It seems like news media everywhere are talking about “The Great Resignation.” In the wake of COVID-19 lockdowns, workers realized that they didn’t want to go back to “normal.” Normal wasn’t working. And business leaders committed to that normal perspective have been floundering. Into all that comes Tom Ziglar. Tom is the CEO of Ziglar Corp. and son of one of the original leadership gurus, Zig Ziglar. His latest book is 10 Leadership Virtues for Disruptive Times and is designed to help leaders change their outlook toward delivering employees a better quality of life. Interesting in hearing more about the book—and his take on “The Great Resignation”—I knew I had to have him on the podcast.
The Conversation | Tom Ziglar
This interview excerpt is lightly edited for clarity and conciseness. Listen to the full interview in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.
Josh Olds: Normally, I like to begin by asking authors about their inspiration and why they wrote the book they did, but yours seems pretty obvious. We’re two years into the COVID-19 pandemic and it seems like many work environments are going back to normal. What makes this book relevant now?
Tom Ziglar: My first book was Choose to Win and I did it as part of a two book deal with Thomas Nelson. When we agreed, I said, “I don’t know what the second book is.” And they said “Don’t worry about it, you’ll have a year.” And so the end of 2019, I started writing that book, and then 2020—everything changed. Like everybody, I got really fascinated with all the business changes that were going on and started studying kind of the dominoes that fell when we went home from work. And there were lockdowns and remote and hybrid work—all these trends started happening. So I began to write the book really around this focus in April or May of 2020.
One of the components of the book is that not only are we in disruptive times, but it’s only going to increase in frequency and intensity. And looking at the world stage: the convergence of technology, the supply chain, and the great resignation. It just keeps going on and on. And the fact of the matter is, is that the world is just rapidly going through these disruptions. I mean, the book would have been great six months ago or a year ago. But I think it’ll be even more powerful and more appropriate six months or a year from now, just because the frequency and intensity of change is going up. And the way people are deciding on where they work and how they work and the way leadership needs to adapt in order to meet those needs. That’s a big deal. And it’s going to take a generation to figure this out.
Josh Olds: I know that, you know, right when everything shut down, you know, almost immediately within months, there were dozens of books about how to live in the era of Coronavirus and from business standpoint, spiritual standpoint, and so on. It was just sort of like everyone’s trying to figure out how to navigate this. This is something that is born out of COVID, but it’s meant for something much larger than that. We are not going back to normal in what the old normal was in the business world. What are some good things that you’ve seen come out of those changes that we’ve had to make?
Tom Ziglar: Yeah, well, here’s the first one and, and I’ll just—I’m showing you my fist if you’re listening to this, just imagine I’m making a fist—this is prior to 2020. The fist represents work, it was your career, it’s what you did. It’s where your identity was. And then everything kind of revolved around that you know: your physical health, your mental health, your relationships, your family, even faith, a lot of times. Work took center, that was the priority, and everything else revolved around that. When the pandemic happens,