In this episode, Robert Mixon interviews David Pinder, President at Cardinal IG, about the key values that instill trust into an organization. They discuss how trust can be applied in day-to-day operations, the old axiom “Trust But Verify,” how to handle giving bad news, four steps on how to build trust into the heart of an organization, and more! Don’t miss this inspiring episode!
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Podcast Episode 5: A Culture of Trust – An Interview With David Pinder of Cardinal Glass Industries
Robert Mixon:
Well, welcome everyone to the Level Five podcast series. Today’s episode of “The Journey With No Summit” is focusing on the concept of trust. And we are privileged today to have Mr. Dave Pinder, the president of Cardinal Insulating Glass as our guest. And we want to get his thoughts on how he has learned and developed a culture of trust and taken, I think, a good company to a great company. And I’ve been privileged to consult with Cardinal IG now for three or four years with Dave and his leaders. And it’s been an honor and a privilege.
Dave, your career, a distinguished career involves both military and corporate service, a graduate of West Point and a leader who’s been through tough situations in hard times and been very successful in doing that. So, Dave, welcome to the show. Glad to have you.
Dave Pinder:
Thank you, Robert. It’s a privilege to be on with you today.
Robert Mixon:
OK, I’d ask you first, Dave… First question is, what’s your most memorable experience where you felt trusted and how did that affect you?
Dave Pinder:
Yeah, if I could tell a quick story to preface my answer here, I think it was 1973.
Roger O’Shaughnessy is the CEO of our company … he had been the president for six years and he asked himself a few questions. One, the first one, what was the best company in the world?
He was looking for a company to model our company after. And General Motors… considered the best company in the world in 1973. He asked why: it was because they ran independent divisions.
And for the six years that he ran Cardinal, he had the privilege of being able to operate it independently.
The next question he asked was, how do I attract and retain intelligent, hardworking people?
And his answer was independence.
And so from our very beginning, he’s believed that in order in order to be successful, he’s got to give leaders the ability to run their businesses. And so when I was hired in 1986, by two people, Roger O’Shaughnessy and Renato Lizardo, they gave me the freedom to run my plant in Fargo, North Dakota.
They basically said, “Dave, build it, design it, build it, hire the people, run it, take care of your people, call me if you have any questions.”
And so, they put great trust and responsibility in me to manage not only that project, but that business. And I would work 24 hours a day, seven days a week to never let those people down.
And so, again, early on in my career, 22, almost 22 years ago, I was given that great responsibility to manage a business for this organization.
Robert Mixon:
It’s a wonderful story, Dave, thanks. How do you translate trust into empowerment? And yet still, in the words of President Reagan, “trust, but verify.”
Dave Pinder:
Yeah. The way I look at that, Robert, is you’ve got to have trust both up, down, and to the ‘sides’ as well. And what I mean by that is, I have to believe that the people that that are working in are for me are good, honest, effective, worthy of trust.
Basically, they have the competence and character to have earned it. And I have to have those same characteristics. But also, the folks that work for me have to believe that I love them and care for them.
And then to the sides, we all have to be able to trust each other. Their peers need to be able to trust them. My peers need to be able to trust me.
I think when you when you have that effect, one person, this management theorist, Chester Barnard, once called it a ‘zone of indifference,’ evolves. And what happens is people trust each other. They don’t question orders.
They don’t question each other because that trust exists. And then you have this enduring cooperation. And I think once you have that, at least in my organization, I’m able to verify, you know, my people, the folks that that work for me, my plant managers know that I care for them.
They trust me. They know that I must keep my hand on the pulse.
And I just want to know what’s going on because I want to be involved in the business because I care.
And I found that once all of that exists, it’s easy to do.
You know, a leader of mine once told me, “you have to feed the elephant a peanut every once in a while and you won’t get stepped on.” And although that sounds extreme, it’s just kind of a metaphor that says, ‘keep me informed.’
And everybody understands that. And it works both ways.
They keep me informed.
I keep them informed.
And the system works.
Robert Mixon:
Yeah, I love it. I think the peanut theory is a great way to go. Next question for you, Dave, is, you know, what’s the biggest mistake you’ve made where you either trusted too much or not enough — and what did you learn from it?
Dave Pinder:
Early on, I took over as president of Cardinal IG company in at the end of 2011. I had a few very experienced leaders. And I think what I did, Robert, was I trusted too much.
I didn’t trust but verify.
I think sometimes, a failure occurs in an organization when they’re given, leaders are given the freedom to run their businesses … and the ego takes over.
There was a doctor named Stephen Berglas at Harvard Medical School, I think back in the 80s, and he did a study of very successful people over the course of 10 years.
And what he found was that highly successful people slowly fall apart when they achieve certain levels of success. And they basically have a lack of character to handle the stressors of success.
And so, I take responsibility for the failure of those leaders.
And the lesson that I learned… really, was that everybody must communicate.
I must keep the pulse of the organization. I have to know what’s going on.
And we have to talk about moral and ethical issues at every opportunity. So it stays right in the front of our minds. And so, again, ‘trust but verify’ is a very important part of being a leader.
Robert Mixon:
So in your initial engagement with a new leader coming on your team, how do you define that ‘trust but verify’ framework that you’re planning to operate in?
Dave Pinder:
I think what I’ve done is… I get it right out on the table. They understand that I’m going to trust them, and I have a great team right now. I have total trust in all the leaders in our organization.
But they understand. They know that’s their responsibility. Their responsibility is to keep me informed.
My responsibility is to keep my leader informed.
And I have no problem whatsoever. I have nothing to hide if Roger O’Shaughnessy, my leader, asks me questions about my organization.
And my leaders, I believe, have no problem at all, with any questions that I have about their organizations. Now, it goes back to that mutual trust. If you don’t have it, and your folks truly don’t believe that you trust them and vice versa, it’s not going to work.
And so, again, once you have it, it works beautifully.
Robert Mixon:
You know, there’s an old saying that I’ve learned over and over, or relearned, that “bad news never gets better with time.” But I think part of that trust model you’re talking about is the ability to handle bad news. Is that true?
Dave Pinder:
Absolutely.
Bad news doesn’t get better with time. And yeah, I think my folks… I’ll give you an example.
Every time an employee has an OSHA recordable injury, my plant managers are required to call me no matter what time it is, day or night.
And why is that? It’s not because I don’t trust them. It’s because I care.
And the analogy is, if I’m out to dinner, and I have a babysitter over at my house, and one of my children get hurt, I would expect them to call me and keep me informed and let me know that somebody got hurt. And not simply tell me once I got back from where we were and, “oh, by the way, your son fell and got stitches. I didn’t want to bother you.”
And it’s the same thing. I love all of my employees. I just want to know when they get injured.
And so that’s an example of sometimes my plant managers will call me, and they’ll preface the phone call with, nobody got hurt. And I’d say, “oh, great.”
But I think they feel very comfortable.
Well, nobody likes to deliver bad news, but I think they feel comfortable in doing that because they know I trust them, and they’re doing the right thing.
Robert Mixon:
Yeah. And how you react to the bad news is an important part of that trust model too, right?
Dave Pinder:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Robert Mixon:
We’ve all been around men and women who just went ballistic whenever anything bad was transmitted. And it goes back to another lesson…
“If you don’t want to hear any bad news, you won’t.”
And I’ve been around people who didn’t want to hear any bad news, and I’m sure you have too, right?
Dave Pinder:
Believe me, I’ve had to deliver a lot of bad news, both in my military and civilian career. And you’re absolutely right. And I’ve been very fortunate to have outstanding leaders who reacted in a very respectful and kind way.
So, I learned from them.
Robert Mixon.
You mentioned Roger, and of course, I think for those who don’t know… Roger O’Shaughnessy… he certainly is one of the most respected leaders, I’ve ever heard of or known of in my career and his role at Cardinal.
Do you have other role models who have typified trusting leaders?
And if so, who are they and why do you respect them?
Dave Pinder:
Too many to mention. But one of the others is Renato Lizardo. Renato came to the United States back in 1971 from the Philippines, and he actually is the one that hired me in 1998.
Roger gave Renato the responsibility to build a factory in Fargo, North Dakota, to service one of our largest customers — and to find a plant manager to run that operation. And so, Renato was the one who actually found me, and hired me. And he learned from Roger, how to lead, and in a trusting environment.
And he led me in a terrific way, exactly the same way as Roger O’Shaughnessy has led this organization. And then probably three years into that job, I then began to report to Roger, but both of those guys are right at the top of the role models that I want to emulate, and have emulated over the years. But I also had a couple in the Army.
I had a battalion commander named Jack Carter, who was a great role model, trusted his subordinate company commanders to do their jobs. And he was a wonderful leader that, again, I learned a tremendous amount from.
Robert Mixon:
Okay, thanks. Thanks, Dave. What advice would you give aspiring executive leaders in creating a culture of trust in their teams and organizations?
Dave Pinder:
Sure. I kind of wrote down four easy steps.
First, you have to hire the right people, you know, those that you can trust, who have the propensity to internalize your core values.
Of course, they’re not going to have them all, but if they have the propensity to internalize, to learn them, internalize them, those are the people that we’re looking for. So, first and foremost, we got to hire the right people. Not necessarily the best people, as Herb Brooks would say, but the right people.
Second, we’ve got to, as leaders, provide the guidance to them, in the form of the company’s vision, the company’s mission, leader’s intent, values, culture.
So, I’ve got the right people, I’m giving them the guidance, now I’m empowering them to run their business. I give them that entrepreneurial freedom to do it.
And then step four would be, I’ve got to communicate. I’ve got to keep my hand on the pulse, always.
Why? Because I care. Because we, as leaders, care. It’s not that we don’t trust, it’s because we care.
And if our subordinate leaders understand that we’re keeping our hand on the pulse, we’re verifying because we truly care about them, about their success, and about the success of the organization, then it works.
Robert Mixon:
So, for aspiring leaders who want to be like Dave Pinder someday, that empowering leadership, would you say that that takes a lot of diligence on your part … to know what you need to know, and yet still give them the freedom of action that you think they deserve?
Dave Pinder:
I think once you have it established, Robert, it’s easy. It’s not like I have to work on it continually. Once you have that trust established, and people understand the expectations, it just works.
It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful system that works so well.
But again, you’ve got to have the right people.
They’ve got to understand what the expectations are. You have to give them the guidance, empower them, and then you keep your hand on the pulse, and it works.
Robert Mixon:
Well, you certainly have a great organization, Dave. I’ve had the privilege of going out to all your plants and meeting with the leadership teams out there, the plant managers, and the leaders throughout the ranks. And you’ve instituted a wonderful program called ‘Bedrock’ for the frontline leaders to help them understand ‘what right looks like’ across the organization.
In a company the size of Cardinal IG, there’s more than 3,000 employees out there every day working hard and trying to do the right thing.
I think your investment in their understanding of ‘what right looks like’ as leaders has been really one of the most remarkable opportunities I’ve had in my career. So, I want to say that and congratulate you on having done so much wonderful work to, you know, create a culture where people do, I think, feel trusted.
And, you know, it has to permeate throughout the ranks. It’s hard when you’re at 30,000 feet sometimes to know that it’s permeated throughout the organization. But I think you’ve got some mechanisms in place that do that.
And it’s important, I think, for a leader, no matter how large your organization is, to maintain, as you said, an idea of feeling for the pulse of the organization and the health of the leadership team as they learn and grow. Because I don’t think, in my experience, any of us, you know, that have ever been to the summit, we’re always on a journey as leaders.
Do you agree with that?
Dave Pinder:
I totally agree, Robert.
And, you know, I’ve got to thank you.
It’s interesting how things happen in your life. For those that don’t know, you were a military art professor of mine back in 1984.
Robert Mixon:
[Laughs]
Dave Pinder:
And we served together after Desert Storm with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment when you were the 2nd Squadron Commander there.
And we went to the National Training Center. And then, really, that was probably about 1991.
And then we didn’t reconnect until 2014 or 15.
Robert Mixon:
Something like that, yeah.
Dave Pinder:
But it happened for a reason. And as I look at our leadership journey as a company, if I was writing the history of it, I would say that that reconnection of us and Level Five, has been instrumental in taking us to the next level of leadership and, really, next level of trust within the organization.
Robert Mixon:
Well, thanks, Dave.
Dave Pinder:
I truly appreciate it, Robert.
Robert Mixon:
Thank you. Do you have anything else you’d like to share with our audience here, Dave, about your leadership journey, advice to others, thoughts in general?
Dave Pinder:
Yeah… I think, as you said, it’s a never-ending journey. And we could always learn.
And we have to learn from those mistakes. And I’ve made a lot… ensure that we do all that we can not to have those repeat themselves.
But, again, it’s a fantastic feeling to work with a group of people that trust each other and work so well together.
And when you can truly enjoy what you do every day, it’s really not a job anymore. It’s just a pleasure doing what I do. So, thank you for having me today.
It was a pleasure participating in this.
Robert Mixon:
Well, thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, Dave. And I wish you continued success in leading, again, what I consider to be a great company in Cardinal IG.
And as we go forward in our journey, we’ve got several more senior leaders of different type companies and organizations that will be interviewing on our Level Five podcast series. So, please join us, each time. I think these leaders will have and do have the ability to share some of their thoughts and experiences, that will help us all grow on our journey.
And I wish you all well, and enjoy your journey!
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