Steve Dils: I grew up in the sports world and I could see how people that work together for a common goal and everybody bought in, could be successful, so that's the mindset I come from. Tim Spiker: Business is very often a team sport. And it's up to us as leader to drive towards the culture that we want our teams to have. I'm your host, Tim Spiker. And this is the Be Worth* Following podcast, a production of the People Forward Network. On this show, we talk with exceptional leaders, thinkers, and researchers about what actually drives effective leadership across the globe and over time. You just heard from Steve Dils. Steve played quarterback at Stanford for the legendary football coach, Bill Walsh. He then went on to a 10 year career in the NFL. After football, Steve entered the business world through real estate. He's now a managing director and principal at Avison Young, a global commercial real estate organization that has grown from 40 million in revenue in 2009 to 1.5 billion in revenue in 2021. In this episode, Steve shares how his perspectives on leadership, teams and culture stem from lessons he learned during his athletic career. But long before Steve was playing in college and professionally, he had some important role models. His parents and his high school football coach. So let's start there. Steve Dils: I got started with my folks. My dad was an athlete as was my mom, but back in the day, the women didn't play organized sports. She loved it more than my dad did, but my dad played basketball, played volleyball. His dad was an all-conference football player way back in the '20 at Washington State. So I grew up around sports, but more importantly, they both came from really good families. And I grew up in the town where my mom grew up, which was a relatively small town in the state of Washington. And be being a good athlete in a small town where you've got a history, people can attribute a lot to you, give you a pass on certain things they wouldn't others. And my parents, the one thing they always said is, "It's not all about you." It wasn't that it wasn't any about me, but it's not all about you. Steve Dils: And I think that's probably the best thing they ever taught me when I was growing up. And it was to keep me humble, but it also kind of forced me to look at things about how can I help others or is what I'm doing impacting others. Right? I think it's a lot of why I ended up playing football ball as opposed to the other sports, the one I probably was most gifted at, but I liked it the most because it was a team game and the position I played, I had to know what everybody's doing and I had to lead them and get them to accomplish the goal of moving the ball down the field, getting in the zone and winning games, that kind of thing. So what they taught me was very applicable to what I did in sports. And then as I've gotten into business, it's probably even more important. Tim Spiker: They shared with you, it's not all about you. And I love your distinction there. That's not that I don't matter. I'm a part of the equation, but it's certainly not all about you. So as you move on, who are some other folks that have had influence in your life from a leadership standpoint? Steve Dils: Yeah, I would tell you, both of them were head football coaches. My high school football coach was way ahead of his time. We threw the ball back when nobody else threw the ball, we had hot reads, but that's not what I remember about him. What I remember was how he held people accountable, and he held me accountable and he was all about team. And as a result, we were really good every year I was there. But it was also his willingness to give me responsibility. Sophomore year, we had a senior who hadn't played quarterback the previous year, they'd had a senior who'd graduated, and I figured I'd back him up. And the week of the first game, he said, "I'm moving Dave, it was Dave Spicer, to running back. You're going to be our quarterback. And here we go." And so first game, sophomore year, I'm starting. And from then on, he's letting me call the plays. He's never second guessed me, always had me prepared. And so that was impactful. Steve Dils: And then the next one is the one who really changed my life, and that's Bill Walsh. And in so many ways. I could go on for hours, how he changed my life, allowed me to play pro football. But as I've retired from football and been in business, I've used what I watched and learned from Bill so often in how I try and lead in whatever situation I am in. And I've been fortunate enough to be put in leadership positions for quite a while now, and watching what Bill did and the way he went about leading a team, setting a vision, being positive, never telling you what you couldn't do, telling what you could do, helping you try and peek around the corner a little bit, he helped everybody understand how they fit into the team, all those things were so important in my development as a player and as a leader. Tim Spiker: Tell me, just so we can have it on record, your high school coach's name. Steve Dils: Kerry Boggs. Tim Spiker: So we'll come back to coach Walsh in just a second, we'll have some more conversation about him, but before, I don't want to skip past Kerry too quickly, this idea of holding people accountable is really interesting, and holding them accountable to good things. You can go into sports world, but you can go out of the sports world. We can take it to Avison Young. You've got your highest performers. You are the star athlete on your team, and yet coach Boggs was willing to hold you accountable alongside everybody else. And then, it didn't slip past me, you guys won some games. So as you think back on that, now we don't have to go fast forward into business, but I just feel like there's so many coaches today who just, they see talent and whatever the talent wants and needs, talent gets different rules than everybody else. And how that, in my opinion, and tell me if you agree, how that breaks down the team over time and how ultimately you don't achieve what you could have when you have people that are catering to talent, but not holding people accountable to good things. Steve Dils: It's one of the keys to the way I manage and what I believe. I saw it in teams where if you allowed the superstar to get way with things, some people say, well, that's just the way it's got to be, we're in a superstar sport, but when you let that happen, you start losing the locker room, in my opinion. And I see it just as much, if not more, in business. In our world, revenue is king. And there are some superstars out there, and there are a lot of places where they get a lot away with really bad behavior because they are those producers. That's one of the things I love about Avison Young is we've backed it up corporately. We've fired a top producer, or a close to top producer, when, because of their revenue production, they started thinking the rules don't apply. Steve Dils: And what we do is we go in and say, we appreciate all the work you've done for us, but now you got to go do it somewhere else. And that gets people's attention. And I've had to do that here. Not necessarily with producers, but you can have people who treat people poorly. I don't allow that. I give them second chances. I try and help them. I've got them coaching. I've done that thing, but I've, ultimately, I've let people go. And you can look in the NFL today and you can pick out a lot of teams where they've made compromises because, oh, somebody got hurt, we got to bring in this guy. We know he is a bad actor, but then they start doing stuff and it ruins a locker room, in my opinion. Tim Spiker: And if you believe in culture, if you believe in how one person impacts another, then that's an awfully important thing. Not only in a football locker room, but also in any organization. Steve Dils: Yeah. And I'll give you an example. When I was with the Rams, and I won't use names, but we had a young receiving corps, and we had one guy who had a lot of notoriety, because he'd been a track star and he'd worked hard in track, but he was not a hard worker on the field. And he dragged the other young people down. When they finally moved on from him, all of a sudden, the guys who were kind of goofing around, not really practicing hard, all of a sudden they did, made a big difference. Anytime you talk to anybody that played for the 9ers, when Walsh was coaching and Montana was there and Rice and all those guys, those key people, Ronnie Lott, set the tone. And the coaches never had to say anything because their superstars with the hardest workers on the team. And that's the kind of culture you want where it doesn't have to come from the head coach or the managing director or whoever it's. Tim Spiker: Let's talk a little bit more before we get to present day Avison Young, let's talk a little bit more about coach Walsh. So many people are familiar with Bill Walsh, the persona, they know of his success, but you obviously have a very different experience than most people having been knee to knee with him as your coach. So talk a little bit more if you could, about that experience of following coach Walsh up close and personal. Steve Dils: Wow. There's so much. One of the things I loved about him, and I still remember the first few meetings, is he was setting the vision of where he thought we could go. Then he kind of backed off from that. And then when we went to practice and stuff, it was all about the detail spin. It was all about the process. And to the accountability point is, just completing a pass was not good enough. He was looking for excellence. So I'd throw the first pass. First time I've run this play. I throw it. And he goes, "No, I want a little more air under the ball." So I throw the next one. He goes, "No, that's too much." And I throw the third one and I complete it and he goes, "That's what I want. Now do it again. Now do it again." And we got to the point where the ball never touched the ground and it was all in the details and you never took a play off, you never took a rep off. And so there was that part of it. Steve Dils: And then I think when he was explaining a play, he did it differently than any other coach ever had, where it wasn't just where your position went, it was, he would do it in front of the whole team and he would explain why the guards were important to this, why the fullback faking a run play, why it mattered, how it impacted the defense. And it helped because everybody understood why, what they were doing every day and practicing the game mattered. The other thing, kind of peeking over the horizon type thing, the first game we played was in Boulder, Colorado. And he said, "Don't panic if we don't score," he says, "We will score, but it may not happen right away. Don't panic." And sure enough at halftime it was 21, nothing. We hadn't scored. He came in, made adjustments. We went out and scored 24 points in the second half. We ended up losing, I think by three, but just having the fact that he had said that ahead of time. Steve Dils: Another game, the first game I started in college, he said at some point, somebody's going to have to make a big play for us to win. And sure enough, wide receiver made one big play. I made a big play. We beat UCLA in the last 18 seconds of the game. And so the credibility he had because he could see over the horizon. And he did that because he was, I think, because he was prepared. And they used to kind of call him the genius. And sometimes people were saying it in a derogatory way, but he really was a genius when it came to football and how to put a team together and how to guide them. Tim Spiker: I want to go into one more aspect of coach Walsh here, because I think it's really interesting what you're unpacking here. You're talking about somebody who had abilities to see around corners and was willing to communicate that with his team. And you're talking about somebody who really emphasized that the details were important. I'm wondering, how did coach Walsh, how did he thread the needle there where the standard didn't come down? The standard is just that amount of air under the ball and do that over and over again, without necessarily wearing people out to the extent they were just like, "I'm sick of this guy, I don't want to do... I want to... This isn't fun. I'm going to go somewhere else. I don't want to do this." Steve Dils: That's a hard one for me, because I never viewed it that way. I guess it was because you knew he was making you better. I was a guy who, before he got there, I'd had success as a freshman, I'd freshman football player of the year, but then I sat for two years watching, nobody had any big thoughts I was going to be a superstar. And once he came in and we started doing things, I could see how much better I was getting and I could see how much better everybody was getting. Forget about me. There's a guy named James Lofton that was on the team. James is in the NFL Hall of Fame right now. Steve Dils: James had in three years before Bill got there had caught 12 passes. And he, unbelievable athlete, but nobody had coached him. He led the league in receiving, his senior year, first round draft pick in the NFL and now Hall of Famer. If not for Bill Walsh, who knows what would've happened with James. But I don't ever remember hearing anybody complain about the details because it was done in a way that this is going to make us better and this works. Tim Spiker: All right. Well, let's jump forward. You come out of the NFL, and we may have to just frame this a little bit for people, the NFL then is not exactly the same as the NFL today. Is that a fair statement? Steve Dils: The game is the same, but the money... The money's the biggest difference. Tim Spiker: So you didn't finish an NFL career like, oh, I never have to work another day in my life. You were, in fact, you were preparing for your current career while you were playing in NFL. Share a little bit about that. Steve Dils: So yeah, after my first year, I didn't know how long I was going to play. And when the season was over, they had a team meeting, they shook your hand and say stay in shape, we'll see at mini camp. So I'd go back to Palo Alto. And I don't do well without something to do. So I called up some alums and got meetings with them and just went and said, "What do you do? I'm trying to figure out what I'd do either next year when I get cut or when I get done playing 10 years from now." And I talked to people that made nuclear power plants, highly purified water for the chip industry, a lot of things, but the two guys that got my attention were developers, and both of them were very successful. And I said, "I want to do what you do," and they said, "Well, you can't do that in the off season, but what you can do, is you can get a real estate license and you can become a broker," and I said, "Okay, I can do that." Steve Dils: So the next year I went back, got a real estate license, started working as a broker for a regional firm. And then the next year, ended up getting injured during the season, decided to stay in Minneapolis and found a developer who did some brokerage as well. And he hired me and I did that for three years with him. And then, then things started to change. I got traded to the Rams and the football world became a full-time job. So I did work one more off season before my last, I kind of convinced Rams that, look, I'll stay in shape. I'll come when you have mini camp stuff, but I don't need to be here every day watching film that I've seen a million times. Steve Dils: So I worked for a developer that was building a housing and a golf course development. And so I was selling home sites and country club memberships, which was great experience and I loved it. So then played my 10th year, actually it wasn't with Rams, I got traded out to Atlanta in '88. Finished up, figured 10 years was good. Went to work for a developer, leasing their space and never looked back. Tim Spiker: At what point did you come in and become the leader of the Atlanta office for Avison Young? Steve Dils: January 2010. Tim Spiker: For folks who may be uninitiated to Avison Young, talk a little bit about the organization as a whole, and then we're going to dig into some of the things that you do there to lead this Atlanta practice. Steve Dils: Sure. So Avison Young has been in the U.S. now since 2009. I opened the office here in 2010. We were the third office in the U.S. 17th office total, $40 million in revenue. Fast forward to 2021, we're well over billion dollars in revenue. We're the largest privately held real estate services firm in the world. And we've got 5500 employees. When I joined, we had 300, give or take. So it's been a pretty dramatic ride and been a lot of fun, but it's been fueled by a little different vision than our competitors. We do a lot all the same things, but I think the biggest differentiator, as it were, the majority of the firm, I think it's 78% is owned by the principals of the firm. Tim Spiker: If somebody were to say, well, how do you think that makes the organization think and operate differently due to that ownership structure? Steve Dils: It drives completely different behaviors. Everybody says compensation drives behavior. For us, because we're owners of the firm, we think about it on a long term basis, not just a transactional basis. And when you're dealing, one of the things that is always a point of friction among real estate services firms, if you're dealing with a broker in LA and I'm a broker in Atlanta and I've got a deal that's done there, there's always a lot of back and forth about who gets how much of the commission when it eventually gets done. We don't have that because you're dealing with partner to partner as opposed to just broker independent contractor to independent contractor, and it really does drive different behaviors. Tim Spiker: So you have a little bit more of a, it's all a contribution to the whole of the team mentality. Steve Dils: Yeah. Because we own stock and the stock's done very well over the last 10 plus years. And while it's not a... we don't make distributions right now because we view ourselves as a growth stock, we reinvest that much, but ultimately it will accrue to the partners and benefit us. Tim Spiker: Well, one of the things I'm able to do because of my engineering degree is I can do the math and say that a billion is a lot more than 40 million. So I put my college degree and my graduate business degree really to good use right there where I can identify that there's a pretty big difference there. In fact, it's more than 20 times different. Steve Dils: I'm glad I can't get anything by you. Tim Spiker: Yeah. No, no. You cannot sneak that past me. All right. As you're leading the Atlanta office, one of the things that you and I had a chance to talk about previously was culture and that you look at yourself as a caretaker for the culture. So I'm interested in what that looks like for you, and why do you see something like caretaking the culture, why do you see that as such an important role from a leadership perspective? Steve Dils: First of all, I grew up in the sports world and I could see how people that worked together for a common goal and everybody bought in could be successful. So, that's the mindset I come from. One of the reasons I came to Avison Young is, I told you how long we've been in the U.S., which is since 2009, but we've been in Canada for 30 years more than that. And I don't know if you know many Canadians, but they're probably the nicest people on the planet. And one of the things they prided themselves on in Canada was their culture, that it was collaborative, that there was respect for people, those kind of things. And when they turned it over to the CEO, when he came on board and said, "I think we can grow this and make this bigger," they said, "Okay, we're going to trust you, just don't screw up our culture." Steve Dils: And so Mark Rose, our CEO and I were on the same page with that when he came and asked me to open this office. And I do believe I've got a real advantage this time around. I've been in other offices where there were ongoing concerns and I came in and tried to develop the culture the way I thought it should be. This one, I get to... I handpicked everybody that works for me, pretty much. And we've done a pretty good job. Like I said earlier, we've had to let some people go that were not behaving in the way that I thought was appropriate for our culture. We've had some employees leave, then they call and they call one of the managers to say, "Uh, I didn't realize how good it was. Any chance I could come back?" Because Avison Young's culture in Atlanta really is different. Steve Dils: And it goes back to what I was talking about Bill. I want people to feel respected. I want them to know that what they're doing matters. I spend a lot of time trying do that. We've got an event we call victory of the quarter that we do four times a year. And what it is is we have teammates nominate other teammates for going above and beyond, and they describe what they do. And what we get out of that is getting everybody together, first of all, gives me the chance to talk about what's going on with the firm. Then I get to recognize people that have gone above and beyond. And oftentimes the brokers hardly ever get nominated. Who gets nominated are my property managers, my engineers, my accountants. And I say, my they're our, and I get to recognize them and we give them the nominations to hang to them. And I say, put these up on the wall. And when you're having a bad day, read them because they'll make you feel a whole lot better. Steve Dils: And the other thing it does that I really like is it, without even having to mention it, people realize that other people are watching what they're doing and it breeds that accountability part. And, why didn't I get nominated, without having to get on somebody? And this is a little bit roundabout trying to get to your question, but to me, when we're we're profitable and all those kind of things, but to do it just for profitability's sake, isn't a firm I want to work for. I want to work in a firm where I respect the people I work for. I learn from them and I also can help people further their careers. Steve Dils: The head of my property management, she was part of an acquisition we did. She was a general manager in a building. We saw she had talent, kept encouraging her, helping her. She became... ran the office part. And all of a sudden now she's running all the property management and she's a principal in the firm, and she's an African American woman who bought in wholly to the culture. And she is a superstar. But those are the things that get me excited and I am proud of that we've been able to do here in Atlanta. Tim Spiker: What would you say to somebody, Steve, who would say, well, that's a nice, I mean, nice story, and this idea of collaboration, that's cute, but we're really, it's about the results that are produced. And so this other stuff is fine for you, but I don't see it as necessary as long as we're hitting the numbers that we set out to hit. When you think about leadership in business, what would you say to somebody who would have a response like that? Steve Dils: I would say, I think it's probably possible to be successful and not have a culture that is like the one I describe, but I would also point to both Atlanta, but I'd point to Avison Young as a whole. I'm not an outlier. I'm not the only one that is doing this in our deal. And like you said, we've gone from 40 million to 1.5 billion in 11 years, 12 years, and have maintained the culture. And it's very possible. Those are good numbers, and- Tim Spiker: Hold on. Steve Dils: It works. Tim Spiker: Hold on. Those are good numbers. You're going to get, you're going to get the understatement of the year award on that one. Yes, those are, that's a pretty good 11 year growth, 40 million to 1.5 billion. Yes. Steve Dils: And let me go back and just talk about leadership. I heard quote a little while ago that, if it's not about others, you aren't really a leader, even though you may be in "a leadership position". And I always listened to, and this will kind of answer, can you do it on a larger scale to Frank Blake, who was the CEO of Home Depot, and he talked out an inverted pyramid where he was at the bottom and the customers and their associates were at the top, and all the things I'm talking about, he was doing. I'm going, wow, I guess I'm doing something right, because he's talking about it. And he was fourfold or something like that, the market cap of Home Depot improve when he took over from Bob Nardelli. And so, can you do it without doing that? Yeah. But is that a place everybody wants to work? I don't think so. I think, why can't you have a good culture and be profitable? Tim Spiker: So let's talk about, depending on how you want to count, were nine to 12 months in this thing that's currently being referred to as the great resignation, as organizations across the U.S. and in other parts of the world as well are having a very difficult time holding on to employees. So as we look at this pretty amazing growth that that Avison Young has experienced over the last 11, 12 years, talk to us a little bit about what retention and turnover has been like for you in the Atlanta office. Steve Dils: Honestly, we've grown. We've had very few people leave. I'm trying to think if we've had anybody leave, honestly. I really don't. I can't think of it. I'm sure there are other offices, but for Atlanta, I don't think we have. And part of it is I think because they like the people they work with, we have been flexible, we changed our policy. We used to be five days a week in the office, that kind of thing, we're now three days you need to be in the office, too, on your own with flexible hours, those kind of things. So they can see that they can have a job that they like and still have a life and adjust it. Tim Spiker: I think it's amazing, Steve, that when I ask you that question, you struggle to answer it because you're trying to think if you've even had a single loss in this space of time. I can promise you that there are many peers of yours across the globe who do not have to wonder whether or not they have lost people during this time. And I think it's a Testament to the culture that you're building there, that we could be in a moment when people are massively exiting their current jobs and you're having trouble thinking if there's even been one. I think that that speaks to the culture that you're building. Steve Dils: I hope so. One of the things I'm a big believer in, too, is, yeah, I was the first one here and yes this is what I kind of think an office should be run like, but I've got a lot of managers, I've got five direct reports that help me reinforce this. And then now on top of that, that's not counting the principals who are part of the firm that do it every day as well. It can't just be coming from one person it's got to be coming from... buy-in from everybody. Tim Spiker: That makes sense, especially as you're talking about culture. All right. A couple things for us to touch base on here before we wrap up. And one of them is, we're going to be in the weeds here a little bit, in the nuts of bolts of action, but one of the things that people are often asking of us is give me examples. Give me examples. I understand the principal would give me the example. In this case, one of the things that you do is you hold weekly meetings with your leaders. Talk a little bit about why you do that. And what do you think is critical to communicate, interact with your leaders on a weekly basis? Steve Dils: There's a number of things. The first thing is what I'm looking for from them is what's going on in the office. I want to know if there are issues out there, are there people that are underperforming? Are there people that are unhappy, are the people that are going through divorce or sickness? Other things. Because we need to know about that. The next thing is that I'm communicating what's going on at the firm globally. What's coming down from corporate, if you will. And then, it gives me an opportunity to say, hey, I'm seeing this. Is it just me? Or is it something else that's going on? And if so, what are we going to do about it? Steve Dils: And going back to victory, the quarter, I ask them, is it still working? Is this something we should be doing? Should I change it up? I don't want to just assume things. I want to hear feedback from them. And that's where we do that. They started out, gosh, they were half hour meetings and now they're going an hour because we all enjoy it so much and we come there prepared to talk about- Tim Spiker: Hold on. You just talked about people enjoying meetings and I'm just processing that. Sorry to interrupt, but there's smoke coming out of my ears because my brain is having trouble doing the comp. You just said the meeting went from a half an hour to an hour because people were enjoy... What on earth were they enjoying? Steve Dils: It's camaraderie. It's... I guess you think I'm crazy. I don't know. It's something they get there early for and we've got to shut it down after an hour because they've got another meeting that's coming into the room and they've got to be in. And if we aren't able to have them, if I'm traveling or something, we all miss it. Tim Spiker: Again, I'm going to go back to a data point about not being able to identify losses in personnel during this crazy time. No, I don't think you're crazy. I think you're doing something very, very effectively. You also utilize an idea called management by walking around. Now, a lot of folks may have heard of this previously, but I want to dig into it a little bit. What does that ultimately mean to you and what does that look like for you? Steve Dils: I've been trying to think about whether it's just a generational thing or whether it's just the way I'm wired or what, but it's definitely a differentiator, I think. And I'm lucky in that in Atlanta I've got three offices. Some of my counterparts across the country will have five or six offices and they end up having a lot of principal meetings. We don't do it all that often. We do it once a quarter. And it's not because I don't want to do it. They've kind of communicated to me, my fellow partners, that they don't necessarily need it. And it's because I believe I'm always walking around, sitting down, tell me about the deal you're working on. What about this? Steve Dils: My way of communicating is it's, first and foremost, I always want to do it face to face. If I can't do that, I'm going to do it on the phone. The last choice I want is email, because I really don't like communicating through email. I think there's a lot that gets lost. And so what it allows me to do is update people and get updated and have a good feel for what's going on in the office on a daily basis. I don't have to wait for a biweekly or monthly partners meeting to find out what's going on. Tim Spiker: I want to make sure if there was anything that you wanted to expand on or something else that you wanted to touch on before we wrap up here. Steve Dils: I think there's a couple things as a leader that I think are important. One, it goes to who not what that you guys talk about is, is character counts. And I think having behaved in a professional, ethical manner my entire career in Atlanta when I started this office, and it was just me, I got a lot of people were more than willing to sit down and talk with me. Doesn't mean I hired all of them and stuff, but they were willing to do that. And I think if you asked the people that work with me here, they would say I'm consistent. I don't behave one way in front of them and another behind closed doors. The other one is, and this kind of goes back to part of it's not all about you, is I try and listen more than I talk and really hear what people are saying. And I always try and think about where are they coming from? That's one thing I think a lot of people don't do in leadership. They hear something, but they don't try and put it in perspective of where that person is coming from. Steve Dils: And then the last one is just being visible. When I took over at the company I worked at before Avison Young, the guy who was running it before me, his office was way down at the end, away from everybody. He didn't want to be near anybody, I guess. And when they said, "Well, here's your office," I said, "No, no, no. I'm not sitting there. I want to be right in the middle of people." And every office, I'm kind of at a fulcrum where people have to walk by me and then if they see me, they can talk to me or I can grab them. I want to be visible and them know that I am here and I'm fully engaged. So those are some things I think about leadership that I do think are important. Steve Dils: And then I guess the last thing would be that willingness to admit mistakes. I'm okay doing that. I'm a big believer in hiring people smarter than me, which isn't all that hard to do. And I don't say that humbly, I got a lot of really smart people working for me. But the willing to say I screwed up. I had a partner walk in my office. I had kind of commandeered a couple of his staff without talking to him because I was in a hurry and thought I could get it done, blah, blah. And he walks in, he goes, "What are you doing?" And I said, "Oh man, I apologize. I made a mistake. I should have come to you first before going to them." And he was kind of torqued up and he goes, "Oh, okay." Steve Dils: He was expecting me to push back, I think. And he said, "Everybody makes mistakes." He got up and walked out. Everything was fine. So if I'd kind of bowed up, said, "Well, look..." I got it. I'm the boss. I could have done this. And it wouldn't have played nearly as well. So those are just some other got principles that I use as I kind of go through each and every day. Tim Spiker: All right. There's a couple things in particular that I want to point out as we wrap up our conversation with Steve Dils. First, I want to start with the word accountability. Steve told early on the story of his high school football coach, Kerry Boggs, and then he went on to talk about his college coach, the very famous Bill Walsh. And the idea of accountability came up with both of them. This idea that even the highest performers must be held accountable to the standards of the organization. Steve went on to say that he sees that as an issue, even more so in business than he did in athletics. And the idea of what happens when the rules don't apply to everybody. And in Steve's terms, in football terms, it was you lose the locker room. What happens to the culture when there's a different set of rules for people who produce the big numbers? And you heard embedded in that idea of how important the culture is, but we have to ask ourselves what is the key to a leader being able to hold even superstars accountable? Tim Spiker: And I think it begins with a simple word that we've all heard before that starts with a letter C, and that's courage. We have to have the courage to hold high performers accountable. Attached to that is the belief is that we're building an enterprise that's going to be more capable if we are all pitching into the fullest of our ability, and we lose that when we see that the rules for high performers don't apply to everybody else. So I think the aspect of who we are that allows us as leaders to hold the line on accountability, even with our greatest performers, is courage. And Steve shared the story of that from both Kerry Boggs and Bill Walsh. Tim Spiker: I also want to pause and take a little time on another idea that Steve first shared that was given to him by his parents, but you heard it carried throughout his story. And it's that idea of, it's not all about me. When you're a high performer, as Steve has been his entire career, then we're tempted at times to think that maybe it is all about me, but what you here in that is, I matter, it's just not all about me. And there are two things that really show up in that that are attached to who we are as leaders. The first part, obviously, if it's not all about me, then it's got to be about other people and it can't be this real egocentric thing. In other words, I have to be others-focused in order to see this for what it really is. But there's another part to, it's not all about me on the inwardly sound side of things. So it's not all about me, but a little bit of it is about me. And it's a little bit about the responsibility that I have to bring to the table. Tim Spiker: And so you see this, this balance of being inwardly sound and others-focused that sit behind that idea. And so when I ask Steve to, when we started to talk about some real examples in the workplace, we had some conversation about the weekly meeting that he's having with his leaders. And as he invites them into developing the culture of Avison Young, you can see he's setting the pace, he's setting the terms, he's saying, "Here's where we're going," but he's also inviting them to participate in the solution. And that's really important because here's a question I think that might scare some of us when we pause to think about it. And that is, if I'm passionate about developing a really high performance and positively effective culture, what happens when I'm not in the room? What happens when I'm not there to set the pace? Does the culture still move forward? Tim Spiker: And so as Steve has these weekly meetings, I'm thinking about the people that report to him and he's inviting them into the problems that they're trying to manage from a cultural standpoint so that when Steve's not in the room, that the culture's still moving forward. So he bears that responsibility from the inwardly sound side, but he sees others to bring them into the problem so that it can be about them as well. He creates a more effective organization because other people are carrying the banner of the culture as well. So as we wrap up, here's a question to think about. How am I as a leader, making our organization more about others and not just about myself? Tim Spiker: I'm Tim Spiker, reminding you to be worth following. And follow us wherever you engage with your podcasts. If you've heard something valuable today, please share our podcast with your colleagues and friends. And if you're up for it, leave us a five star review. Thanks for listening.