Today we are interviewing Ralph Peterson. He is the owner and operator of Ralph Peterson LLC, which is a Management Development Company. It specializes in helping mission driven organizations, built five star management teams, primarily in the long-term care industry. In addition to Peterson LLC, Ralph was also a number one bestselling author, internationally syndicated columnist, highly sought after Management Development coach and a public speaker. So we're excited to have him on. We thought with his intersection between the long-term care world's medicine and management in general, he'd be a great guest on today's podcast. Before we bring him on though, I want to ask you, please subscribe to the podcast. You can find us on iTunes, Google podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, any pod catcher of your choice. You can also subscribe at peopleprocesses.com where you will get exclusive subscriber only content. I look forward to seeing you there.

Now let's get over to Ralph. Ralph, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

Man. I'm excited to have you. You have such an interesting and long career in Long-Term Care Health words, which I guess is another word for like nursing homes. Right

Nursing homes. That's right.

And so why do you think you focus on that versus management of long-term care in nursing homes? Like, how did that happen? 

Well, what happened was, I was always looking for, I've worked in everything. I started out in housekeeping. It was my first job. I was 16 years old working on housekeeping and then I went into fast food. I've worked in construction. Excuse me. And then I ended up in the Marine Corps. And then when I got out of the Marine Corps, I answered a blind ad for a management. For a company looking for a manager. There was a company that was growing by leaps and bounds working in management. And it was super intriguing to me. I've always wanted to be in charge. I got my first management job. When I was 16 years old. It took like weeks to get my boss to ask me, and said, "Hey, I'm expanding. I got a couple of other jobs, but I need somebody to run the day crew doing the lawn mowing," and I was six, I cannot tell you. I'm the youngest of four. I've never been in charge of the remote control. You know, where we're going, what games were playing? Nothing. So when he said, I'm thinking about putting you in charge making you the foreman. My head just went. I got so excited. Like I couldn't believe I was another opportunity to be in charge. He finally puts me in charge on a nice rainy Monday morning and about Eight minutes later, I get fired for fighting with my employee.

Oh, well, an auspicious start.

I lost my first manager job in eight minutes. And he said something really interesting when he was bringing me home, he was driving me home. And he said, you're never going to be able to be a manager, if you don't understand you have to be better than everybody else. And the idea that I had to be better than everybody else kind of pissed me off, kind of like, "Why do I have to be better than everybody else? Why? Why do I have to hold my time when other people aren't holding their time? Why do I have to do the right thing? Why do I have to be the bigger person?" And the truth is, of course, that's what separates managers from non managers, good leaders and bad leaders. But logically….

Yeah, so you were 16. You try. You had that and then let me ask you this then. So how would you think, obviously, management principles, there's a whole study of management, right? There's all kinds of great things to learn. Do you think that in the nursing homes or managers for nursing homes, do you think that there's any specific differences between management styles purely because of the medical profession you're in? Or do you think it's pretty universally applicable?

I think it's pretty universally applicable. I think we all struggle with the same challenges. And we all are drawing