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Today I am joined by Shane Metcalf, co-founder of 15Five, a company that provides a leading performance management software that helps to unlock each company's highest potential. Impactful topics we discussed: Giving others their freedom in order to...
Today I am joined by Shane Metcalf, co-founder of 15Five, a company that provides a leading performance management software that helps to unlock each company's highest potential.
Impactful topics we discussed:
Shane Metcalf is a keynote speaker on building a world class workplace and one of the world’s leading pioneers in the space of cultural engineering and positive psychology. His insights have been featured in Inc, Fast Company, Business Insider, Washington Post, Tech Crunch, and Bloomberg. As the Co-founder of 15Five, Shane and his team support HR Executives with data-driven continuous performance management. 15Five has won numerous awards for their company culture, including the prestigious Inc Best Workplaces award, and is ranked #3 in the U.S. on GlassDoor. Follow Shane on Twitter and LinkedIN , and listen to him co-host the Best-Self Management Podcast.
At 15Five we envision a world where every person has the opportunity be engaged in work that is meaningful to them, working alongside people they deeply trust and respect, building towards a common and inspiring vision, and where their work not only calls out their individual greatness, but together leads to creating a world-class, high performing company where everybody wins.
"Can you tell us a little bit about where did that impetus that impulse, that desire to serve coming from? Is that always been there or is it more of a, a cultivated superpower that you have developed over time?
Yeah. I mean, I think that there's a lot that I don't know, you know, there's so much mystery around how we end up the way that we actually end up, but I can definitely trace it back to early childhood.
You know, particularly high school. I had a really interesting high school called Chamisa Mesa high school and house New Mexico, where I grew up and the principal used to design colleges with Buckminster fuller. And so he baked in a ton of these really weird and crazy ideas from Bucky fuller, also based it on integral theory Ken Wilber's work.
And so kind of design the curriculum on integral philosophy. And so at a young age, I was getting bombarded with all these crazy ideas about how do you actually have a human being progress levels of development? How you not just focus on, let's say cognitive development. But in interpersonal personal development, how do you cultivate the interiority of yourself as a human being such that you can then build external systems that are reflective of that stage of consciousness?
I love that. So I think that my brain started getting mutated from a young age around, around these concepts and ideas, and then it played out in a really weird, eh, completely nonlinear career path. No, I wasn't, I wasn't groomed of like, yeah, you're going to go to an Ivy league college and then you're going to have this career. I had a very different kind of upbringing and.
And I think that that pursuit of transformational work of, of transcendence of development from a young age led me to a place where, okay, cool. Well, what do you do when you collect all these tools? What do you do when you start to learn? Wow. There's simple communication patterns that can make all the difference in relationships.
There's certain ways of operating in the world that can get you more of what you want. You can think about life in a more holistic capacity and make sure that you're not just, excelling in your career, but deeply compromised in your heart Hmm. So once I had done all of that work, it was like, well, what do you do with that?
You become a coach.
" I am curious to know your point of view as a coach now as a cofounder, also as someone who is being given the gift of transformational tools at such a young age, What you feel now, reflecting back on your life from young adulthood to adulthood, to where you're doing right now?
Well, look, we all have our own path, you know, and more and more and more. I realize you can, you can influence a little bit, you can kind of provide some guidance and some frameworks, but ultimately each person has to walk their own path and,Adyashanti , really great teacher meditation. Zen teacher says something that really always stuck with me.
That until you give the world its freedom, they'll never be free.
Oh, interesting. Say more about that. What do you, what do you mean by that?
As somebody that I think a younger version of it myself was really gung ho to try to change the world and change people and influence everybody around me and optimize everyone around me and tell my parents how they should be. Yeah. Taking better care of themselves and got to quit smoking dad. And you know, all these things that used to kind of drive me a little crazy because it was like, look, you guys need to be doing better. You need to do change these things about your life. You need to get to do this writing exercise, take this workshop and, you know,
this is a smile of recognition by the way, just so that you know for sure.
And you know, there's something really beautiful about that. There's something, I think very powerful about being a stand for other people's greatness. I'm not sure settling for other people living a mediocre life, but there's a big shadow of that as well, which is that I'm getting into, I'm thinking that I know what somebody's own path is.
I'm trying to exert some kind of control and that that is guaranteed rooted in some of my own shadow of inadequacy, some of my sense of not being enough. And so I'm going to try to control other people, you know, all dictators, all tyrants at some level feel inadequate. And so part of the journey is realizing like, well, shit, I know way less than I thought I knew.
All of my transformational and enlightened experiences and the countless peak experiences I've had in my life. they come and they go and hopefully some wisdom remains from them, but here I am. Oh, Whoa. I am. I am still at the bottom reaches of the mountain. I thought I'd climb to the top and Holy shit, boy was I naive
there's a, one of my favorite poems that I think expresses this really well. this guy, Jed McKenna, that if you haven't readily enlightenment trilogy. It's a disclaimer. They're intense books. they kind of screw up your spiritual path in a good way, hopefully, but sometimes they burn the house down too.
as all transformational work should do in my mind. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so, yeah. there's this beautiful poem called open sky and it goes, if you are not amazed by how naive you were yesterday, you're standing still. If you're not terrified of the next step, your eyes are closed and you're standing still and your eyes are closed. Then you're only dreaming that you're awake. A caged bird in the open sky.
And, and what I love about that is that we need to, I don't need to control the world. I need to, I need to own my own path. I need to walk my path. I need the mind into my business. And in that there's a little bit of letting go of control of other people, understanding that we all have a unique path.
And I do not actually know what is best for each person, because if I try to prevent somebody from going into the abyss from going down, you know what maybe that life cycle that they're on is that life is bringing them. They are on the down escalator. Life is bringing them down into a death experience so that they can actually be reborn.
But what most of us do is we spend most of our lives running up the down escalator. No, no, no, I don't want to go down. I don't want to go down there. I don't want to go down there. I don't want to go down there and it, and it's inevitable. We're only delaying it. Whereas if we actually surrender control of let go and everything goes dark.
That's cool. Pretty much guaranteed. The very thing that is, is the catalyst for our evolution. And then what's fascinating is how do we take these experiences and these, you know, the cause as a, as a founder, as a business executive with a very rich life outside of the office that I really pursued the depths of consciousness.
I've plumbed, these practices. I am not a workaholic. I'm not somebody that just only works and finds no other purpose in life. But how do you translate some of the insights, some of these principles into effective functional business systems and processes. So that's, that's what I find really fascinating is like, how do we, how do we build better, healthier, higher performing organizations rooted in some of these principles that I'm gathering from the more esoteric, spiritual, and intangible world.
And you do it in a way that it doesn't come off as I'm creating a cult or I'm feeding a bunch of new age bullshit into my company, but that are actual systems that help people live lives that they're proud of.
"You know, people don't do that give away though. It was that large of chunk of equity if they don't have to. And it really speaks to the character of this man,
Say more about that, actually, if you don't mind say more about that.
Yeah, sure.
Again, going back to that journey in the first few years. , let's talk about it from a few different points of view.
One is who are they such that they are willing to do a very unconventional thing, which is to bring a third partner at a later date. Right. So describe who they are first. I want to make sure that people are hearing this such that they, if they resonate with what you're sharing, they can then now point to the attributes, the characteristics of these people.
I mean, I think that he's one of the more virtuous humans. I know very principled. He, he is clear about what his values are and he lives by them, you know?
And it's interesting too, because we all have our own unique makeup. Like, I don't know if you know the gene keys, but gene keys is probably my favorite map of consciousness. Really, really interesting about it is. Yeah. It, for me, it blows every other system out of the water.
Okay. Very human design, all, all of it for me, pale in comparison to the value that an insight that I get from gene keys. Interesting. When you're looking at, what are the unique, archetypes imprinted on my system.
so if you look at like David's gene Key profile, for instance, it's all there. It all makes perfect sense. Like virtue and empathy are two of his, his prime gifts. And, and so I think that, you know, forgetting all the gene keys stuff, he is somebody who also discovered the transformational path, somebody who started to engage in the work of self-actualization got tastes of what it is to live a life where you're operating, not out of self preservation and survival, but out of contribution and service. And so I think that that is one of the foundational elements of really work for our partnership is that we speak a lot of the same language. We have some of the same maps of what does it mean to take that journey to become your best self?
Hmm.
I want to underline those themes and use that. So for the people who are listening, why Shane just said is. Speaking the same language have the same map of consciousness. So I just wanted on underline that. So what, what, so then what kind of actions did you identify to say, Hey, David actually embodies what he's preaching. He's a principle person versus just talking some empty words. Was there any specific thing that you saw that really moved you in a particular way?
I mean, there's a, there's a lot of them, some of it is, you know, just, You know, for instance like how it we're navigating COVID right now and the determination to keep everybody in the company and not to do, do layoffs and is fierce stand around that. there's you know, to the saying, Hey, Shane, you're making invaluable contributions to this company and you have, you have from day one, you have had the mindset as a founder and ownership of this company. And I'm going to, I'm going to recognize that and say, and actually officially making you a founder, you know, because who we are is what we do. It's, it's our actions that matter are our words, our value statements, our core values. Those can all be good words.
Would we actually do it. Do we actually, when it's tough, do we actually make the hard call to stick with our principles?
it's everything from just the vulnerability and honesty of, you know, those are, we've baked a lot of opportunities for vulnerability into our culture and his willingness to show up in front of people and be real and, and reveal the things he struggles with.
"So what is service? let's talk about that a little bit.
I don't know. I mean, services kind of entertainment. It's. It's like, you know, because there's a way of saying, Hey, look, I'm going to build a company where people feel deeply, psychologically safe, where we share our human experience, where we can show up at work and know that we're valued for being a human being as well as for our productivity and our contribution.
But then that inherently you're valuable because you are alive and how do you feel that have you actually. Get that it's okay to be who you are and to feel what you feel, integrate emotions. And we can integrate these things into our work life. And so I feel like that to me is kind of like service.
Like I feel genuinely like building a company where these principles of love of connection of being seen is, is service to everybody that touches our company.
And simultaneously it's, it's kind of entertainment. It's kind of saying, Hey, well, I think this is a more entertaining way of doing life and it's not necessarily better. It's not better than, than a another company that is as a more fear-driven culture and internal competition.
That's how I like to play. Yeah, a lot of how I've designed the company is because I never wanted to work at a fucking company. I never wanted a job. I actively avoided a career. You know, coaching was like, it was almost more of a last ditch effort because it was like, I had all these tools and I was like, okay, well, that's, that's a good way to make some money without actually working. And without really having a job and, Oh, I actually like it. I genuinely love, and I feel like it, my strengths, but it was, it was still a bit of a pursuit to avoid having a job. Yeah.
And then it was like, okay, Whoa, I'm starting this company. And, and have been given this opportunity. Cause it kind of found me.
You know, my co founder, we met, he was like, dude, come help me with this.
"You know, people don't do that give away though. It was that large of chunk of equity if they don't have to. And it really speaks to the character of this man,
Say more about that, actually, if you don't mind say more about that.
Yeah, sure.
Again, going back to that journey in the first few years. , let's talk about it from a few different points of view.
One is who are they such that they are willing to do a very unconventional thing, which is to bring a third partner at a later date. Right. So describe who they are first. I want to make sure that people are hearing this such that they, if they resonate with what you're sharing, they can then now point to the attributes, the characteristics of these people.
I mean, I think that he's one of the more virtuous humans. I know very principled. He, he is clear about what his values are and he lives by them, you know?
And it's interesting too, because we all have our own unique makeup. Like, I don't know if you know the gene keys, but gene keys is probably my favorite map of consciousness. Really, really interesting about it is. Yeah. It, for me, it blows every other system out of the water.
Okay. Very human design, all, all of it for me, pale in comparison to the value that an insight that I get from gene keys. Interesting. When you're looking at, what are the unique, archetypes imprinted on my system.
so if you look at like David's gene Key profile, for instance, it's all there. It all makes perfect sense. Like virtue and empathy are two of his, his prime gifts. And, and so I think that, you know, forgetting all the gene keys stuff, he is somebody who also discovered the transformational path, somebody who started to engage in the work of self-actualization got tastes of what it is to live a life where you're operating, not out of self preservation and survival, but out of contribution and service. And so I think that that is one of the foundational elements of really work for our partnership is that we speak a lot of the same language. We have some of the same maps of what does it mean to take that journey to become your best self?
Hmm.
I want to underline those themes and use that. So for the people who are listening, why Shane just said is. Speaking the same language have the same map of consciousness. So I just wanted on underline that. So what, what, so then what kind of actions did you identify to say, Hey, David actually embodies what he's preaching. He's a principle person versus just talking some empty words. Was there any specific thing that you saw that really moved you in a particular way?
I mean, there's a, there's a lot of them, some of it is, you know, just, You know, for instance like how it we're navigating COVID right now and the determination to keep everybody in the company and not to do, do layoffs and is fierce stand around that. there's you know, to the saying, Hey, Shane, you're making invaluable contributions to this company and you have, you have from day one, you have had the mindset as a founder and ownership of this company. And I'm going to, I'm going to recognize that and say, and actually officially making you a founder, you know, because who we are is what we do. It's, it's our actions that matter are our words, our value statements, our core values. Those can all be good words.
Would we actually do it. Do we actually, when it's tough, do we actually make the hard call to stick with our principles?
it's everything from just the vulnerability and honesty of, you know, those are, we've baked a lot of opportunities for vulnerability into our culture and his willingness to show up in front of people and be real and, and reveal the things he struggles with.
"
"So, you want to offer something as an option. So it's out of their own choice to pick, but at the same time, given your a title influence and gravitas, and they want to make sure that it looked good to you, there's gravity towards that options when it's offered, it's not really a free choice, so to speak, even though when the come from place where you offer it, it is. how do you...?
It's a really good one that says such an interesting conversation, because we have so many wounds of hierarchy.
If humanity is hierarchically wounded, you look back at the last 10,000 years and it's been people in positions of power, generally exploiting position people below them. Creating cultures of, of authority based on fear, not trust, you know, like I'm not going to trust you because you're my leader because you're my emperor because you're my boss, because I trust you.
I'm going to do what you say, because I fear you then because you have the power and. And so I think that we're, we have to recognize that we're the inheritors of all of these patterns. You know, we're the inheritors of all of history. Like the present moment, didn't just spontaneously arise of its own accord.
It is a sedentary collection of every past experience, and most of that is just a random. Kind of a random collection. It's like a bird that goes and builds the nest out of all the cigarette butts and random pieces of plastic and twigs and everything else. And some of it's good and some of it's not good.
We have a lot of beauty in our history and we have a lot of terror and trauma and pain, but still lives inside of us. And so when a well-meaning founder like me Makes an invitation, you have to understand that there is that inherent suspicion of authority. There's an inherent, like, okay, well, shit is my job dependent on this.
And so I think that that's part of what we need to do as organizations is we need to start healing some of that. We need to create cultures of that are built on trust. Okay. And, and how we do that, right. As a, like, if the old model is like master and servant, and I'm the boss and you're my employee.
You do what I say,
you serve me. And it's, it's kind of as simple and as complex as me realizing that I work for my people. I am in service of them. the 200 people in the company, 15 five don't work for me so that I can make a bunch of money and, you know, like inherently I will benefit way more financially than my employees.
And we don't like to talk about that. Right. We usually like, Oh, let's not go there. But the truth is that like, You know, I have more equity. I will make a lot more money than they do. And all the more reason for me to make sure that like I am doing everything in my power to actually be of service to them, to, to really come from it.
You know, and I mean, I think servant leadership is a beautiful model. we call it as best self management where we're actually managing in a way that people become better versions of themselves. And so when you flip that polarity of you work for me to, Oh no, I am actually your servant. Like, you know, I have an incredible executive assistant shout out to Sydney and she's amazing, but I work for her. I'm in service to her. And do you know what happens? She then becomes in service to me, like our people, like we have a much higher retention than the average 200 person SAS company.
"How do you then in your mind balance that or concretize that between your business needs?
Yeah, definitely. Well look like, I think that. Our frame around this is that you win the business game, which let's just call it pure financial results by helping your people become their best selves. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a, you know, Oh, like you win. Yeah. And you can also help them grow along the way.
No, this is, this can be seen as a purely selfish behavior. Okay that helping these people live their lives and feel their feelings is ultimately going to massively benefit 15 five. Like if I want to look at it just through the financial perspective. Right, right. Yeah. Like average cost to replace an employee is two to four X their salary, no employee lifetime value.
It's very expensive for somebody to leave your company and to hire somebody else and train them. So, if you can, can extend your average, your employee L LTV is what it's called. You know, we always talk about CLTV, but LTV is equally important. So if you can extend your LTV by two months or two years, that has profound financial implications.
we know a lot now from neuroscience of when the brain is in fight or flight. The higher functioning of the creative brain doesn't work as well. We aren't as creative. we don't come up with innovation. And so if you have a culture of fear, people's brains won't be functioning as well.
Optimally, our brain jeans are where all this work is happening. So it's optimizing people's performance by creating cultures of psychological safety. You know, Google did all that research of like, what is the most, what is the single most important element of a high performing team can psychological safety.
Okay. It is very much in service to the financial interests of the company. Now that, of course, that doesn't mean that like you sometimes don't have to make hard decisions. Like if the economy totally shits the bed and the second half of the year, and we're destroyed and we need to cut costs, you know what, there's, there's a point where we can't die on the mountain.
Right.
and, and it's also, you know, I think a lot of people. I think that this also then means that you have to be really soft and you have to like, basically be like, well, we value relationships over performance. And so, you know, we're not going to fire that person, even though we all know they don't really pull their weight.
It was like, no, no, that's not it at all. It's extremely high caring and it's extremely high accountability. Yeah. But it's making sure that that's a two, two way agreement that there's clarity around what performance actually means.
Yeah.
And you can have high standards around performance and still care about people.
And so that's, that's really, I think what we're on a mission to prove is that you will do better as a business by investing in your people and helping unlock their potential. Yeah. If you focus purely on the financial metrics and you don't put the human being at the center.
"Do you mind sharing some specific rituals or practices that you guys do? Cause I want to for the people listening, not just be inspired, like, Oh, I wish my company had that, but they can actually go out and duplicate maybe some of these practices.
So, you know, if we take the premise of that, it's possible to build socially connected and thriving cultures in our remote world.
You know, we've been remote since day one. And it's something that we're talking a lot about right now, because for us pandemic hat, we took people out of our main hubs in San Francisco, New York and North Carolina. but we don't miss a beat because we were already a remote first company.
We'd already built this award winning culture on a completely distributed this model, even though we had hubs.
And so one of the ways that we think about doing this is that because of, because we were remote first, we said, Hey, we need to be even more deliberate about how do we build culture and connection. And so one of the things that we do. One of the rituals that we have is every Friday, we hop on a zoom call.
We call a question Friday, and there's a question leader for the month. And that person, every Friday, their job is to come up with a question that inspires introspection and reflection and storytelling from our lives. I love that. And then we all get on the call and the person asks the question.
And then we used to all before we were hit 60 people, we all did it on the same call, but yeah, now we break into zoom rooms and we go around and we answer. So this morning was super fun. The question was you could buy, like if you had to give a 30 minute presentation on the spot on any topic, what would it be?
Not business related, not related to your work. And it's so cool because you hear these people's passions.
You're about, you know, this guy who loves building his own custom camper van. And he's like, I would do that. You know, I'm like, I want to do it. I would do a 30 minute presentation on the gene keys and, pottery and cats.
And, you know, you learn more about each other. And so th but the questions, the question you change completely changed the conversation. And so it, it varies from more superficial lighthearted questions to deeper ones of what did you struggle with as a teenager? Well, what are you struggling with right now?
Or, you know, what, like what, what traits of your parents that you don't like have you inherited? And, you know, all of a sudden people are sharing these incredible stories. And so we do that every single week and it's super fun because it's, it's building company community as the communitization of the enterprise.
Business was just business and your life was outside of business and it's all coming together. It's all merging. It's all integrating.
Hmm. Thank you for sharing that. and
then, you know, and then we go deeper. We do like, you know, biannual leadership retreats where we get together and we treat those as transformational retreats and we go super deep on those.
And usually every day, every dinner we do a table questions and, you know, pretty much every, pretty much a hundred percent hit rate of somebody who's going to cry.
"So, you want to offer something as an option. So it's out of their own choice to pick, but at the same time, given your a title influence and gravitas, and they want to make sure that it looked good to you, there's gravity towards that options when it's offered, it's not really a free choice, so to speak, even though when the come from place where you offer it, it is. how do you...?
It's a really good one that says such an interesting conversation, because we have so many wounds of hierarchy.
If humanity is hierarchically wounded, you look back at the last 10,000 years and it's been people in positions of power, generally exploiting position people below them. Creating cultures of, of authority based on fear, not trust, you know, like I'm not going to trust you because you're my leader because you're my emperor because you're my boss, because I trust you.
I'm going to do what you say, because I fear you then because you have the power and. And so I think that we're, we have to recognize that we're the inheritors of all of these patterns. You know, we're the inheritors of all of history. Like the present moment, didn't just spontaneously arise of its own accord.
It is a sedentary collection of every past experience, and most of that is just a random. Kind of a random collection. It's like a bird that goes and builds the nest out of all the cigarette butts and random pieces of plastic and twigs and everything else. And some of it's good and some of it's not good.
We have a lot of beauty in our history and we have a lot of terror and trauma and pain, but still lives inside of us. And so when a well-meaning founder like me Makes an invitation, you have to understand that there is that inherent suspicion of authority. There's an inherent, like, okay, well, shit is my job dependent on this.
And so I think that that's part of what we need to do as organizations is we need to start healing some of that. We need to create cultures of that are built on trust. Okay. And, and how we do that, right. As a, like, if the old model is like master and servant, and I'm the boss and you're my employee.
You do what I say,
you serve me. And it's, it's kind of as simple and as complex as me realizing that I work for my people. I am in service of them. the 200 people in the company, 15 five don't work for me so that I can make a bunch of money and, you know, like inherently I will benefit way more financially than my employees.
And we don't like to talk about that. Right. We usually like, Oh, let's not go there. But the truth is that like, You know, I have more equity. I will make a lot more money than they do. And all the more reason for me to make sure that like I am doing everything in my power to actually be of service to them, to, to really come from it.
You know, and I mean, I think servant leadership is a beautiful model. we call it as best self management where we're actually managing in a way that people become better versions of themselves. And so when you flip that polarity of you work for me to, Oh no, I am actually your servant. Like, you know, I have an incredible executive assistant shout out to Sydney and she's amazing, but I work for her. I'm in service to her. And do you know what happens? She then becomes in service to me, like our people, like we have a much higher retention than the average 200 person SAS company.
"how do you balance the depth by the right questions you asked the right frequencies you asked about the right amount of questions that you ask at scale.
That's a good question. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean it comes down to being in rapport with the people that you're asking the questions to setting the right expectations, having agreements around this. Yeah. Not, not asking too much, many questions, you know, like in a, in a good 15 five, I think you should be limited to about five questions. You know, like some of my favorites are like, how did you feel at work this week?
What's going well, where are you stuck? What do you need help with? Maybe one random question. Of what I see. Like I always come up with a, as kind of a inspired question in the middle of the week. And usually Wednesday I go in and put that in. And so then I can get feedback and ideas and reflections on something that we're going through as a company.
But again, so it's lightweight. It's needs to be, it needs to be lightweight, but then those questions. You know, and then people write their answers, but then those questions can lead to really powerful conversations. And they don't always have to, like every week isn't, you know, every coaching session doesn't need to be a life changing, cathartic experience.
If you're lucky, every, every one out of four coaching conversations is going to be that. And similarly, but it is a habit asking and reflecting- introspection. Introspection looking within, reflection, looking backwards and prospection looking forwards is a habit. Okay. And for the most part collectively, we're not in those habits.
And so the more you do it, the easier it is and the less threatening it can become to actually pause and look at where you are, where you've been and where you're going. "
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