Flip Flippen is the Founder and President of The Flippen Group and author of the new book called The Flip Side - Break Free of the Behaviors That Hold You Back. Flip is a man with an uncompromising mission: to build relationships and processes that bring out the best in people. He has applied this lofty goal to his work with hundreds of thousands of individuals, including educators, K-12 students, executives, and athletes. With an emphasis on changing behaviors and attitudes that stand in the way of success, he has helped organizations from small rural school districts to Fortune 500 companies achieve dramatic improvement in performance, leadership, trust, and productivity. He founded The Flippen Group in 1990. Today, it is the largest educator training company and one of the fastest-growing leadership development organizations in North America. The company’s breakthrough educational processes and curricula are in use at 5,000 school districts and campuses in 42 states. The Flippen Leadership Series is a dynamic training program that helps leaders establish goals, uncover constraints, and develop action plans that improve performance and profit, and has transformed organizations around the world.
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KE: The common message that we hear from such folks as Marcus Buckingham is to focus our attention on our strengths. In the book, “Now, Discover Your Strengths,” which Marcus co-authored with Donald O. Clifton, they write that we will excel only by maximizing our strengths, never by fixing our weaknesses. They say that it is important not to ignore our weaknesses, but rather than trying to fix them, they recommend managing around them. What is your position on this issue of focusing on strengths versus weaknesses?
FF: Marcus is right. When talking about skills, you have to focus on your strong set of skills. It is foolish to focus on anything other than that, but people do it all the time. I am talking about behaviors that are constraints and that critically impact your performance and your life. For example, those guys at Enron were phenomenally skilled. Andy Fastow, Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay were brilliant. It was their behavioral constraints that ultimately brought them and their company down. There is a big difference in the skills that Marcus is talking about and in the behavioral constraints they we are talking about.
KE: Help me differentiate between constraints and weaknesses.
FF: We all have weaknesses, but they don’t all impact our performance. A constraint is something that dramatically impacts performance. Weaknesses hold us back, but constraints impact throughput. If you have low self-control, it is not a weakness, it is a constraint. It will dramatically impact your life. Think about Dennis Rodman and the constraint that his lack of self-control had on his life. It has destroyed him.
KE: Some of the terms we use in HR that parallel your description of constraints would be derailers or fatal flaws; the things that get in the way of an individual’s ability to maximize his/her potential.
FF: Yes, that is a good way of thinking about it. We have developed some models to statistically assess them so we can identify the ones that are most critically impacting people at any given point in their lives.
KE: What was it that prompted you to write this book?
FF: I kept having very high performing people come to see me and as a psychotherapist, I was intrigued by how I could take them to another level in their performance. Over time we built these models. Because I could not meet with everybody one-on-one, I wrote the book and included the processes in the book.
KE: In your book you talk about five laws of personal constraints. Please review them with us.
FF: The five laws of personal constraints are:
1. We all have personal constraints. The trick is that we don’t have the same ones year to year.
2. You can’t rise above the constraints that you don’t or won’t address. This is essential to personal growth. I see people that can identify a personal constraint but they won’t work to change it. I am working with a guy right now who is a volcano. He knows that he blows up at people but he will not deal with it. Then he complains because he is not getting advancement opportunities in the executive ranks.
3. Our constraints play themselves out in every area of our lives. If you are not nurturing, warm, affirming, attentive, caring, or encouraging, the odds are good that you are the same way at work as you are at home.
4. Personal constraints are role specific and they can be incredibly impacting in very specific roles. Look at Mike Tyson. He has an aggression scale of 97 that works in the boxing ring, but not on a date. A constraint in one role doesn’t have the devastating impact that it has in another role.
5. Those with the fewest personal constraints win. They will always outperform people with more constraints. I think everybody knows that Tiger Woods has less personal constraints on the golf course than any other golfer in the world. We see that played out consistently in life.
There are two additional laws that we developed that apply specifically to the corporate world and they are very important for the HR community:
1. No organization can rise above the constraints of the leadership. Until the people in positions of leadership address their constraints, the organization cannot rise above them.
2. Those who are unwilling to address their personal constraints are unfit for leadership. I know that sounds tough, but if you are not going to look at your issues, don’t talk to me about mine.
KE: Explain how overcoming personal constraints works, from a philosophical point of view.
FF: You cannot look at a normal growth curve in a person's career. It has its ups and downs, and you peak at some point. My challenge was to move the peak point earlier into someone’s career. I am looking for the things that are holding you down. For me, my self-control scales were lower than they needed to be. I was impulsive because I am very creative. Every time I came up with an idea, I tried to execute it, but I was never able to implement the one or two really solid ideas. It wasn’t until I broke that constraint, that I was able to grow to the next level.
KE: Before we talk about a few of the constraints you’ve identified, what high-level recommendations would you make to HR in how to work with people’s constraints?
FF: If we agree that people are the greatest asset a company has, then we should look at the following two things in the HR community:
1. Hiring the right people. Those with the least personal constraints win.
2. Accelerate the growth of the people a company currently has.
KE: How did you arrive at the 10 killer constraints?
FF: We ran data on tens of thousands of people in our database, from profiling 83 of the top CEOs in North America all the way down to the lower echelons inside companies. The same constraints kept coming up over and over so we labeled them “the top 10 killers.”
KE: Can we take a look at those 10?
FF: Bulletproof, Ostrich, Marshmallow, Iceberg, Flatliners, Bulldozers, Turtles, Volcanoes, Quick Draws and Critics.
KE: The top one on your list is Bulletproof. Could you give us a quick description and help us understand what questions we might ask to see if this one fits?
FF: Bulletproof people are interesting to me. A few years ago, I was in Dallas at a board meeting for a Fortune 500 company. I was chairing an investment discussion where we were looking at investing between $50 and $100 million into different startup companies. There were presentations from numerous dot-com guys. Every one of the presenters was confident their plan was right. Finally I said, “Do any of you have a business plan that has been analyzed from a risk investment point of view?” Every one of them said, “Flip, you have got to get on board, you don’t understand where the dot-com world is going.” That was why they were bulletproof. They thought they were right and it was very hard for them to admit fault on anything. You know how that ultimately played out.
KE: What if we believe we are bulletproof? Now what?
FF: Bulletproof people are tough. They need to sit down with their teams and apologize and ask forgiveness for the ways they’ve acted. They need to ask questions, listen, and quit shutting people down. Bulletproof people need to ask others to flag them when they aren’t listening or following the process. It’s tough to slow down bulletproof people.
KE: Are there are a fair number of leaders that would qualify for this constraint?
FF: Absolutely. They are found in political office, athletics, the classroom, and the boardroom.
KE: Do you have recommendations on how to manage the leaders who have this personal constraint?
FF: Yes, if you are dealing with a bulletproof person, an easy way to approach them is to say, “I have some thoughts and feedback for you. When you feel like you have time to listen, let me know so I can share it with you.” That way they have to open the door for you. It’s a conscious action on their part that you are requesting. Dealing with bulletproof people is tough. Arguing with them doesn’t work. You have to work with them so that you state that your goal is their success. They need to know that you are there to support them and not to challenge them.
KE: I’m guessing that 360 feedback would be hard for these folks, given they are not prone to receptivity around other people’s perceptions.
FF: When we run 360 data on people, we have a lot of executives say, “I think you picked the wrong people.” I am always ready to say, “Why don’t we pick six more and run that data.” I also tell people that all data may not be accurate, but it’s still relevant.
KE: Tell us about the marshmallow.
FF: Often times very nice, good, kind and thoughtful people struggle with this. You are not going to find kind and thoughtful people who are bulletproof. Some key questions for marshmallows are, “Do you ever struggle with saying no? Is it difficult for you to speak up and say what you really think, especially if it’s in opposition to other people? Do you frequently find yourself being over committed and worn out?” With a marshmallow in the corporate ranks, what you see is a person who takes on too much. They have a tough time meeting deadlines, not because they are not working, but because they are overwhelmed with the amount of work. It is difficult for them to say no. People will make demands of them that are inappropriate. We see this marshmallow person more often than I wish we did, good people that get beat up hard.
KE: How might a marshmallow get better at boundary setting?
FF: My first question to a marshmallow is, “How do you take care of yourself? When was the last time you did something special for yourself? Do you speak up in a corporate setting when people aren’t treating you right?”
KE: Do you have some suggestions for how best to handle a marshmallow?
FF: I encourage people who are marshmallows to declare what they think and what they like. When I am in a meeting, I always ask them to tell me what they are thinking. It’s good for me to call on people who are more reluctant to speak up, not because they don’t have something to say, but because they are trying to be gracious and let other people speak. Those are some of the things that we do to draw them out.
KE: Can you give us an example of an iceberg that you’ve coached? What qualities do they demonstrate? How do you help them overcome it?
FF: These guys are tough. There was an executive in Ohio with one of the larger financial institutions. His base salary was $1 million a year and he had an 80% bonus upside. He was one of the worst icebergs I have ever seen. They brought him into the company against our recommendation. I went to meet with him for the first time. The minute I sat down, he looked at his watch and said, “How long is this going to take?” I said, “We can be through right now,” and he said, “Well, that’s fine with me.” I put my stuff in my briefcase and he said, “What happens now?” I said, “I will write up in my notes to recommend immediate termination due to noncompliance with intervention.” You can imagine his response. He said, “Flip, I don’t think you get it, I tend to business better than anybody in this organization,” and I said, “You know what, that’s exactly the problem, you tend to business. You do not tend to your people.” It was a difficult situation. I couldn’t give him a new heart, so I gave him specific behaviors to do: to speak to people when he passed them in the hall, to call them by name when he was sitting in a meeting with them, to affirm them when they said something valuable in meetings. Later we were sitting in a meeting and he looked at his group and he said, “I am supposed to be nice today so I want everybody to know that I have said something nice to you, now let’s get on with business.” It didn’t work and we terminated him.
KE: That sounds like an extreme example. Do you see it showing up in less extreme ways with a lot of leaders?
FF: Yes you see it in the leaders who are not attentive, not affirming, not encouraging. They have staff trying very hard to do a great job to get their approval. But icebergs have a way of strategically withholding their approval, which is devastating to the people who are working under them. We see this constraint a good bit.
KE: I am thinking about my work with clients in executive coaching. I can think of a few who felt appreciation, but didn’t think it was important to express it. Or, they didn’t recognize that emotional connection with their employees was important. Once they saw it as a priority, they were able to focus more on the relationships, not just the business. Would they be icebergs of a milder variety?
FF: We know from our data that in some cases these leaders are not icebergs, but rather they have a very high level of self-control. I see people who have tremendously positive and affirming feelings for other people, but their self-control skills are so high that they are not expressive. We would give them very specific behaviors to do, because it’s almost like the song is already there, they just need to sing it. With icebergs, there is just no song.
KE: I am guessing that having a leader as an iceberg would be very difficult, given the importance of being able to engage employees and help build commitment.
FF: Yes, it is really tough when you see this at the leadership level. A lot of people go up through the executive ranks simply because they have learned to tend to business very effectively. But I don't consider those people to be executives. I consider them to be operations oriented people. The greatest strength of an executive is the ability to pull people together and capitalize on their strengths. To do that, a person has to encourage, affirm, support, draw out opposing information, and create a safe environment so people can disagree with you.
KE: Will you tell us a little bit about the flatliner constraint?
FF: This is very common. Between 50% and 55% of all the employees in companies just show up for work. They are not bringing much to the task. What we want to do in HR is to tap into the effort that people have that they contribute at their own discretion. It is an effort above and beyond the baseline. Flatliners are not going to produce that kind of behavior. We call it flatliners simply because these guys died a long time ago. They just keep walking around.
KE: Is this because the organization is not providing a motivating environment, or are these people born this way?
FF: Flatliners are not born. Think about children. They are motivated to sit up, to roll over, to talk, to stand, to run, to fly, and they think they can do anything. I believe that we start out motivated and then different experiences throughout our lives impact that. If you have a low achievement drive and low passion by age 27-28, our data suggests that is becomes very difficult to raise it.
KE: A little earlier you talked about how one of the goals for HR is to match the right people to the right job, to identify those with the fewest personal constraints. What are some ways that an HR professional could identify a flatliner in the interviewing process?
FF: Watch their energy level in an interview. Talk with them about their passions and what excites them. Ask them to tell you a story about a time they were successful and watch the energy they bring to it. A good interviewer should be able to zero in on the right questions that will pull out the energy level that a person brings to the task.
KE: How does the behavior of a bulldozer get in the way? What can they do about it?
FF: Bulldozers are one of the most critical ones that we see at the top. Remember, no organization can rise above the constraints of the leadership. If you have a bulldozer at the top, you know that they are going to run right over people. Over time, that takes a tremendous toll on the key people around you. Bulldozers can be abusive and opinionated. Some questions you might ask to determine if they are a bulldozer are: Is being in control important to you? Do your strong opinions cause others to perceive you as not listening? Do you finish other people's sentences? Quite often people find it difficult to approach bulldozers freely to disagree with them. Bulldozers are tough people.
KE: Do you have any recommendations for the people who manage bulldozers?
FF: I start by asking them, “When would you like some other ideas on this? Would you like some feedback? Can I pull together some thoughts and get back to you as it relates to the plan? Can I take your plan and run it through a risk analysis and get back to you with some additional thoughts?” The bulldozers have to know that you on their side and committed to their success. Fighting with them will cost you your career. It is like going up against a physical bulldozer. You are going to get hurt.
I do not make statements, I use questions. For example, “Tell me when we can visit about this and I could give you some feedback. When would be a good time for us to talk about this further, for me to bring some other thoughts to you?” If it does not come in the form of a question, they will most likely push it away. The data shows that they can be insecure and very obstinate. They fear not being in control and need to know that you are on their side.
KE: Which constraint do you consider to be the most likely to derail someone’s career as a leader?
FF: There are several, but the one that will derail it early is being a volcano. If you blow up and twist off on people, you are dead. People are not going to put up with that. Being a volcano early on will absolutely ruin your career. The next one is being bulletproof. It will hurt you immensely. We are in a knowledge-based society and the people with the most information win. If you are running around bulletproof, you are not listening, you are not getting information from other people. It’s going to catch you mid-range at a more senior point. The next is being a bulldozer. A lot of guys get to the top because they think they are right all the time. They take on an air of, “I am always right and it’s your job to get in line and let me plow ahead.” It’s unfortunate, but I see it at the top a great deal.
KE: Are these constraints equally challenging to overcome, or are some easier than others?
FF: The most difficult to change is being an iceberg. It is very difficult for these people to develop compassion and care for their teams. People have choices today as to who they work for and they want to be appreciated. If I am going to be with you 40 to 50 hours a week, I want to be valued and affirmed as an individual. I think the iceberg is really hard for somebody who truly wants to change. But the problem is that they usually don’t want to change. It’s the people around them that want the change. Also, trying to move out of the flatliner mode is very tough, especially if you are over 30.
KE: Can you tell us a few of your favorite examples of people with whom you worked who have overcome their constraints to achieve some really great things?
FF: I have a friend who was one of the worst volcano/bulldozers that I had ever seen. When I first met him, he told me a story about a time he was in a meeting with all of his general managers. The concierge brought him some gourmet cookies on a platter and set them down. This guy blew up at the concierge. He grabbed the platter of cookies and literally threw them against the wall. He told me about this quite honestly with some sense of pride that he was able to act that way. I was surprised. He said, “That got their attention!” I said, “I think it is unfortunate that you have to go to those ends to gain someone's attention, so we want to work on that.”
He went back and apologized and began to deal with it. About a month later, he called me excited, and said, “I am growing and I can tell. I threw donuts against the wall but they were in a bag and they stayed in the bag, so I know I am improving.” Today he is loved throughout his company. He is now a group president. He is a phenomenal guy but it took a lot of apologizing. A lot of going back and trying to undo some tremendous hurt he had caused.
KE: In that example, what do you think it was that was so personally motivating to him to change?
FF: His wife felt the same thing at home that his employees were feeling. He went home and told her about one of our discussions and it broke her heart. She wept. He had no idea that he was that bad and he really went to work changing that. I saw him not long ago with his 10-year-old son. It never crossed his mind to hug that kid. Now, he is so affectionate with him. It has been a beautiful thing to watch, quite honestly.
KE: Do you believe that people can and will change, if they are motivated enough?
FF: Yes, I think all of us really want to be better; the challenge is to know what to do to get better and then to have the motivation to do it. When my first son was born, the night I brought him home from the hospital I took him out in the backyard and set him down in my lap. I put my hand on his chest and said, “Matthew, I commit to you, I am going to change everything in my life that needs to be changed so that you can become a man that you were destined to become.” That was when I realized that my constraints impact other people. That drove me to change. Personal growth is not personal, it is not about you, it is about everybody around you that you touch. If you are unwilling to change, what you are really saying is that they are not worth it. I do not believe that. My team is worth it, my wife is worth it, my children are worth it, my friendships are worth it, and so I think that love for them compels me to change.
KE: Do you have any final thoughts you would like to leave with us?
FF: I want the HR community to know that you are the #2 most powerful person in the company. You manage the greatest asset the organization has. The HR people I have been around are phenomenal attending to their people. Because of that they have lower turnover, they have people who are continually growing. It is the greatest investment you can make in a company. The HR people that we hire and recommend have a phenomenal impact on their companies. I am proud of the HR community, what they do and the heart they bring to their job.
