The One Leadership Principle That Devin Durrant Learned

The One Leadership Principle That Devin Durrant Learned

Sean: Great coaches. What they do is coach, right? That’s their job. That’s what they do. 24 seven. They’re thinking about how I can improve my team? Well, who’s fit for this role? Where do we need to draft new talent? Right. Everything they’re doing now, when you’re in your business, especially when you started the business and you’re president, CEO of your own organization, so you probably founded this business as well at the get go. You don’t have that luxury where you’re just thinking about team, team, team player, player, player. You’re like doing accounting, you’re doing legal, you’re doing the sales work, you’re doing account management, you’re doing marketing, you’re doing so many things. You’re wearing so many hats that it eludes you to to not to not to a fault, not to your fault. Even if you might want to coach, you might want to build your people, but you just don’t have the time. And a lot of business people are there. I know I’m there in that position, so I guess this is kind of like a twofold question in a way. Where should you hire someone who will be a coach full time? And how do you know, like if this person is going to coach or your business is interest or or that person’s interest alone? Because a lot of coaches have tendencies to coach for that person’s interest, no longer for the business interest. And the second fold to this question is how do you coach your people now, now that your leader, your founder, you’re doing so many things, how do you find time to do that?

Devin: I love the idea of being an entrepreneur. I think I was certainly born with the entrepreneurial spirit and as I grew up, I would mow lawns, take care of people’s property. Most of the work was fairly independent, running my own small businesses as a student. And then after my basketball playing days were over, I had an opportunity to work in corporate America. So to be part of a large, successful company by the name of word perfect, and I enjoyed that time there. But I still had within me that entrepreneurial spirit to get out and start something on my own. And one thing led to another, and that happened. And so initially, just as you outlined, I was doing almost everything. I was a real estate investor, so I might buy a property and I would mow the lawn, I would pull the weeds, I would paint, I would clean, I would schedule subcontractors, I would do the accounting and from top to bottom. And one of the benefits there is I learned every aspect of the business what needed to be done, really with the exception of maintenance. And so I recognized that my strength was not going to be in the maintenance area, so I’d have to hire someone to do that. And fortunately, I hired just the right guy for that role and the two of us began to grow the business. And so as the dollars would allow us to bring on more employees, that’s certainly what the direction we headed. I love the idea of building a business, starting a business, but I think the expectation needs to be this is going to take all of me and it’s going to be a rough and bumpy first few years till we get established and then as we can, I’m more conservative and as we can we’ll add additional employees and and will grow the business over time.

Sean: What was some leadership? Leadership principles that you learn along the way, maybe from your basketball days all the way to your word perfect days that you find so valuable even now when you’re I would say semi-retired. Maybe you’re still holding on to these principles in your mind.

Devin: Yet one of the principles, the value that I write about in the values Delta in my book is optimism. And just the power of expecting the best and thinking about the best outcomes that could take place. I think optimism and confidence go hand in hand. And I realized that as an athlete, how important it was to believe in yourself. Because there’s always someone who’s there to tell you, You can’t do this or you can’t do that. But to take the optimistic approach. And I also think that as your teammates, those around you, as they sense your belief in yourself. It gives them confidence in you, and it’s a reciprocal thing. If I know that you believe in me and I believe in you, I. We can accomplish some good things.

Sean: Got it. And Devin, my question is, how much do you apply coaching your people and making sure they’re at the right seat in the bus, making sure that they are fulfilling their roles where they’re strong in, rather than seeing them in roles that they’re not really strongly and they don’t really enjoy moving the piece around. Who does the coaching now does this and you mentioned this is a leadership role. This is a leadership thing where you help your people see where they’re strong or you help people see you or they might be weak. Do you do that now? And how do you do it?

Devin:  I do that, but probably not how you would imagine. I’ve been. In this business for almost 30 years. And. So at the time I started. All my children, I have six children and they’re all all younger. Over time, as I operated the business, those children continued to grow. So now I’m in my sixties. And those small children are adults. And so I got to the point where I figured. I really want to pass this business to my children and. Fortunately, two of my sons agreed with that idea. So now we work together. So a lot of the coaching that I do is my oldest son because he’s now in the coaching role. So all of the different managers and people that we work with the most directly interact with them. And so I’ve passed the baton in that sense. And I’ll give you this one example. Right now, we’re in a situation where we had to hire three new office managers, property managers. Because we have three openings, but we’re not sure who’s going to fill which role. And so he’s working with them, training them. And essentially coaching them to try to understand what are their strengths, what are their weaknesses, and how can we magnify what they do well in their role with our company. And at the same time, how can we help them overcome some of their weaknesses so that they can be successful. That’s what we want, is that when they leave our company, they’ll look back and say, Hey, I learned a lot about a lot of things during my time with this company, and they can go on and be successful in another pursuit. So long answer to your question. My oldest son now does that coaching. I’ve done a lot of coaching for him and now I like to hear him coach to see some of those things that stuck with him. And then another one of my sons. He came on board and really we didn’t have the background that we would normally hire. But it’s been great to see him take coaching and learning and now some of the things that might have been considered weaknesses for him are definite strengths. So I guess in summary, Sean, what I might say is my company doesn’t need me anymore. My sons have taken over.

Sean: You know, your sons work with you today and it’s such a delight to hear that. I hope that I’m blessed with that as well someday.