Garry Ridge on Helping People Win at Work

In the latest installment of the Blanchard LeaderChat Podcast, Chad Gordon interviews Garry Ridge, CEO of WD-40 Company and coauthor with Ken Blanchard of Helping People Win at Work.

In the podcast, Garry shares key principles from the book and how he has put them into practice over the past ten years at WD-40 with remarkable impact.

It all starts with goal setting—a conversation focused on getting where you want to go—and it is a shared responsibility between the manager and direct report.

In Garry’s opinion, the annual performance review process is broken.  Why wait until the end of the year?  Coaching, development, and feedback should be an everyday conversation between leader and direct report.  Garry describes how to change people’s mindsets so mistakes become learning moments—and how this shift not only helps drive out fear but also increases learning.

Garry shares 12 principles that L&D professionals can use to impact training and development as well as employee engagement. Garry walks his talk—and the results are impressive. At WD-40, employee engagement numbers are in excess of 90%. What’s more, compounded shareholder annual income growth has been over 15% per year for the past 14 years—and over 20% for the past 5 years.

Ridge describes how a focus on values, learning, teaching, growth, and community can lead to enhanced performance by helping people step into the best version of themselves.

Be sure to listen to the very end of this 30-minute interview to hear Ken Blanchard share his thoughts and personal takeaways on Garry's ideas. Ken shares how success is based on not only what happens in the classroom but also what happens afterward. Ken takes a look at the performance review process and illustrates how important it is to focus on providing people ongoing feedback instead of sorting them into a normal distribution curve.