Coaches Not Managers: How to Lead Without the Hero Complex ft. Marc Haine

Plug: Paul Leon here. I want to take my hat off for a moment and speak directly to you, the listener or watcher of our show here at the managers Mic thank you so much for being consumer of the show and I want to take our relationship a step further. When you join our newsletter at the TheManagers Mic.com website again, that's the managers Mic.com I'm going to give a free resource called a selling script to sky rocket sales.

Paul Leon: I have with us today Marc Haine He's a customer and employee experience strategist, professional speaker, author, and founder With more than 30 years in hospitality, retail, and customer facing industries, Marc has lived the reality most leaders face. because they were exceptional at the job. Then the team with little to no leadership, and grounded in a truth many organizations learn the hard way.

Plug: And my promise to you is that resources to help you evaluate your current script and see where it might need some improvement.

Paul Leon: extraordinary experiences don't happen by accident. Their design. Marc is the best selling author of lights, action, operational excellence through the lens of live theater, where blends operations, leadership, and live performance

Plug: Thank you so much for being a listener and watcher of the show. And now back to the episode.

Paul Leon: the driving force TEDx Devon the global TEDx event in Devon Alberta Marc brought together 11 bold innovators, community leaders, and change makers. Marc hosts two dynamic podcasts, Marc HainLive ⁓ and Experience Leadership, small business podcast. He's also the co-founder and president of nonprofit organization, including Walk the Talks Sustainability Society and the Arts of Association. He's an active member of East ⁓ of 60 Production Society and his past national director, of Canadian Association of Professional Speakers, Whether he's on stage behind the mic or helping organizations curate the right voices for their events, Marc Promise remains the same. To empower organizations to transform everyday operations into extraordinary experiences for customers, employees, and leaders alike to dare to be the exception.

Marc Haine: thank you very much. So what's interesting about this was I had an epiphany. Back in 2015, I was working for a community to help them do a service excellence program. And one of my colleagues walked into my office and she says, Marc, you act, right? And I said, what? She goes, you act. And I said, sometimes I act silly, sometimes I act goofy. Most times I just act immature. And she was like, no, no, no, like on stage. And I had never done it. had never acted. I've always secretly wanted to, but I've never ever kind of bitten the bullet. And here it was, she told me that there was a role. She thought I'd be really cool for it. And so she encouraged me to go to the audition. I went to the audition and I got it, which scared the bejesus out of me because I can't remember what I had for breakfast. How am I going to remember lines? I have to tell you, the process was so intriguing for me because Brian Spankin knew at it.

Paul Leon: All right.

Marc Haine: We had four months of rehearsals and I could tell you, I don't care how funny comedy is, after it's about three months, nothing is funny anymore. At three and a half months, you're going, why did I say yes to this? This is so hard. ⁓ my God, this stresses. ⁓ go live in two weeks. Why did I do this? Why are we doing this? And then opening night, I'm and I don't know if you've ever been backstage at a production, but there's no lights on. There's a couple of little light bulbs like this. ⁓

Paul Leon: Yeah.

Marc Haine: backstage and you're you're pretty much in darkness and I'm getting ready to go on stage I have hand on the doorknob ready to step on stage get onto the set and the lights down the music comes up and then as the music comes up the lights come on and there's my cue to step on stage ⁓ and I step stage completely blinded now because I got all these spotlights in my face can't see anything and I utter my first words

Paul Leon: Yeah.

Marc Haine: and 250 people start laughing all together.

Paul Leon: a good feeling.

Marc Haine: And I think to myself, that's why we did what we've been doing. It was such an epiphany for me that the very next day I came in two hours before the show time I walked into the venue and I turned on the stage lights and it was the first time I had actually seen what the audience saw. All of a sudden the lights fled the stage and you get a sense of time, place, purpose. And I stepped up on the stage and I looked at everything we had done. We're a nonprofit dinner theater group and we had to, coordinate volunteers. We had to hire the caterers. We had to get the bars coordinated. We had to sell tickets. We had to set up the room. We had to build out and build up the stage. And we had to do this, all this to put on six shows. And I thought to myself, after 25 plus years in hospitality, I thought to myself, if businesses put this much time and attention into their business as we do to put on six shows,

Paul Leon: Hmm.

Marc Haine: we would have amazing businesses. Like it'd be crazy how good our businesses would be. And so was the catalyst for Lights, Camera, Action, Business, Operational Excellence through the lens of live theater because it made me realize that if we take principles, if we reframe what we do in our businesses and we reframe it under a different light, we start seeing the ridiculousness of what we do in our businesses. I find lot of us just get kind of caught up in our day-to-day. that we forget the reason why we're doing well.

Paul Leon: Yeah, it's good frame.

Marc Haine: And for new managers and people who've never been trained in leadership, this is something that is pervasive in every single business. And so the idea with Lights, Camera, Action, I actually wrote it so that people, managers could actually buy it for them and their frontline managers and go through chapter by chapter and learn and apply it and create a book club around it. Every chapter has worksheets and all that. And so it's like consume part of the thing. Number one, I think it's hilarious, just saying. But having said that,

Paul Leon: Hmm. Yeah, yeah, it's a good title.

Marc Haine: being to take the concepts that each chapter has and apply it to their businesses. And I guarantee you, if you do that, ⁓ your by the time you're done the 20 chapters, your business is gonna be entirely different from beginning end.

Paul Leon: I did stand up for five years, which ⁓ had to put on pause to do this MBA journey. I don't think a lot of realize how ⁓ that feeling is that you explain when you said you got up, ⁓ you said your first joke

Marc Haine: Mm-hmm. Yay!

Paul Leon: how much work goes in how much relief ⁓ must have felt in that moment like just that feeling and I think a lot of people know that Feeling but curious. What is principle you learn leading up to that night? That maybe was catalyst or something that comes out of the book. We don't want to give the whole book away that's not the intent of our conversation today, but what's a principle that inspired from that moment that led to your Lights, Camera, Action.

Marc Haine: So the overarching premise of the whole book is done in the prologue where I talk about experience expectations. we get into an interaction, you and I are in we build trust by getting to know each other a little bit, but coming, let's say just coming on this podcast, I an expectation that you're gonna be a great host. You have an expectation that I am gonna. bring value to your audience that I'm hopefully gonna be entertaining enough that people wanna tune in and hopefully I'm not gonna be picking my nose anytime soon. have that expectation and hopefully I let you down. And the same can be said for anybody coming into a live coming into a storefront, doing shopping online, whatever it is, we all have expectations of ⁓ what experience going to be like. And here's the interesting thing is, There are three kind of possible outcomes. is you're gonna meet expectations. We get in, get out, everything's good, right? And that's fine. The challenge with that is ⁓ nothing about that is super memorable. I come in, I do the work, I serve you, you leave, you're happy, done, done, deal. There's the ⁓ what a shame effect where something happens. I walk into a store. you know, as I open up the door, the leaves in the foyer blow because it's or something and all the leaves are blowing around and they're blowing through the store and the place looks messy and it's like, ⁓ what a shame. Right? ⁓ you have where you actually are, you see something and you go, wow, that's really great. Right? A lot of things, it's interesting because a lot of things that just lead to basic expectations, we don't even notice.

Paul Leon: Yeah.

Marc Haine: You check into a hotel, the room is clean. You don't really notice, You will notice if ⁓ is in entranceway. You will notice if somebody left a Doritos wrapper behind the nightstand. You'll notice stuff like You'll also notice if there's a personal handwritten from the housekeeping saying, I you enjoy your stay. Please let me know if you need anything Doris.

Paul Leon: Yeah. Hmm.

Marc Haine: You'll notice that as well because that is so kind of, I've never seen that. This is a really cool effect, right? And so we have the ability to, every time we have a transaction, we have the ability to set new expectations. And so really the book premise is this idea that every interaction is about touch points. And every business has touch points, whether they know it or not, whether business leaders know it or not, there are touch points in our businesses.

Paul Leon: Yeah.

Marc Haine: that need to be addressed. And one of the things I have on my website at markhain.com is I have a customer touch point assessment where you can actually take this form, give it to one of your supervisors and say, just do a walkthrough like a customer and just see what you see.

Paul Leon: have you had any stories or anything that have out of people who used that or had some successes as a result?

Marc Haine: So one of the biggest challenges in our businesses is that we are engulfed in our businesses every single day that we stop seeing things. And I'll tell you time and time again, when I do secret shopping reporting, I'll do things like, you know, I remember getting yelled at by a guy who owned a pizzeria because he got a secret shopper report and he called me up, he goes, Marc, I need to see you. And so I went in and he slammed it down and he goes, why do I give a damn that there's fingerprints on my doors? I said, you don't have to give a damn. You don't have to care that there are fingerprints on the doors. I'm thinking that the mere fact that the secret shopper noticed that there are fingerprints on your door, that means something to you. And he looked at me, goes, but here's the thing. I make really great pizzas. Why should I care about fingerprints? I said, that's an interesting question. Would it be fair to say that somebody who has never ever stepped into your business doesn't know

Paul Leon: Hmm. ⁓

Marc Haine: how good your pizza is, they only know how the place feels they first walk in. We ⁓ a lot about, know, if you want to see how dirty, how clean the kitchen is, go into the bathroom. the whole premise being that if you go into the bathroom and they're not paying any attention to the bathroom, are they paying attention to areas that you cannot see?

Paul Leon: That's That's a good call out. Yeah.

Marc Haine: Right. And so the idea here is even and this is why I kind of use the framing of a stage and of a live show. You know, when people come into a live show, we're putting on a stage plate. have eight characters. We have sets and stuff. You know, one of the shows that we did was we were doing one at a, was a golf resort, was the stage. And I out and I actually went to the local golf club and I actually got broken tees and filled out torn up scorecards and magazines, and I brought them into our set and actually threw them in the waste paper basket. Now, the audience would never see it, but the actors do. And as you step into the stage, you're seeing something that helps the actors put themselves in time and place. And so the same thing can be said about how we cast and how we...

Paul Leon: ⁓ really? All

Marc Haine: up our employees for success? Are we setting them up for success? Are we mentally preparing them for stuff? And, you we all fulfill different roles in our lives. If I'm coming on a podcast, I'm putting on a sweater and putting on a decent jacket. If I'm going to be renovating my basement, I'm putting on overalls and... ⁓ Right? And different roles different costumes. And so then I ask people to take a look at their business and say, does your costuming create the sense that people can define time and place and care? If you have people who are, their shirts are hanging out, their jeans are hanging down to their bums, ⁓ their jeans dirty. And is that the vision you have for your business? Right? it all comes together, all ties together into one holistic kind of ⁓ idea around what your business represent?

Paul Leon: I like that frame a lot. like there's population of people who will hear costumes and they'll associate that with being fake. They'll associate with not being really who they are. Well, I actually with you to say like costumes dictate a culture on level, hence Comic-Con as an example.

Marc Haine: Mm-hmm.

Paul Leon: I don't know why that example came to mind, but it's just, you know, maybe it's because of hat I'm wearing, who knows. But I'm curious, I like your frame with the pizza, Marc. In your experience, have you ever seen situations where people this costume idea Where you're like, this is the model example, ⁓ and can keep it as high level as you'd like. That way just keeping your clients privacy, because I want to name anyone. But I'm just curious if there's anything that comes to mind like, ⁓ these people got down tight, ⁓ this frame of costuming up to the culture strong.

Marc Haine: Disney. the highest level, ⁓ ⁓ know, ⁓ I for a number of casinos. And so casinos is a perfect example, right? When you go to a card table, how are the croupiers dressed? Are they dressed like they just came off a bus with a hoodie on and freezing cold temperatures, or are they...

Paul Leon: fair it yeah ⁓ all ⁓

Marc Haine: up in a way that you can look at them and go, you know, I think I can trust them. The food and beverage servers, do they look like they just pulled out of bed or do they look like they took some care in getting themselves ready to present to the audience, their customers? Are they ready to serve our customers? And so those are very quick examples of what it takes to kind of figure out what does it look like. In the book I mentioned, I walked into a...

Paul Leon: Hmm, that's a point.

Marc Haine: into a business that looked like it lost some love. They had truck bench as their main seating inside and it had the Ford logo on it. They had flowers everywhere, thick with dust. And you can actually, know when you walk into a place you could smell the dust, right? ⁓ And I you know, as I walked into this business, it's like...

Paul Leon: Yeah.

Marc Haine: what do they want their customers to think about the level of professionalism? It was a welding shop. I mean, I'm not expecting chandeliers and all this for a welding shop, but if I'm going in ⁓ to something, I want to know that there's people who are going to be working on my project care enough about my project to make it successful. And so for missing the touch point of being able to walk in this place, if ⁓ nobody's this... entranceway, this vestibule, this reception area in the last 30 days just do something like dusting, cleaning, vacuuming? How good are they going to be to attention to detail

Paul Leon: Yeah. It's a good frame because you earlier you had talked about how the people will evaluate the bathroom and you're talking about secret shopping and the pizza place. It's funny growing up. One of the things I always did, my mom would thought I had a small bladder every time we stopped somewhere, I'd go to the bathroom. actually still do this to this day. unbeknownst to her, I always evaluated even as like a seven year old into this day mark, I will go to the bathroom and if it's dirty I don't want to eat there. Like it sounds so petty and small.

Marc Haine: Mm-hmm.

Paul Leon: We talked about like a good example. We talked about a bad example. What else contributes lights, camera action framework that companies new managers could also adopt or get value if they move forward with tool and And if you don't mind also, as we kind of come the end, I'd like to know more about your journey into writing the book and bringing it together to as we get closer to the end if that's fair, Marc, because I am curious. Yeah.

Marc Haine: Sure, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the principles really are doing kind of a walkthrough of what it takes to do a live production and then comparing it to business operations. ⁓ for instance, in hospitality, it is absolutely the standard practice that they'll hire somebody, they'll ask the server and go, so you have three years of serving experience, you've served at this and this and this place, really good. Okay, so you'll start. your point of sale access card. Here's the menu. And here's your uniform here's your apron. You start Tuesday. Kind of sort of would be like, wow. Shakespeare? You've done Shakespeare? Wow, that's really great. 10 years. Wow, you're awesome. Wow, all these different roles. ⁓ my goodness. Okay, so here's the deal. Here's your costume. Here's the script. You go on in 10 minutes.

Paul Leon: Yeah.

Marc Haine: Would that ever happen? Never. But yet in businesses, for some reason we hire people to come on board and we think, you know what, we're just going to onboard them and then very quickly we'll get them up and running. And then we pull out our hair when we think, what happened to this person? He was such a good candidate. Why aren't they performing at a higher level? Number one, we're not training effectively. And especially to anybody who's tuning into this podcast. I bet you. you're in a leadership role today because at some point you decided as an entrepreneur, I don't want to work for the man anymore. I'm going to open up my own business. you are a mid-level or entry-level manager ⁓ you got promoted because you were really good at what you did. And they said, you know what? I'm going to promote you. Thanks so much for everything you've done, but we'll you into a leadership role. And if you could train everybody to be just like you, that would be really great. And then you're taking people, putting them into a new role that requires completely different skill sets than what they did before and expect them to succeed. And so investing in our staff, we can't get the best out of our actors. We can't get the best performance from our employees when we don't invest the time to train them.

Paul Leon: Yeah.

Marc Haine: And of course there's that whole adage out there, ⁓ but if I train people, they might leave and they'll go to my competition. Worse than that though, if you don't train them, they might stay. ⁓ worse for your business? Right? ⁓ so, and so, so really the catalyst to having this idea, so you mentioned about how got through the book. I went, I kind of had this, the minute you have the idea that you have a message you want to share.

Paul Leon: I always liked that. Yeah.

Marc Haine: We have to think about the medium. And I always stressed out before I wrote the book, I have all this stuff in my brain. I don't know how to get it out. once I kind of tripped on this idea, sitting on that couch, looking at this, ⁓ at the production we had done for the very first time and thinking, you know, my goodness, if businesses could learn this stuff, they would be better businesses. And so I just went through and my very first step was, okay, let's put it out there. Let's see. First of all, I came up with Lights, Camera, Action as kind of a three-step framework. Lights being kind of how do we set, how do we create the foundation to everything? How do we plan what we want our business to look like when we turn on the lights? How do we want that brand to look? And then camera is what does it take to be camera ready? And of course, action is service delivery. And so just using those three themes, I was able to think of topics. And so I created all these topics and it was a very fluid process, by the way.

Paul Leon: Hmm. Hmm.

Marc Haine: I'll start at A and get to Z. It was, I'll start at A, which then became Z, because I can tell you the very first thing I wrote for my book ended up being my last chapter, was hilarious. ⁓ thought I was gonna kill the darling because it didn't fit anywhere until I got to the last chapter. But then you go to ⁓ and then you go to I and then, right, you're jumping everywhere. And so what I would do is get up and I had these section headings and I start every day and.

Paul Leon: Really? Interesting.

Marc Haine: I look at the section heading and a lot of times I would just write, I don't know what I want to do here, but this is important to me because, and I would actually start with that sentence. This is important to me because, and then I'd start writing why I thought it was important. And then all of a sudden a story would come into my mind and I'd start writing a story about this and then the lesson coming through and so on. And that's kind of how I got through the book. It was a process because it was... more a passion project because it was again I had all the stuff up here it's like how do I get it out and then being able to just answer that question every day almost as a journaling exercise here's a topic why is this important to me it's important to me because and then just start writing and that ideas just started to come out and you don't get the ideas until you're actually sitting at the keyboard or sitting down with your pen and paper and start doing the work

Paul Leon: Yeah. I love that you had enough passion and tenacity that even though you had nothing you and correct me if I'm wrong. I heard you said, I don't know what I want to write, but know it's something important. Is that what you said? I just want to make sure I capture that.

Marc Haine: Yeah, yeah, don't know what I want to write here, but this is important to me because.

Paul Leon: I like that. I like a lot of things are nuanced or common sense need to be spoken out loud sometimes more for the reminder than like the knowing because common sense is not always common I feel in my experience and I assume yours as well.

Marc Haine: Mm-hmm.

Paul Leon: Tell me how many years did it take you to take all of your 30 plus years in service acting and everything to bring that book together? Because I feel like the value of anyone listening, I'm not trying to promote Marc's book because I don't I'm trying to like make money. I want to be very clear. I do believe in the power of buying a book because it pays down that ignorance tax. And I'm going to use this example right now. How many years did it take you to write that book?

Marc Haine: Mm-hmm.

Paul Leon: to bring your 30 plus years to life

Marc Haine: So all told, the book probably took me about two and a half to three years. The longest part was the editing part. I made a conscious effort when I sat down to write my book ⁓ that I would either be writing my in creation mode or editing mode, but not both. it was always number one, write the first

Paul Leon: Interesting.

Marc Haine: crappy version of the chapter. But don't edit. the idea here is you get the all the ideas down first. Just dump your brain. Even it doesn't make sense, you'll come back to it afterwards to clean it up. But it's important when you're in the mind space to be able just to keep dumping stuff out. ⁓ If you start writing first couple of paragraphs and you go, ⁓ wait, that doesn't sound really good, you're going to lose momentum because you're going back now to play editor mode and you can't run both at the same time.

Paul Leon: Hmm. Hmm. That's interesting.

Marc Haine: Right? And so once I started doing that, would, you know, honestly, I was lucky. I got an editor out of the UK. He come on, he would editing my document every Saturday, so I knew when he was on. So he would come in and goes, I don't understand this paragraph. And then it's like, ⁓ that's great. And I would actually tune in with him and we'd be editing live, which was really great. ⁓ And then it went to the book publisher, they had their editor and they... would come in and give suggestions and that sort of stuff, but it wasn't a live kind of back and forth. It was, here's a list of recommendations we make, it was lot tougher dealing with the publisher than it was to deal with my own editor.

Paul Leon: You know, one of the things I struggle with, Marc, and I don't know if you've ever struggled with this is too much of perfectionist. Like I'm personally struggle with a lot of management and bad habits live the world of stagnation and new management. think if we wrote that Venn diagram in the middle, that's where toxic management lives. And I think some people would take being a perfectionist, someone who's very meticulous about the details, and automatically label a micromanager. that's my experience. I'm of your thoughts around that type of framework and how who might be a perfectionist can still have that but also can expedite the process using some of your insights. Do you have any thoughts around that question? That's kind of a weird word salad I just threw at you but I was curious if you had some thoughts around that.

Marc Haine: So what's interesting is, know, when we say that, you know, I'm a perfectionist, that's typically the excuse that a micromanager will use. I'm a perfectionist. that mean that if I go into any aspects of this person's life, that everything is going to be perfect? Like I'm going to go to their car and their car is going to be perfectly polished and cleaned and absolutely pristine? Will I go into their house and see everything around absolutely pr... And I bet you any money, the answer to that is no. So micromanagers will use this whole idea of I'm a perfectionist as justification for acting badly. Now, it comes down to perfectionism, the more we care about what we do, the better we'll do at you're a micromanager and you're telling everybody what perfectionist you are, you need to consume enough information to realize that as a leader, There's nothing perfect in the way you're behaving. So as if you're that much of a perfectionist, you say you're a perfectionist, that means one of the things that we're going to do is we're going to hone our skill. We're going to hone our art. You mentioned about standup comedy. You get up when you first trying more times than not, you get up at a mic to tell a joke, to find out what's not working, not to get the laughs. And when I that mindset, it made getting up so much easier because it wasn't about up and making the whole audience laugh all at the same time for every single joke. It was like, okay, I know this joke works. Let's see if it works today. Does it? It worked. Yay. Okay. Let's try this new joke and let's see what's not working. And it takes the stress ⁓ off we're aiming for perfection, knowing full well that we're not going to be perfect. And so a lot of these managers, the micromanagers, have something in their mind that they're so focused on the how to do things, they're not focused on being able to sell the why we're doing it. does it matter that somebody fills out a form top to bottom rather than bottom to top? Do you care? All you care about is fill out the form, right? rest of it doesn't matter,

Paul Leon: the

Marc Haine: If backwards on the form creates a lacking, then you have to address the lacking. And chances are when people aren't living up to your expectations, it's more than likely because you haven't been able to communicate your expectations clearly enough. And I know there's managers going out there, but I told them 15,000 times and they still do it wrong.

Paul Leon: Hmm.

Marc Haine: That means you haven't communicated in a way that they understood what the objective is.

Paul Leon: Yep, I would agree with that.

Marc Haine: The onus is on us as the communicator,

Paul Leon: I have to ask you just because anytime I have somebody who has stand up comedy experience and I'm okay going on this tangent because I think it humanizes us. What's the worst bombing story you have? I have a lot. I'm curious with one of yours that you want to kind of humanize some of this content just in like, cause I feel like the struggle is what makes our successes and our outcomes more viable. At least I know I've failed a

Marc Haine: Mm-hmm. Yeah

Paul Leon: I was just curious what was one bombing story you had that you're like you got to hear this

Marc Haine: And so before I get into that, just want to, know, one of the things that I've realized over my years that for some reason, when people are working for us, we expect perfection. ⁓ when people fail or when people make mistakes, take it on, it's it's the worst thing ever. They made a mistake. And it's interesting because I don't know about you, Paul, but...

Paul Leon: Yeah, that's fair.

Marc Haine: I don't know if you've ever skateboarded or played guitar or whatever. You don't do something for the first time perfectly. A lot of what we do is skill building. And it's the same thing with stand-up comedy. You don't get up the first time, do a five-minute set and knock it out of the park. You're going to have a lot of crickets in the room. And so bombing becomes kind of this normal status.

Paul Leon: No, no. Yeah.

Marc Haine: of when we're trying to do anything new. And so that's why my coach said, you know, just go up stage and find out what doesn't work as opposed to trying to make everybody laugh, it takes the heat off. Likewise, you know, my biggest bomb, I think, was I was doing a presentation for a group of professional speakers and was speaking on the Saturday and I was all confident with the content and everything else. And on the Wednesday before, I just thought, you know what, this is not good enough.

Paul Leon: I like that.

Marc Haine: And I completely rewrote my presentation. And on Saturday, I'm up on stage and both versions came together and melded into each other like some rambling mess of word vomit. It was terrible. I bombed, I crashed, I felt horrible about it. I could see everybody was being as kind as they could because nobody wants you fail. They want you to succeed. And so I knew that I had people in the who were feeling for me. I knew I let them down. It was terrible. It was awful.

Paul Leon: Yeah.

Marc Haine: About 18 months later, I begged them to let me come back and do another presentation. were like, I don't know. I said, please trust me on this. This'll be great. And so they did and I knocked it out of the park. Now, what was the big difference between ⁓ number one and time number two? Time number one was I was so focused on the audience. The second I went up, I went up to serve the audience.

Paul Leon: You Yeah. Mmm, I like that.

Marc Haine: And that was a big difference. So when we turn around and we think, you know what, I'm going to put on the Rolex, I'm going to rent a Ferrari, I'm Why are you doing that? Are you doing that because this is comfort for you? Or are you trying to impress somebody? Because I would challenge you anytime. And it takes, I have to tell you, it takes intentionality. It takes a level of humility to turn around and say, why am I doing this? I'm being honest with yourself. Because the minute it's to make an impression on other people,

Paul Leon: Hmm.

Marc Haine: I would challenge you try to figure out a way how we can turn that around to say, want to serve these people. And that'll make you so much better leader, customer service delivery person, whatever. make you so much better at what you do.

Paul Leon: No, love that. It's a good frame. I like that the second time is you went there and you learn that I'm going to go there and serve these people. I think intent has huge part of we do. And I think the hardest thing I have yet to peel the onion around is how to communicate intent. ⁓

Marc Haine: Mm-hmm.

Paul Leon: in your management style. I don't feel most managers are toxic on purpose. I just don't believe that. You know, I just believe most managers who are labeled toxic are doing it completely unintentional. It's, um, it's unawareness. And I think probably me when I, when I have managed people, had a team of 17 when I was in the car rental world. I think my biggest... Mistake if I'm being sincere with you mark if I use your framework lights camera action to kind of describe How my management style was I was more of the action? Part I was not lights and camera like just be real and I think for me of the things I've learned is That's not a good approach. Would you agree with that? ⁓ would you say actually and peel the onion around this framework. Where do you feel most new? managers we use your frame of lights camera action spend enough time in number one number two need to address first I'm your thoughts there and what I just shared with you and I'm just showing you my humanity so you can console and coach

Marc Haine: I'm loving it. I appreciate the fact you're transparent and you're vulnerable at the same time, Paul. I think that it shows what an evolved human being you've become because all too often, and I had these personal epiphanies myself at some point. I had to turn around and go, why am I behaving like this? Like, why am I getting so pissed off because somebody did this? why does it matter? And then I started coming around with, I started having this little mantra in my brain, somebody did something. And it's like, if I let that, you know, one thing about leading people, I believe that when you recognize and reward the good things you see, those good things will be repeated. so recognize reward gets repetition. If see bad things and you don't address it, bad things will always evolve to get worse, never better. So you see bad behavior, we have to be able to address it. But at the same token, ⁓ We have to take that intentionality and recognize and reward all the good behavior very specifically. Hey, Paul, saw that you have this really awesome, you know, Paul, I love the fact that you maintain this brand 100 % of the time. You got the hat on, you got the microphone all set up. Paul, I really appreciate how professional you are when you show up to these things. Specificity makes all the difference in the world. It makes people feel good. It makes you feel like, noticed. So when you talk about the lights, camera, action component, when you're dealing with your team members, your team members have, you have to, again, was it my boss who said, you better damn well be serving a customer. And if you're not, you better be serving somebody who is.

Paul Leon: Hmm.

Marc Haine: And so Lights, Camera, Action, everything that goes about your audience, your customers coming into your business, the holds true for your employees. This is why I tie customer and employee experience together as a holistic whole. I think you can't have one with the other. You can't be yelling at your team about how you want them to be respectful with their customers and focused on their needs when you're yelling at them being disrespectful and calling your team's name, And so, and so this idea of intentionality, here's what it is. You're absolutely right. When you say ⁓ people don't come to work thinking that they're going to be toxic, what happens? I think everybody wakes up wanting to do the best they possibly can. And sometimes even toxic people are just trying to do the best they can. But number one, they haven't been taught how to not be toxic. Number two, they're probably in crisis all the time and that crisis is not getting addressed.

Paul Leon: Mm-hmm.

Marc Haine: And so their leaders, their people and themselves have to stop and think to themselves, why do I feel like I have to yell all the time? what's going on with me that I feel that the only way is going to be demeaning somebody or slapping somebody down or treading on somebody? Because some people, I know one of the things I had was a hero complex as a brand new leader. I used to tell people, I have, look how many keys I have. at how many keys I had measured how responsible I was for the business. That was kind of my badge of honor. Look how many keys I have. ⁓ And some people, their badge of is I am the leader and I have to be the leader. And what's interesting is time and time again, I'll come across leaders who will be telling their staff members, you have to listen to me. I'm your boss.

Paul Leon: Hmm.

Marc Haine: Well, the only reason they say that is because their behavior caused them to lose respect for the people they're talking to. And now they're trying to reassert their authority, Which is just poison. It's just every time you have to say that to somebody, it is just poison. How about instead of saying, I'm your boss, Hey, you know what? I'm working with you. Let's make this happen.

Paul Leon: like that. And as a as a frame, just in case somebody I always think about the lowest common denominator. When you hero complex, Can we peel the onion a little more around that definition means and how you feel you came to? ⁓ was your thoughts when you were going through that hero complex? if you go back to when you were your younger self when you were going through that One what is a hero complex? Let's define that better number one number two What would you say to your younger self to get them of the hero complex with the boundary of you? Can't tell your younger self it's you and you can't tell your younger self it's you from the future how would you go about that?

Marc Haine: Mm-hmm. Hmm, don't know. don't know. think yeah, I think the humility's dial on my time travel machine needs to It's I I think again I see this all the time and so the hero complex basically is You want be king of the castle? So when I got promoted so I keep in mind that I came from a background of you know My parents were first. I'm first first generation in my family. So my background My parents are from Europe and I grew up with kids had to be seen and not heard. We didn't have a voice in anything. We were ruled with an iron thumb. My father is very strict with how he ran the household and what he expected from us. And so I grew up very shy and feeling like I really didn't matter. And so when I got my first promotion at McDonald's at the age of 17 as a swing manager, somebody notices how good I am. And now I'm the boss. And so I needed to constantly reaffirm that. And wanted people to know how important I was to the organization. So I created systems and methods that would force people to come to me for everything. And that continued for the next 20 years. That was a habit of, I wanted people to

Paul Leon: Hmm.

Marc Haine: I wanted people to know I was the resource. You can count on me. Come and see me. The problem with that is when you have a casino department of 85 people all coming to you for individual things, at some point you have to think, I can't do this all on my own. I don't do this all on my own. I have people to be able to do this. hero is that whole thing about, ⁓ and again, took me a little bit of self-evaluation. to be able to look at my habits and say, why am I doing this? Like, like, is it necessary? And so that hero complex is something that a lot of managers have when they first get promoted because number one, they're trying to work within a skill set they don't have. They've never been trained to be a leader. And trying to make sure that they're looking good. They're trying to impress their boss. Remember what I said about impressing? Impressing or serving, pick one. You can't do both. And so if you're going to serve your ⁓ boss and business, it means you have to serve your staff. If you're trying to impress your boss, Chances are you're trying to impress him, but you're doing absolutely nothing for the people who rely on you every single day.

Paul Leon: Hmm.

Marc Haine: And so this being able to shift out of this component being able to turn around and say, you know what? I believe now that we no longer have to be managers. I think what we need to be is coaches. And that's again, when that service hat comes on, it's like, you know what? Instead of managing them, I want to coach them. And let's see if that makes any difference.

Paul Leon: I guess, being a true hero, somebody who's not trying to impress everyone, but trying to serve everyone, is how I interpreted that story. Marc, talk to me about type of customer journey, if somebody wants to learn more about you, what's the best place that new person can join the journey of coming into your world and gaining more value from Lights, Camera, your book and other content you publish if I may. What's the journey that is best for that person who's maybe new to you?

Marc Haine: Yet. Yeah, so I think the easiest way to do it is just go to marchaine.com there is all sorts of resources. At the same token, the book Lights, Camera, Action, Business, Operational Excellence through the Lens of Life Theater is available on Amazon for download, plus the audio book is there as well. I strongly if you're a leader, read the book first and then see if getting a book for each one of your... And then, again, do it part of your weekly management meetings. Have the team consume one chapter, come back and say, hey, what did you learn from the chapter? How can we apply it to our business? How can we move our, let's see what we can do to apply it. you mentioned Sobeys. I had one of their general managers for one of their store do And she said within the, within the 25 weeks, took 20 weeks to go through the book. then within 25 weeks, they were able to evaluate of the They were able to measure,

Paul Leon: ⁓ really?

Marc Haine: employee satisfaction metrics, and they were able to actually see their employee turnover actually stopped. Where they used to see people quitting like every month, all of sudden over that 25 weeks, people were sticking around and they were becoming part of it. they showed that their managers and their leaders within the organization, we're caring about what the employees were going through.

Paul Leon: Marc, is there an anchor that comes to your mind? You could pick anything you want, whether it's making pizza, doing stand up time with wife that is kind of like

Marc Haine: Mm-hmm.

Paul Leon: This is the story that anchors me into the work I do that keeps me going and doing the work I love. Is there anything you want to leave we kind of come toward the end of our conversation today?

Marc Haine: You know, one of the very first things as a young manager, when decided, when I went through the quick evolution all the trial and failure, so at one time I got promoted, at 17 years got promoted as a supervisor, all of a sudden all my friends were now my subordinates, and it's like, ⁓ this is gonna be a cinch, they're all my friends, this'll be great. ⁓ And then ⁓ about six was like, everybody's taking advantage of me, this is terrible, I better become this hard-ass, And at some point I had to find my way and I had to learn my way through I say that because we all go through this evolution we all go through our own evolution if have the humility to say we're not perfect if we have the fortitude to say I want to keep learning through my mistakes then we will grow find all too often, I find people just get caught in crisis. And this is where intentionality kind of falls flat on its face. Because Paul, we've all been there. We've all been where our intention is we want to do something, but then the crisis of the moment hits. And we have, we need some means to be able to call ourselves back to what it is we're trying to achieve. There used to be a thing back in the nineties where you wore an elastic band and when you started behaving in a certain way, you're getting into a certain mind frame, you'd snap them out. elastic band. would create a little red mark right here, but it would remind you every time to get intentional. And for me, when it comes down to this idea of people wanting to make a change, wanting to make things better, we have to realize that when crisis hits, we will always devolve back to our benchmark, to what we're used to doing. And so this really takes us back to your toxic manager. toxic manager treat people because they're feeling hurt by something. They're going to slash back and do old behavior, well, if they have a means to be able to do call out to create that intentionality in the moment, then we will be able to learn from our failures. you know what? I handled that really, really badly. And I want to change. And so the more we do that, just like getting up and doing an open mic to try out a brand new joke, I'm not up there to make the whole audience laugh. I'm just going to look to see what didn't work. And then I can evolve for past there.