Bojangles:

Episode Transcript

Jeff Walter (00:00)

Hello, I’m Jeff Walter and welcome back to the Training Impact Podcast. My guest today is Lindsay Halston. Lindsay is the Senior Director of Training and Development at Bo Jangles. Lindsay stands at the intersection of organizational design, learning strategy,

 

and change management. Her unique expertise transformed training ecosystems to align with strategic business goals. At Bojangles, she leads a team of over 15 professionals responsible for shaping leadership development, talent cultivation, and operational excellence across nearly 900 locations. That’s a lot of locations. With a background rooted in educational psychology, instructional design, and adult learning research, Lindsay has pioneered data-driven competency-based frameworks that enhance

 

organizational clarity and accountability. Our innovative approaches have resulted in significant reductions in employee turnover and a development of robust internal talent pipelines. Lindsay, welcome to the program.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(00:53)

Thank you.

 

Jeff Walter (00:54)

So Lindsay, I’m always curious. how that there’s a, I think you’re unique ⁓ in that you have a very robust learning and development background. And, you know, so how did you, and if I recall, there was a lot of, you know, academic learning in there too.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(01:03)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (01:16)

How did you end up as running training over at Bojangles with a 900 plus locations and they are franchise ors. So, you know, trying to train people that don’t work for you guys.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(01:31)

Yeah, no, first of all, thanks for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this discussion for some time. wanting to dive right in here, I I always loved learning to start with. And I think once I became a teacher and sort of got to see what the outcomes of learning could be, but also how difficult the inputs were to make learning happen, I wanted to know more about the craft, went back, got a master’s degree in what

 

Jeff Walter (01:52)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(01:59)

The degree itself is called Applied Learning and Instruction. And I think there was always a part of me that thought, OK, school is cool, but there are so many other learning scenarios out there in the world. And I just wanted to understand how learning happened. it opened up a whole new world. It was basically an educational psychology master’s, but it was applied. And not just to K-12 school systems, to anywhere learning occurs at all different ages. So obviously, in the process, I started

 

Adjunct teaching, some educational psychology courses, got to experience all types of people who were in positions to do some teaching. And then after a couple of years, 10 years, in the school system, five of those where I was also adjunct teaching, I wanted to see what happened to my students. Where did they go? What did they look like, feel like, sound like after they graduated? What do they do in the real world? And I think maybe one of the best kept secrets about

 

Corporate America are our quick service restaurants and who runs them and how they grow and how they learn. And it’s really one of the, I don’t know if we want to call it old fashioned, but one of the places where you can come in as a crew member still today in modern society and grow your career for the next 40 to 50 years and stay there. think, you know, I think there are lots of assumptions about needing to change careers every so often. And one of the things.

 

you know, we’ll get into just a little bit as, you know, we wanted to, because Bojangles is still that, you know, is still that place where you can kind of come in and kick your shoes off and rest your laurels, but also grow, is we wanted our, you know, we wanted to change our training program so that employees, whether they were going to be with us for a couple of weeks or a couple of months, maybe it was a high school or college summer job, or whether this was something that they wanted and needed to grow a career, grow into a career.

 

they could see themselves here and they could understand that the crux of what we do here and our belief systems around learning and development are that leaders are teachers and that it’s their job to get their teams to grow and for them to be able to do so themselves. long and short of it all is that after a couple of years, many, many, a decade, I guess, of teaching, I started to look.

 

out into the world, you know, was getting ready to become a parent. And I, you know, wanted to also have a, a really cool life for my kids. And I was the main breadwinner in my family and said, okay, well, what’s, what’s in the corporate world? Where, where, where did my students go when they left me, you know, as high schoolers, many of them in that case, they didn’t go to college. Where did they go? And it was here. And finding them here with the same learning needs and being able to say, Hey, I’ve seen this before. Let me show you how these people learn. Let me show you.

 

all the different ways that they need to tap into their motivation. have lots of misconceptions about what actually motivates people and what doesn’t. And what I found out in the world was that not only did we misunderstand, I think, some of their motivations, but we really don’t, in general, understand what, let’s say, how to measure learning, and so therefore how to make learning happen. And so, you know,

 

Jeff Walter (04:58)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(05:01)

That’s where I fell in. Started working here, this fell into my lap. I originally was gonna come on as one of our trainers just to branch out of the world of K-12 education. And I met with some of our leadership team and after a couple of weeks in the program, I was kinda like, hey, you could do this. This might be cool, let me talk to you about where you could go and put together a plan in arguably no time.

 

people to come along and see how, what kind of an impact they could really be making. And it just, it went from like, all right, how do we overhaul the program materials itself to how do we overhaul the belief system of people when it, in regards to both training and leadership. And that’s how I got here today.

 

Jeff Walter (05:43)

I come at it from a very different perspective. I was a technologist. Way back in the old days, was a developer, software developer. And then I ended up in consulting and then started the software company. And so I have no educational framework background, but I’ve been in the industry for 20 years.

 

And I’ve always been a big believer in education and it’s made a huge difference for me, my family, just, you know, not just a formal K-12 and, and, university level, but just education of all types. you said you transformed

 

the program there and you have a data driven competency based framework. Let’s, if we could just start with what are you trying to accomplish? Like, you know, like what is the purpose of the training program that you got, that you’re running there? Like what, you know.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(06:38)

What are we here for? Great question. Absolutely. So the short answer and not the short, the most obvious answer is it’s our job to make sure the people in the field know how to do their jobs.

 

Jeff Walter (06:39)

Yeah, why bother?

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(06:52)

But that’s a loaded statement because knowing how to do your job, wanting to continue to do your job, enjoying your job, seeing the company itself as a place where you belong and you want to grow on and on and on, believing that you want to learn being someone who knows how to teach others how to learn and measure their own impact. Those are all the other things that we’re doing in this department. So that was what we wanted to do initially is we, know, you know, when I came here, I think

 

let’s say 90 % of the training department was focusing on just making sure people know how to do their jobs. Meaning, did we know how to make chicken biscuits and tea? To some degree, did we know what really good hospitality was? To some degree, did we have an idea of what leadership at least should be? And I think when I came in, think it was a small organization that was looking to grow quickly and hadn’t…

 

really written these things down and tested of whether they were working or not. And there was just no underlying pedagogy. There was no like, hey, if I give them this, are they actually learning? Are we measuring impact? Are there any actual training strategies a part of this? our trainers know any training strategies or do they just go out there and show people how to do it over and over again and kind of hope for the best? And I think there was, you know, a mixed bag of all of those things, but

 

Jeff Walter (07:50)

Right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(08:09)

What we wanted to initially do is just kind of lay all the training material and say, OK, you have these 10 job roles. What I see here is at least enough training for these six. And most of the time it stopped right at the leadership level, at the shift leader level. And those are our hourly managers. So they would basically be able to they were able to work all of the stations. There were some training on like, you know, health things that related to health department, because obviously those were vital things that were related to like truck ordering.

 

And it kind of stopped there. on the other hand, our expectation was that these hourly employees who are arguably coming directly out of a crew member position, but looking to go into a higher level manager position, were running shifts. And that meant something different to everybody. a big part of training is aligning on making sure I believe what you believe or I know what you know, we’re defining things the same way. So there was a gap, right? And the training, we had to build out what leadership training looked like for our shift leaders.

 

Jeff Walter (08:53)

Right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(09:06)

Then what did it look like for our assistant general managers and then our general managers and then our multi-unit leaders and then our regional directors who are above all of our multi-unit leaders and have, let’s say, are responsible for around 50 restaurants each. And then say, okay, well, now we need franchise buy-in and now we need to see what have they been doing this whole time? Because many of the larger franchise organizations have some of their own training. They have up to hundred restaurants, a little even more than that.

 

you know, where are they aligned with us? Where are they not? What do they need? Are they even craving any of this? Who do they have that we can scale? I mean, so many pieces, right? So once we get the what, we talk about the scalability and then all of the other skills that all of the other job levels need at the same time. And that’s where what you were describing a minute ago, where those competencies start to come into play. Do we do we even have the right competencies? Because in addition to what you actually have to do on the job, you have these soft skills that you

 

should be hired for and if you didn’t have strength in those areas while you were hired, you’re here to be trained. read something the other day that was like 90 % of jobs in the world can be taught. Remember that. It’s like, that’s not wrong. We can teach you a lot of these things. I can’t teach you to be a positive person, but I can certainly try. I can’t teach you to have an innate sense of how important our guests are, but I can hire for that or I can model it.

 

But there are some things that you can hire for and some many, many, many, many things that you can teach, soft skills included. mean, goodness, I’ve learned so many in my functions learning how to be a leader over the years. mean, coming out of education, like, yes, I had 25 to 30 students in a classroom, but I wasn’t really their boss. I mean, you know, but now, you know, being the boss of, you know, so many people and learning how to lead them and what that looks like. And, you know, go teachers are doers.

 

Jeff Walter (10:46)

Meh. Yeah.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(10:56)

And then going from that to learning how to be more strategic and leading, luckily and ironically is exactly what I’m asking our leaders to do too. So, you the dichotomy worked out well, but, you know, if the question is like, what do people need to learn and where did we start? Well, we started making sure each role at least had training for what they were supposed to do on the shift. And then we worked backwards and said, well, what are the soft skills that they need related to their competencies? And do we even have the right competencies?

 

So then we started building training for those items. And some of those are in-class training, some of those are out. And then it gets a lot more complex because we’re looking at scalability. so for example, our area directors who have, let’s say, four to eight stores, depending on geography and experience.

 

Jeff Walter (11:40)

And the area directors are corporate employees.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(11:44)

corporate employees that manage multiple units, which, they’re very analogous to what a lot of our franchisees do. Let’s say you have a smaller franchise or who has four restaurants, similar things that they’re looking to do as that same area director who would be responsible for that same amount of restaurants is. So the training was not easy, but like it was analogous enough that we could create it for corporate, pull out those pieces and then add in maybe one or two pieces that made it more relevant to the franchise or.

 

And they could also use it. So that was always a part of the growth of the different programs. So go ahead.

 

Jeff Walter (12:19)

So I

 

was going to say, if I, if I hear you correctly, you came in, you looked at all the training material, you 10 different roles within the network. Um, and you said, well, we got basic training for, you know, six of them or 60 % of the roles. And it’s mainly around, you know, knowledge acquisition on how to do something.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(12:44)

process.

 

Jeff Walter (12:44)

All right. Yeah.

 

Pry process training. Right. And then said, okay, well, we need to do it for all the roles, including leadership roles. And then we need to go beyond process training to what are the, you know, other skills. like, and, you know, we call them soft skills, but they’re skills.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(13:02)

They are.

 

Jeff Walter (13:03)

And, and to kind of fill out, okay, this role needs this set of skills, whether they’re hard or soft process skills or, or soft skills and kind of came with a pedagogy in that way.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(13:16)

Both, yeah.

 

So wanted to build training that encompassed it. also had to build out processes, period. No one had ever even written the process down. What are you supposed to do when you’re an area director? How do you spend the four weeks in your month? Is there an expectation around it? Are there certain things that have to happen on certain days? And obviously, the answer was yes. Things that were related to P &L, things that are related to truck ordering and managing food and waste and…

 

Jeff Walter (13:35)

Right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(13:40)

you know, all that kind of stuff. And so, you know, some of it was, is that simple was getting with the operators and saying, all right, let’s, get it on a piece of paper and then we can work backwards and figure out how to train it. And then the other half of it where what do the skills that the, are the skills that they need to do those things well and, filling in the gaps there. And I think the first couple of years and, and arguably sometimes even now, but definitely let’s say three, three to four years ago, we were just teaching them how to do things.

 

Jeff Walter (14:05)

Right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(14:05)

And it

 

wasn’t that they had no knowledge on it, but they were all doing it differently and with varying levels of effect and no one was really measuring the impact that they were having. We were just grateful if they were using the tool or not. And so streamlining all of that obviously was step one. And if we could do all of it all at the same time, we would have, but it would have just been cognitive overload for them to try and learn the system and then all of their skills, other skills at the same time.

 

you know, anything related to leadership. You know, one of the things that we’re super focused on with our leaders this year is calendar planning, something that seems, I don’t know, maybe seems logical and everybody kind of thinks they’re doing it to some degree, you know, so, but they’re doing it all in different ways and, you know, some people are spending a lot more time on it and maybe not getting anything out of it, but I think the…

 

The secret and the sauce was teaching people how to measure their impact and helping them understand and identify, not just understand, but identify for themselves all the places where they should really be teaching and not doing, you know, and that gets into like delegating and stuff like that. But it’s been so much easier to describe it as like, you’re, you know, you’re in the shift leader role, you’re sort of a doer. And then a lot of them rose through these different management roles without getting any skills around. How do I lead instead of do?

 

And that’s where they got stuck. So changing their thinking on what is what and my mind is spinning because it’s so many layers to doing that. it’s like, where do you even start? And is it classroom learning? Do you need to be in the field? How do you build out all of the different layers of both training and support, but also motivation and this mix between

 

know, extrinsic and extrinsic rewards that they’re getting for doing things appropriately. think, you know, there’s, like I said earlier, I think there’s always a little bit of a misconception around, you know, you want people to be like intrinsically motivated to love their job and to do this, this and that. And most of us are, but I would also argue that if we got really honest with ourselves, majority of the things that motivate us to…

 

act in the moment are actual external rewards. Like someone’s gonna recognize me for this. I’m gonna look good if I do that. Someone’s gonna pat me on the back or I can say XYZ or something like that. it’s actually, we’re thinking it’s an intrinsic reward, but it’s not. We’re wanting recognition for doing things right. So building that into all of the training systems too. Like where do you get recognized? Why is it important? Why should it matter to you?

 

Jeff Walter (16:28)

Yes.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(16:38)

not just for, you know, feeling good about yourself, but like your paycheck. That’s important to people, that kind of stuff.

 

Jeff Walter (16:43)

Yeah.

 

Well, so, okay. So a bunch of stuff there, but let’s focus on motivations there for a second, because, you know, I think, you know, from a psychological standpoint, I think one of the things that’s really undervalued in most training programs is the fact that we’re social creatures. And as every social creature in on the planet, it’s, it there’s, there’s a status hierarchy. got a couple, you get a couple of.

 

wolves together and there’s a hierarchy. you know, the pecking order is actually the, for chickens, it’s, or hens, it’s the actual order in which you can eat and you peck each other, right? And if you’re at the bottom of the pecking order, you’re getting pecked. But, and as humans, same thing. And that status,

 

extrinsic rewards. It’s kind of showing, to me, showing status. think it’s really undervalued in the programs. Like just something very seemingly trivial. It’s like a patch, a uniform shows that I’ve accomplished something. I’m not here, I’m here. You know what I mean? So what do you…

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(17:33)

rewards or motivations, yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (17:58)

So how do you operationally, I’m very excited because you said a lot of things I’m really excited about. But let’s shift a little towards, okay, how do you operationalize that? Because I’m seeing the strategy. The strategy is, okay, if we haven’t defined the process, and this isn’t training, this is just operationally. If we haven’t defined the process of what does,

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(18:02)

I said a lot, I know.

 

Jeff Walter (18:24)

you know, this entry level role do, what does this shift manager role, shift leader role do? Like what is the process all the way up to the area managers? You know, what is the process? You don’t define the process and the process is going to be highly variable depending on the interpretation of the individual. So if you want consistency, you have to define it. And then once you define it, you can then teach it. And that, and, then, and then what I hear you say is that then you layer on the soft skills that are

 

necessary to make that a better experience. how do you tap into? So, so I think I got that as a, as a framework is am I, am I kind of, am I getting that right?

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(19:03)

Yeah, and the next step, the where we want to be, and I know we talk about this later, but it’s how do you individualize the learning to the learner? Once you get everybody with their basic skills, some people are going to need extra time on some, some people already came in prepackaged and where do they go? How do you feed your eagles? I don’t know if it’s terrible phrase, but it works. Feed your eagles and starve your pigeons.

 

And the irony, and what I love so much about this job is there are such direct parallels to the classroom. Not that we’ve ever starved a pigeon in a classroom, but when you’re in a classroom, and you have a group of kids, you have, let’s say, 3 to 5 % of them that are gifted learners or undiagnosed gifted learners, they just get it and they are bored out of their mind 90 % of the school day. teachers really struggle to challenge them. And then you’ve got your other, let’s say, 10 to 15 % at the bottom who are extreme strugglers.

 

Jeff Walter (19:38)

I’m ⁓

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(19:55)

And then you’ve got varying levels of kind of people in the middle. And I found that when I was a teacher coach that people either taught directly to the middle and ignored the extremes, or they taught directly to the bottom and ignored the variability of everybody else. But we’re trying to teach everybody to do is teach to everyone. there are teaching strategies that do that. Those are some of the pedagogical components that we’ve wanted to embed into the training materials. We’ve got some fun buzzwords in education we call like blended learning.

 

Jeff Walter (20:03)

Mm-hmm.

 

Right. ⁓

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(20:23)

Essentially, it’s honestly, I firmly believe it’s really just Montessori style thinking on crack or prepackaged nicely or maybe for adults. So blended learning gives learners a choice over one or more than one of these three things, pace, place and path. So the bar is here, right? This is the standard that they have to learn. if you have, but if you’re,

 

Jeff Walter (20:32)

What is what is that? What does that mean though?

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(20:47)

learning session or workshop or booklet or process, whatever thing you’re working on there, gives them some choice of, or let’s say the order that they go in to learn things. And, or it could be one or all of these three things. Pace, that’s an easy one. How fast or slow can they go? Can they move quickly through it or can they go really slowly if they need to? Or let me see, pace, place or path. So sorry, path is the order, but place is where they can do the learning.

 

Jeff Walter (21:13)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(21:13)

you know, you obviously blended learning, meaning online versus at home and and but also just physically, where are they sitting when they get to do it? Like that’s that’s in the classroom. But the same may be true in a restaurant scenario. So if you’re teaching someone how to make biscuits, do they want to be at the biscuit station while they’re doing it hands on? Or do they want to be sitting down at a table taking notes? Do they need quiet? Do you know there’s not as many places in a restaurant you can do that. But the other components of

 

Jeff Walter (21:31)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(21:41)

place are, you know, is it with someone or is it on your own in the sense that you have you’re using the technology. So you can kind of see if you add some choice into that, you’re already getting directly at their level of learning and you’re individualizing the instruction a little bit more. So some of those things are easy things to add in.

 

Jeff Walter (21:59)

And so from a pedagogical standpoint, there’s a certain set of knowledges you want to acquire. And I like that. And you’re defining the path. But then we need you to learn aid.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(22:14)

So you define this

 

standard. You say, hey, this is where you need to get. At the end of a week, I’m going to certify you on this. You need to be able to know and do these 25 things. Here are all your options for how you get there. You can do it in one day. You can do it in five. there are some framework around the learning. These are the things you need to know. But you can learn these things in this order.

 

Jeff Walter (22:17)

Okay.

 

Right, okay.

 

Right.

 

Right,

 

here’s a recommended way to get there, but you can get there in other paths. But in order to attend this instructor led training, you have to do these other self-paced things, self-learning in order to call, there’s prerequisites and all that kind of fun stuff. ⁓

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(22:40)

Here are your options exactly.

 

Yeah, it’s not even

 

to attend the instructor-led training. It’s in order to get certified to say, hey, I’m going to, it’s almost like in order to pass this test, you need to be able to do these things. And here are the ways you can pass it. Here are all the tools that you have, which is also great for motivation, right? Because not only does it let them start making choices that matter to them, it lets them move at their own pace. But it puts the right amount of pressure on them to act.

 

Jeff Walter (22:53)

Right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(23:17)

What I love about this is it teaches them metacognition. It teaches them to think about their own thinking, to say, OK, I need to be able to do that. What are the tools that I have that work for me to get to that point? Because a lot of times we’re saying, here’s the task, here’s the tool, like, good luck. But that skill, I mean, that’s its own neural pathway in and of itself, right, is to go internally and say, what are my tools? And is this

 

Jeff Walter (23:27)

Bye.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(23:44)

And then even halfway through, this working for me? Maybe I should try something else. That is a whole skill set that we want to build in the process. So by changing the pedagogy to have some of this blended learning, you know, foundations to it, simultaneously starting to build their metacognition and their motivation to do the role and their autonomy in the role itself. So they’re not constantly dependent on a booklet or a person for their learning in the position.

 

Jeff Walter (24:08)

So I think I get that. I understand that a little. How does that tap into the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations? I can see how that can tap into the intrinsic because I’m being empowered. I’m not being told to show up for class at 8.30 or take these three things or else. I’m given this menu.

 

And I got to get to this point, but how I navigate there is, know, I’ve got some control over that. I’m empowered to navigate that. I would imagine that would correlate to some intrinsic motivations because I can take, I can, but how, how do you tap into those other things? Yeah.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(24:52)

So the structure, you’re

 

right. So what you don’t wanna do, and I think when I was teaching teachers and when I work with my trainers here is what you don’t wanna do is make it a free for all. Like, here’s a checklist, good luck. It needs to be very structured around it. So for example, when we’re teaching this to teachers in classrooms, especially of little kids, and maybe think back to when your girls were little too, they probably had something that their teacher used.

 

Jeff Walter (25:06)

Right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(25:16)

to monitor their behavior on a minute-by-minute basis, maybe like a stoplight or, right? And then they probably also had something that was daily. The kids were also probably earning points as a class daily, but there was also probably something they could win at the end of the week. So there was a weekly motivational check-in there too. And then maybe there was something that was larger and monthly too. The same applies to adults. Go ahead.

 

Jeff Walter (25:37)

So, okay.

 

So how do you bake that into a training program with thousands of learners and like 900 plus locations?

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(25:45)

Everybody has a stoplight in their restaurant. No, I’m just kidding. There are no stoplights. But what we do

 

do is we build common language around how we are evaluating them and places where they can succeed and achieve. And we create different layers of check-ins and some that are singular and they don’t add up throughout the course of their training and others that do. So we have daily check-ins.

 

where they have to sit down with their manager and they can achieve one of three scores essentially. They have a weekly version of it. We build in some reward system. We have what we call bow bucks and we want them, if they’re doing really well weekly, to get a certain amount of those. But there are other rewards like, okay, well, if you do this well, you can pick your schedule and so on and so forth. And then we also have monthly versions of that. But then at each check-in, we have different layers of leadership that are involved. So for any managers,

 

you know, daily they have to any managers in training, they have to meet with their certified training manager, but they meet with their regional training manager at least once or twice a week as well, and kind of get that kind of reward and input and feedback as they’re going. But they also get, you know, all of that daily check-ins add up to what their weekly one. So they’re constantly working for something at the same time, not just to learn the position, but to make sure they’re a good cultural fit. And are they, you know, are those leadership or soft skills or skills in general?

 

Jeff Walter (26:46)

Uh-huh.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(27:07)

you know, being threaded through it. And if they’re not, they’re getting behavioral feedback that helps. And if they are, sometimes the reward is just, hey, you did a great job. Here’s your score. Or sometimes the reward is, hey, you did so good, we want to award you some bo-bucks. Or you can work for this, this, and this. And yes, there are pins and badges in the process. But the goal is to structure and appropriately stagger the feedback and the feedback in and of itself.

 

is an extrinsic reward, like, I’m doing really well or no, I’m not. And they want that approval of their manager.

 

Jeff Walter (27:35)

Right.

 

And well, so that’s interesting.

 

So how do you execute something like that in a franchise situation where, you

 

You have to convince the franchisees to allow their employees to do all that. Right? Like that’s a lot of engagement. You know, right? Like, you know, a daily check and a weekly check in, a monthly check in. like how do you, you know, just, I, you know, saw up here in Michigan, lot of time in the automotive sector.

 

You know, the, you know, how do you, how do you get your franchise ors, uh, franchisees, I should say to, to dedicate that time and energy for their staff. I mean, they’re the ones paying the staff, right? Not the franchise or, right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(28:21)

Yeah, you

 

make it a common language and you make the check-ins simple and meaningful. I mean, that probably sounds like a diluted answer, but that’s really the answer. The check-ins have to, everybody has to be speaking a common language. The language has to matter to them. has to be simple. I mean, we’re sitting here talking about, you know, some of the psychology behind it, but I don’t use extrinsic motivation in any of our trainings. You know, we just thread the language through, you know, we kind of, and thread the language through, very simple, very accessible.

 

Jeff Walter (28:26)

Okay.

 

Alright.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(28:49)

very meaningful to them and something that matters to them as far as measuring whether or not this person is going to fit into the role or not. So it’s also a tool that they kind of need and they have to believe that they need it. Otherwise, they’re just training people on how to make chicken biscuits and tea and then asking them to lead a shift and not seeing the results. always tying things to results is super helpful. But the teaching side of it is it’s frequency and simplicity.

 

Jeff Walter (29:01)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah, so… Okay.

 

So frequency simplicity and then the simplicity, it’s defining it. And then, and then I guess.

 

It becomes part of the Bojangles way. Right. I mean, that’s, and that’s what they’re buying into at the end of the day is, is, is a, it’s part of the turnkey. And it’s, I mean, it sounds like I’m just listening to you and it’s like, you’re integrating the training into the operations. And this is just how we, this is how we do business. And it’s not, it’s not, okay. Now put your operations hat on and go make biscuits. Right. It’s like, no.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(29:29)

Mm-hmm.

 

It’s just who we are. ⁓ That’s right.

 

Right. While you’re macing biscuits,

 

your head’s always on a swivel and here’s what we believe and here’s, yeah, here’s how we think about the business.

 

Jeff Walter (29:48)

And then.

 

Exactly.

 

Well, cause you, what you see, what I’ve seen in a lot of, you know, partner training, whether it’s in a franchise or other types, it’s like, here’s the operations and you go do, and then stop, go over here and train and then stop, come back and do what I hired you to do, which is actually do something. And what I think I hear you saying is, you integrated into the operations.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(30:13)

you

 

Jeff Walter (30:16)

I mean, obviously that has to be time to actually take, you know, taking consumer training, but you make it all part of the way of doing business. And then you have these very distinct checkpoints, these competencies that you’re like, no, I need you to get these 25 competencies so that you are a trained associate.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(30:30)

you

 

Yeah.

 

so for example, your daily check-ins are like, did you complete each piece of training? also, of the? So let me work backwards. Your weekly check-ins are actually all related to your competencies. There’s one checkbox at the very top that says, did you complete the actual e-learning? And did you get to work on that station or whatever it is? Or maybe it’s like, you know.

 

dealing with waste or counting inventory, something like that, you get to do the thing, right? But the whole rest of the page is what were your leadership competencies that you were supposed to be doing throughout? So they get feedback on that throughout the week and then they get kind of a culminating look back each week. So we’ve shifted the focus, like they’re also getting certified on these stations, but to your point, it’s integrated and we’ve shifted the focus away from running the restaurant to leading the restaurant. And we’re measuring for that. That’s what all of their, and that was the other,

 

Jeff Walter (31:16)

Yeah.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(31:28)

I would say probably biggest change we made and most impactful thing that we did or I did with my training team here when we updated the training was we created observations for each layer of leadership that they had to pass and be certified in. They had other ones where it’s like, well, someone would come in and evaluate the restaurant and that was a measure of how well the shift leader was doing.

 

But what we did was we put observable, objective, measurable behaviors on a single observation that they had to do in order to be certified as a shift leader and an assistant general manager and manager. And that was a game changer because all of a sudden we weren’t saying, hey, you’re doing a good job or hey, you you need to, I don’t know, you need to speak up, but you also need to be aware of how fast our drive through is moving, but you also need to aware of the guests that are coming every two minutes. No.

 

What we did was we made them behaviors, right? And we counted them on a frequency basis rather than on a qualifying basis. So I’m not qualifying whether they do well or not. I’m just counting how often they are doing the behaviors that are part of that role and that would represent strong leadership or not. So then when they get to the end, we’re just saying, okay, well, out of, let’s say, the 25 times that a guest walked in,

 

maybe the best example, but about 25 times that the guest walked in, you coached your front of house team on hospitality once. That’s something to think about for them. Like, hey, does that, like what’s happening? It’s easy to get under the hood on that, but it also helps them just see, it feels so non-judgmental to them and it makes it very easy for us to give them feedback and for them to sort of pick an area to be coached on. And then, you know, that gets back into pace, place and path. They’re, know, they’re choosing what,

 

Jeff Walter (32:55)

Right. Okay.

 

Yeah, yeah.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(33:15)

They can think about the tools that they have to do that and then they can improve on each thing in their own way.

 

Jeff Walter (33:20)

So that’s it though. if I’m coming in at entry level, I’m picking up knowledge on how to work all the stations and do all the things. So the process stuff we talked about and a little soft skills in terms of what it means to be a good ambassador, right? Cause I’m the face of the brand. Would that be a fair way putting it? And then…

 

And then, and then as I get into shift leader, I’m starting to have these leadership skills. Now who’s counting how many times you greeted, you you, coached your like, how’s that happening? Okay.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(33:54)

your trainer, whoever’s, whoever’s,

 

we call it a peak period observation form. So what we do is we have that trainee, you know, be on, you know, one of two stations during a peak period, because one of the problems that we have is that shift manager, so the person running that shift will get on, let’s say, pack station where we’re putting all the orders in a bag and getting it either to the window or to the front. And they’ll be hyper focused on just making sure all the orders are accurate, but they’re not.

 

Jeff Walter (34:04)

Okay.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(34:20)

their heads don’t come up, their heads aren’t on a swivel and they’ve stopped managing, they’ve stopped listening for what’s happening. So what we want to do is help them in a very condensed one-page format understand that like, yes, your job is to make sure those orders during that very busy time are accurate, but you have a team to do that with and it’s your job to coach the team as you’re going. And you may need to be able to bump and slide out of position and go check on certain other things. What are you listening for? What are you looking for?

 

your coaching, how frequently, and it’s really they can do most of the job from their position but they have to pick their head up, they have to be conscious of those things. So it was an easy way to help them stop thinking about just the position and know, all right, these are the other 10 things, they could have it right in front of them while they’re in position and they’re training on it. These are the other like, especially like five categories, but let’s say 10 things that I need to be monitoring and coaching for and making sure my team is also aware of.

 

You know drive-thru times, know, do we have our food is any of our food out of hold time? Is it hot and fresh? You know, are we being hospitable that they always have a headset on they can hear everything going on the drive-thru You know, I coaching on hospitality? How is my team doing like and those are that’s really only four or five things It feels like a lot but when you understand that the exact behaviors are being measured on are it makes it a lot easier to focus your time and energy on those things instead of the Let’s say the subjective

 

Jeff Walter (35:16)

huh.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(35:44)

You’re in charge. But this is what it means to be in charge. And I think just getting specific about the behavior. We used to do this with teachers too, right? Like we would get in there and say, OK. And this is kind of where I learned it from. Like I had someone come in and observe my classroom 15 years ago at this point. And she’s like, well, what do you want to work on today? Like what is it that you feel like you need to be better at as a teacher? And she had a whole list of things, which is those are the parameters, right? It wasn’t just like, I want to feel better when I show up to work. There was actual teacher.

 

Jeff Walter (35:46)

Right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(36:13)

skills. And, you know, I think I picked something like

 

How do I measure learning or something like that? I can’t remember what it was. And what she did when she came in was she chose a couple of things that were objective to measure. She drew a map of my classroom, and she would mark where I was standing at which times. And then she would mark the students that I called on. And so when she showed that back to me, it was super easy for me to see, well, my back is to this quarter of the classroom for 90 % of the lesson.

 

Jeff Walter (36:46)

Right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(36:47)

Kids are the only ones whose knowledge I have any idea of whether they understand what I’m talking about or not. I didn’t hear from the other, let’s say, 30 kids in the classroom. That’s the foundation of what these observations are for. How do I give you an objective way to look at your leadership of this shift, of that particular peak period?

 

Jeff Walter (37:07)

Pretty interesting. ⁓

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(37:08)

It’s super interesting. One of the other things she measured during,

 

I don’t know if it was that less or another one, was how long I talked for versus how long my students talked for. Because we know that the only way I know if my students got it is if I, well, two ways I would say, but for the most part in a classroom is if they explain it to me, if I can hear that they’ve got it. Most people answer that question and I ask this all the time and my team, my team.

 

Jeff Walter (37:25)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(37:36)

loves it and hates it, think. I walk into any of their trainings and I say, well, how do know they got it? And they’re like, well, I told them like 25 times. And I’m like, but how do you, that means you got it. How do know they got it? And they’ll be like, and then they start to get there. like, because they’re good trainers, they’re amazing trainers. But they’ll say something like, well, they showed me, or I had them explain it back to me, or they asked questions, or I checked for understanding. like that’s, we’re just getting there now. in, not in addition, but to as

 

Jeff Walter (37:46)

Right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(38:02)

part of this whole like, let’s take the actual content and fix it. We have to figure out who the people are that are like, I’m not responsible for teaching everybody. Sometimes I feel that way, but like it’s really not the case. Our regional training managers are responsible for it, but I only have six of them. There’s one per region. So six for almost 300 restaurants. And this is just on the corporate side. Obviously that doesn’t cut it. They can’t get to all those people.

 

Jeff Walter (38:12)

Right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(38:29)

But it’s our area directors and it’s our regional directors. on the franchise side, it’s the same thing. It’s their, whoever’s in charge of, it’s their lead operator, director of operations. It’s a little different for each franchisee, but those people become the cohort that we’re also focused on to give them teaching skills. Because most of them are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we already do that. I told them that. If we say, hey, we’re having this common problem, let’s say it’s a food cost issue or waste.

 

Jeff Walter (38:42)

Yeah.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(38:56)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, did a class on that a week ago or I do class on that once a month. So I asked, you know, Mr. Mrs. Area Director, so how long have you been doing classes on that thing once a month? for years. My people love it. amazing. How has it impacted your food costs? Has it changed? Well, no, I got to keep doing them. And then that’s where we start to say, OK, well, wait a minute. I’m sure they’re enjoying the class, but are they learning? Are you measuring what they learn? What are you looking for after the class?

 

Jeff Walter (39:18)

Right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(39:23)

And that’s what we’re working on now too is, know, so A, we spent all of last year training our trainers on how to teach, how to measure understanding and how to measure their impact in that way, you know, both, you know, cause I mean, I went to a couple of our in-person classes very early on and it was, one of them was five days of being talked at. I mean, I’m doing a lot of talking here, but when I’m in the classroom, you know, it’s how many opportunities can I give them to,

 

Jeff Walter (39:45)

Hahaha!

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(39:50)

to hear what they’re thinking, it’s so much more strategic than that. There’s so much structure that goes into the types of questions we ask, the behaviors that we’re looking for, the answers that we’re looking for, all of that. And that’s what we’re teaching on the back end, but that’s what’s also built into the learning. So those opportunities to show those behaviors are there. We just got to teach the right people to look for those things or to remind them of those things or draw them out.

 

Jeff Walter (40:15)

Well, so, so, so a couple of things pop my head. So, well, first of all, sounds very comprehensive. And I, and I get the, I always think in terms of like learn, do teach, right? Like if you really want to know something, try and teach it to somebody. Right. So I, it seems like I get the whole, seems like a very comprehensive knowledge acquisition, right? Like this is how we’re going to train, this is how we’re going to teach people. This is how they’re going to learn.

 

about a process and then it sounds like with the check-ins and that and other tools like that, you’ve incorporated the do and that’s the skill development, right? Like in my mind and learning and development, the learning is, know, getting prepared to pass the driving test. The development is skill development. I can pass the road tests, right? Two different things.

 

is so when you were talking about all that and when we’re talking about, you know, that first level person coming in, that associate coming in, it sounds like we’ve got the, you’ve got the program in place to not only do the learning, but do the skill development because you’re getting observed. heard a number of times you talk about observation, observation, observation.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(41:23)

Well,

 

yeah, and what we’re talking about is almost what happens in between learn, do, teach. Because if you say it that way, obviously it’s an oversimplification, right? But what if between the learn and the do, they got it wrong? What do do? You’re going to go make them learn it again in the exact same way? Or are you measuring? Go ahead. Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (41:37)

Well, that’s that’s.

 

or that.

 

Well, I was going to say on, me on skill development, it’s all about practice and coaching, right? Like knowledge acquisition is all about absorbing the information, knowing what the red light and a traffic light means, knowing what the yellow line means and being able to convey that back to somebody. Yeah. I know I’m not supposed to cross the yellow line. I know that means stop. I know this triangle means yield, but then.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(41:49)

Cloud, you brought that word up.

 

Jeff Walter (42:10)

I got to actually pull into traffic. I got to actually park in a parking spot. I got to actually operate the vehicle and build those skills. I actually have to make the chicken. I actually have to run the shift and I got to practice and I got to get coaching because that’s the only way to develop skills is to do it and have somebody say, Hey, you might want to try this. Hey, you did this well, but you know, it’s like what you said before. It’s like.

 

Hey, was just observing and 25 people came in and only coached once to have people greet them, right?

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(42:42)

Right,

 

we gave them a tool to give them feedback and the benefit of a single tool to do that is that everybody’s looking for the same things instead of the feedback we were getting prior to having that tool was, yeah, they were getting feedback in between saying, yeah, you did a great job, but we were leading shifts differently in every single restaurant.

 

Jeff Walter (42:59)

Well, and that’s where you start to get into the, you define this and now you can do it consistently, right? Because you’re all operating off of the same rubric. So it seems like over the years you’ve been there, you’ve taken all this great educational theory and applied it, right? Which, little bit of psychology with the motivation, a little bit of pedagogy, a little bit

 

So now when you get to the, do I have that right in terms of learning and then actually skill development in terms of getting the feedback and the coaching on the skill development and using the tools, like you said, kind of, so then go, yes, Jeff, you not only know that you’re supposed to put the chicken in the fryer and put them in and put them in there for five minutes and blah, blah, blah, blah, but I’ve actually seen you do it seven times. You make really good hot chicken, right? Like, like.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(43:50)

think that’s like 75 % of it. The other 25 % of it is how do I know that you’re going to do it when I’m not here? Because now know how to do it, but are you going to do it? And that’s the other piece of it where I think some of those motivational check-ins and building the culture and the process come into play to ensure that, because there’s probably 25 shortcuts you could have taken, or you don’t want to tempt the chicken, or it’s

 

Jeff Walter (43:56)

Right, right.

 

Right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(44:14)

you don’t want to follow the process, you could be certified that you know the process perfectly. I’ve seen you do it seven times. And that’s where the then what question comes in and are we building some of those skills in the process? And do the managers know what to look for or how frequently to look for it while they’re on the shift to ensure that the team members are following the process that they learned really well?

 

Jeff Walter (44:34)

And then you’re building that into the, so are you building the observation into the process? And, and, and with the observation comes to coaching, because if I saw you made the chicken or the biscuits wrong, even though you know what to do, right. But you took that shortcut. You know, you only beat the eggs for one minute instead of two minutes or whatever the thing is, right? And yeah, you took this little shortcut. You didn’t do it ABC. just did ABC all at once, right. Or whatever it was. ⁓ so, so, so it seems like that.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(44:59)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (45:03)

To me, that’s the learning and the skill development. When you were talking about the folks going out and teaching, are those your 15 people or are you leveraging the franchisees to do the training?

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(45:16)

Yes, to both.

 

Yes, to both. So I have six regional training managers and, I don’t know, back your way out of that. I don’t know, eight or nine field training managers. The regional training managers work on the corporate side of the business. The field training managers work on the franchise side of the business. But above them also, I have a field training director that works on my team. And then I have a director of curriculum and design who actually

 

Jeff Walter (45:23)

Right.

 

Okay.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(45:43)

I met in grad school and we’ve been friends and we went through the exact same program together. So she’s been able to sort of take what I started. She’s been here for about a year and start to spool it up into this ongoing curriculum at different levels. And she’s the one who actually spent the last year working with, let’s say my team of those 15 people, my field trainers, teaching them about how to teach so that they didn’t, like let’s say if they were in a classroom setting, they didn’t get up there and talk for an hour if it was an hour long class.

 

Jeff Walter (45:53)

Right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(46:09)

And how to also plan their lessons. Like most of the time we, you know, we do hand them stuff that’s like, here, done, do this. But if they don’t really understand what they’re doing, like what is the thinking behind? Like why do I do a think, pair, share as part of this activity? What’s the point? Otherwise you’re gonna do the activity and not realize you’re actually supposed to be checking for understanding right here. And here’s how you can do that. And you know, one of the things that I noticed super early on when I came here is that in a classroom scenario, any scenario really, any training scenario, is if someone was wrong,

 

they were afraid to correct them. They would just say, you for your answer and keep going. So the entire class just got the wrong answer and nobody said anything. And they didn’t know how to correct them in a way that made them feel empowered. But there were probably other six or seven other people who thought the same wrong thing and just giving them all those teaching strategies for how to measure their impact and what to do in scenarios where things went wrong or people weren’t paying attention or.

 

really understanding what engagement meant, not that they were having fun and that they were talking. I mean, we used to be punitive to the whole room if people didn’t answer. you know, we would ask a question and then be like, all right, come on, guys. I know. Like, don’t do that. You make them feel bad for not answering the question. They had no concept of what think time was. You know that, you know, I was an English teacher, we’re like, we’re the queens of this. But you probably can remember back into your school days what a teacher would ask a question and then just wait. Awkward silence.

 

Jeff Walter (47:17)

That’s… Alright.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(47:32)

felt awkward maybe and it does to new teachers as they’re coming in for sure but it gives the kids a chance to process the information and give you a good answer instead of just the fastest thing that they can think of off the top of their head. So those are all the skills that we spent time on the back end teaching the training team first so that to answer your question they could go out into the field and teach our franchise operators or the heads of training in their you know different

 

Jeff Walter (47:42)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(47:59)

organizations and let’s say our area directors and our regional managers, how to do those things. And once that’s where we’re going, like that’s what I think the secret sauce or really good training is, just understanding how people learn and understanding that leadership is teaching. And if you know what good teaching really looks like, you you’ve, cause, cause you know, I think there’s a lot of not great teachers out there. They’re not measuring their impact. and a big part of it is like, Hey, do you have all the skills to get the knowledge across?

 

and to measure whether they got it in the moment. But then what?

 

Jeff Walter (48:32)

Right. Well, I want to talk about impact, I want to understand what I think I…

 

So I get the edge, you know, the, skilling up of the instructors and the folks that are on your team. So, but it sounds like you’re getting into your, you’re going to the next step, which is giving the, franchise employees the opportunity to teach. it’s, and I would imagine that would especially be. Yeah. Thereby certifying them to teach.

 

this competency or this course or whatever, you know, how, how to teach whatever X, whatever X is. And I would imagine that would be, desirable for a lot of the multi-unit operators because then they have the opportunity to do the training at any point in time. And they don’t have to schedule somebody from corporate. can engage their own folk. Is that, is that, is

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(49:24)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (49:26)

And, and so next question, because I was just talking to a gentleman about this with Freightliner, with Freightliner. They, they were a Freightliner multi-unit dealership and, and, he had gotten, he and his team, he’s on the, he’s on the franchise or side. They had gotten certified to teach a certain number of courses. And then what was interesting is when they do conduct the deal at Freightliner was.

 

When you are certified to teach a course, is kind of traditional instructor training for technicians. It has to be open to the entire network, not just your units. And there’s a tuition to participate. So they would get people from other dealerships that were outside their network and they would get the incremental.

 

revenue, but it was really interesting. then, but what was also really fascinating is that Freightliner had created a whole network of dealer instructors. And so they would talk, there was a whole place and way for them to communicate with each other. So anyway, I was just curious as you’re exploring this, as you’re putting this in place, how do see that fleshing out?

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(50:35)

Yeah, so we’ve created a cohort. started with our certified training managers, and we bring them in once a year and follow up with them weekly with professional development, essentially, to make them strong trainers. And these are our certified training managers across the brand. So we have a whole cohort. These are store managers.

 

Jeff Walter (50:49)

Now, they’re franchisees,

 

they’re franchise employees, not corporate or, yeah. I’m sorry, they’re not in the corporate training department. Right, right, right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(50:56)

Some are both, it’s both. So what we do is we create.

 

No, no, no, these are operators. These are general

 

managers that run training stores throughout the entire footprint, both franchise and corporate. And so we built that initial cohort. as the parallel path is for their training leaders to also get built into a cohort of learners, essentially. the first group, it’s not the first group, we’re doing a lot simultaneously.

 

Jeff Walter (51:25)

Yeah.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(51:26)

Who are the people in your organization in charge of training? Let’s certify them. It’s a year-long course on teaching. You’ll use some of the courses that you will teach to get certified on teaching classroom. what I love most, I think, about the course is that I’d say 50 to 75 % of it is also geared towards in-restaurant teaching to apply those skills and kind of bring it back. So you get certified to teach.

 

and understand training both in a classroom and at the store level. And these are your franchise leaders in addition to some of your opco leaders, right? And then you take it down to the next level. Okay, who are your multi-unit leaders and what impact or frequency or interactions are they having that actually require teaching skills rather than managing skills? Because they have to do both, but the majority of what they do…

 

is teaching and I think they don’t necessarily see it that way and once we help that mindset shift and they’ve got the resources in their own organization to support them, it’s much easier for buy-in because it’s not me from corporate coming to tell them how to do it, it’s right, it’s their leadership and their trainers.

 

Jeff Walter (52:26)

Right. Well, I also,

 

I also thought that whole approach is just a brilliant way of leveraging all that knowledge out in the field. You know, and, you got to do it the way you were talking about.

 

I just thought that’s brilliant. It brings the whole learn to teach back in that now there’s an opportunity to, to, for them to teach, which gets into like leadership, half of leadership is teaching, right? So it’s, I think it’s brilliant. I think this is another thing and you.

 

mentioned this several times, so I’m really curious as to how you’re doing this. I think a lot of people struggle with how do I know I’m having a positive impact? You know, I mean, I’d say 80, 90 % of the programs I’ve seen measure success by completed transcripts, right? Or the old butts in seats, right? Like, well, you know, I had 3000 people

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(53:14)

Yeah. You’re measuring your input.

 

Go ahead, sorry, yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (53:18)

Right. Yeah.

 

Yeah, exactly. Like I had 3000 people complete that course. So I’m doing a good job because last year it was only 2000. Right. So I had a 50 % increase in the number of people that took the training. So I’m doing a great job. And it’s like, yeah, but that amount to anything.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(53:30)

That’s compliance,

 

exactly. What is the lagging indicator? And that’s what we try to look at is what are our leading indicators that we can influence or measure? Both. Some of them are compliance related. Most of them are actually within the compliance piece. So did they come to the class? Obviously, you got to get there to learn, But we’re able to measure.

 

their skills within the class before they leave. So if I have Betty Sue, can say she was at about an 85 % on, I don’t know, this is arbitrary, but listening skills or, and so on. So when I go back into the field, then I can look at some of my lagging indicators, are, which in some of them, think also cross over, but like I can say, Betty Sue attended on this date, here’s how she scored. And here’s what I should then expect to see in her restaurant. These are the behaviors that I’m looking for in store. those things have to be,

 

Jeff Walter (54:19)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(54:22)

universally available. So coming out of a class, we get that in, you they have pages marked in their books and we do it a couple different ways, but we also share data with their superiors to say, these are the behaviors we saw in class. This is where, or their confidence level or how they achieve, depending on what it is. Here’s what you want to look for as a follow-up in your restaurants. And then we have numbers too, right? Did your retention improve? Did their job satisfaction improve? Did you see, you know, cause you know, those things.

 

improve, typically you’ll start to see the P &L being managed a whole lot better. Their drive-through times will all of that will improve, right? But I think the first and often the most, let’s say telling like lagging indicator is retention. ⁓ Do they themselves stay for longer? Do they make it to the 90-day mark? Do they make it to the two-year mark? You we have these different measurements and what we found is that more often than not when these managers have come through these new courses,

 

Jeff Walter (55:02)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(55:15)

and score that, like, let’s say X amount on certain competencies, they stay because they are learning the things that are relevant to their job role. They’re able to apply them directly, and we’re able to support them on things that aren’t subjective anymore. It’s like, hey, I left this class, and I need to do this, this, this, and this. And these are the behaviors that my manager is now looking for, and I have to teach my team how to do these, and yada, yada. And our retention numbers have, in the last two years, have

 

Jeff Walter (55:35)

Right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(55:43)

been significantly lower than they’ve been ever in the company’s entire existence. We’re trying to track towards best in class, and I would argue that we’re sprinting towards that line.

 

Jeff Walter (55:50)

Yeah.

 

Quick question, when you say retention, are you measuring retention within a group or retention within the network? Within a franchise group or retention within the entire franchise network?

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(56:07)

So we can’t measure, I’m talking about employee retention and we measure them within groups as far, like we group them by like job level, but I’m talking about an opco. So team member, salaried manager, hourly manager, and we look at those in different categories and improvements in their retention. We look at that, but we also look at like manager, for example, time in store, like in a single store versus moving to different stores and how that impacts. ⁓

 

Jeff Walter (56:35)

So

 

you’re looking at both. Yeah, the reason I ask is I worked with one of the automolars and it really interesting because the dealers had like a 50 % turnover, which is terrible. But then once we started looking at things from a

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(56:38)

Mm-hmm.

 

at

 

like what their general manager level or.

 

Jeff Walter (56:50)

Just, you know, that was the number that was just thrown out at the service tech salesperson, you know, just in general, right? And most of the staff are, you know, clerical service techs or salespeople, right? That’s the bulk of it. And then you’ve got your managers and that. But what was interesting was when we looked at the network as a whole. And so part of the thing there was why train? They’re just leaving to go to a different brand. You know, we’re training our competition.

 

Right. And then when they looked at it as a whole, the network had less than a 10 % turnover. And what was really happening was people were going from one dealer group to another within the network because they were getting trained and they were more valuable and they weren’t being rewarded for that value within their current employer. So they went to another employer in network. So I was just wondering if you’re looking at retention or you’re at the, you know, within the employer or across the network.

 

And, ⁓ both, and, and, and you’re seeing like huge increases, it sounds like. And that, so in addition to retention, is there any other thing that, that has been a good indicator of the impact you guys have been

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(57:50)

Both, yeah, definitely both.

 

gosh,

 

Yeah, I think that’s I want to answer that question.

 

Jeff Walter (58:05)

I mean, is huge because it’s a lagging, but it’s also a leading of sales and profitability.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(58:07)

It is, it is, and you know, it’s impacted everything.

 

Mm-hmm. Yeah, you know, I’m trying to think how I want to answer that question because there’s so many incredible impacts that we see, but I think what matters probably most to like me in the training department is I see…

 

let’s say, because being re-energized is difficult to measure. But I see people asking for training. I see people taking training on their own, like when we offer those kinds of things. What I see that I think is also a really good measurement is both things. Following standards probably sounds ridiculous, but at the above SOAR level,

 

Jeff Walter (58:33)

All right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(58:49)

All of a sudden, they believe in some of these processes and they’re getting results in multiple restaurants. So they’re able to sort of double down. that’s where I think that’s like some of the outcome that’s a little bit harder to measure is there. But we’re also having to retrain significantly less. That’s another great indicator for us. And like the training department is, they got it and they’re doing it. So we don’t have to keep retraining it.

 

you know, they’re ready to build on it. And it depends what it is. But we also do look at things like, you know, how much faster are they moving? And, you know, do they and like I said earlier, the other important indicators for me at least are, you know, they’re what are their reasons for leaving? What’s our net promoter score? And or what are their reasons for staying? And, you know, what is their manager’s involvement in their training process? Ben, do they?

 

Because these are all questions we ask them on their 14 and 28 day surveys. That survey data to me is gold. Because that’s telling me everything about how the programs are being executed.

 

Jeff Walter (59:47)

Well, and I also, think NPS is a great tool. You know, it’s hard to tie it to a dollar figure, but, but I think it’s, it’s a, we have another client that that’s what they use. use NPS at the, at the store owner level. Like, what do think of the training program? And it’s, it’s all about getting a higher NPS score. And then. Yeah.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:00:02)

Yeah.

 

Yeah, would you recommend this? Would you recommend

 

this place to work for a friend? Yes or no? we’ve arguably moved that needle in a very similar way to how we’ve our retention needle.

 

Jeff Walter (1:00:17)

Yeah.

 

And I’m a big believer also that the empirical evidence is you increase retention, that’s increased in sales and increased in profitability. It’s like the two go hand in hand. They all go hand in hand. It’s really hard to have high sales and high profitability when you’re constantly churning your staff.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:00:37)

Well, and in increasing our retention, I

 

teach the base classes less. We used to teach the foundations of leadership class that we have for our general managers once a month. We teach it now twice a year because we don’t have enough people to attend those classes and the people that they are choosing want to be here. Everybody else has already gone through the class and they’re on to the next level.

 

Jeff Walter (1:00:48)

All

 

Yeah.

 

That’s awesome. That’s

 

really awesome. I know you’ve been very generous with your time. If you have just a few more minutes, I just was curious as to what’s coming down the pipe for you.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:01:10)

What, I mean, it depends, long-term or short-term, right? We have a whole curriculum built out that we’re working on rolling one piece at a time. I think if it were up to, I don’t know, not me, we’d roll it really fast. All the classes would be available now and they could be teaching them. But what we’re trying to do is roll them in a way, not what we’re trying to, we are doing, we’re rolling them in a way that matters to the field and that we can measure whether the class is impactful or not and kind of make tweaks as we go. And so we’re rolling, let’s say two or three at a time, we built out an entire curriculum.

 

for shift leaders all the way through area directors. And both are available to franchise and we want to roll them in that way. Franchise will be about six months to a year behind on everything because they’re coming through the program afterwards so that our team can actually teach them how to do it in the field. But probably a pretty common scaling scenario. We don’t want to give them something we haven’t tested and we don’t know if it works or not. But that’s the idea, right? And what Catherine did, who’s my counterpart, and

 

Jeff Walter (1:01:59)

Yeah, yeah.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:02:07)

Partner in Crime and All Things curriculum, was she took like one class that had, so for example, foundations of leadership, we were only teaching it to our general managers. But what we kept finding is that some people were sending their shift leaders, some people were sending their area directors, some people would send assistant general managers. So she took it and broke it apart into the same topics, but at the competency level for each of those different roles. So now there’s four levels of foundation. Right. And then she built out all the other classes.

 

Jeff Walter (1:02:30)

interesting. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:02:35)

based on those competencies. And then when a new competency gets added to a role, like when you become a GM, you have new competencies that are relevant to you, she’d build a class that also worked its way up. So it’s a full curriculum. If you think like a university catalog, and it’s like, know, ENL 1101, ENL 1102, that’s what she built out. that, you know, so rolling that and measuring the impact of that, I think that’s what’s next in the next, like starting, you know, yesterday in the next three to five years, making that something that.

 

Jeff Walter (1:02:47)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:03:03)

is really unique to our organization and I think it’s going to help us excel. But I think what has always been a goal of mine in this particular organization, but just being out in the world outside of K-12 is, you’ve got two teachers at the helm. I would love for our area directors and general managers and shift leaders to be able to take our classes and get college credits for them. And that’s right. So say, OK, here’s where you live within Vojangles. What can you get your associates in business?

 

Jeff Walter (1:03:26)

Mmm. Mmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:03:32)

coming through 90 % of our program or all of our program. We already call it Bo University, Bojangles University, but we really want to make it that. And so that, you know, that it changes the talent pools that you’re getting, but it also makes it so that the people that you have that are already here and love the brand, but maybe hated learning growing up and didn’t go to college because not every, you don’t have go to college. I mean, I firmly have seen so much success not having gone to college and, you know, having spent 10 years getting paid as a public school teacher like,

 

Jeff Walter (1:03:34)

that’d be really, that’d be really cool. That’d be really cool. Right.

 

Yeah. ⁓

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:04:02)

Goodness, it’s a wild world out there, but.

 

Jeff Walter (1:04:02)

Yeah. Well, what I love about that, and I was having a

 

conversation with somebody the other day about this, is one of the things I think from a corporate learning standpoint that just, we need to think through how to solve this problem is once you, as the learner, leave that organization, your credential generally gets left behind. Right? So I can be a

 

Triple gold level platinum whatever yo

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:04:32)

You got all the pins, you got all the certificates, but it means nothing when you leave, yeah?

 

Jeff Walter (1:04:34)

Right. And then,

 

and then when I leave it, none of it’s transferable. Right. mean, I can say I did it, but I, but nine times out of 10, I have no way of actually demonstrating I did it unless I printed off hard copies of things and have my little folder of things. That’s what I love about what you just said on the associate’s degree is if you is the, the associate’s degree becomes a transferable credential. Right. Like.

 

Yeah, I got these all these certifications at Bojangles University, but then when it culminated in associates to read, that’s a credential that they can take with them elsewhere. You know, like, yeah, anyway, it’s just kind of that that’s first time I’ve heard somebody look at it from that perspective. That’s really, I think that’s brilliant. I think that’s awesome. I think that’s really cool. If you can figure out how to work with, you know, a two year school and, and, and get that,

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:05:19)

Throw that out there? Good.

 

Jeff Walter (1:05:29)

that accreditation, that would be amazing. I agree with you 100 % in that I don’t think it’s

 

Well, let me state it in the positive. I think in the next 10 years, there’s going to be a complete overhaul, maybe 15 years of higher ed credentialing in this country because it’s…

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:05:48)

You’re already starting

 

to see it where master’s programs and PhD programs say, don’t worry about it. You don’t need your GRE. Just come, come learn, come do, make it apply.

 

Jeff Walter (1:05:56)

Right. Like, there’s, and, and, and it’s going to morph. And, and what I love about what you just put, what you were just talking about, it’s, it’s, it’s one of those morphing things, right? Because, you know, the credentials are important in that I had a negotiation professor. He said, Hey, what do you think, you know, your, your MBA, what does it mean? And, know, we were like, Oh, we’re going to run the world someday. Blah, blah, blah. You know, a bunch of kids, you know, we’re young.

 

He goes, no, no, it means you have a minimal competency in a certain field.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:06:30)

that’s standard across all other MBAs. That’s exactly what it is.

 

Jeff Walter (1:06:32)

Right. Like, he goes,

 

you have some minimal competency and, you we were looking at it as a ceiling and he’s going, no, it’s a floor. But it’s an important floor. that’s, know, the gentleman I was talking to is over at the National Association of Automotive Service Excellence, ASE. And it’s the same challenge there. It’s like, you’ve got folks that are usually not on a higher ed path.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:06:40)

the stairs up, yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (1:06:58)

And how can they credibly signal to the marketplace that I’ve achieved this level of competency when those credentials don’t go with them? So anyway, was an interesting conversation.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:07:07)

Yeah, I mean, it roots

 

their abilities and universal standards that we all understand. And he says we’ve measured them this way. So no, it’s I mean, I love that. And I and I look, you know, having been working with this, you know, cohort of of people in this side of the industry for so long, it’s I find it incredible the amount of like time and blood, sweat and tears that they put into this role. And, you know, some of them.

 

Jeff Walter (1:07:12)

Right, right, exactly. ⁓ that’s brilliant. That’s so cool.

 

All

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:07:34)

just were struggling learners for years. I I was my goodness. I drove my teachers nuts. I mean, I was a gifted kid, but like I had severe ADHD. you know, that’s why I wanted to be a teacher because I was like, well, I’ve seen it all. You know, like, but also let me dive in because I understand those those nuances and they matter to me because I was one of those kids that my teachers had a very hard time figuring out how to make them love learning. And I think at the end of the day, when I get these group of people that come to my classrooms like

 

They just, they leave deeply inspired and they go home and they implement stuff right away. Even if it’s one small thing, it gets at the root of who they are and what their belief systems are. And the most meaningful belief system for me, I think, in this role, and I talk about it a lot, is I want them to like to learn because that makes them ready for what’s coming. ⁓ Because everything, nothing stays the same. This world has changed so much already since just…

 

Jeff Walter (1:08:16)

Thank

 

Yeah.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:08:27)

just COVID and the necessity to get online. now we have AI coming down the pike, not coming down, AI has been arrived, whether you’ve started using it or not, but it’s here. And it’s got, and we’d rather sort of take it by the horns and use it rather than be afraid of it. But that goes for everything. And I think that’s, it’s a, I don’t know if it’s like a fully Carol Dweckian open mindset, but it’s something to that effect where I enjoy.

 

Jeff Walter (1:08:35)

It’s here. ⁓

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:08:52)

and I’m open to hearing what’s next. And I also believe myself able to learn new things when necessary or frequently depending on who they are as a person. The group of people that I encountered, which has arguably been turned over since I started here, were people who, self-attributions they were making were they had fixed beliefs about themselves. I am this, I can’t be anything else. I don’t enjoy learning. Learning’s always been difficult for me.

 

These classes are so boring. I don’t want to have to attend. I have to leave my store and my family to go do this. They didn’t find any value in any of it. So just really making the training, you know, all of the things, which are so many and it’s layered, that make them, at the end of the day, love learning. But then at the end of the day, also want to see themselves as a type of educator and understand what that means at all the different levels. know, am I teaching it in a way that all different learners will understand me?

 

Jeff Walter (1:09:22)

Right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:09:45)

do I know how to measure whether or not they got it? What do I do? And this is word for me that sort of like learn, do, teach argument falls apart. It’s so simple. What do you do if they don’t get it? Because they don’t get it so many times. And do you know if they got it or not? Like that to me is like, I asked that question upside down and backwards all day long. like it changed, I changed how my whole department thinks about it. We’ve actually.

 

Jeff Walter (1:10:08)

Yeah. Well,

 

are you teaching or are learning? Yeah. Exactly.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:10:12)

Yeah, and are you able to measure or not they learned the right thing so that you

 

know that when you leave they’re going to do the right thing or believe the right thing or whatever those things are. It’s funny, my industry and many industries I’m sure used to use the word earlier coaching. They use it all the time, right? And I spent about a year back from maternity leave, which was last year. My kids are 15 months old. And so I, thank you. I spent the year.

 

Jeff Walter (1:10:27)

Yeah.

 

Congratulations.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:10:37)

observing, giving, know, they’re, while they’re going through this, this very overt course on what good teaching looks like in the restaurant, in a classroom, whatever, I’m observing them and observing them say, okay, I’m doing this skill right now. I want to, what does, what does coaching mean to you? I talk about it. And across the footprint, without, without exception, what they

 

when they thought they were coaching, they were modeling, they were jumping in, they were modeling, they were doing it for them and maybe asking them questions about it afterwards. So my team, who’s supposed to be like the pinnacle of all training in the organization, isn’t actually teaching and they think they are. that’s my job to get under the hood on that. And I think that maybe…

 

Something else that sets us a little bit apart is how far do we actually get under the hood of whether actual teaching is happening and whether they know if they’re doing it or not. So they all thought I was hilarious and they asked for lots of baby videos after this. But I was like, you are no longer allowed to use the word coaching. And they can’t. I want to change it for creating new neural pathways. And they’re like, Lindsay, you’ve lost your ever-loving mind. Like, I’m not going to tell people to create new neural pathways. I’m like, no, no, no, you don’t tell other people. But you have to think of it this way.

 

And I was like, and here’s what I mean, and this is what you can tell other people. Babies are these beautiful blank slates, Their brains come into this world, and they just, ain’t nothing there. And so all of these new pathways start to be created. They get attached to other pathways, yada, yada, yada, as they learn new things. So I gave them an example of my daughters learning to use a spoon for the first time. And I was like, so a baby reaches their hand forward to pick up the spoon.

 

Jeff Walter (1:12:04)

Yes.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:12:17)

a neural pathway is created, just the process of their hand wrapping around the spoon. And there so many things that go involved, and there’s probably 25 pathways, right, that get creative. But then the process of dipping their spoon into their food, getting their spoon into their mouth, all the places they miss and get it elsewhere, which is where they were like, we need picture evidence. I wasn’t even using my children as an example, but they know. And I was like, so I gave them this whole elaborate story, similar to what I just told you. And I was like, well, what if I had just

 

Jeff Walter (1:12:31)

huh.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:12:44)

fed my baby with the spoon. No neural pathways. We didn’t create any, right? And that visual, you could see them all just go like this. Shit. Like I’m feeding all the babies. And I can show my baby 100 times, mommy does it like this. Here’s how I put the spoon into my mouth. when this, no, you have to let them try it. You have to let them mess up within parameters. You’re there to teach them and coach them, but don’t tell them what to do next.

 

Jeff Walter (1:12:47)

Exactly.

 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Yes.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:13:07)

See what they do, see what they know. Let them learn to recognize and think. You’re teaching people how to think. I mean, arguably that was the most impactful skill. All of that, I got out of my, my master’s degree program changed my life. It’s not well enough recognized, but yeah, go ahead.

 

Jeff Walter (1:13:13)

What?

 

that that

 

No, well, I was going say, I love that, that visual cause it, get it like that. And because I agree. I agree a hundred percent with you because the thing is what it goes to our nature as human beings. mean, we, as a species, what makes us different than every other species out there is we are adaptable and adaptability.

 

is like our calling card as a species. And that means you’re learning. Adaptability is I have to change the way I’m doing, which means I have to learn a different way of doing it. And the neuropsychology goes right into what you’re saying. It’s like you start building those pathways and you strengthen them, strengthen them, strengthen them. And all that. there was a great book my daughter recommended, was Atomic Habits.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:14:06)

Right, and then the more repetitions you have, the stronger the pathways get. Absolutely.

 

Jeff Walter (1:14:15)

that just kind of laid all that. Yeah, it was brilliant. was brilliant. It was very accessible to folks. But I love the visual of, okay, now imagine I just fed my baby or just showed her. And it’s like, poof. Yeah.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:14:15)

⁓ I’ve read that 25 times. love that book.

 

Feeder. I didn’t give her the opportunity to learn. I mean,

 

can’t tell. so, because what I found myself doing while I was observing them, I found myself saying, wait a minute, like, kind of grabbed their shirt tails just a little bit. they’re like, hey, where are you going? Well, you know, we’re about to run out of this, this, this, and this. And I’m like, but do you know if the manager has recognized that yet or not? No, no, no. But if it happens, like, shit’s going to hit the fan and the whole world’s going to end. And I’m like, well, you the world won’t end. Let’s take a beat, breathe.

 

Jeff Walter (1:14:32)

That’s so cool.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:14:54)

manager picks their heads up, they didn’t hear any of our conversation, calls for the right amount of food, checks with his team, somebody bumps and slides, he does a lap, comes back, and my trainer looks at me they’re like, okay. I go, got it, and I was like, you don’t take, there are probably many scenarios, and there are so many scenarios where modeling is important, it’s a whole teaching skill in and of itself, and where teaching, and arguably coaching is that, but when you think about even a literal coach on a field,

 

Jeff Walter (1:15:05)

haha

 

Right, right, right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:15:22)

You can’t stop the bad plays from happening. You can only talk to them about it afterwards. But all the experience that went into the bad play is learning.

 

Jeff Walter (1:15:27)

Yes.

 

What?

 

Yeah, it’s, it, you know, it’s funny. You just use that, that example, because I use that same exact example I got, because most people think of a sports team, right? I’m going like, remember the coach of a team does not step on the field and play, right? They don’t.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:15:49)

But even then too,

 

they think of themselves as like barking orders from the sideline. I’m like, wait a minute, that’s stepping into, I remember in my training and four or five of the people on my training team trained me five years ago. And one of them, remember kicking her off the line three or four times when I was packing or biscuit making. And I might be like, let me try it. I can do this. I just need to go a little bit slower at first. And it changed.

 

Jeff Walter (1:15:53)

Yeah.

 

Yeah. Yeah.

 

I did.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:16:14)

love that she’s still on my team too because it changed everything she thought about. OK, wait a minute. How many times am I doing this? Am I over explaining this? But they had learned. There wasn’t the learn, do, teach method. was something I can’t remember. It something also very basic. But basically, what learning used to look like was they would read our manual. They would watch the videos. Then they would watch the trainer make the product or do the thing. And then they would get to do that. I’m like, my god, good lord. They need to get their hands on it sooner. That’s the fastest way to teach them.

 

Jeff Walter (1:16:17)

Yeah.

 

Monday.

 

We haven’t modeled.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:16:41)

you know, other changes that we made, but now they’re starting to think it’s cool to see them take a beat and say, okay, well, let me make sure that they don’t actually need me. And there were a couple of times in my observations where I would ask the employee themselves, I’m like, do you need help right now? Are you confused? Are you overwhelmed? And they would be like, not at all. I’m busy, but I got this. And I’m like, and I, I, I would tell the trainers, I’m like, ask them, see, see if they’re okay. They’ll tell you what they need at certain points. I mean, there’s,

 

so many levels to a training, you know, I wanted, coaching was just one of those words that there was an, it still is, an extraordinary amount of subjectivity around that I wanted to kill the word for my team and say, hey, what you really need to be working on is allowing them, is creating new neural pathways. How can you facilitate a new neural pathway for someone in our organization?

 

Jeff Walter (1:17:24)

Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, and

 

I love that. Your example, your, your baby that, that, like you said, that’s like, people get right away. It’s like, yeah. Well, they’ll net the kid will never learn to eat by themselves. If, if you’re constantly, yes, that’s Hey, I think that’s a pretty good place to, I think that really brings it all home. And it’s, it’s all about the learner has to learn the teacher can’t teach.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:17:29)

you

 

It’s so simple. Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (1:17:52)

the learner has to learn and then the teacher can’t do, right? Right.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:17:52)

can’t do. Yeah. Can’t do it for them. Yeah, you can’t take their tests for them. You can’t go to college for them. It’s such a

 

parenting, funny parenting thing too, but it’s all the same.

 

Jeff Walter (1:18:03)

Yeah. one

 

thing I also really liked about this, there were a lot of, well, I really enjoyed the conversation, but also I think there’s some really good, great takeaways. And, but one of the other takeaways that is that integrating it into the operations and how the teaching becomes part of the managing and the leadership. And I think that’s something that a lot of people don’t appreciate. And so it’s because that’s what you’re doing as a leader.

 

You’re, you’re teaching and you’re, you’re enforcing compliance to a process or a set of rules or whatever, and you’re doing development and development is teaching, right? You’re mentoring.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:18:41)

I mean, I think you should add that

 

into your set of questions that you ask people. I think you should add the question, well, how do you know they got it? Or when you’re in any of your training programs or experiences or even in your leadership experiences, that one would make it even more relevant, right? How do you know that the people who work for you understand what they’re supposed to do, what you want them to do, what your expectations are? And 99 % of your answers are going to be, well, I told them.

 

Jeff Walter (1:18:47)

Yeah.

 

Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:19:08)

How do know they got it though?

 

But do they understand what you understand? Do they think of coaching the way I think of coaching? it immediately opens up this whole field of they start checking for understanding that I believe I’m doing what you’re doing and how am I defining this word? when you’re trying to elicit behavioral change, that’s the crux of it right there.

 

Jeff Walter (1:19:17)

⁓ yes.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

Well, what I really like about what you’re doing is you’re really, you know, several steps up the Kirkpatrick model. And so many people are stuck at that first step. like, well, because I, you know, like I said, I got 3000 people, it’s 20 % more than last year. And look, I got more smileys sheets, you know, like, you know, they checked the smile box more than a frown box. So I’m doing good. And it’s like, yes, that’s a necessary, but insufficient condition. You know, it’s,

 

It’s the behavior changes and the behavior changes lead to business outcomes. And that’s what you’re really shooting for. you know, and, I was blessed when I got into this industry that my client at the time, that particular client was focused on that. And then I thought that was the norm because I came from consulting and then I went to the rest of the industry and I was like, no, that’s the exception. And, and it makes all the difference. So I, you know, I,

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:20:10)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (1:20:19)

I think this is a good place to wrap up. cause I think, I think that’s the seminal question right there is how do you know they got it? How do you know they got it and it made a difference? And if you can’t answer that, if you can’t answer that question, then

 

Or let me state it in the positive.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:20:36)

Well, you’ve got additional questions. well

 

then, so how do you know they got it? And then maybe the better question is, what did you do to make sure they got it? Maybe there’s that little follow-up caveat where you’re reflecting on your own behaviors, whether it’s asking them, listening or understanding them as a learner or understanding your own, let’s say blind spots or, know, I don’t know. mean, so many other, I think you want to make sure that

 

Jeff Walter (1:20:45)

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:21:01)

when you’re asking that question that you understand also that the person you’re asking to realize is that they have so much control and so many tools to ensure the transfer of information and to measure understanding and that they’re part of it, that they’re part of that process.

 

Jeff Walter (1:21:15)

Well, and I think it ties to the cultural thing that you said, which is if you know that they know and you can demonstrate the impact that’s had, it also like it automatically becomes part of the culture because everybody in the organization sees the benefit and that makes all the difference, all the difference in the ⁓

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:21:37)

Yeah, and let me just

 

say that cultural change is slow and that, you know, I think we’re talking, I’m talking about it looking back on five years, but you’re, you’re tapping, this may seem obvious, but you’re tapping into people, people’s belief systems that affect their behaviors and yada, yada, but, you know, it’s, it’s slow, but longer lasting. that, you know, the, everyone’s like, well, what’s your trick? Like, how did, how do you get people on board? And I think my only,

 

It’s not the only way, but the most important way is to just work with the willing. Let them start to become your ambassadors of change, because change is difficult and scary. And if you’ve ever seen that like Simon Sinek bell curve that he draws where it’s like 5 % of people adopt it right away. They’re the people who love the new stuff. I’m not one of those people, by the way, believe it or not. Well, maybe in some scenarios. Then you got your next 10 to 15 % of people that watch what they did and then they try it out.

 

Jeff Walter (1:22:14)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:22:28)

And then

 

there’s the tipping point into the everybody else. Once you can bridge that gap, right? Is that, and it’s just take, who are the people who are passionate about what they’re doing because they’re the ones who are gonna get everybody else to do the things and that might seem oversimplified. But for me, it’s everything.

 

Jeff Walter (1:22:31)

And then everybody, all right, yup.

 

I, and I, yes, I agree 100%. And that’s a great thing that to end on here. But one last question or that is if anybody wants to get ahold of you or the folks at Bojangles and training, how would they get ahold of you or what would, you know, you know, hit you up on LinkedIn or social or what’s the best way to.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:23:05)

Yeah, LinkedIn’s a great option.

 

I’m not going to lie, I’m not on a whole lot of other social media. I’m somehow one of those millennials that decided that it wasn’t for them. But I’m definitely on LinkedIn. You can also reach out. I think my email is public. It’s LHalson at Bojangles.com. And yeah, would love to talk training. We’re just starting to branch out into the world of other corporations. I’ll be at the Women in Restaurant Leadership Conference doing actually a mini learning on

 

know, leadership is education in February, I believe it’s February 24th and 25th in Charleston. You can come meet you in person. But yeah, reach out on any of those avenues and, you know, we’re open to new ideas. I don’t think we’re at the, you know, necessarily so far ahead of everybody in the industry, but I do think that there’s a little bit of secret in our sauce that has caught on like wildfire.

 

something that’s sort of measurable and tangible and is making everybody really enjoy working at this organization.

 

Jeff Walter (1:24:03)

Well, Lindsay, thank you very much. My guest today has been Lindsay Halston, Senior Director of Training and Development at Bone Jangles. Lindsay, thank you.

 

Lindsey Halson Bojangles(1:24:12)

Thank you so much for having me. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you.

 

Jeff Walter (1:24:16)

You too. Take care.