Episode 875 - Teach it Until They Own It

0:04 Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of performance through strong human relations, team building, and goal achieving. This is the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast with your host, Paul Falavolito.

0:22 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast. It's episode 875. Today's episode is called Teach It Until They Own It. Because there's a mistake leaders make all the time when they train people. They confuse telling with teaching. I told them during orientation. We covered that in the meeting.

0:45 I sent an email about it. It's in the policy. Or they should know this by now. Well, maybe. But knowing something exists and owning it are two very different things. If you want a standard to become part of your organization, you have to teach it. until your people can carry it without you. That's ownership. Think about a new employee walking into your organization on day one. They're trying to remember names. They're figuring out where everything is. They're learning the software. They're trying to understand the personalities around them.

1:22 They're learning procedures, expectations, schedules, rules, and they're probably wondering where the bathroom is. And then we sit them down for orientation and and unload 10 years of organizational knowledge into their brain in a few hours. And at the end, we ask, any questions? They shake their head and we think they've got it. They don't have it. They just survived orientation. There's a difference. I think leaders need to rethink what it means to train somebody. Training isn't an event.

1:56 It's repetition with purpose. When I teach something important, I want people to hear it more than once. I want them to see it being done. I want them to practice it. I want somebody to correct them when they get it wrong. Then I want them to eventually be able to explain it to somebody else. And that last part matters because there's a point where the employee stops borrowing the standard from the leader and starts owning the standard themselves. That's the goal. Think about any high-performance environment, and aviation is a great example. Pilots don't hear about checklists one time during flight school and then move on.

2:39 Checklists are everywhere. You learn them, you use them, you repeat them. An instructor watches you use them, you get corrected, and eventually the process becomes part of how you operate. I've seen the same thing in EMS. You can teach somebody A procedure in a classroom, that doesn't mean they own it. Ownership happens when they can perform it correctly on a call, under pressure, with distractions happening all around them.

3:08 And the same principle applies in a hotel. You can tell a new employee that guest service matters. Great. What does that actually look like at 9.30 at night when a tired guest walks to the front desk and they need more towels? What does your standard look like then? You can tell a restaurant employee that cleanliness matters. What happens during the dinner rush when everybody is slammed? You can tell a manager that accountability matters. What happens when their best employee breaks a rule? That's where you find out whether you taught the concept or somebody actually owns it.

3:44 This is why leaders have to stop getting frustrated by repetition. Sometimes leaders say, how many times do I have to say this? My answer? until they own it. If it matters enough to become a standard, it matters enough to repeat. Your employees will probably hear your important messages so many times that they can predict what you're about to say. Good.

4:11 That means it's working. If I walk into a room and my team can finish my sentence about one of our standards, I don't see that as a problem. I see that as evidence. The message has traveled and eventually something even better starts happening. You're not the one saying it anymore. Your supervisors are saying it. Then your experienced employees are saying it. And then one day a brand new employee makes a mistake and somebody on the team steps in and says, hey, this is how we do it here. That sentence is leadership gold. This is how we do it here. Now you have culture. Culture isn't the poster hanging in the hallway. Culture is the employee who corrects something when the boss isn't standing there. Culture

5:00 is the veteran employee who teaches the new employee the right way because that standard belongs to them. Culture is what happens when the leader leaves the room, and that's why your training has to survive you. So I want you to think about one of the most important standards in your organization, something you absolutely need your people to understand.

5:23 Now ask yourself a question. If I disappeared for 30 days, would this standard still be followed? What would people still talk about? Would supervisors still reinforce it? Would employees correct each other when someone drifted away from it? If the answer is no, You probably haven't taught it enough. You announced it. Maybe you explained it. Ownership hasn't happened yet.

5:51 And there's another piece of this leaders sometimes miss. People need to understand why the standard exists. Because compliance can be forced. Ownership has to make sense. If you tell someone, do it because I said so, you might get compliance while you're watching. Explain what the standard protects, who it helps, why it matters, and what happens when it fails, and now the employee has something they can believe in. That's when training gets powerful. And I've spent a large portion of my career teaching people in environments where mistakes can have real consequences. Those environments taught me something that applies to every business. You cannot assume understanding. You verify it.

6:37 You demonstrate. You observe. you correct, you repeat. And eventually, you watch the person do it without you. That's the moment you're looking for. And there's also a leadership trap hiding in this. Sometimes experienced leaders become impatient because something feels obvious to them. Of course it feels obvious to you.

7:00 You've been doing it for 15 years. The person standing in front of you might have been doing it for 15 minutes. Never punish someone for not having your experience. Teach them, then teach them again. And when they start getting it right, recognize it. Let them know you noticed because repetition shouldn't only happen when somebody screws up. Reinforce the win. Things like, you handled that exactly the way we teach it. That's our standard. That's how we take care of people here. Now you're connecting behavior to identity.

7:36 And that's where things start becoming permanent. Eventually your employee shouldn't need a manager standing over their shoulders. They know what right looks like. They understand why it matters. They can recognize when something is drifting away from the standard and they're willing to step in. That's ownership. It also creates something every leader desperately needs. Scale. You cannot personally train every employee forever. You cannot personally monitor every decision.

8:08 You cannot be standing in every room. Your leadership has to travel through other people. That has always been one of the goals behind my own leadership teaching, practical lessons that people can understand, apply, and eventually pass along to somebody else. My podcast history reflects that same emphasis on coaching, development, leadership education, and and real-world application because the highest level of training isn't when somebody remembers what you taught them.

8:42 It's when they become capable of teaching it. Imagine that. You teach an employee. That employee becomes experienced. They eventually train somebody else. And while you're walking through the building one day, you overhear them teaching the next person the exact standard you taught them years ago. Maybe they even use some of your words. That's impact. Your leadership survived the handoff. So the next time you hear yourself saying, I already told them that, just stop. Ask yourself a better question. Have I taught it enough for them to own it? Because great leaders don't communicate something once and hope it sticks forever. They teach it, demonstrate it, reinforce it, and keep going until the standard no longer belongs to

9:36 the leader. It belongs to them. Teach it until they own it. This has been the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast, and I thank you for listening.