors of trust is a great joy for me.

Freddy D: 00:04:01

Yeah, because you're really talking about also being transparent.

And when you're being transparent and authentic, then you can build that thrust because people believe in what you're talking about and they buy into it versus, versus. You've got management that says, well, that's not important to you because you're down here and I'm up here.

Right off the bat, that changes the dynamics. Just that little bit. Changes the dynamics dramatically.

Adam Malone: 00:04:29

When I examine trust and work with a team in understanding what's going on, I think about trust in three components. One of those is empathy. The second is authenticity. Then the third is about performance.

In my experience, most of what we do focuses in performance and often it's only half of performance because we focus on competence. That's what degree do you have, what certification do you have? What skills does Freddy have to do this job? That's really only part of performance.

Anyway.

The truth of the matter is, most of the time when leaders are seeking to give trust or they want to receive trust from their teams, in both cases, empathy is actually a much higher issue, much great issue than competence. Even though most of our measures, metrics and reward systems focus on competence instead of empathy.

Getting leaders to see that they actually want empathy, they need empathy from their team, is pretty difficult because most people kind of confuse empathy with emotion.

Freddy D: 00:05:31

You bring up a great point there, Adam. Because it's bi directional, it needs to be bidirectional.

Leadership has to have the empathy for the team and the team has got to have empathy for with the leadership. Otherwise it doesn't work.

Adam Malone: 00:05:44

Exactly. That bi directional flow, I talk about it as a flow. In every relationship we are giving trust to someone else.

They receive it and then they do something with it. Maybe they live up to it, maybe they breach it. There's all kinds of things they can do once they have the trust.

In the same way they are giving their trust to me and then I have to receive it and choose what I'm going to do with it once I receive it. And thinking about it that way instead of often. The language we use is we need to build trust.

Which building implies, hey, I decide I want to have trust with Freddy, I'm going to build trust with him.

It implies both a control that I can kind of make you trust me, which is not really possible and create some problems, but also it implies that it's permanent. It also implies that it kind of applies in every situation. But trust is highly contextual.

We all have that friend from high school or college that knows our deepest darkest secrets that we did when we were 18 and 20. We trust them with those secrets, but we might not trust that same person to babysit our kids or take our grandkids somewhere like trust.

Trust is different. It's contextual.

Even though when we have trust with someone, that doesn't mean we trust them in all regards, for the most part, we want to seek ways to inspire others to give us their trust.

Freddy D: 00:07:02

And you got to earn it.

Adam Malone: 00:07:04

Exactly. Talking to leaders when they say, hey, I want my team to trust me. The goal needs to be exhibiting those behaviors.

I talked about those components of trust in a way that over the medium and long term we will inspire others to give us their trust. I can't force you and I can't build it without your consent. You got to give it to me. I need to inspire you to want to give it to me.

Freddy D: 00:07:29

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Freddy D: 00:08:40

That was one of the things that I had learned in Dale Carnegie management class that I took years ago, which was my job as a leader, was to make sure you were successful at doing your job.

And one of the approaches that I had learned, I've used it over and over again over the years, is I would get say, okay, Adam, you're in this particular position, describe to me what would be success in this position. And you would write up your whole job description, what your goals are and everything else. So now you emotionally own that.

I basically made sure it aligned with what the company goals and all that stuff were. But then my job became helping you achieve what you said you were going to do. It wasn't top down, it was bottom up. And then my job was a facilitator.

My job is to help you to facilitate your success.

Adam Malone: 00:09:31

Taking on that space as a leader of being a guide and a coach as opposed to more of a delegator, that's a big shift to help people through understanding that real sustainable development and performance is that guide and coach as opposed to the deleg. An important aspect of helping leaders become who they should be. Because it's rooted in helping our teams become who they want to be.

Freddy D: 00:09:57

Exactly. There's the bingo right there. Who they want to be. Because people have aspirations and they have goals and they have visions.

Sometimes you got to make the hard decision as a leader and say, okay, this person wants to grow and I don't have the room for them to grow and they may go someplace else. You have to sometimes suck it up and say, you know what, that's the best for you. You need to take this position somepl someplace else.

I hate to see you go, but that's going to be where you need to go. And you create a super fan out of that individual because they're going to look back at you and go, man, that was a great manager.

They actually encouraged me to go to the next level. That's when you really elevate yourself as a leader.

And now you start developing that trust amongst your team because now they go, wow, that guy actually did the right thing or gal did the right thing for that person.

Adam Malone: 00:10:47

Yes. That's about the bridge between management and leadership.

Managers are about getting the work done, about delivering the tasks that are necessary to achieve short term goals. Whereas leadership is more about getting people to a place that they wouldn't have gone on their own. It sounds much different. Right.

Management sounds very task oriented, which it is. It's Very important. All great leaders also do some managing.

But there are great managers who often fall down on the leadership aspect of seeing their job as taking people to a better place and inspiring them to go there. One of my favorite kind of moments as a leader was when I had someone on my team. She was fantastic. I was a vp, she was a senior director.

I remember the time she came to me and said, hey, another part of the company has come. I think that they are courting me to be a vp. I said, well, what do you think?

She said, well, I could absolutely do the job that they want for me, but I would rather stay here.

And when she said, hey, I would rather stay here and be a senior director in this team than be a VP in another team, that was when I really finally felt like the culture that I wanted for my team was starting to show fruit.

When people are willing to say, I would rather be on this team than to have a higher position with a higher pay, they're saying that tangible good of more salary or whatever is not as valuable to me as being in this team, in this culture. That was the moment that I finally felt like I was delivering something that was valuable to the team and not just valuable to me as a leader.

Freddy D: 00:12:22

Yeah, she became a super fan of your leadership. And when you have a cohesive team, think of it like a SEAL Team Six kind of guys.

They're a tight knit group and their lives depend upon each other, but they're a unit. And so what you created was a unit that was cohesive together. Once you got that momentum and that energy, you don't want to lose that.

Adam Malone: 00:12:47

Right. That place, though, is one it's very difficult to get to.

But it is about hitting all three of those components of trust, empathy, authenticity and performance. You don't want people to stay on your team and under your leadership because they trust you, but you don't have any results to show for it.

That's not a great outcome.

Just because someone trusts us, just because we have built a culture that is established and rooted in trust, that doesn't mean we're foregoing the need to put great results on the board. We all need that. The reason we're here is to make money.

But doing that day in, day out is about the team seeing and understanding that I have their best interests in mind, that I care about their concerns, I care about their fears, and where possible, I'll defer to those. And it's the same thing from a leader on that empathy framework I mentioned earlier.

Sometimes leaders struggle to Say that they need empathy from their team because they think it means that they need some emotional connection, which, that's great if you have some. But when I say empathy from a leader leadership standpoint, from a trust standpoint, that's when a leader can be seen.

When their people see their fears and concerns, see their hopes and their dreams, what keeps the leader awake at night? What are they worried about in the day to day?

That team takes those fears and concerns and goals on and says, hey, we see what Freddy wants or we understand what Freddie is concerned about. They take that forward and they deliver on that regardless whether or not the leader is in the room.

That's how trust enables that sustained high performance. Because now I don't have to be in the room every time my team is working on something.

I can trust that they understand what I'm worried about, that they won't run out to a place of discomfort that may put the team or the company at risk. They understand the bounds. Great. I can give them a lot of rope and they'll come back to me when they know that they're getting outside their limit.

That empathy is so hard for leaders to understand as a primary blocker, that they have to stay involved with their team and they are forced to delegate instead of empower because the team doesn't take the concerns of Freddie or Adam on themselves. How do we create systems that solve that gap? Is one of my big passions.

Freddy D: 00:14:58

Yeah, you bring up some great points there, Adam. One of my quotes in my book is people crawl through broken glass for appreciation and recognition.

So as a leader, to build that trust, you also have to recognize the efforts that the individual or the team put together as a whole. If it's an individual, one of the things I tell people is, hey, Adam, I really appreciate that extra effort you put in on that project.

Really knocked it out of the ballpark. And it's a nerd thing to say, hey, team, I want to take a moment to recognize Adam for really crushing it on this particular project.

Everybody gets elevated that way.

And everybody says, okay, this person really notices what we're doing, appreciates it, and we start trusting that person because they show back that we're valued.

Adam Malone: 00:15:45

One of my earliest mentors, he used to say, great leaders are a window when things are good, meaning praise is given, and they're a window into those that should actually get the praise for that work. And they're a mirror in times of difficulty and failure.

When that failure and blame comes, they don't show through the rest of the team they actually stand in front and they say, no, look at me, I'm accountable for the failure.

It's the leaders who protect the team when things are bad and praise the team when things are good and give and share that praise and that credit that people will walk through glass for.

I've got a couple leaders in my life that if they called me today and said, hey, we're digging ditches and I got a shovel for you, I'd go dig a ditch form. Because in my history, they've always sought to produce the absolute best thing for me possible.

If one of these guys, his name is John, if John thinks that digging ditches is the best thing for me right now, I can generally trust that he's thought that through and it's going to be the best thing for me. So I'd go pick up a shovel and dig right next to him.

But it's because over the years he cared for me in ways that benefit him personally, but whenever possible, they benefited me personally.

Freddy D: 00:16:53

Well, that's where I want to kind of bring up the point that you just iterated, Adam, and that is the fact that you said something very important that I want to make sure our listeners understand, especially leaders. And that's the mirror thing. I want to re emphasize that because when you're successful and the team is successful, you want to recognize the team.

If there's a setback and things don't go as planned, you got to be the blocking back for football term and take the hit for the team because that's your job and that's how you build that trust is you go, they got our back or he or she's got our back. That's the big part right there. Because everybody's going to see that you can't hide that.

That's visible and that earns the trust, that earns the respect and that empowers the team because now they believe in their leader and that's when you get momentum going within that group.

Adam Malone: 00:17:43

Absolutely. What you just mentioned there, I really appreciate that, is one of the reasons that trust is a linchpin in empowerment and sustainability.

As I mentioned earlier, we give trust to people and then they receive trust and they have to do something with it. So as a leader, when we empower our teams and we say, hey, Freddie, you're empowered to go own this thing and do this thing, I'm giving you trust.

You have to decide what to do with it. But just because I have given you trust doesn't mean that you trust me in return. That's Often where the leaders fail is they cultivate.

Hey, how can I trust my team in terms of do I have the right skills on the bus, do they have the right experience? All of those things. But they don't actually spend enough time inspiring the team to give trust back. As a result, the team is fearful.

Hey, Adam empowered me.

I know he said, I own this, but you know what, I'm going to cc him on every email and I'm going to check in with him every day and I'm going to invite him to every important meeting because they're used to that.

Freddy D: 00:18:41

They haven't transitioned away from that. Absolutely correct.

Adam Malone: 00:18:44

They live in fear because they don't have trust. Lots of leaders believe that their work is done. Once I trust Freddie enough to give him this, then he's going to take it and run with it.

Then they don't understand why never really get the team to that self actualized place where empowerment starts to deliver.

It's because the leader has actually failed to do enough work on empathy and authenticity such that the team believes that trust should be reciprocated.

Freddy D: 00:19:10

Absolutely. Spot on. And the other thing is that it takes a while for that trust to be built, but it takes minutes for it to be destroyed.

Adam Malone: 00:19:18

Yeah, it takes a long time to develop it. But the very first time that you throw one of your team members under the bus, when something goes wrong, trust is gone. Yeah, it's gone.

And it's also infectious both directions. Trust is catching, but distrust is more catching.

So all it takes is the guy that works for me saying, hey, guys, Adam said he's going to stand up for us and that we can do X, Y or Z.

But you know what, we were just in a review with the COO and the minute it got nasty or the COO was concerned, Adam said, I told Freddie to do that differently. I don't know why I didn't.

Even if that's true, that guy's going to hear that and he's going to immediately seek to never be in that position again and he's going to go tell others about that. Yeah, he threw me under the bus. He could have just said, oh, we must have misunderstood your requirements.

Freddy D: 00:20:08

Right. Could have been handled differently.

Adam Malone: 00:20:11

Yep. And all of a sudden I've had those experiences where a team member has failed, where a team member has done the thing wrong.

I'm in front of the leader, they're in front of my leader and we're talking about something and I have had to make the decision in the moment. Hey, am I going to throw so and so under the bus or am I going to take it on the chin myself?

What is really amazing is if you're the leader that will put yourself at risk and say, you know what, coo, I think I must have misunderstood and miscommunicated some of these requirements to Freddy. We're going to take a beat. We'll come back to you tomorrow. I want to go revisit the analysis or the work product or whatever.

We'll come back to you tomorrow and make certain that we've gotten that taken care of. We walk out of the room and what does Freddy do? Before the door is even closed, he says, boss, that wasn't you, that was me. Like, I did that wrong.

Yeah, we rise and fall together. You're not going to take that once I do that one time, Freddy is going to be my best friend. Super.

Freddy D: 00:21:04

He's going to be a super fan.

Adam Malone: 00:21:05

He'll be that super fan.

Freddy D: 00:21:06

And your thing too, that you I want to iterate is that COO is going to recognize that there ain't dumb. They're going to recognize that and they know what's going on and they're going to say, okay, Adam stood up, did the right thing as a leader.

He's got potential to go to the higher level because it goes both directions. I've run companies before and I've seen people step up and take the heat and I go, interesting, okay, they did the right thing.

Adam Malone: 00:21:33

Well, it's always the one on one after that is helpful because then I'm going to have my one on one with my boss and he's going to say, hey, what's the real scoop? What actually happened? And sometimes the answer is I misunderstood something you said and so I did tell them the wrong thing.

Sometimes it's Freddie screwed up that happens. Not like we're not too worried about it. We'll fix it. It's not a big deal.

But my leader's almost always going to find out what the truth of the situation is in a more controlled manner. In both of those situations, respect is going to come from being the one that can be trusted.

Because just like we said earlier, in every relationship, we're giving and receiving trust.

Part of what I've reiterated to my leader is, hey, coo, when me and you are in a room with the CEO and that same thing happens, I'm not going to throw you under the bus because as you go up in leadership, you get quite a few opportunities where you could betray the trust of your leader and throw them under the bus. And when they know I'm not going to do that to you, that's where you also get a lot more scale.

Because they can say, you know what, I don't mind when you meet with my boss without me because I can trust that you're going to care for my reputation just as much as you care for the reputation of your people. And that's where we get more performance. Because now we don't have to be inefficient, everybody be in every meeting.

But that's also where you as the COO would get a ton of scale because now you can send me places that you would have to go otherwise. Because you can trust me to care for your reputation just as much as I care for mine and my people.

Freddy D: 00:22:58

Right. Share a story with our listeners. Adam, about a company that you stepped into that was a hornet. That's nest to put it mildly.

I'm sure you've stepped into a couple of those places and what was the outcome?

Adam Malone: 00:23:11

Yeah, so six or seven years ago I stepped into an operations situation and I'll never forget the SVP was fantastic lady but sometimes she didn't always inspire trust. She could inspire a little bit of fear. I remember I was in a meeting and she said, you know what, we need the directors.

So think this like SVP in this org, then vp, then senior director and then director. The directors were the ones who were similar between director and senior manager.

They were very much like the non commissioned officers or like the first officers in the military, like early lieutenant sort of feel. Her point was, hey, we have too many VPs and senior directors that are in the mix running the day to day.

We need the directors to take charge, take over and run this business because we have a lot more work to do on the earth on the important work like long term strategy and thinking we need them to own this stuff that's urgent but not always as important. So up to that point that's a great statement. I think all of us would nod our head like yes, we want to empower our teams. We want ownership.

We need some people thinking about strategy, we need some people thinking about tactics. Great. All that's great. But then she said the phrase that is problematic but we can't misplan.

That company had an annual planning process like lots do. And the aop, the annual operating plan, it was like the bible, it was God's honest truth and you do not deviate from delivering on that plan.

Most of us have lived in companies like that. And she added that One sentence. But we still have to meet plan. And you know what that tells everyone in the room?

It tells them that she feels like she needs to say that there's no trust. That's the opposite of trust. Right. Like there is a fundamental operating principle for how we get our work done.

And I actually believe that the leaders that I'm saying need to be empowered to take charge. They must not understand this fundamental thing. We still have to hit plan. You know what? Those guys didn't get their 20% bonus unless we hit plan.

I'm pretty sure they knew we needed to hit plan. And so we embarked on building a culture that it could empower those directors to run the business.

But it took me over a year to build a performance management structure in that company that was rooted in trust, where no one had to say anymore, hey, you have to hit plan. And instead it was, hey, around here the directors run the business. And here's what that looks like.

We developed a system that kind of showed results to leadership.

We gave leadership the opportunity to inspect those results, show their concern, get that empathy that we talked about from their teams where their concerns were made aware, but also develop the team where the systems and the processes could be empowered to a point where it was like an F1 race car going around the track by the time we were done with it. But it started with that wrench being thrown into it and we had to get that out of the works and actually develop the system that could handle that.

One of the things I would say is I prefer to think about systems and teams instead of individuals.

If you want to deliver a long term sustainable, high performing company, you have to think about building systems and processes that can be empowered and not just individual people that can be empowered.

Freddy D: 00:26:33

Yeah. And I'm going to add to that and I use an analogy of a racing rowing team.

It's one of my favorite analogies because you've got eight people on the boat, they all have a single or and you've got someone beating the beat for the team that's up front. The bottom line is if you don't get in sync, you're not even going in a circle. You're just wobbling, going no place.

So you have to have the mission, the vision. Everybody's got to trust the leader and you got to get that thing going. And once you get that synchronization in sync, it flies through the water.

Adam Malone: 00:27:10

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:27:10

If you watch those guys in complete synchronization, it's memorizing how fast they're clipping through and going. And that's what you're doing is you're really helping get everybody in that racing rowboat in sync, in direction and flying through the water.

Adam Malone: 00:27:24

Yeah.

In that example I shared, I would say the issue was because the leadership team was always so focused on hitting plan, as I mentioned, it was pervasive. They made every conversation about that.

As a result, their teams could not embrace concepts like curiosity and innovation that delivered long term performance. Because every conversation was about, how are we delivering results today?

I think it's highly important that we deliver results, but in order to give enough space for long term growth and long term innovation, we actually have to build systems that separate concepts of inspection and curiosity. That's part of how we can deliver teams where trust enables us to be more creative.

Because once I trust that, hey, Freddie understands that we can't put the plan at risk, or if we do, we need to understand that risk. All of a sudden, the conversation, when Freddie brings an idea of how we could improve things, I can say, great, I'm excited about this idea.

How much risk do you think it adds to our plan? Great. I would love to make this investment in customer service, but we have a cost component that we have to consider.

How are we going to impact our operating plan if we're going to go improve our service in this way? All of a sudden, Freddie knew that. Freddie knew that we had to care for that. And he says, I'm so glad you asked.

Here's the three ways that we're going to take care of that cost issue. You're right. There's a bogey out there that we create when we extend ourselves like this. Here's how. I already have a plan to mitigate it.

I've already talked to these teams and we believe that we can do it.

Freddy D: 00:29:02

Two years ago, I scaled a company, a service based company, by a million dollars in a year as when it took over as general manager. And it was small, small revenue.

But basically one is I changed the mindset of everybody is that it's not like a lot of people set the goals that we're striving to be or we are, we're looking to be the best. No, I changed the mindset. We are the best. We are the premier company. We are setting the standard. Here's what we're going to do.

Then it was, okay, here's this audacious goal that everybody thought was nuts. I said, well, let's come up as a team. What are your ideas to hit? This is the target. And you know what if we miss?

That's okay because it was an audacious target. But if you don't have that, then you set a lower target. Well, guess what? If you miss, you're a lot lower too.

Adam Malone: 00:29:49

Right.

Freddy D: 00:29:49

So I set up a higher target.

And then we got ideas, we got creative and people that were not necessarily in simple positions, lack of a better way of wording it, but they're not at the management level.

They had some great ideas because I opened up the doors to say, okay, I don't care what role you are in a company, what's your ideas, and sometimes that person that you wouldn't think of has got a brilliant idea. I mean, it's happened. There's stories of this all over the place. Of somebody that was a servant in a restaurant in New York.

I remember, I. I think it's unapologetic hospitality.

Adam Malone: 00:30:25

Unreasonable hospitality.

Freddy D: 00:30:26

Unreasonable hospitality. The clerk that was or whatever her name was and positioned her in another role that had no qualifications whatsoever. And she killed it.

Adam Malone: 00:30:37

Yep. That inspiration you can give people is beautiful. And I love. So Unreasonable is one of my favorite books. Leadership.

Freddy D: 00:30:44

Yeah, same here.

Adam Malone: 00:30:45

I give it out all the time. One of the concepts that he was talking about in that chapter too was they took the guy in thinking about high performance.

They said, hey, at 11 Madison park, we want to be the, the best. But you know what, there's already a whole bunch of other places that are the best.

And one of the examples I love is all these fine dining establishments. They had sommeliers out the wazoo who had multi thousand dollar wine pairings and all kinds of stuff.

And they said, like, we don't have the capability to outrun them in wine. We've actually noticed that they all kind of suck at beer. Beer drinkers kind of get treated like second class.

And then they find out that one of the servers, this guy, a kid in his early 20s, he has this love of craft beer. And they said, hey, we can't be better than them at their strengths, but we can be better than them at their weaknesses.

We can be the best at their weaknesses. And we've got this kid who could be a beer sommelier.

And so they told him, hey, you're the beer sommelier for us and every day you're going to teach us about beer. It is your job to inform us, teach us, and grow us in this way. And they took this guy who was a server, gave him an.

Freddy D: 00:31:51

It's a simple position that goes back to a simple position. But he got empowered. The guy got empowered and he took ownership 100%.

Adam Malone: 00:32:00

And here's one of the fun little tidbits in that. It wasn't his job. His job was a server. But they said, hey, we know you love this thing. Will you help us do this better?

And he was inspired to go do better. And they didn't have to tell him, freddie, we'd like you to do this. And he says, like, well, yeah, but if you pay me more and promote me, I'll do it.

But that's where so many leaders fail, is we look for, hey, I want to give you this increase in responsibility or workload. I'm going to have to pay you more. I'm going to promote you to make that happen.

Whereas if we could engage on an empathetic level and an authentic level to understand what drives our people, all of a sudden, we can give them opportunities that they long for, that they'll grow into and that they will absolutely destroy. And we don't have to make it about a financial transaction in every single instance. I will take care of you over the long term.

You can trust me to do that. It comes back, yeah, go do this work.

That's how you create that virtuous cycle of, if you trust me, extend yourself out there, go try new hard things. I'm not going to let you fall. And you know, I'm going to reward you because I've done it before. Right?

Freddy D: 00:33:09

And that's how you create those super fans of the team. Once you got super fans of your team, they create super fans of the customers and everybody that they're dealing with. Because guess who? What?

They're the front line. It's not the management, it's not the CEO, that's the front line. It's the server, it's the customer support representative.

That's the front line of the business. You should be taking care of them the best because that's the representation of your company.

That's not the lowest worker, that's the most important worker in your organization.

Adam Malone: 00:33:40

There is no most important. That was hammered home for me about 15 years ago. I was in a meeting with a guy who would become the CEO of the company that I was at.

He was a longtime mentor for me. And one day I was in his office and we were talking about something and he was really frustrated because his email wasn't working.

I mean, you can imagine, like this is a SVP at a multibillion dollar company. When his email goes down, that's a bit of an issue.

I looked and I said, wait, are you telling me like you're not on some super secret like high uptime server that never goes down. And I'll just never forget he lost it on me. He said what do you mean? Why should I be on some super secret server that never goes down?

Everyone deserves that. Everyone deserves to have a high uptime in their work tools. No more me than them. We all deserve the gold plated server.

We're all doing valuable, important work.

That stuck with me so much because I think we can easily become hierarchical and think that this person's time is more important than this person's time. There are some ways in which we have to consider that. In some practical ways, I'll say.

But if that becomes pervasive in our culture, we've lost the battle.

Freddy D: 00:34:50

Totally agree Adam. As we get close to the end here, great conversation, great insights for our listeners. How can people find you?

Adam Malone: 00:34:58

Sure, LinkedIn's the best way to find me. Search Adam Malone. My technical is Adam Malone Speaks.

But if you search for Adam Malone, there'll be a black and white photo of a pudgy white guy with a beard. That's most likely me. Click on that and engage. I'd love to see you there. Love to get you on my newsletter. Really. I love answering direct messages.

When people have questions about how they can inspire trust from their people or inspire trust from those that give them trust from their leadership. I'm always open for that sort of thing.

Freddy D: 00:35:27

Well, make sure that we put all that stuff into the show Notes. Been a pleasure having you on the Business Superfan podcast show.

Definitely would love to have you on the show down the road again because you and I could talk about this stuff for a bit. I can tell.

Adam Malone: 00:35:41

Let's do it. Thanks Freddie. It's been great.

Freddy D: 00:35:43

Thank you for your time. Appreciate it and have a great rest of your day.

Adam Malone: 00:35:47

See y'. All.

Freddy D: 00:35:49

That's a wrap for this episode. What stood out in today's conversation with Adam is his perspective on what truly sustains high performance.

It's not just drive or discipline, but the ability to lead teams that stay resilient under pressure.

After two decades in corporate leadership, Adam knows firsthand that the real edge comes from cohesion, trust and the courage to face barriers head on.

For service based business owners, that insight is gold because whether you're managing a team of 5 or 50, your growth depends on how well you lead people through the uncertainty, not just how hard you work. If this episode brought you value, leave a quick 5 star review. It helps service based business owners discover the show. Thanks for tuning in.

I'm grateful you're here and part of Business Superfans journey. Every listen, every action you take gets you one step closer to building your own superfans.

Remember, one action, one stakeholder, one super fan closer.

Intro: 00:36:57

We hope you took away some useful knowledge from today's episode of the Business Superfans podcast. Join us on the next episode as we continue guiding you on your journey to achieve flourishing success in business.