Shaping Success through Relationships: Insights from Fred Butz

EPISODE 119 

Fred Butz: Yes. Absolutely everybody brings unique experiences, unique backgrounds, different history, different experiences, previous jobs. And that whole mix brings different perspectives because there's no way that I can or nor would I even want to try and like, ‘This is the way we're doing this. This is the way we're doing that. Everyone, just listen to what I say and –’ Things would probably get done, but I can't imagine anybody being happy in that kind of situation. And I think that melting pot, you know, we say America. But that unique gifts that everybody brings, their backgrounds, no matter what history they have or race that they are or sex, male, female. It doesn't – they're all going to bring something valuable.” 

Alex Cullimore: Hello, Cristina. 

Cristina Amigoni: Hello. Two podcasts, two days.  

Alex Cullimore: Well, we are burning through it this week.  

Cristina Amigoni: We're on a roll. It hasn't been like this in two years.  

Alex Cullimore: You’ll probably do one tomorrow just to keep it going.  

Cristina Amigoni: It's like now then it's moving. It's not stopping again because then it takes a while to jump-start it.  

Alex Cullimore: I was just looking at our kind of general release cadence, and you can see it in like our stats. You can tell when we get busy on projects. 

Cristina Amigoni: And the stats go down. Okay. Back up.  

Alex Cullimore: We're back in creation mode, kind of excited to do this. Even more exciting, we got to do this one with a client of ours that we've gotten to work with a lot over the last two years. His name is Fred Butz. He runs the service desk under one of our major clients here, and he's just a fascinating guy, super nice. I'm one of the teams that we've really enjoyed working with. So it’s just a collection of great people, and he has some awesome insights to share on relationships.  

So just a heads up, we did start the conversation with him a little bit into like we were already kind of chatting and talking. Then we had pushed record, but there were too many gems between that. When we would have officially started, we want to be able to share with you. So we're going to drop a little bit into the middle of the conversation here.  

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, yes. It’s very authentic, like you said. 

Alex Cullimore: It is. It is – 

Cristina Amigoni: Slash disorganized.  

Alex Cullimore: Well, we could have tried to recreate the gems, but it would have sounded a lot more stilted.  

Cristina Amigoni: No, no. It was such a great introduction that he was providing on his main theme really. He's the one that reached out and says like, “Hey, you guys ever emphasize on your conversations the importance of creating relationships.” He came on and talked about it, which is – it's great. I mean, it's my personal passion. I'm a big believer that we don't exist alone. With the right team, it's not just one plus one equals three. It’s one plus one can equal ten. One plus one can equal infinite.  

So the choice of like do we want to have a bunch of ones running around, or do we actually want to do something that's way bigger than we could ever imagine? That's where they're creating relationships which, ironically, starts from having conversations.  

Alex Cullimore: Fred does a great job of illustrating like how to build relationships, what happens when you don't have them, what happens when you do have them. These are incredibly crucial. My favorite part about getting to do this podcast and this episode particularly is just continually reminding myself that we all slowly discover these themes in life. We could probably do better about helping people access them from an early age, so it's not this stumbling discovery all the time.  

But that being said, it is incredible how much we end up gravitating towards these working portions of human nature that we just stumble on. Then we start to realize they're really important. When we invest in them, it pays dividends. I think Fred’s a great example of that. He found these things fairly naturally and had a great way of describing how important they are, what can be done.  

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, definitely. It's almost like we all have this thing that's missing. At some point in life, it disappears. Then when we find it, we're finally not thirsty anymore. We realize like, “Oh, that's it. It's about doing things with other people instead of alone. Okay.” Then it becomes much harder to then choose to go thirsty again.  

Alex Cullimore: That's a great metaphor for it. Once you know what's possible, why would you deprive? The more we know about that, the more we know about ourselves, the more we can deliberately create that. That's where we get this huge amount of power, so it's exciting you to share something like this.  

A little background on Fred, in case it's not clear from some of the intro, he was an Eagle Scout where he kind of learned some of the basics of why it's so important to have everybody doing everything that they need to do and working together and what happens when small pieces are not there. It's just great baking analogies. But he's a fascinating guy. I'm really excited to get to share his voice and his opinions with everybody.  

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, yes. Enjoy.  

Alex Cullimore: Enjoy.  

[INTRO] 

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives.  

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that's with our families, co-workers or even ourselves.  

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens. 

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni.  

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore.  

Cristina Amigoni: Let’s dive in.  

Alex Cullimore: Let’s dive in.  

“Authenticity means freedom.”  

“Authenticity means going with your gut.” 

“Authenticity is bringing 100% of yourself, not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.” 

“Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.” 

“It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.” 

“Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.” 

“It's transparency, relatability, no frills, no makeup, just being.” 

[INTERVIEW] 

Fred Butz: You're right. I mean, doing anything alone, even life, work, I can't think of raising kids. I mean, single parents, single dads. I was a single dad for like five years and that – I mean, I could not have gotten through that period if it wasn't for the relationships that I built with my brother and with my parents and my friends and even some of the folks that I worked with at the time that helped build me up, helped prop me up, gave me space when I needed it. That was very important to me as time went on, just to kind of pay that back to other folks, knowing how much I had been helped during that time. Even continually through getting remarried and my wife adopting my children, become our children, I mean, that – of course, kids, as they get older, they don't get any easier. So that relationship with my spouse is even more important.  

Even at work and as I had said kind of on my LinkedIn post, it's been 25 years now here at Vizient between contract work and regular employee FDE. The one thing that has stayed the same is the need to build relationships, either starting, obviously, with the team that you work with, the individuals that you're doing from a day-to-day task, the projects that you're working on, your manager.  

Then, of course, that just grows to the business units that you work with, the teams that are out that are part of those teams in the same department that you work with it. It didn't matter from day to day, year to year, project to project, process to process. If you don't have those relationships, it just makes the work more difficult. I don't think you'll get to where you really want to be as an – that whole definition of done without having those relationships. I mean, you'll probably get there, but it might be harder probably. I'm going to say might. It will be harder to get there without those relationships, and I mean good relationships.  

You can have bad relationships. I'd like to think nobody wants to have bad relationships, but I'm focusing on good relationships here with employees. I mean, they're all customers really. I mean, you have your internal customers, and you have your external customers. But they're all your customers. Especially we're I'm working currently with service desk and member support and with laptop deployments and software support that everyone within Vizient is a customer. Our group, our department could never possibly survive if we don't try and build relationship in those bridges between the people that we serve and the information that we're providing from a Microsoft Office 365 standpoint all the way down to like I need to reset my password.  

I mean, it's probably the most important aspect of your job is that relationship part. You can be the smartest tool in the shed. But if you're a jerk or you have a hard time working with people, it's going to be hard for me to work with you, to be honest. I mean, you can teach a person to do a job. But sometimes, you can't teach a person to be an effective communicator or to work well with others. It's like it goes back to a kid. You learn to play well with others. It's one of the things that you're supposed to know right from the beginning. One thing that we try to teach folks is to play well with others.  

Yes, that goes back to some of the stuff from scouts that when I was quite a bit younger there, it didn't matter if you're a first year Boy Scout, got your first Cub badge or your Life Scout about to hit Eagle. If you're camping, if you're doing a pioneering project or setting up camp, everybody had to work together. Their roles were not always the same, and their duties were not always the same. But if each individual do their part and work together as a cohesive unit, then a part of it would fall apart. Either you wouldn't eat or you wouldn't have a place to sleep or – the whole entire aspect of what you're trying to accomplish, if that one part does not succeed, then the whole mass is messed up, the whole camp, the whole project.  

Or, I mean, it's like baking a cake. Leave out the eggs or something like that, you're going to – I'm not sure I'd want to eat that. Okay. I know with baking. My wife bakes a lot. Even the baking soda, I mean, it's just a small part of the baking process. But if you leave that little bit out of it, then it's not going to taste very good. I think that's what relationships are. It's that foundation of everything that we try and do.  

Cristina Amigoni: It is.  

Alex Cullimore: So just you guys right in the middle of the conversation here, but this is Uncover the Human. Welcome back to this episode. We are joined with our guest, Fred Butz, today. Fred Butz is working this service desk and runs the service desk over at Vizient. He’s been a clients of ours when we've gotten to work with him for a while here. But I'll let Fred give himself more of an introduction here. Fred, welcome to the podcast.

Fred Butz: Thanks. Yes. No, I'm Fred Butz. I’m Senior Director here at Vizient, over our INS customer support. We support Vizient’s organization. We kind of call ourselves the first responders for Vizient, in the sense that we manage the service desk, member support, software support, and client services, which is our AV and our rooms, along with laptop deployments, and really a lot of the first-touch activities within Vizient. They’re our customers.  

Cristina Amigoni: They're great. It's a great team.  

Fred Butz: Yes. It's fantastic working with Christy and Joseph. Yes. I cannot be happier with them at this time. Yes.  

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. As a customer of passwords and the usual stuff, I have to say like that’s top-notch service whenever something happens.  

Fred Butz: That's great to hear. Yes. We definitely try, always trying to make ourselves available. Some of the folks, I mean, we – even during COVID, we had employees here supporting Vizient during COVID time. We’ve had folks here that work Monday through Friday here in the office to support our AV and our rooms and our conference rooms, laptop refreshes. Client service folks, they're great, and I don't think we could be in the position that we are without the teamwork involved with those individuals.  

Alex Cullimore: Yes. We were just talking a little bit about how the team has to come together as a whole, and you have to have these – with your role as a service desk, your first real view of what it means to help people. As customers ourselves of that service desk, we know it's not possible without that. But you had just been talking a little bit about it. I was hoping you could expand on a little bit some of that idea of like you have to have all the ingredients. You have to have all these pieces. Really, nothing can be done alone, at least not without massive struggle.  

Fred Butz: No. That's true. You can’t. That's one thing that I really worked with Christy and Joseph on is bringing us tighter integration because there's a lot of work that service desk does, and there's a lot of work that the client service has done, and there's – a lot of that work, it crosses each other's path. So we've spent a lot of time integrating those teams and those relationships, both through group activities. We have a team’s chat, for instance, that we're all part of. So if anything comes up to the service desk, they can – and it might impact client services. They can bounce it off them.  

We have the UNICOM team also now part of that for the M365. So if something comes through, there's an alert or an issue possibly with Microsoft that could impact our employee customers that the service desk need to know, we can provide that information quickly. There's an entire kind of culture that's built up around the fact that now client services, service desk, UNICOM, that we're all talking to each other. I think, I mean, and without talking to each other, that goes back to can't start a relationship unless you talk to somebody. I mean, it's kind of the basis of any relationship is talking. So we've done a lot of work with Christy and Joseph. They've helped and put their touches on this as well that we have monthly meetings and open mics that Joseph has started as well. 

We could not have done that if everybody also didn't want to have that as well. I think that's one of the greatest part. It’s not a me thing or just a leadership thing. It's also gone all the way down to the individual employee. Everybody wanted to get to know each other, and everybody wanted to build that relationship. I think we've seen it through the conversations that I've had and some of the conversations that the others have that I believe it's working really well. I mean, just having – people talking to each other has improved our well-being. It's improved our attitudes, improved our morale.  

Through that talking, they’re sharing information because that way, I know a lot of things people kind of – especially in the way that we work nowadays with teams and Zoom and on our cell phone, I mean, that COVID changed everything. There's – it's easy to feel on the outside, to feel like you don't belong. I think a lot of that, now that we're starting to come back to the office more so, which is help. But just creating those avenues of interaction that we've done through teams and meetings and group activities not only has improved productivity, but it gives you a feeling of belonging that you're important, that you matter. I think that's important no matter what you do in life, be it work or at home.  

I believe people are built for relationship, and I think, at least from what I've seen over the last year to 18 months, it’s a tighter integration between everyone, and everyone's enjoying it.  

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, yes. I think you touched on very good points and crucial points. I think as humans, we're wired for relationships. We're wired to do things with others. It’s at the core. So like you said, like it was in a leadership mandate. Everybody wanted to have the relationship and talk to each other at least because deep down, we all want that. We all want to be doing things with other people and not alone.  

Somehow, in the evolution of society, we've gotten to this point of like, well, if you can't do it alone, then you don't know your own value, or you're not strong enough. That’s not the point. We're not supposed to be doing it alone. It's always going to be limited.  

Fred Butz: Yes. I think I've read some things over the last few months that shows that, obviously, we are the most connected society that's ever existed in the world. It's changed dramatically with Twitter and social media, Instagram. But at the same time, we become – we're the loneliest generation. People have – you have 400 friends on your Facebook, but they're not really – some might be friends, but it's an interesting – I don't know the answer to it, but it does give me worry a bit and where we're heading to say as we’ve gotten more connected that we've actually become more lonely in our own spaces.  

Alex Cullimore: I can't remember whether it was Brene Brown or might have been one of our podcast guests. They're talking about, hey, you have 400 Facebook friends, but how many of those people could you ask for a ride to the airport? How many of those people are close enough that you could actually do that? So when we have relationships, we have connections. It’s interesting you mentioned like when you're within work, you've set up like teams channels and all kinds of spaces for people to have avenues of communication.  

There's a lot of places that might have avenues of communication. They'll put together a group channel, but then nobody will contribute. Then nobody will be part of this, and there's not enough space created. Or there's something about like the vibe that it doesn't allow for that open communication. We like to talk about the – there's open door policies, but nobody walks through. We sometimes call it like the glass door policy where there's the illusion of transparency, but there's a barrier of some type that people aren't really willing to go through.  

So I'm curious, what elements you see that help make those available avenues of connection used?  

Fred Butz: Well, I think one of the very first things I did when I accepted the role a little over a year ago was to break down those bears is to physically meet the people. For instance, we had a team. Our member support team actually worked on a completely different floor in a completely different area of the building than the rest of IT at the time. They work – they're down with us now, which is great. But when I went up there and visited, and they set out, I was probably the first leader that they had direct – that had visited them in probably years. So it made it. I mean, it made a really big impression talking with those individuals just to make that step. I continued to do so.  

So going back to breaking down the barriers, you have to have a physical presence. You need to meet them. If you can, obviously, I mean, if you have remote workers, it's not always easy to do that. I think that's where one of ones are very important and making sure you're doing those on weekly or bi-weekly basis. Turn on your camera, so you can see each other. I mean, that's even more important. I mean, especially with someone who may live 1,500 miles away, it's probably never going to fly into the office, is to set up some sort of cadence of the conversation and turn the cameras on. For those individuals, that really helps.  

Since my organization, I mean, it's pretty large. There's over 75 individuals within INS customer support once you add contractors to it. I know it's not everyone to do this, but I set up one-on-ones with everybody once a year, so they can see me. I can see them either virtually through a team's call or here in the office in Irving in order to make that connection. I always say, no, I do — talking about the open door policy. Every time I get done with one of those 101s, I say my team's chat is always open. Because I know we don't live in the same place, we don't always see each other, and we may never see each other in the office. But I'm reachable if you need anything at any time. I may not be able to answer immediately. I might be in a meeting, or some other processing activity is going on. But I will respond to you.  

So I think those have – and you have to be authentic. I mean, you have to be yourself. Be relaxed. Be compassionate. Try and understand. If they have something that’s bothering them — to understand where they're coming from and the reason that they – for some of them, I'm sure it's a brave step just to even walk into the office of someone that they've either never seen or they rarely talk to and they don't know how I as a leader can perceive them coming in to have a conversation. So I think it's important to provide that level of openness and reassurance that you can do this at any time. So people can't feel comfortable because not every conversation is comfortable.  

Cristina Amigoni: It's really true. Yes. I love the physical piece either via video if that's the only way or at least coming together in person. As you know, in the leadership program, that's a big part of like we are together in person for five days spread apart. But it's still five days, and that's a big piece. It's the energy. It's the understanding. We're in a room, we're together, and we get to connect as humans in a deeper way than if we were all windows in a team's meeting, attending a training.  

Fred Butz: Yes. I really really enjoyed the leap experiences. Partially, for me, being the only individual at least in that leap from INS getting to – and I've known some of the names from the application desk side, Dan Perry and – but I have never actually – I don't think I'd ever actually physically met them before. So there's some engagements that were starting as a result of those connections that we made in leap to help bring some of the things that we're doing in member support closer to those BRMs and agile POs.  

So we just met yesterday, and we're going to put a pilot together. So we're hoping that this can – some of the issues that we see on member side and some of the conversations that they're having, we can bring those member issues closer to the team. So we're excited, Cristina. We’re excited to see where this may go.  

Cristina Amigoni: That's very exciting.  

Alex Cullimore: Yes. It’s exciting to hear. There's another kind of tally on the side of the importance of relationships where you end up just getting to see people, and that just makes it easier. I mean, these are the things that are harder to measure but end up being incredibly important. Or just, hey, I now know this person and know we do have this problem. Now, I can just kind of reach out to them, and it does help to have that in person. It’s really interesting to hear that kind of come into play. I'm curious for you when you started to see this almost more explicitly as an important thing to create all these relationships and connections and understanding that importance.  

Fred Butz: I'd probably say it's been probably about 10 years when I moved from an individual contributor role to a manager of a small team. I had already kind of built relationships through the individual tasks that I had had at the time and with the individuals that I worked with. But that just kind of grew when I moved into a new role, and it wasn't really just me. I'm now responsible for a whole team of activities. Not only the relationships of that team but also involved in the relationships and interactions for those who interface and interact with the team.  

So my bubble, just it grew significantly. Over time, as additional roles and responsibilities came to the team, it just got expanded larger and larger and larger. During that time, that just kind of grew to understand that the importance. You’d see it too just through the interactions that you have. The conversations would change. The way that people would interact with the team would change. Because of those past relationship billing activities, if something – a new challenge came up. The way that they would interact with the team would be more positive. Or there’d be more flexibility. They'd be more open to suggestions because we had a foundation of a relationship that we had already built from previous engagements. Even it had been months in the past beforehand and they're just coming to us again. But because of that solid foundation that we had already built, it made those future products, projects, and activities easier to work with.  

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. That definitely makes sense. One of the things that as we were talking at the beginning, and you were talking about baking and how you need all the ingredients, I don't bake, and there’s very good reasons for that. I cook but I don't bake.  

Fred Butz: No. I do. I like cooking.  

Cristina Amigoni: One of my first baking experience was when I went to – I came to the US for college, and I just got one of those like brownies in the box kind of things. I'm like, “Ah, I love brownies. I'll make brownies,” and it asks for vegetable oil. Well, growing up in Italy, I'm like, “Well, olive oil is a vegetable oil.” So I put olive oil on there. That's when I learned that maybe it was not a thing for me because even like the baking soda, baking powder, things like, “Yes, it's one. It's baking something.” Just it doesn't matter. But that's part of the – not only you need all the ingredients, but you need to understand the uniqueness and the value of each exact ingredient in that.  

I find that in humans and in teams, it's the same thing. It's like if the person can be their authentic best self, then you're really getting the best value of that person within the team.  

Fred Butz: Yes. Absolutely, everybody brings unique experiences, unique backgrounds, different history, different experiences, previous jobs. That whole mix brings different perspectives because there's no way that I can or nor would I even want to try and like, “This is the way we're doing. This is the way we're doing that. Everyone just listen to what I say.’ Things would probably get done, but I can't imagine anybody being happy in that kind of situation.  

I think that melting pot, we say America. But the unique gifts that everybody brings, their backgrounds, no matter what history they have or race that they are, sex, male, female, it doesn't – they're all going to bring something valuable to that conversation and where we're trying to go. I think that is one of our greatest strengths of our teams because our teams that we have is very diverse, and I think that diversity is very important when you're talking about those ingredients to make a great high-performing team or a great high-performing organization.  

Alex Cullimore: Or a very olive oily brownie.  

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. It was not a good taste. It was very olive oily.  

Alex Cullimore: I don’t bake either. No. That's a great point, and there's so much – we went to coaching school, Cristina, and one of the principles there is that everybody is a student and a teacher. That's one of the things that I really love about just any mixture of teams, and getting to know people on a more personal level, and getting to know anybody that you get – you will learn something about yourself, about the other person, about the way life can be lived, should be lived if you're listening and if you're willing to go dive in, and find that authentic person, and find what matters to them, and just be curious about that, and know that it can be different from what your original thought might be.  

That might influence your thought on what's important and what can be done next. When you bring that into the teams and bring that into organizations, that's when you can get this more full picture of what is happening, should happen, could happen. It's only by allowing people to have that space instead of, like you're talking about, being the person who's like, “This is what we're going to do because this is how I said we're going to do it.”  

Fred Butz: Yes. That’s not going to work. I mean, I guess I can do that to my kids maybe clean the house. Some conversation can take place, but you're still going to clean your room.  

Cristina Amigoni: It can be a team conversation but an individual effort.  

Fred Butz: Right. That still got to get done.  

Cristina Amigoni: Yes.  

Fred Butz: I don’t care what order you clean it in. It still got to get cleaned.  

Cristina Amigoni: So you talked a lot about how the creating relationships really elevates all of it, like the performance of the team, but also the happiness and the well-being of people. People are happier because they are having these conversations. Like you said, it starts with a conversation. Who would have thought? So where do you see – like when that's missing, what do you see happens in the workplace or even outside of the workplace? 

Fred Butz: I see trust breakdown. Probably is the biggest thing. When folks don't talk, they don't trust. When trust breaks down, when you have a problem, you don't engage maybe with the person that could probably solve the problem for you. You try and either do it on yourself, or you go to somebody else, and you maybe do trust. Sometimes, you'll start getting infighting and back-biting and gossip and people talking disrespectfully behind your back. It just cascades from there.  

But I think trust is the main point you lose. If you don't trust each other and you don't trust the team, that goes like then who can you trust? How are you going to get anything done if you don't trust anyone? 

Alex Cullimore: I think that's an excellent point that it really does come down to trust. We have a somebody in their network told us once, and this has stuck with me for a long time ever since he said. It was that trust is an outcome. Trust is an outcome of a bunch of choices. You believe you can trust this person because of said interactions with them. They've been trustworthy. Thus, there is this imparted trust. So you lose those relationships. You lose that trust because I think many businesses can point it. Trust is like this is important. But you can't just run to your team and be like, “Trust each other. Okay, we're good.”  

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Or trust me.  

Fred Butz: Yes. That’s something that's built. Yes. I mean, it's built. A lot of times, it's built over time. I mean, I do try and trust. I can't say I do it all the time, but I do try to trust from the beginning. You've been hired here for a reason. Obviously, we trust that you have the capabilities. I think it's important to start at a level of trust too because if you start by a level of distrust, then you start double-checking their work or maybe going back behind. Or you don't fully engage and provide all the information because you're not sure how they're going to take it. So I think it's important for us to start from a level of trust when you're talking with anyone, new or old.  

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. It’s a very good point. It's like the book ends, and I think it's just – it's almost like it's a different trust, but it's still trust. The outcome of trust is known as to the full human, their intentions, what they do their product or outcomes. At the beginning, you trust the human because that's a much better place to start. Also, you have no reason not to. Then you start observing what happens. What's that relationship going to build? 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. I think having that intent, it's almost like I have just a split hairs on the wording a little bit. It's having that faith up front that like, yes, I'm going to give you the chance. Then trust is built when the chances are taken well and then received well. You start to see that there is something to trust there, and so you have that faith upfront.  

They ran this on a prisoner's dilemma type of experiment, where the idea is like there's two prisoners in a different room. If neither of them rats on the other, they both can get out. But if one tells on the other, then that person has a worse outcome. Or if they both tell on each other, they both go to prison or whatever the idea is that they put like little scores to the outcomes. You win. You lose. You get like a higher score for them.  

They simulated this with computers and gave them all different ideas of how to operate in this. The one that ended up coming out on top with the best outcomes over time was the one that would trust first and just be like, “Yes, I'm going to trust that my partner's going to do the right thing.” Then if they had a partner that didn't do the right thing, they would remember that partner and not trust them in the future. That one ended up being like the most like awarded computer, and it's obviously an imperfect match onto all of humanity and its behavior. But it's an interesting thought experiment in having that faith first and then deciding and then figuring out what you learn from the person by first extending that benefit of the doubt.  

Fred Butz: Yes. Sometimes, I mean, trust can be hard, especially for a new manager or a new employee, especially if an employee has been hurt by a previous manager or a previous employee. If there was trust lost or trust broken amongst the team. That can be a tough thing to overcome. But I think that goes right back to building that relationship, starting by having a conversation. Then I know it's hard in some, and it's brave is to put yourself out there and engage with each other.  

Cristina Amigoni: It's hard and it’s vulnerable. It takes a lot of courage, like you said. Sometimes, you just walk into somebody's office that you don't know well or you don't know at all. It takes a lot, for sure. Yes. Well, I'm glad that we've been having a lot of conversations for the last 18 months.  

Fred Butz: Yes. No. It’s been great.  

Alex Cullimore: Yes, absolutely.  

Cristina Amigoni: For sure. So we do have one question that we ask all our guests. What's your definition of authenticity? 

Fred Butz: I'm going to say that is to be a true self in an open self. You're open to different perspectives, new ideas, and new ways of doing things by holding true to the things that maybe in your heart that you believe that you're open to having the conversation to make changes. I mean, I think that goes to show just how much of an authentic person to the other individual, showing that you're open to what they have to say, and you're open to change.  

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. That's really powerful. I like the open piece of the authenticity. It's not just showing up. It's just like how open are you to the people around you and changing and understanding them.  

Fred Butz: I don't think authenticity is just going in, and this is who I am. You're going to take it or leave it. This is what I have. I mean, authentic. If you don't like it, no. I mean, I guess that's a form of authenticity. I wouldn't say it's the right form of authenticity.  

Cristina Amigoni: Maybe not the relationship-building form of authenticity.  

Fred Butz: No. I think we'll go about doing that right.  

Alex Cullimore: I love that as adding the definition with openness because it does like a very rigid form of authenticity is I think personally a little unauthentic. Like the idea that you are that unchanging, it would be surprising to find somebody who is so steady and stuff but absolutely resolute in whatever they're saying.  

Fred Butz: I mean, life has changed. We have to be open to it.  

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Life has changed, and we're constantly changing. So whether we're open to it or not, we still are constantly changing.  

Fred Butz: We are, all the way down to the cellular level. We can get that far.  

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. It's true, very true. Yes. Well, thank you so much, Fred. We know you're involved in a lot of things. So if there's anything you want to plug in and where people can find you at the Renaissance fairs.  

Fred Butz: I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me, Fred Butz. I am the fourth Butz.  

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. I did notice that on your LinkedIn.  

Fred Butz: My wife likes to say that we're – it's a very unoriginal family because everyone's named Fred. I can't deny that, but that's the way it is. You're welcome. Yes. It's open. You're welcome to reach out. Or if you want to have more conversation, I'm happy to talk with anyone here internally at Vizient or outside. I appreciate the time that y'all have given me today. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Thank you.  

Alex Cullimore: I appreciate you taking the time.  

[OUTRO] 

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you for listening to Uncover the Human, a Siamo podcast.  

Alex Cullimore: Special thanks to our podcast operations wizard, Jake Lara; and our score creator, Rachel Sherwood.  

Cristina Amigoni: If you have enjoyed this episode, please share, review, and subscribe. You can find our episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Alex Cullimore: We would love to hear from you with feedback, topic ideas, or questions. You can reach us at podcast@wearesiamo.com or at our website, wearesiamo.com, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook. We Are Siamo is spelled W-E A-R-E S-I-A-M-O. 

Cristina Amigoni: Until next time, listen to yourself, listen to others, and always uncover the human.