Episode 50 | Protecting Dignity During Conflicts with Joe Kiedinger

Joe Kiedinger  00:00

We discovered 56 emotional drivers and five of them make up your dignity, and when that is satisfied, your heart is filled with love, you feel accepted, you feel worthy, and that we defend our worthiness at all costs and we don’t have to. So I teach people that you’re already worthy, you’re already amazing

Voiceover  00:22

Welcome to the “Lead at the Top of Your Game” podcast, where we equip you to more effectively lead your seat at any employer, business, or industry in which you choose to play. Each week, we help you sharpen your leadership acumen by cracking open the playbooks of dynamic leaders who are doing big things in their professional endeavors. And now, your host, leadership tactics, and organizational development expert, Karan Ferrell-Rhodes.

Karan Rhodes  00:57

Hey, they’re superstars. Welcome to the lead at the top of your game podcast. And thanks for joining another episode designed to help you better lead at the top of your game. You know, I wish I had $1 for every time an instance of miscommunication in the world of work or business happens. If I had $1 for every time this happened, I would be a trillionaire by now. But unfortunately, in most leadership development programs, we’re just not taught how to first diagnose the root cause behind the root cause of conflict and then handle the conflict in a way that preserves everyone’s emotions and dignity. Did you know that there is actually a technology that helps with this? Well to give you more information about it on today’s show, we feature Joe Kiedinger, who’s the founder and CEO of Prophit, CO and Prophit is spelled p r o p h i t, Prophit, CO is a leadership development and executive coaching consultancy, which offers a patented employee engagement technology platform called dignify Now Joe was kind enough to offer a free trial of dignify to all of the elite at the top of your game listeners. And I want to give you this information up front just in case you’re torn away before the end of the episode. So if you’re interested go to www.dignify.com If you click on this button, it says enter code and then you enter the code, “trydignify” d i g n i f y, all lowercase. And then once you do, you can examine the tool and kick the tires and see its value. So before we get into the episode, I just want to remind you to be sure to stay tuned for just two minutes after the episode to listen to my closing segment called Karan’s take, where I share a tip on how to use insights from today’s episode to further sharpen your leadership acumen. And now enjoy the show. Hey there superstars, this is Karan and welcome to another episode of the Lead at the Top of Your Game Podcast. We are so happy that you chose to join us this week and we have a tremendous guests on today’s show. If you are a person that is passionate about ensuring that you lead with dignity and you provide a space for dignity for your team and family and all those you interact with. This is going to be the episode for you. We are so pleased to have on today’s show Mr. Kiedinger. I’ve been practicing that and still messed it up but Kiedinger. He is the founder and CEO of Prophit, CO and Prophit, CO is a leadership development executive coaching consultancy. But he What is unique about Joe is that his company leverages a technology a patented technology that he created called dignify and it’s an employee engagement technology platform that he’s going to talk to us a ton about today. So welcome to the podcast, Joe.

Joe Kiedinger  04:11

Hey, so excited to be here. Karan, thank you know I’m an urban or you know, I’m up in Green Bay, Wisconsin. That’s how we talk.

Karan Rhodes  04:22

Well, you know, I’m in Atlanta in the Deep South, you’ll hear the ya’lls and the drawls every now and then so, but I think we’re colleagues in the space of helping people to be their best selves and a very comfortable and accepting environment.

Joe Kiedinger  04:40

Amen. Amen.

Karan Rhodes  04:42

So before we dive deep into profit CO and your platform, Joe for as much as you feel comfortable. Would you mind giving us a sneak peek into your personal life and passions right now?

Joe Kiedinger  04:56

Oh goodness gracious, of course. Always excited to share about me. Who isn’t right? Okay personal life and passions Well I grew up as an entertainer. My parents friends call this the von Kinzinger family like the Von Trapp family, you know Sound of Music, I was the youngest of five cutest and it’s entertaining was a big thing in my life and my I have three daughters who are entertainers. And I have a son who is a musician in his own right. And so music is a very big part of our life. Hospitality has been a big part of our life big into, we’re camping. Now we have a little, we have a little cabin up north. So finding those moments to be on a boat, you know, like what a pontoon boat is, is something that’s a passion of mine music is a passion of mine. And just bonding with people on creating special moments is a passion of mine.

Karan Rhodes  05:51

So I can only imagine on your family get togethers, they have got to be a hoot because there’s so many creatives in the house and personalities.

Joe Kiedinger  06:02

Oh, my gosh, we have big sing along to the piano. So my toddler Greenbay was small. The Kiedingers are known as entertainers, you know, because they see us out in the boat, especially in the earlier days. And just my daughter, we had a group of kids over at Halloween, I remember this. We have a we have a foreign exchange student from Brazil staying with us. And the person that brought her to us is from our community was part of the kindergarten class for my girls right now now in high school, you know, and she heard about legends of the killing her singing around the piano, playing instruments and jamming out. And then we went to this Halloween thing she asked Sophia, our foreign exchange daughter. So do they really sing around the piano? She goes, Oh, yeah, lots of times they sing around the piano. Because I don’t know if that’s just legend, or, and then on Halloween, one of the daughters one of the girls from who she invited said, I can’t believe as a kid and you’re singing along. I’m like, Wow, are we that famous? Like is that really a thing? Yes, it’s legend. I’m like, That’s adorable.

Karan Rhodes  07:05

I’ll have to add that to my bucket list. Joe love to be part of your Kiedinger family sing along!

Joe Kiedinger  07:10

It’s a direct flight from Atlanta to Green Bay.

Karan Rhodes  07:14

There you go. I live in Hartsfield Jackson airport. So there you go. Well, thank you so much for sharing a little bit about that. And so help our listeners understand how you move from being an entertainer to being really focused on founding profit CO and its mission.

Joe Kiedinger  07:36

You bet. So right out of college, that was communication major out of college, I want to perform on a Carnival Cruise Lines. That was my only professional experience for one gig, I only want to do one gig. And I came back and started a performing arts school called Empire for the Arts with a dancer who I met and got smitten with. And so we started having seen dancing, acting, and I could not manage a business. I couldn’t manage the money of a business, I could create one I could do all the creative stuff, but I couldn’t manage it. Just one thing I learned and the relationship wasn’t working well. So now I’m not making any money and so forth. So then I go to work for a television sales company, because I’m broke. I have no money. We split up. And the money the business wasn’t making anything anyway. Well in that journey, because life When you surrender takes you to people I met a gentleman named Dave Scogan. And Dave Scogan changed my life. He mentored me, he owned he owned a startup grocery chain. Okay, they only have three locations and he took a liking to me I took a liking to him and that he introduced me to a movement called servant leadership which is meeting legitimate needs, not wants. And I had a front row seat to James Hunter who wrote the book, the servant who sold millions of copies are the servant leadership experts, professors, because he would have a yearly college, you know, for his his executives, and I would eventually help run it to put my entertainment flair into it, right. So he hired me for marketing, I started my own company and advertising agency and I went to him and said, I need you to catch me if I break off from selling TV advertising. He said, I’ll catch up. And so now they have 40 stores. So I tell it’s like, you know, investing in Apple when I was young, right? And in my heart kept going is servant leadership, even though we’re a marketing company. So being courageous, I said, I’m gonna start servant leadership, quarterly meetings, we’re gonna get together, and we gather up to 200 people. I’ve been doing that for 17 years now. And people would ask me, Why are you having a leadership like, you know, it’s two hours in the afternoon, four times a year for free. I’d find speakers who just donate their time great leaders who I deemed to be servant leaders in the community or outside and they’ll speak but people would wonder why is a marketing company putting on this I saw I just love leadership, so I’m just gonna do it. And I love it. In those early years of being an advertising marketing company, went to Dave and said I want To learn servant leadership, and he, he sent them to me. And I said to them, I’m a student of servant leadership. I’m not a teacher, I have a marketing company. And they said, Well, you know more about servant leadership than we do. So why don’t we hire you as a marketing company? And then you talk to our team? Nine times a year. Wow. So are we okay, I started, it became a book club, or as I say, with the servants. And it was just a book club. And after two or three years, I realized that all of my education we did this I kept coming nine times a year, I realized is that at the end of two or three years, Karan, how do you think that leadership team changed for me coming to talk to them nine times a year? What do you think there’s like 14 of them?

Karan Rhodes  10:44

They grew and evolved because they probably gained connections and the discussions and learn more about each other that they never understood before.

Joe Kiedinger  10:53

No, nothing happened.

Karan Rhodes  10:55

No?

Joe Kiedinger  10:56

Nothing. Nothing.

Karan Rhodes  10:58

So it was a waste of time for them?

Joe Kiedinger  11:00

No, it wasn’t his time. It was it was a learning experience for me. I said, there’s nothing happening. They’re still berating people, they’re still have these challenges going on. And I said to them, I think I know what’s wrong. And the company leader said, what I said all their IRAs, PowerPoint slides, speakers and books. There’s no how to engage servant leadership that’s churn like a system, there’s no system. I said, Will you help me? Will you allow me to create a system within your company and be my guinea pig? And they said,

Karan Rhodes  11:32

Yes? Good for you.

Joe Kiedinger  11:33

So that evolved at the same time. I was trying to understand my son Alex, who I met when he was three. So that story is happening the same time I meet my love of my life. Now the girlfriend leaves, right? I meet the love of my life. She’s 20 I’m 28. So I’m immature. She’s mature. We met in the middle. And she has this adorable boy named Alex and he reminds me of the Jerry Maguire kid. Do you ever see Jerry Maguire Karan?

Karan Rhodes  11:59

Yes, all the time. Yes, numerous times.

Joe Kiedinger  12:01

That little boy with a big glasses on. Okay, charming, right? Every guy thought, oh, maybe I could marry someone with a child like that give hope. And he was like, like that kid big vocabulary, super charming. So I fell in love with him. I fell in love with her. And we get married. By the time he’s nine, he starts to become self conscious. Right? So at the same time, I’m with this company. There’s this I’m realizing servant leadership might have something wrong to you know, to treat someone or you want to be treated doesn’t work. Because I’ve been treating him how I want to be treated. And I’m getting a response or he’s pushing me away. So I was raised very optimistically, entertainers my dad was Good job, buddy. Best lawn I’ve ever seen. I mean, I hit the parent jackpot when it came to praising me for mundane things. And so I did that to Alex. But when I did that you would go. Many of the times, I tried to praise him for mundane things he would get frustrated with. And I didn’t know why. So now he’s nine years old. I’m doing this whole thing with doll. And I’m realizing there’s something missing. And while playing Monopoly with him, I noticed those property cards teach you how to treat the property. Yeah. Right. Like you can’t match green with this. They have rules, they have to follow the rules. If I mortgaged the property, and you land on a carrot, what happens if we’re playing Monopoly? And I mortgage Park Place? Because I’m desperate? I suck out all the money out of it, and you land on her place? Do you know what happens?

Karan Rhodes  13:34

I haven’t played Monopoly. And it’s such a long time. But I have to pay you. I don’t know. I really

Joe Kiedinger  13:40

No. If Iortgaged the property. I flip it upside down and grab the money out of it. If you land on it. You owe me nothing.

Karan Rhodes  13:46

Oh, gotcha.

Joe Kiedinger  13:49

Yeah, and I had this epiphany, Karan. We mortgage each other all the time.

Karan Rhodes  13:54

That’s true.

Joe Kiedinger  13:55

We try to get the best of our people get everything you can out of our people is drain that rig dry, right? And I thought in my mortgaging my son, ah, what’s cool with Monopoly on the back of the car, and it says, Hey, if you pay this amount, you cannot mortgage it, get it back. So I had this idea What if instead of us trying to figure out how to raise our children, what if he could teach me how to raise him. And that’s where “About me” card popped in my head and about new card can have this epiphany. So at the same time, there’s no tool at this company I’m working with. And so with their help, because they’re my guinea pigs, we created the technology called about me card. Now in this journey of about me because you didn’t have to write it, there was no computer technology. It was literally by hand, it took 45 minutes. When you create a little monopoly cards, and on those cards, it said, here’s what you can expect from me. And here are my do’s and don’ts. Okay, that’s what the card says. But in that journey, we sophisticated it, we automated it. And what we realize is that we discovered something so Here’s what was right in our face, we couldn’t see it. Oh, that dignity. See, I discovered 56 motivators with the help of a scientist who also we just met. He’s she’s in my area. I mean, it’s just how life works, right? You’re interested in something and he we meet, he created this algorithm. So he was part of my solution. And he said, there’s 56 motivational traits. But as I use them, I go, Oh, Larry’s name is Larry. Oh, these are more way more important than motivations. I mean, this isn’t Strength Finders, you know, this is like my heart like this is like this. These are my top five, and I go dignity traits. And he goes, Oh, my gosh. So I started studying dignity, and dignity is our worthiness, right to be worthy of honor and respect to the definition of dignity. So in my journey, we stumbled upon something that we all agree in dignity, we shall dignify each other, we always say with respect and dignity, and we discovered 56 emotional drivers that makes up and five of them make up your dignity. And when that is satisfied, your heart is filled with love, you feel accepted, you feel worthy, and that we defend our worthiness at all costs, and we don’t have to. So I teach people that you’re already worthy. You’re already amazing. Like just do you then that’s why you asked me which seven out of your book I’m most, like gravitate towards and that’s courageous agility,

Karan Rhodes  16:26

Courageous agility? Yeah, I can see that. Now. I used to like to that way, but tell me more.

Joe Kiedinger  16:32

I’m not a psychologist, or that people go. Are you a PhD in psychiatry that you’re inventing this? I’m like, No, I want to. I want to learn how to love my son. Is that okay?

Karan Rhodes  16:41

Exactly. But to your point, having a high degree of dignity is important and all walks alive. So I can imagine there’s the business application, but then there’s the family or the school or the charitable applications, it it ranges every lens of our lives, correct?  Yeah.

Joe Kiedinger  17:03

Yes. And Dr. Donna Hicks, who is the only author or, or authority I found on the subject of dignity, she wrote two books. And her second one is leading with dignity. It’s absolutely amazing. But I called her and I showed her my invention. And we did. So I called her and I showed our invention. And she said, because she’s the authority and dignity knows a lot more than I do. And she said, you know, dignity Joe is located in the limbic system, which is the emotional part of the brain. And it doesn’t process language. I said, Okay, she goes, like your emotional, maybe you’re angry, you don’t always know how to express that. If you’re, if you love someone, you go to Hallmark because they do a better job of expressing, you know, right, otherwise. Yeah. So she said, what your tool allows people to do is have an open dialogue around emotional topics without getting emotional. And I went, Wow, there you go. I guess I didn’t realize it. But now people are having discussions around dignity, because dignify is not a personality test. It’s a survey, and then all that information gets fed into our machine. And you just talk just hit the top button, and it’ll bring up subjects that two people can talk about to explore each other’s dignity in a safe and beautiful way.

Karan Rhodes  18:21

I love that. I absolutely love that. So can you give us some examples on in general, and how clients have used your tool to increase the level of dignified conversations or make an impact on the business or in their environments?

Joe Kiedinger  18:37

Sure, absolutely. I’ll give you two examples. The first was early on, which I just love, and I still give this example. It was a small mechanic shop. Okay, he had two locations in Wisconsin. And his number one mechanic came up to him to the owner and said, I want you to fire the service writer. Okay, now service writers, the person you and I would talk to and they go What’s wrong with your car and you go, it’s making a noise, it’s doing this and they go, Okay, thank you. And then they bring it to the mechanic, right? That’s a service right? And so, and the owner goes, why? And he goes, because he undermines me. He’s always undermining me. He goes, Well, what does he do? Well, he goes if I replace the brake pads he he’ll take the old one and go this looks good to me. Why do you replace it right tire tread questioning everything he goes, any use not flawed. He used some interesting language right? scribing how this gentleman should no longer work for the Yikes. Said I want to this is when we were called about me card but the technology is familiar. Same. So it shows him his dignity and ego and the guy goes I don’t need his dignity to know that he’s a bleep bleep bleep. Okay. Because I tell you what, just read what he expresses himself. And then then we can consider firing him. Wow. So he looked at the information and he handed the information back to the owner and said, All right, I’ll make him the best damn mechanic ever, but he better pay attention. So what do you read was, there’s 56 Dignity traits, the mechanic had competent as one of them. I am the expert in my field. That’s how I expressed it. The other gentleman had curious how he expressed it was I want to learn from you so I can grow. So when he was asking questions, his intent was to become a mechanic someday, and to learn from this mechanic who he respected, but he didn’t have the people skills or the articulation to quite say that. So as soon as this mechanic saw the intention behind his action, he then was honored that he would consider him a teacher, oh, I can see that. I can. That is a huge example among many, where we are a bunch of misunderstandings walking around, I judge you by your actions, but I judged myself by my intentions. So my intention is to do good by you, Karan. But way maybe because I’m too aggressive. Maybe the words I chose maybe what I did you interpret it through your dignity, as I’ve made me feel comfortable, you must not like me, you know, you didn’t say please, or thank you if you’re wired that way. Right. So what dignify does is it allows two people to sit down and prevent any of that stuff from even happening. If you do a we call a dignified check in. And so employers put into their system ever, there’s, there’s no system for servant leadership, right? Well, we have a system that is run, usually by operations or HR, and they go, hey, it’s check in month, and they pair people up. And they play the wheel of dignity, which is like a wheel of fortune game. And they they learn how to share some vulnerability and some humility. Within the course of this conversation, they discover who they are while they express their dignity. And they clear up misunderstanding. So now if two employees are at each other’s throat, and they go the leader, and they talk behind each other’s back, today, those who work with us leaders go, I want you to to do a check in and dignify and I can’t wait to see what you discover, have a good day.

Karan Rhodes  22:08

And so the two employees work together via your tool to better understand each other. Wow, that

Joe Kiedinger  22:14

And they just click a button and it tells them what to ask each other. So they don’t have to become a master on how to read a dignify snapshot. They don’t have to know any of the stuff, they just have to click the button. And we each have do’s and don’ts that rule respect. And so the system goes, Hey, Karan, you have give me all the details. And then the system goes on a scale like What do you mean by that? And you go, well, I need details to get all my stuff done. And then the next question pops up. How would you rate me and supporting that on a scale of one to five? You go? Well, I’ll give you like a four even though you’d want to give me a one. I’ll give you like a four. And then a question pops up? How can I make that a five for you? Ah, I like learning how to surf not Why are you giving me that that triggers something negative. But my point is it pulls out all these questions and things that it’s important that individual, and allows two people to have a logical conversation around an emotional reaction.

Karan Rhodes  23:06

So who is your target market?

Joe Kiedinger  23:09

Usually owners or divisional leaders who put people first, okay. And so they typically are companies that are at least maybe 70 to 100 employees, but they realize our system can cater to 1000s of employees because of the way it’s programmed.

Karan Rhodes  23:23

Okay, interesting. And so the you organizations would buy access to a model for their organization. And then you all can I assume, train them up on how to use it. And then there

Joe Kiedinger  23:37

Yeah, so let’s say divisional leader wants it. The divisional leader typically has a budget for the division. Sure, they love people they care about their pay, they really want to, you know, bring in this type of servant leadership or dignity based culture, right? Well, then we work with that leader, we interview that leader, we ask a lot of questions, understand the makeup of their department, in their, in their situation, know what their pain is, are and what’s going well. And then we customize a program that will incorporate dignify into it that would help that leader achieve what they’re trying to achieve.

Karan Rhodes  24:08

Gotcha. So as you know, this podcast is all about helping people to lead at the top of their game. And this fits right into it. So if I can ask you and this might be come from your workshops or what have you, but we try to give our listeners at least one tip piece of advice or playbook knowing what you know about the research and how organizations use dignify what is one tip or piece of advice that you can get to your audience members as they approach more dignified environments and conversations.

Joe Kiedinger  24:46

Sure, understand that what people say, they don’t mean. What they mean, they won’t say when they’re emotional. And so something I’ve learned that when someone’s emotional, I mean regardless if you have a dignifies a software are not just about dignity, right? Is, is when you’re leading an individual, depending on how you’re wired, you may react a certain way. You might be the fixer, you know, you might be, well, we’re just gonna do this, you dive in and fix it. That’s not what they’re asking of you because they can’t really tell you what they really mean. Right? Because they got a problem, right? You might be the collaborator leader, where you’re sitting there going, Well, tell me more. And you’re like, God, you’re gifted. Tell me more. I’m gonna help them discover it. Well, that you can go over the top there too, because helping them discover they might just, they might be wired to go, just tell me what to do. Karan, like, I need you to tell me what to do. Right? To help with dignity is when someone comes to you with a challenge I’ve learned. I there’s three things one, are you venting to me and you need to get it out? Because that’s good. I’m glad you’re venting to me and not to another employee. You know? Yes, I’m just venting. Let it out. Let it out. Good. You feel better now? Okay, good. Number two, are you sharing this with me? Because you’re asking my advice on what you can do to fix it? Or number three, as you’re sharing this information with me, are you escalating it to me? Because you definitely want me to get involved in some way other than advice? Yeah, that’s a great, yeah. You know, so when you have those three options, a person goes, I’m just venting or I just need your advice. Don’t take any action. Okay, because I don’t want to do is accidentally jump into something and make it even worse than what the situation could be. Because I interpreted through my motivation and moves, quick action. That’s one of them. I’m driven to just fix it, let’s just go right. Like I’m driven to go fast. And my wife, thank god slowed me down always goes, Don’t send that email. This is years ago. Don’t say that. Don’t do the text right now. Just pause

Karan Rhodes  26:48

Pause and breathe. Yes.

Joe Kiedinger  26:50

Yes.  Settle down here, because that person was emotional. Therefore, what they say they don’t mean it what they mean, they can’t say. Because the part of the brain is doesn’t have language, so they don’t always articulate it well. So people have a gift for being in tune with their emotions, the poet’s the artists, they sing about it. I’m going to a Taylor Swift concert with my daughters. Guess what Taylor brings her whole life and throws it in song

Karan Rhodes  27:14

She does!

Joe Kiedinger  27:15

Most people don’t have that kind of intuitive like reflection to put feelings into words. Or we just say things we don’t mean, and we usually hurt someone’s feelings.

Karan Rhodes  27:25

And we don’t mean to, but we ended up doing so sometimes. And right. Yeah.

Joe Kiedinger  27:30

That would be my advice to experience dignity is to step outside yourself. And allow yourself really, to understand where they’re coming from.

Karan Rhodes  27:39

I love that. I love that. Yeah. And that’s just, you know, a slice of increasing one’s emotional intelligence when you do that, right.

Joe Kiedinger  27:46

reading coaches, emotional intelligence. Whenever you come down with us like that, you gotta like intra premiership, is that the mindset of emotional intelligence, leading yourself?

Karan Rhodes  27:57

Yeah, that and stakeholder savvy when you’re being very conscious about the other person and adjusting based on, you know, the situation and the conversation that you’re having with them?

Joe Kiedinger  28:09

That’s exactly right. Influence is a big deal, isn’t it?

Karan Rhodes  28:12

It is, it definitely is a big deal. Well, just before I let you go, I want to focus on you as a founder, because launching profit coach and your technology platform, although it’s strawberries and unicorns right now, I’m sure there was a journey behind that. So can you share of how hard was it to actually grow your firm and be a leader in a company when you’re, you know, trying to get this great work that you’ve created out into the universe to help others? How’s it been being a leader and founder of Prophit, Co?

Joe Kiedinger  28:53

Exhausting.

Karan Rhodes  28:55

Same here!

Joe Kiedinger  28:57

Willing and everything else, right, because remember, we’re an advertising company, you turned into a marketing company. And as of four or five years ago, we shut that and went straight into organizational health. So now, you’re doing newspaper ads, you’re doing TV commercials and all this stuff. We’re saying we’re no longer going to do that. You know what that does to your staff?

Karan Rhodes  29:16

It flakes that makes them scared.

Joe Kiedinger  29:19

I signed up for a marketing company. I didn’t sign up for this stuff when you fly out and figure all this stuff out. Right? It was a big challenge, because I had to, and then you have to bootstrap it.

Karan Rhodes  29:30

Yes. Yeah.

Joe Kiedinger  29:31

Boot strapping, for those who don’t know is you pay for your own technology. So as a small company and putting over the years, millions of dollars into something you believe in, and imagine in my journey, it was a disconnect. How is this tool go to marketing? You could say, oh, well, that’s another motive. We didn’t use it to try to persuade you to buy a product.

Karan Rhodes  29:51

Right.

Joe Kiedinger  29:52

Right? We’re using it for people who are interested in learning about servant leadership, and so forth and how to be a better leader. So there was definitely a A big challenge and so you lose half your team. Yeah. So because you can’t use them anymore, right?

Karan Rhodes  30:07

They’re not what you need. Yeah.

Joe Kiedinger  30:10

And others, you could use their skill sets, but they’re too scared to go in that direction. Yeah. You know. So transparency at the right time is something I’ve learned. And I think we did it. Well, we didn’t overshare too soon in the process. Right. And I think we allowed I hope, we allowed our team enough time to process it. And when our largest account that Festival Foods, we ended up doing the newspaper ad for many, many, many years. And then they grew to a billion plus company, and they said, We don’t need you to do our newspaper ads anymore. And we love you. It’s not because you’re not good. It’s because we’re growing. Well, we were poised to be the last the where I’m sitting right now, I used to have eight production people on a long dining room table, working on doing a weekly newspaper ad, as you know them in your paper, right for grocery right now. Now it’s a studio it’s in and we had to make that transition. And it does take changing appropriately. And I think over the years, it’s been an I call it a 10 year pivot we did, it took 10 years

Karan Rhodes  31:15

To pivot to what you’re doing now. Yeah, and I think that’s an important lesson for our listeners to learn and understand that especially I mean, I’ve know people is overused, but in this like, changing hyper competitive world, if you are resistant to pivoting, no matter your job function or industry that you’re working in, you’re gonna get left behind, because you know, people are looking for new opportunities to be more productive and stronger and to build your skills. And I think your platform definitely helps to do that. It provides kind of a high how to playbook for organizations of all kinds. I’m just so proud of what you’ve done and so thrilled that you know that you came on the podcast, because I want to help amplify what Prophet Ko is doing as far as we can. We’re not like Howard Stern and have the world and our oyster in our hands. But and within our audience what we’re able to do, hopefully, we were able to plant seeds and expand your reach as well.

Joe Kiedinger  32:20

Well, Karan, I appreciate that. And for all of your listeners, I’ll give you a free Dignify survey that you can discover your dignity nice and spread it to some people close to you, but you go to www.dignify.com and you’ll click on enter code and the code is “trydignify” and we’ll just allow you to see you know, and I encourage you to have two or three people do it so they can like maybe maybe a husband, wife, we’re going to do dignify date night starting this summer, Karan.

Karan Rhodes  32:49

 Now, you know, I haven’t had a chance to share but my husband and I aren’t gone date night, every Friday night at 730. I am going to schedule one Friday night, we’re going to do a date night at home and we’re gonna do your dignify survey,

Joe Kiedinger  33:05

Do’s and don’ts. And you’re gonna say, Honey, how am I doing with each one of your do’s and don’ts? And am I supporting your top five dignity traits? Or am I unknowingly pulling you down? Because we do that accidentally?

Karan Rhodes  33:16

Yeah, we do. Yeah. So issue a challenge to all the listeners to do that, we’ll have all the information in the show notes, everyone so that you can try it out. But do sell try it out. Take it to heart, make it be very serious about it. And then introduce it to maybe your co founders are leaders in your organization’s and reach out to Joe and bring it to your organization. We all talk about doing our best to retain the right talent within our organizations. This is one way to do it and have a very fun and meaningful way. And inspiring way, in my opinion, anyway.

Joe Kiedinger  33:57

Is Karan and people say wow, I mean for an employer to care this much about me. One last story. I want you to picture in the mall. We all know what a mall is, and other going away but we still have. We’re working with an owner that owned a great American cookie store. You know, you buy those like delicious cookies in a mall. Yeah, you’re in, you’re in our area. And he said I’m going to use your tool to know where to place these young kids because he had high schoolers, right? That’s usually the first job behind the counter. And so he had this Runco we filmed her name is Lauren, you know, and he goes she has competent and artistic in her top five. And she goes and right when I saw that because they got hired and then they would do their little survey, because you’re gonna be my best cookie decorator. She goes, Well, I’m artistic but I’m more into like, you know, painting. And he goes, no artistic is artistic and you’re competent, which means you’re going to learn the process fast. And she literally instead of he goes normally I would wait for a person to work their way into that role, because I put it right at cake decorating and this person is totally introverted. I can see that from their report I putting them back to make the cookies this person, you can trust them to make anything but man that we’re wonderful personality, we’re going to put them out selling with cookies. So he said that was great. But the biggest magic was when you do dignify you’re going to read these paragraphs are specifically for you. And they only build you up, they tell you your beauty, they tell you your strength. And you can print these off and he gave them to each kid. He said the kid would bring them home to their parents. He said I started getting text messages. Because that’s a communicate with your kids. Right? All right, yes, that’s all I do. Thank thank you for helping me understand my son or my daughter. I am passing you on to my friends, because I cannot imagine a better place for my child to start understanding what it’s like to go do a job in a place that cares so much about them like yours, because I did not see that coming at all. He was had a steady flood of people, these teenage kids, and they might only work for a season or two. Or for a few months. He goes for the I don’t care. They were great kids.

Karan Rhodes  36:04

Yeah. That’s a whole nother market for you right there. Joe is

Joe Kiedinger  36:08

It’s all about getting dignity to the world. And that’s where leaders come in. Because you need strong leaders like yourself, and those who listen to you to realize I can make it I am going to make a bigger difference. They already realize they can if they’re tuned in do you, Karan.

Karan Rhodes  36:21

They do.

Joe Kiedinger  36:22

So this is just a tool to give you a credit. That’s why we work with divisional leaders who put people first because they sometimes you bang your head against the wall going gosh, I love you so much for you don’t see that, you know. And so you have a support tool that aligns with what you already believe in that course. And it expresses in the words how you feel about a person and they look at those words, and they immediately associate them with the person that gave it to him. Like you think about this to me. Absolutely. There’s magic in you.

Karan Rhodes  36:50

But we want to help spread that magic. So thank you so much, Joe for sharing, Prophit, Co, Dignify, everything. You have all the tidbits I was sitting here taking notes as we were going along. But thank you so much for the gift of your time to be on the podcast today.

Joe Kiedinger  37:09

Oh, you are so welcome. And thank you for your gift and your wonderful personality and everything you bring to the leadership world as well as it’s been a pleasure to connect south and north.

Karan Rhodes  37:19

That’s right. And all right, listeners. Thank you for listening to another episode. And you all know there’s only one ask I ask of you, what is this, like and subscribe to our podcast, and also share with just one person one friend so that we can expand our reach and help leaders just like you lead at the top of their game. Have a wonderful rest of your week and see you next week. Take care. Well, I hope you enjoyed our conversation today with Joe Kietinger, Founder and CEO of Prophit, Co. Links to his bio his entry into our leadership playbook and additional resources can be found in the show notes, both on your favorite podcasts platform of choice and on the web at lead your game podcast.com. And now for Karan’s take on today’s topic of preserving one’s dignity. You know, dignity is the inherent worth in value of every human and dignity is very different from respect, dignity is given. But Respect is earned or loss through an individual or groups choices, actions or behavior. So I want to give you a few common sense reminders to help you prepare to have difficult conversations while simultaneously preserving everyone’s dignity. The first reminder is to do your homework before having any tough conversation. Never initiate a hard conversation based solely on your observations. You need proof of your concerns gather the data, and the cold, hard facts that’s going to drive the foundation of helping them to understand your angst. The more you prepare, the better your meeting should go. My second reminder is to make it safe to talk as safe conversation is one in which both parties feel comfortable about expressing their thoughts and feelings without negative ramifications and without feeling threatened and to make a conversation safe state up front, a mutual purpose for the conversation and a desire for a win win outcome. Remember, you have to care about the interest of others as well as your own. And my third reminder is to be sure to loop back to review the situation after you have the conversation. Once you’ve had that hard conversation and the situation has begun to resolve or improve circle back with those individuals and grab them for maybe a cup of coffee to Have an informal, brief discussion to do a quick check in with them and to reiterate your support, and to ensure that there are no hard feelings, you know, this is going to go a long way to solidify your ongoing relationship with them. As I mentioned, these are common sense reminders, but extremely important to deepen your relationships. So in closing, don’t let difficult conversations wreck anyone’s dignity keep the offering of mutual respect, front and center. Because the instant someone precedes disrespect in a conversation, that interaction is no longer about the original purpose of solving a problem is now about defending one’s dignity. Please remember to subscribe to the podcast and share with just one brand because performing this one selfless act will empower you to help others to also lead at the top of their game. Thank you so much for listening and see you next week. And that’s our show for today. Thank you for listening to the lead at the top of your game podcast, where we help you lead your seat at any employer, business, or industry in which you choose to play. You can check out the show notes, additional episodes, and bonus resources, and also submit guest recommendations on our website at leadyourgamepodcast.com. You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn by searching for the name Karan Rhodes with Karan being spelled K a r a n. And if you like the show, the greatest gift you can give would be to subscribe and leave a rating on your podcast platform of choice. This podcast has been a production of Shockingly Different Leadership, a global consultancy which helps organizations execute their people, talent development, and organizational effectiveness initiatives on an on-demand, project, or contract basis. Huge thanks to our production and editing team for a job well done. Goodbye for now.