Tish Squillaro 0:00

Hi everyone, Tish Guilero for Canada with Tish. As you know, I have wonderful guests come on and join me for a very casual but effective conversation on leadership, leading teams, building businesses, scaling challenges, growing pains. And today's guest is Dr. Kevin Rendal, CEO and co-founder of Vimosity, where he helps trade leaders build strong, safe, and resilient workforces. He was formerly with the U.S. Olympic sports medicine team, which is very exciting. I'd love to hear all those stories. And he's bringing all of that knowledge of the core discipline around athletes to the workplace. He has his own podcast, which somebody hopefully will invite me on, which is called Work Ready Podcast. And Kevin, welcome. Welcome to our little conversation about leadership and teams. If there's anything else you'd like to share that I've missed, a fun fact about your background, please do so right now.

Kevin Rindal 0:56

No, you did a great job, Tasha. Thanks so much for inviting me on the show.

Tish Squillaro 1:00

We're excited to have you. I I do think, and I said this pre-R conversation, when I'm working with individual leaders, a lot of the former athletes always have that transition of the workplace communication style. They come from very disciplined, structured, and very, very resilient sort of way of getting stuff done. They usually have big voices and very much in charge. And then you have to learn how to collaborate and work with others. So I'd love to get your first thought on that as you bring this into workplaces, that mentality of knowing what's it like to get athletes ready for the Olympics or any sort of sport. Do you see the same thing with a transformation on how they communicate and have to engage with others?

Kevin Rindal 1:44

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that what I've noticed the most is that it's just getting the workforce to acknowledge that they are athletes and that they deserve the same treatment as professional athletes. I mean, when you think about a professional athlete, most of them maybe train four to six hours every single day and they focus so much on recovery and the maintenance and all those other things. But a workforce athlete, they may work 10 to 12, sometimes 18 hours a day. And so they need those same skills. And when it comes to communication, I've just found that it's so important that, again, from the leadership all the way down to the field-based workers, that they do communicate like they are athletes and that they need to maintain their bodies, they need to focus on recovery, they need to focus on preparation and use those same, same strategies.

Tish Squillaro 2:36

Give me an example because I do think it's terminology that's probably new to the workplace, recovery, sustain. I mean, I do think today everyone pushes performance and moving quick to get things executed, right? So can you give me an example of what it's like when you get involved and how you're helping a company scale with a healthy mindset and mentality to performing?

Kevin Rindal 2:58

Yeah, absolutely. Because a lot of the companies that we work with are construction companies, utility companies, energy companies. And so there's always this tension between operations and productivity and getting stuff done, but then also the safety of the job. And what's really fascinating to me, and this was one of the things that I stood out to me the most when I first started working with these companies, is that the individual workers, they would never think about going out on a job site without ensuring that their tools were ready for operation. They maintain them, they take care of their vehicles, they take care of their tools so that they can operate effectively and safely. But when it comes to their own bodies, they they weren't thinking that same way. And so they'll just go out there and you know work 10, 12 hours a day and then just go and do it all over again and put very little thought into their recovery in their own maintenance. But I mean, you're you're not gonna cut down a tree with a dull chainsaw. But again, I think a lot of people just approach their work not thinking about their body as their most important tool. So I think that that's the big shift that we're really trying to make, both from the operations perspective and the frontline worker perspective of your body is your most important tool and you have to maintain it. And sometimes that's slowing down and it's taking a few extra minutes to do a warm-up or do recovery or focus on hydration, get good nutrition so that you have that fuel to be able to perform your job at your best of the best of your ability.

Tish Squillaro 4:28

So, with that, having and again, I'm not sure if the work remote for met for what your businesses are like, they're probably more in the office, less remote, correct? I would say they're probably more in the fields or the factories or the manufacturing plants, they're more hands-on. Absolutely. Am I correct with that? Okay. So burnout. I mean, I believe that someone doesn't realize they're burned out until after they're burned out. So how do we, you know, get ahead of it? Like what would be signs? So any of our listeners now, right? You've got leadership teams, you've got plant managers on the floor, you've got workers on different areas across the business, some machinery, some maybe more just organizational design. What are the things, the top two things you'll look for to give someone guidance about when they see burnout coming for someone?

Kevin Rindal 5:18

Yeah, I think it's it's a general awareness of the organization. So we talk about workforce readiness, and there are three categories. There's the physical readiness, which is again, is my body prepared to perform that job task? There's mental readiness, and then there's the you know, the operational readiness. And I think sometimes we disassociate those three from each other. But I mean, let's say that I'm a worker and I have chronic pain, that's going to start to wear on me mentally just as much as it is physically. And so there may be things that are chipping away at that readiness that I'm not aware of. And so I may have, you know, someone on my team who has to go home every night and take medication just to get through the pain. Or, I mean, we work in an industry where a lot of people are drinking a six-pack of beer every night just to deal with the pain and then they show up the next day. So I think a lot of it is just understanding the physical and the mental aspects of the job and checking in with your crews and making sure that you're giving them the tools, the time, the resources to actually be able to take care of themselves because especially in the area of work that we deal with, there's just that gridded out mentality where you don't talk about it, you don't talk about your feelings, you don't talk about emotions, and you just show up to work and do the job. And so what I'm seeing is a big shift that we're starting to have open and transparent conversations with frontline workers to help them, you know, speak up when they are feeling like they're getting burnt out.

Tish Squillaro 6:46

No, and it's a good point with speaking, just talking about it. I've had the luxury of working with a variety of manufacturing plants. I can't say it's always one of my industries, but the few that I have had a chance to work with always were very real people who are willing to tell you what's happening if you ask them. And I found many times leadership didn't always ask because they didn't want to know. So how would you contend with that when you're brought in to have those conversations? Is it the leaders who are having the conversations or are you having the conversations? Because I do think that's a big part of the freedom and lack of fear to share that they are in pain or that things are upsetting them, or there's stress. I mean, it doesn't even have to be a physical element, it could be just the job is stressful and a lot is on the line. So when you go home at night, you take the stress with you.

Kevin Rindal 7:38

Yeah, and I think there's almost like this taboo like you don't we instruct leaders not to ask people about those things because it's like we want to keep this separate from working from home. We don't want to get into to those personal aspects. But man, I've you know been fortunate to to work with hundreds of businesses and see, you know, leaders in all different sectors. And the leaders that I've seen who are the best, they know their workers by name. They're they're getting to know them, they're you know, asking them about their kids, they're asking them about you know their hobbies. And I think when you start to put a name to the face and you care about your team members in that different way, and you live out that brothers and sister keeper type mentality, it completely changes because then you can have a conversation with someone and say, hey, notice that things seem a little bit off today. If you want to, I'm more than welcome to to talk to you about that. And it's it's never an obligation, but it at least that person knows that somebody notices them and that they care and that they want to do something about that. And I think that as leaders, it's so important that we we pay attention to the details and treat people as individuals rather than a number.

Tish Squillaro 8:53

No, and I and I think with AI, I don't know if you have any of that implemented, but I would imagine as an operating model, AI is going to be integrated to make people's life easier, maybe less stressful. But I think there's a still stress element around AI because there is this image of AA replacing human bodies. And I recall working with a couple of the manufacturing plants, even just automating, forget AI, it was less sophisticated. It was just automation, doing things a little differently, not on a a clipboard, but actually getting a technology was always very frightening for people in those roles because they thought they were being eliminated. How are you seeing AI in the manufacturing world, in these facilities, you know, where stress of that might be an element of what's making it very hard for them to sustain the day because their attitude changes, right? You know, if someone's afraid or someone's unhappy or or even not sure, they may change the way they communicate to others.

Kevin Rindal 9:54

Absolutely. I don't work as much in the manufacturing world. And I I do think that, you know, the automation with AI is gonna definitely change manufacturing. But in construction and utilities and energy, I mean, there is so much work to be done over the next 10 years. Like we don't even have the workforce to do it. I mean, we're short hundreds of thousands of workers to actually complete that work. And so if anything, I think what we're gonna see over the next 10 years is we're seeing this construction boom with the data centers and increased energy production. And we're gonna need people to do those jobs. And hopefully what I see AI as doing is making us more efficient in our day-to-day tasks so that we're not spending as much time doing those monotonous uh jobs. I mean, think about how much it helps us with like spreadsheet type, you know, problems and things like that. And we can actually take time to invest in the actual people and see them as humans and really important parts of our team and the entire infrastructure. So again, I think we're gonna move to greater automation, but hopefully the in-person relationship aspect becomes a deeper and more important part of the businesses that we have.

Tish Squillaro 11:05

And then it should, right? I think a lot of industries should not write off too quickly that the human factor, the human human strategy as a performance mechanism probably won't be gone for a long time. I not in our lifetime, right? I still think we need people to be driving forward, but you want them to be more efficient and effective and maybe less tedious work. So what I have seen AI do in a lot of other industries is just become a great way to organize and create shorter timelines around maybe producing an output, but you still have to have someone review it. Now, in your field, my son actually is in in oil and gas in Dallas. So he's a rising senior, that's his focus. And you're right, that they have a lot of future work to get done. There's just so much land and so many areas that they have to scale up because it's become now a necessity to get these types of businesses ramped up. So, with that, as you see this kind of growth, how are you supporting companies to bring the right teams together? What is your what is your framework that you use?

Kevin Rindal 12:13

Yeah, so again, I I think that human capital is going to be an important part of that entire equation. And you need to have people who what we call it work-ready, you know, they're physically, mentally, and operationally able to perform that that job task. And so what we're focused on is it's like every professional sports team, they're trying to optimize the athletes that are on their team so that they can perform at the highest level. We we have to do that same thing when it comes to the workforce. We focus a lot on injury prevention. And injuries are one of the number one things that keeps people out of the job. I mean, if if you strain your back, hurt your shoulder, that could take you out of work for a couple months. And now, now there's a a gap, and you have to try to fill that with an already short staffed uh model. And so we really believe that optimizing the human component is going to be a big a big part of the equation for this, uh, the future.

Tish Squillaro 13:10

And knowledge, right? Because if that person's out for a couple months, oh yeah, they may have a lot of knowledge that's not written down somewhere. And now what? Because I do think from my, you know, time with you know, industries that really need the right people's knowledge, it's not so simple to replace. When someone goes on vacation, it's like, oh my God. Imagine they're out longer. So I can I can imagine injury prevention. What about the mental state? Like when I'm engaged, I like to give people tools to be able to utilize their minds more relevant to what they need to know, right? So I use tools to help people communicate more effectively, digest information that doesn't have to be overly dramatized, engage in difficult conversations that don't have to create friction. So that's a lot of what I would bring in. When you say the mental side, is that a very similar thing or are you working on something else?

Kevin Rindal 14:02

Yeah, that's that's a part of it. I mean, again, we're talking about crews. So for us, it may be a constructionist crew that's, you know, 40 people out in the field, and there's a foreman or a leader who has to bring those people together. And it it all comes down to communication. I mean, safety and good output is all based on your ability to communicate with uh team members and them to actually be able to perform that job safely. So when we're talking about the mental aspect, it's checking in with everyone, making sure that their heads are in the game, that they're ready to play. I mean, every sports team, you can see in people's eyes when you look at them, when you're huddled up, is this person ready to perform or not? And so that's that's what it takes. As a foreman, it takes the skill to be able to assess our team to make sure that they're ready, to identify any gaps, and then be able to communicate clearly what the what the mission is so that everyone's on the same page. And part of what we do as a business as well is we help scale the processes. So, like some of the job tasks that people perform on a regular basis. So, for instance, like a solar farm construction project, those are happening all over the United States. So, what we'll do with a team is we will actually send a team out to create video content of them performing those job tasks so that everybody's on the same page. So if you, you know, it started a whole a whole new project in Abilene, Texas, and you're getting people from Walmart who've never done a solar field, they can actually get these short modules, almost like a YouTube-style video where it's like 30 to two-minute clips of how to perform that job task, how to best position your body. And now you're scaling those best practices across an entire work group so people can get onboarded very, very quickly with the right skills.

Tish Squillaro 15:47

So give them the tools they need, but I do love the idea of giving them something they can keep looking at too. Like I do believe that people learn over time and they get good at it, like um, like their habits, right? It's like working out. Your muscles try something new, you're not going to be the best at it until you get it used to utilizing it and get stronger and stronger. So this sort of continuum of how you give people the tools both from uh safety as well as learning, right? They do have to learn how to do their job. And in it sounds like a lot of the clients you would have, there is a skill set in knowing how to do stuff. And sometimes you'll hire people outside that skill set doesn't mean they can't be trained. It's just you have to give them the training. You're not gonna, you know, hand them a book and say, hey, figure it out. A lot of the other industries, I must admit, when people get started, they say they jump from the firing pan into the fire. This would not be a good plan for the types of clients you have. There should be some more legitimate training and understanding of what you signed up to do and how to do it and how to do it.

Kevin Rindal 16:47

Exactly. And but the problem with traditional training is that you do an onboarding and it's a week long and you sit in these classrooms for hours on end and nobody retains that knowledge. I mean, you maybe retain the first five minutes of of that knowledge. So what we've done is we've basically have created a whole social media style platform where it's 30-second to 60-second modules. So let's say we want to teach somebody about hydration and working in 100 degree weather, which people are doing all day, every day. So we'll have like 10 different modules that get you know shown at the start of the day. So 30 seconds each day. So over the course of one to two weeks, people can learn all the strategies for how to, you know, stay safe in heat. And what we find is that people retain that a lot better. The content is, again, more social media style, which we know that people learn in those short bits. And so we found that that's actually been a really good strategy to build that workforce readiness and incorporate it into the workday so that it doesn't take too much time, but people can actually retain it.

Tish Squillaro 17:50

And it stays with them, right? Because they can keep going back and back and you know, test out, and it sounds like it's diverse. So not everybody is gonna hydrate and know how to hydrate or recognize where they need hydration the same way. So you want to try to hit as many audiences as you could. And so I have one one last question for you. You've worked in a ton of different trade and types, trade facility driven companies in different industries. When you first get there, can you tell right away if people are really gonna invest in their people or you're a check the box because I want to be able to say, well, we brought, you know, Kevin and his team on and he's gonna tell us all the things to do, but they're really not gonna be doing those things. So you really are just doing it while you're there. I mean, have you ever come across where it wasn't as genuine or they didn't even realize how lack of genuity it was that they were doing this planning?

Kevin Rindal 18:43

Yeah, I mean, even in the sales process before you even like sign a contract to to come and do work with people, you can start to tell, is this something that they're really gonna buy into, or is it something that they are just, you know, like you said, checking a box? And it depends on the stakeholder that you're working with right from the get-go. If it's someone who has very decision low decision-making capability, they're just gonna be the person who's gonna be implementing, but you know, from the executive level, they just were told that you know, this is something we need to focus on. So that leadership presence and the leadership investment in this, it says so much. And you can tell right away when leaders show up to an onboarding or when leaders start to participate in the meetings to, you know, plan the rollout. We know right away uh, you know, what the success is gonna be like. And the the success or failure of a program or an initiative always comes down to the leadership investment in engagement.

Tish Squillaro 19:40

And so one engagement is their presence. So be there and be committed to showing your face and being part of this decision that was made, that it was just made. So that would be one. What's another?

Kevin Rindal 19:52

Yeah, I think it's even comes back to like the mission and core values. Like if a company says, you know, safety is our core value, but then you look at them and they're like, we haven't had an injury in five years, like that's a disconnect because statistically, no organization has not had an injury in five years. They've just figured out ways to engineer the data so that it doesn't show up as an injury. Right. And so what I always see is that if if that mission, but then what you see on the the ground level of they're constantly learning, they're constantly trying to say, hey, we had these close calls, we don't want to see that happen again. They're proactive rather than just reactive to an injury that happens and trying to cover it up.

Tish Squillaro 20:38

Yeah, it's tough. I mean, I would say when I first uh step into an organization and there is a challenge, growing pains, right? Your yours is probably considered also a growing pain of some sort. When the CEO or founder or the leadership team is ready to tell me how everybody else is the problem and they're not, I immediately have to say, well, hold on a minute. Are you honestly thinking you don't play a part at all? That's the first step. You're you should be playing a part, right? So let me bring you into this. No nothing is ever completely not your fault, right? If if there's a group or there's a team, it's everybody. And so I'm aligned with even if it's not from the standpoint of the type of industry you're in, all industries, leadership needs to commit and then show up. And I do think that's step one. And then step two is communicate. I mean, I do find that communicating to the team, the staff, the groups, they need to understand what's coming and why they're doing it. And they need to understand what the steps are and they need to know why it's important for themselves. And I'm sure when you're in there, besides them being present, it's how they communicate about these things you're gonna be offering them to start to do. Because if you're having conversations about hydration and leaving the off you know, leaving the the business upset at night from either a pain you have in your body or the stress of this job that no one's listening, they have to hear that. That's that's part of their leadership and that's part of their values as a company. So communication to me would be also number two. So we're kind of aligned. I mean, I like that you bul you build elite performance teams. I don't want to steal that phrase because I do like that very much. That's great. Any parting words for those listeners out there that are managing businesses, and it doesn't even have to be in the same industry as you are. I do think your leadership skills you're talking about are leadership skills that are very relatable to other industries, but maybe something from your lens to build the elite group to perform with elite, you know, sort of performance metrics, because then everybody gets what they want. The person feels good about their job, the business gets that's good, the leaders managing them have a proud team that they support. What would you say on the top two things you do to kind of put that elite team together?

Kevin Rindal 22:56

Yeah, number one is just realize that your your current team is your greatest asset. And I think that we can't we can't say that enough. Like the team that you currently have, invest in them. They're uh a resource. That's who is gonna drive the productivity that you have. And when you invest in them, people will show up and that they'll be cared for. And number two is be curious and focus on getting to know individuals as individuals, and so that they can see from you that they're a valued portion of your team. And then again, goes back to what you talked about. If I were to say number three is focus on communication, clear communication is everything. And so if you can, you know, value your team, value them as individuals, and then communicate well, it's gonna be a successful organization. And people will know that in this day and age where AI seems to be taking over everything that they're valued. And that I think removes a lot of the fear that people have of am I gonna be replaced? Because they just they know that they're valued and and they'll show up and they'll perform at the highest level. The the top coaches that I've ever worked with in professional sports, those are the things that they did to every individual on the team. They realized that if they're gonna be successful, they needed to help their team rise to the occasion.

Tish Squillaro 24:15

And if it's the team, right? Because I would say if you don't think you have the team, then do something about that. That's that would always be step one, right? Absolutely. The second is that's the team that you're gonna bank on and support and be part of. Put them first and help them. I'm I'm I'm writing a third book called First Teams First. And it's really a roadmap for early young founders, CEOs who have never really put an executive team together. There's an art to it. There are things you want to know and boundaries, and you've highlighted what a lot of them were is put them first as the team. You're gonna support them. Make sure that as an individual you know them. I mean, how hard is that? But it's about relationship building, right? Which is why a lot of my programs talk about the relationship that you're building with trust and the ability to have conflict and you know, you hold each other accountable. That's the relationship. And the last is, you know, understand that your communication with them is what they're gonna actually take from what they're supposed to be doing. So if you're not creating the right atmosphere, then the whole company will not have that right atmosphere, right? The culture falls apart. And I I I do think that is the method I use. It sounds like Kevin, it's yours too. And thank you. I really do appreciate everyone, Dr. Kevin Rendal of Velocity and an amazing sort of groundwork around getting the right teams to be able to have the right support so that you can have the business succeed the way you want to. And without that, businesses don't succeed without a team that's well cared for, in your case, hydrated, well fed, and have a clear mind. Because at the end of the day, we are humans. We need all those things.

Kevin Rindal 25:54

Tish, thanks so much for the opportunity to be on your show. I really enjoyed it.

Tish Squillaro 25:58

I did too. Thank you, Kevin. I'm sure we'll connect. I want to learn more about your podcast because I see it being something very relevant for all industries. I and I think people are missing out not to hear it if they're not.

Kevin Rindal 26:10

Absolutely. We'll have to schedule a time for sure. Yeah. Thank you very much.

Tish Squillaro 26:14

Thank you. All right.