Using Servant Leadership to Drive Engagement and Culture

Using Servant Leadership to Drive Engagement and Culture with Garry Ridge, CEO of WD40

The application of servant leadership in the workforce with Garry Ridge

I'm excited that you're joining me because I have a fantastic interview for you. I interview a lot of great talent development leaders, learning leaders, thought leaders in this space of talent development. I got my first global CEO on the show and I am speaking with Garry Ridge, who is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of WD-40, a global company based in San Diego, California. Garry has created an amazing culture at WD-40. I can't wait for you to learn all about what he's done. Some of you may have heard of him speak or talk about this already. If you haven't, get ready to take some notes.

A little bit more about Garry, he's passionate about the learning and empowering organization culture. He has helped establish at the WD-40 Company and his vision and leadership have positively impacted the WD-40 Company in both measurable and immeasurable ways. Garry joined WD-40 in 1987 in Australia where he lived and has held various management positions in the company. He has worked directly with WD-40 Company in over 70 countries. Garry is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of San Diego where he teaches leadership development, talent management and succession planning in the Master of Science in Executive Leadership program. In 2009, he coauthored a book with Ken Blanchard outlining his effective leadership techniques titled Helping People Win at Work: A Business Philosophy Called "Don't Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A." Garry talks about that in this interview as well.

He's a native of Australia and he lives in San Diego. He is a true servant leader and in this interview, we talk all about servant leadership. We talk about the culture that they have created at WD-40, why they call it their managers coaches, how they've driven their employee engagement up to 93% or 94%, which is amazing. He talks about his formula for culture and what the job of a great manager and coach is. He gives a lot of book recommendations and some great advice on how to drive culture as well. If you are in talent development, you are a coach, a manager, a business leader and you like being in awe of great leadership, I can't wait for you to check out this episode. Without further ado, here is my interview with Garry Ridge, the CEO of WD-40.

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Garry, welcome to the show.

It's great to be here. How are you doing?

I am doing fantastic. I've got lots of great calls going on, kids running around and the highlight is I get to talk personally with the global CEO of WD-40.

Thank you. That's kind of you. I'm getting used to the new normal. I'm here in my home office and although I don't have kids running around, Max the wonder dog occasionally does wander in. It's a time when we're exercising new leadership muscles that we probably had them, but we forgot a little bit about them. It's a time when cherishing and being grateful for our tribe is important. I am delighted that we have such an engaged tribe that works every day to do great things. It's an interesting time.

We are in some interesting times. We're certainly right in the middle of Coronavirus and everyone working remotely. I've been working from home for years, myself, but I have two children that might burst in here at any moment. I don't even get worried about it anymore because it's the new normal. We scheduled this a long time back to focus mostly on your leadership philosophies. I want to talk about that and I also want to get into how you, as a CEO and leader, have adapted during these challenging times under Coronavirus. Before we get to all that, let's start with a little bit of your background. I'd love to know a little bit about who you are and how you got to where you are.

Profit is the applause for people doing good work. Click To Tweet

I am the CEO and Chairman of WD-40 Company. We're based here in San Diego. We make the famous blue and yellow can with little red top and many other things that we market in 176 countries around the world. My journey with them started many years ago. I'm an Aussie and I joined them in Australia. I’ve been in the Australian subsidiary and in 1994, I moved to the US to head our global expansion. In 1997, I got the opportunity to lead the team. Since then, we've been continually growing our business, particularly outside of the United States. We still got a long way to go, but the thing that I'm most proud of is the tribe that we have. We call ourselves a tribe, not a team. We believe a tribe is a group of people who come together to both protect and feed each other.

I'm proud of our 93% employee engagement, which is about 60 points higher than most companies. At times like this, this is important. I love learning. I'm an Adjunct Professor at the University of San Diego and involved with a lot of other leaders and academics to do as much as I can to learn about how we can be better human beings. I truly believe that our role as a leader is to develop a place where people go to work every day. They make a contribution to something bigger than themselves. They learn something new. They feel safe and are set free by a set of values and they go home happy because happy people create happy families. Happy families create a happy world.

I know you're well known for creating this great culture at WD-40. I don't know how much of it was in place versus what you heavily influenced as the CEO. Maybe let’s start there. How much has the company and the culture changed during the many years that you've been working there?

Culture is perpetual in nature. It was different many years ago and the company was different. We were a quarter of the size in revenue that we are now, and most of our business was in the United States. When I became CEO, I went back to school and I did a Master's degree in Leadership at the University of San Diego. That's where I met my mentor, Ken Blanchard, The One Minute Manager. He was my professor. Ken and I are dear friends. After that, I was on the boards of his company for years. He introduced me to the power of servant leadership and that was my a-ha moment. I realized that micromanagement wasn't scalable and if we were to have a growing and healthy business, we needed to create an organization that reflects what I shared with you. It all started then and it's a continual job to maintain the culture and ensure that we live our values every day.

Servant Leadership

Can you expand on this idea of servant leadership a little bit? I love what you said about the realization that micromanagement isn't scalable. I've been on a bit of a crusade myself to try to rid the world of too much micromanagement and a lot of it is done mostly out of fear. People become controlling. They're afraid that their employees aren't going to get stuff done and it's going to reflect poorly on them. If they become a “servant,” then that employee might rise and take their job or something like that. Can you speak to why we shouldn't be acting that way and the power of servant leadership?

Servant leadership is reasonably well-defined when we talk about ego and empathy. When ego eats empathy instead of empathy eating ego, that's when servant leadership doesn't have the chance to play. Servant leadership is not about the prisoners running the prison. It's about firstly having a true commitment to the development of your people. Having a clear purpose, a clear set of values that set people free but also guide them, a clear strategy within the organization, being bold as executors, and a true dedication to learning. The fear side that we talk about is we don't make mistakes at WD-40 Company. We have learning moments and the difference is a learning moment is a positive or negative outcome of any situation that needs to be openly and freely shared to benefit all people. Fear is one of the most disabling emotions we have. We can remove fear by being okay not always to be right and that's true. I often say in most situations, I'm probably wrong and roughly right. I'm okay with that.

Creating Culture

I love that philosophy that you approach things with a growth mindset. To quote the great Dr. Carol Dweck who wrote the book Mindset, she believes that you can always improve on things. It's okay to get things wrong because those are learning opportunities. I love the philosophy that there are no failures, only learning opportunities. We don't make mistakes, only have learning moments. I talked to a lot of companies who say they want to improve innovation, but the thing that holds them back is many people that are afraid to fail. They're afraid to be wrong and so they're not going to try new things. How do you create this culture where there are no mistakes but only learning moments? Are there certain times when that's true and certain times when that's not true?

There are times when it's always true because if you do have this ongoing commitment to curiosity and learning, one of our values is we value making it better than it is now. That's one of the drivers of the learning moment. Let's be clear, we don't want to make the same learning moment several times. We want to learn from it. Even in this horrible situation that we're going now, the pressure is on everyone. What I've been sharing with our tribe in a daily basis is let's make sure that even in these times where we're making a note of the learning moments because as we go through those and when we come out the other side of this, and we will, that'll help us again all to soar like an eagle. Let's not waste a crisis. We have the opportunity to learn around that. Empathy for their struggles at the moment is important, but affirming confidence is also important. That's also got a lot to do with the power of the learning moment.

Servant Leadership: Servant leadership is having a true commitment to the development of your people.

Having the right people, empowering them and helping them understand where they can take chances and risks is important too. It's okay to make mistakes as long as you learn and improve from it. You also mentioned values and purpose. It seems a very purpose-driven organization. People are connected to the purpose you mentioned, which helps drive engagement. A lot of companies pay lip service to having values and talking about a purpose, but it's rare that employees are connected to that. How did you do that? How do you create such a culture?

We have to have a just cause to help make life better at home and work. That goes for the people in our company and those we serve as our customers. I have an algorithm for culture: culture equals, and the equals sign means happens when (values plus behavior) multiplied by consistency. You've got to have values and behaviors, and you've got to do it consistently right through the organization. Not only do people adopt the values but they embed them in the way that they go about their business every day.

Culture equals or happens when values plus behaviors times consistency. You've got to have the values in place and people need to understand them. You need people taking the right actions, the behaviors that they have and then you want that happening regularly. How do you instill that? How do you get people to understand the values and have the right behaviors?

When the behavior is not aligned with the values, you've got to be brave and loving enough to the people you serve to redirect them. Our values are part of the book I wrote with Ken, which is called Helping People Win at Work. We share there how values are part of our ongoing employee talent development program. We have our people every quarter tell us how they've lived our values in the last 90 days. We only have two measurements for values. You either live them or you visit them. We don't want a lot of visitors. This is where leadership courage comes into play. It's a balance between being tough-minded and tender-hearted. You've got to act it and you've got to be prepared to be courageous and loving to help people around those behaviors.

Is there some type of reinforcement, training or interventions where people are regularly getting reminded of these or they know what's working and what's not?

It's embedded. Over time, we have a number of different talent development programs in the company. We have a thing called Leadership Lab, which is an internal program that teaches the attributes of leadership, not how to manage people. There's a whole flurry of different tools and behaviors that we use. At the end of the day, it comes from the leader. Here's an example. We don't have managers in our company. Everybody is called a coach. I am the coach of the people I lead. The job of the coach is to help people step into their best personal self. What does that mean? You don't find the coach out on the playing field. The coach is on the sideline and in the locker room observing the game, having the conversations, coaching them along. We've been doing employee opinion surveys for many years and there are a couple of numbers that are great. Ninety-six percent of our tribe members globally say they respect their coach, not like their boss. Ninety-six percent or 97% say they know what results are expected of me. Ninety-six percent say that they feel their values align with the company's values. We're doing this and then measuring it. That's why we have an employee engagement of 93%.

What It Means To Be A Coach

I love the terminology that everybody is a coach and reflecting on what that means, because many organizations out there are struggling with how do you get your managers to coach their people, to give the coaching, give the feedback? They're more worried about their job, the micromanaging and that sort of thing. You're directing them psychologically by starting them off by saying, “You're not a manager, you're a coach. You need to act like a coach.” Do they get training along with that to know what it means to be a coach?

Absolutely. Interestingly enough is the definition. Your job as a coach is not to mark someone's paper. It's to help them get an A. You need to identify with the people you're coaching what does an A look like, how will I know what that A is and how do you help them get to that A? We have quarterly or more conversations with our tribe members with their coach. They sit down and say, “Here's what we agreed to do. Tell me where you think you are. What's on your mind? What else? What's getting in your way? What resources don't you have? Where can I help take away roadblocks for you? Here's an observation I have where I think you need to redirect yourself or focus on something else.” These are ongoing development conversations that we have on a regular basis.

Culture is perpetual in nature. Click To Tweet

I love how you're putting this into practice and everything you're saying reminds me of some of the teaching and philosophy from a couple of our mutual friends like Liz Wiseman who wrote about this in the book Multipliers. Michael Bungay Stanier wrote about this in the book The Coaching Habit, your fellow Aussie, and talking about freeing things up for people and getting roadblocks out of the way. What else could I do to help you versus always trying to come in with advice and telling people what to do?

I love Michael's book. I don't know how many hundreds of copies we bought and gave them to all our coaches. I love his latest book The Advice Trap. Liz Wiseman's book is right on target around how do you get people to be influences. We're putting that stuff into practice so it works.

Liz and Michael have both been on this show. I had Michael on again to talk about his latest book, The Advice Trap, a fantastic interview and a great book. I mentioned to you the first time we talked I ran a full-day workshop based on Multipliers book. In there, we talk about some of the things that managers do to be diminishers and one of them is always jumping in and rescuing their people. You talked about being a coach and how you don't have coaches going out on the field. The players are out in the field. It's funny, everybody gets it when you share that metaphor that in sports, the players are on the field and the coaches are on the sideline giving them guidance, helping them along, but you never see them go out in the field. In business, for some reason, managers always want to jump in, take over, micromanage and rescue. You would never see that at an athletic contest.

Worse even still, in the business community, they also want to go up on the podium and take the prize away from the player. I've never seen Tiger Woods’ coach wear the green jacket. They want to add too much value. They always want to win. When things go great, they're on the podium and they forget the people that put them there. When things don't go great, they're blaming the players.

When I think about what you're saying, in a lot of cultures, there are a lot of managers out there who are stealing credit. I run this program and I essentially replicate Liz's research with the people in my classes and ask them what their diminishers have done over the years. You always hear, “Stealing credit. Taking credit for my ideas,” things like this which is a total fear-based activity because you think, “I need to get credit because I need to get recognition. Otherwise, I might lose my job.” That's ego and it sounds like, “I'm setting you up for this.” How do you create a culture where people are not worried about that? They know they'll be recognized for being a good coach and getting out of the way versus having to produce and show results all the time.

Number one, gratitude. I don't know if you know Chester Elton. Chester released a book, Leading with Gratitude. He also wrote the book The Carrot Principle. You have to show gratitude to people. If they live long enough in an environment where that behavior doesn't exist, the fear goes away. Could you imagine you're walking through a zoo and all the lions are freely running around? There's fear. If the lions are in a protected area, you walk through the zoo without fear. We’ve got to put the ego lions in their cage.

Improving Employee Engagement

If you know your job as a manager or a coach, it’s to get the lions out of the way for your people so they can get their jobs done and it's clear. I want to go back to what you said about employee engagement is at 93%, which is astronomical. I think it’s higher than probably most organizations out there, especially a global organization where you've got people all over the place. What else has contributed to that? We talked about values and culture. Are there other things that we haven't talked about that contribute to having such a high employee engagement?

It's a commitment to the people, transparency, being calm, being good listeners, asking questions, understanding the issues, enabling others to express their points of view. We say, “No lying, no faking, no hiding,” which is important. The other thing that's important too is belonging. One of the biggest desires we have as human beings are to belong. If you think about Maslow's Hierarchy, self-actualization, the first two rungs are, “Am I safe,” and “Can I eat?” The third one is loving or belong. It's a shame that most people in organizations only know they're doing a good job because no one yelled at them. That's why we call ourselves a tribe, not a team, because you belong to a tribe. We studied the attributes of tribal behavior over time across a number of different tribal groups.

Servant Leadership: One of the biggest desires we have as human beings is to belong.

It's interesting that there are some common themes there. The number one responsibility of a tribal leader is to be a learner and a teacher. Here's the example. Let's go back thousands of years to my homeland Australia. Let's be sitting in the middle of Australia, observing a meeting of the indigenous Australians. The tribal leaders teaching the young tribe members to throw a boomerang because if they can't throw a boomerang, they won't survive because the boomerang is the tool of survival. Our number one responsibility is to be a learner and a teacher.

You don't see that often. You think that as a “leader” or “manager,” you need to have all the answers so people do get the teacher aspect. One thing that the best leaders are doing or the characteristic of some of the best modern leaders is that they don't feel like they have to have all the answers. They can ask questions and move things out of the way, instead of what we see a lot which is to hire smart people but then don't let them use their smarts.

Unconsciously incompetent. The three most powerful words I've learned in my life, “I don't know.” As soon as you get into that position, you unlock all of the wonderful people around you that do know. In a lot of cases, I don't know the answers, but together we can find them or we can make the conclusions so that we have better than they are. That's important.

One of the things I wanted to ask you about is a lot of my readers are in talent development, learning and development, and they love this. They're eating this up. I'm sure you interact with a lot of CEOs, CFOs, business leaders who think more about “business results” and maybe hear a lot of this stuff about employee engagement values. That's great. How does this connect to business results?

Here’s the bottom line. In 384 BC, Aristotle said, “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” Our job as a leader is to put pleasure in the job. You are going to get a better result if 93% of your people are going to work every day, instead of 70% of people going to work hating their jobs. It's our role as a leader to create the will of the people to do great work. If we do, they're going to do better work and you will get the financial results. The thing is, it doesn't happen in 90 days. It's simple. It's not easy and time is not your friend. We live in this world of instantaneous. However, that may be changed. What's going on around the world now may have us think a little more about the long-term than tomorrow's result. We're being forced to think even further long-term because we don't know what tomorrow is going to bring us. If we sat here now and were focused on the next day given this time of uncertainty, we'd go nuts. People can deal with risk, but they can't deal with uncertainty. We’re living that now. What happens when we put uncertainty in a business? People can't deal with it. This may change the world in a great way.

I believe that 100%. I'm an optimist. I think a lot of opportunities will come out of this and I can relate to this idea of the short-term uncertainty. There are a lot of companies out there that operate entirely on a 90-day schedule. The quarterly earnings and the next goal. I can tell you in my own business, essentially selling and running training development. I get on the phone with a client and they love a program. When are we going to run this? I don't know. Is it going to be in two months? When are we going to be able to, in 4 or 6 months? It's uncertain, but all we can do is build relationships, plan for the future and think about what are the most important things and how we can help you achieve those.

The Coronavirus Challenge

Let's talk about this Coronavirus crisis and not only their health risk around the world, but as far as the world economy is concerned and in the working world, the biggest change is that most of the global workforce has shifted from offices to working from home, working remotely, which means a lot of them are trying to figure out technology, video conferencing, all this stuff. How has WD-40 handled this major shift?

Firstly, we've got three major priorities. The first one is the safety and well-being of our tribe. In that, we are making sure that they are working in a safe environment. Most of our tribe are working from remote locations. They’re becoming experts on tools that they never used before. That's where I talk about the leadership muscles becoming virtual is important. The second thing that we're doing is staying connected with our customers and serving them where we can. I'm supporting our vendor partners where we can, maintain our business infrastructure, ready for us to be able to soar like eagles when we come out of this because this too will pass. What we're doing personally, I interact by email with every tribe member around the world in a short and encouraging way.

Leadership is a balance between being tough-minded and tender-hearted. Click To Tweet

We’re sending out updates in a larger way on a weekly basis. I'm doing a weekly video that we're sending out. We're asking all of our leaders to be in touch with our people, reaching out to them, acknowledging the pressure they're under, empathizing with their struggles, affirming our confidence, knowing this is tough, but also we know we can handle it and we'll get through it. I was listening to Marshall Goldsmith and he brought up three things that I thought were good and I'll share them with you. He said, “In this time, don't be judgmental. Forgive everyone for being human and forgive yourself for making mistakes,” because in this time, we're going to do that. What I've seen in our a company are heightened collaboration, a lot more comfort and a lot more forgiveness. I think it is encouraging. These times are tough. For many years, I've been trying to lead and this is the first time I've been through this, but this too will pass. We will be better for it. Hopefully, we'll learn some great learning moments.

Fostering Authenticity

I know that the world and the economy will change, but it will pass when we get through it. I love your humble mindset throughout everything that you've been trying to lead for many years. It sounds like you've been doing a good job of it, but that's all up to perspective. Another thing I wanted to touch on there is this idea of inclusive leadership is important these days. You said something from Marshall Goldsmith about letting everyone be human. Don't judge people for being human. We all have been humans, but a lot of people show up differently at work than maybe they do in other places. How has that been handled? When you work, do you think that's going to change in terms of how we let people be authentic?”

A lot of that is how vulnerable you are prepared to be. At the end of the day, we are human. I was re-listening to my favorite book in the world written by Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. It talks about saying please and thank you, pick up after yourself, clean up your mess. He says imagine if the world at 3:00 every afternoon sat down and had a glass of hot milk and a chocolate cookie. Would the world be in a better place? It depends on how you can be vulnerable. There's one me and sometimes the me I love is better than the me I don't love. I tried to be my best me and respect people's dignity and do the best we can.

I love that and I think that this will change things and allow people to be more human and more authentic. I do video calls all day and every day with people and we're having more conversations about kids and school, those types of things that people are into. You see them in their real element. Everybody's at home, which is interesting. I'm enjoying it because it's the life that I've already been living. I don't worry as much about my kids coming in when I'm on these calls. A few more questions for you, Garry. Some of my standard questions here. What's been your greatest accomplishment or proudest moment in your career?

Watching those that I've had the opportunity to lead, create, and do great things.

The ever the servant leader watching others succeed. What has been one of your biggest mistakes or learning moments, we’ll say, if there are no failures or mistakes?

Taking too long to recognize the power of people.

Can you give a little bit more detail or an example of that?

Servant Leadership: For people to do good work, creating environments and cultures where they thrive is necessary.

It was back when I got to lead WD-40. Back then, I was probably a bit like Al, the soul-sucking CEO, which was be brief, be bright, be gone, be dominant. I went back to school and I learned about servant leadership and it felt right. I thought, “I would have liked to learn this a little earlier in my life. I might've been better at what I am.” My message to anyone who's reading, who's aspiring to make a difference in people's lives is realize early that it's not about you and learn to be a servant leader. The more you help others to be the best, the better you'll be.

It sounds like you made a major transformation in your career and your life around that time. You mentioned going to school and meeting Ken Blanchard. Do you credit a lot of it to him and that education? Was there any other factor?

As Whitney Johnson would say that's when I disrupted myself. I moved from my country of Australia to a new country. I was in a completely new environment, in a new role, and I disrupted myself. I said, “I'm not going to be able to do this. I need to find a way.”

Major Trends In Talent Development

Whitney Johnson has been on this show as well. Her book is Disrupt Yourself. I love that concept. I think we always need to be thinking about that. We never have things completely figured out. There are always things we can learn and ways we can change and improve. If we keep an open and humble mind, we can learn from others. We talked a lot about values and engagement. Are there any other major trends that maybe you're following in terms of business or specifically around this idea of developing your people?

I don't know about trends. I feel a little confident that the business world has the biggest opportunity ever to be able to make a difference in the world because we touch many people every day. I was a little refreshed by some of the comments that came out of the president of the CEO Roundtable and other organizations where they're starting to think more about the total contribution we make in the business, not just businesses there for the bottom line. Profit is the applause of people doing good work. For people to do good work, we need to create these environments and cultures where they thrive. That's what's important. There are some encouraging things coming along. I believe this situation is going to help it.

It's going to open people's eyes and change a lot of things. I love what you said there, “Profit is the applause for people doing good work.” I think more business leaders need to hear that and understand that it's more than profit going to shareholders. It's about all the stakeholders and the profit coming from the work that those important stakeholders, your employees have done. I usually ask my guests for a book recommendation. You've already mentioned a few. Leading With Gratitude by Chester Elton. All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. My daughter is in kindergarten and I'm learning from her every day. It's a whole new world being in kindergarten remotely for everybody else. We've talked about Multipliers and The Coaching Habit. Any other books that you highly recommend?

Simon Sinek’s The Infinite Game. Simon is a friend of mine. He wrote Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last. The Infinite Game is an absolute blueprint of how to create a company that is playing for the infinite. The Infinite Game is staying in the game and that's what we're all doing now.

Advice From The Pro

I've heard great things about that. I've yet to read it, but I'll have to check that out. Last question for you, Garry. For anybody who’s looking to up their game in terms of talent development and improve the culture where they work, we've talked about a lot of things. What's one more piece of advice you would give?

A leader’s job is to put pleasure in the job. Click To Tweet

It's not about you. It's about how you change the lives of others with some love. Don’t let your ego eat your empathy. Have your empathy eat your ego.

It could be another formula for you. Empathy over ego could be the mantra that helps all of us succeed with love. Garry, I know people can probably find you, connect with you on LinkedIn. Do you have any other places you'd want people to go to connect with you, to follow you, to see what you're doing?

I also have a website, www.TheLearningMoment.net. I have a whole list of book recommendations there. I put some blogs up there occasionally. Our dear friend, Martha Finney, helped me a lot with that.

Our mutual friend Martha Finney connected us and I'm grateful to her. She's a prolific author, writing coach and helps a lot of people in the leadership space, get books out there.

Not only is she a rock star as a writer, but she's a rockstar as a human being.

Garry, thank you for taking the time to share some of your wisdom, experience, and especially your philosophies on leadership and culture on the show. It's been great for me and I know it's been valuable for our readers as well. Thank you for coming on.

It is my pleasure. We will get through this. Life is good.

• WD-40
• Helping People Win at Work: A Business Philosophy Called "Don't Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A
• Garry Ridge
• The One Minute Manager
• Mindset
• Multipliers
• The Coaching Habit
• The Advice Trap
• Liz Wiseman – previous episode
• Michael Bungay Stanier – previous episode
• Leading with Gratitude
• The Carrot Principle
• All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
• Whitney Johnson – previous episode
• Disrupt Yourself
• The Infinite Game
• Start With Why 
• Leaders Eat Last
• www.TheLearningMoment.net
• Martha Finney