The Leadership Habit

Scale Up Your Business with Jonathan Goldhill, Author and Certified Growth Coach Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall, and on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I sat down with Jonathan Goldhill. Jonathan is a masterful scale-up business coach and personal strategist specializing in guiding next-generation leaders of family businesses to scale up their business as they take control over the leadership and ownership of the family business. Jonathan left New York for California at age 20, after his family’s large privately held men’s apparel manufacturing company started by his great-grandfather sold to a conglomerate in its third generation of family ownership. Within ten years, Jonathan had established himself as the go-to expert for entrepreneurs looking to find their version of Brita. And today, Jonathan brings 30 years of experience to his clients, advising, coaching, consulting, training, and guiding entrepreneurial and family businesses. Join Jonathan and me today as we talk about how to scale your business to eight figures and beyond. Meet Jonathan Goldhill, Scale-up and Family Business Coach Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone, it’s Jenn DeWall. I’m so happy to be sitting down with Jonathan Goldhill. And today, we’re going to talk about how to scale your business to eight figures and beyond! Now, who wouldn’t want to know how to do that. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a small business owner, or a family business owner, this podcast is for you. Jonathan. Thank you so much for joining us today. You’re a business coach. How did you come to be? What was your journey like to become a business coach? Jonathan Goldhill: Yeah, Jenn, that’s a great question. Do you want the short story or the long story? Jenn DeWall: I want the long story. Let’s hear it! Jonathan Goldhill: All right. So I grew up in Mamaroneck, New York. My family lived a pretty nice lifestyle. I would call it upper-middle-class. And I was really well aware that my grandfather, who I admired greatly, built a very successful business. My father, who was a son-in-law, joined the business when he was very young. He had to have been fresh out of Yale law school, had a law degree, hated law, went into becoming a clothing executive selling men’s suits. And you know I didn’t get to know my dad. Unfortunately, he died when I was two. And so my life journey has always been about being healthy first and putting that first and, and having freedom and not being stuck. And so what I saw, though, was my grandfather was a self-made man and owned an enormously successful business. His two brothers – so three of them and their father, built a multi-generational private label men’s suit manufacturing company. It was the largest private label men’s suit manufacturing company in the 1900s. So they started it when they were nine, 11 and 13 as boys. They were peddling. Yeah, I mean, and this is like, these are my clients today, Jenn. These are like guys who started in their parents’ business when they were 12, 14, 16, working evenings and weekends. And so, you know, if you see yourself in this picture, I’m talking to you. I find that I get a lot of clients like that. They’re the next generation leader in a family business, and they want to take the business to another level, and they know that what got them here isn’t going to get them there. And so, for me, my journey was about seeing how successful my family was in this business. I mean, literally like 2000 employees, 500,000 square feet of manufacturing space. And you know, they made suits for like every major retailer in the United States. And unfortunately, I mean, I would have liked to have gone into that business because I think, wow, what an incredible stepping stone, but in the third generation, the only family members that wanted to go into it were in-laws, and they decided maybe because they got a good offer to sell. They decided to sell it when I was probably 11 years old, as my research says. So going back to 1969, that’s how old I am. Folks, date me at 1958. And so they decided to sell the business, but what they did when they sold it was they maintained lifetime employment contracts as the CEO and this chief administrative officer. And they had swanky offices on 57th street or, you know, like Rockefeller Center, Rockefeller. Jenn DeWall: Yeah, in the Garment District! Jonathan Goldhill: Yeah. The garment district in New York. And I used to go in there, and they have the showroom, and like, I didn’t know the business was sold. I just figured this was the way the business book, you know, it was a showroom. I never went into the manufacturing plant. So I wasn’t that teenage kid growing up in the manufacturing plant. But my mother’s cousin ran the manufacturing plant. He had a Wharton degree. It was based in Pennsylvania. It was in a landmark building. And you know, I just thought like, wow, this is, this is a success. This is what I want to have. And unfortunately, that opportunity to join that family business and, you know, benefit from the spoils of that, wasn’t there. But that interest in family business always was really keenly with me. And so fast forward I decide when I’m 20 that I’ve got some money in my, you know, whatever I, however, I got, and I don’t know if I was getting social security checks from my dad cause he died early. Maybe I had some family money, but whatever. I came to California to finish college, and I stayed, and I came here really to California to sort of find my freedom. And I had a lot of freedom and bounced around for a few years, started a couple of things, a couple of businesses. I started an art and clothing company in 1986. I thought it was going to be an amazing success. I reached out to my grandfather to see if maybe he would invest some money into it. Only to find out that, like his, he was too far gone with having had strokes or Alzheimer’s or whatever senility. So that door was closed, and I realized I had chosen really poorly in a partner. My partner was an artist who painted on clothes. I thought we were going to be, and we had really unique stuff. We couldn’t scale it because he couldn’t teach people his skills. The Path to Becoming a Family Business Coach Jonathan Goldhill: And it turns out that he wasn’t a person of great integrity. He was really just an opportunist looking for people like myself, who could put some money into it, open up a store, sell the stuff, and then he’d move on to some other, you know, beautiful place that like Aspen or South Hampton or, you know, Bali or wherever. So, that sent me back to business school to get an MBA. And I was particularly interested in entrepreneurship and consulting, and I found a guy named John Davis, who is a family business coach. And he was like getting his Ph.D. in some corner office there. And I thought like, this is what I want to do. So fast forward, I got into consulting right out of business school. I built an agency of 30 to 40 people that provides consulting, training and financing to small businesses. We got funding from the city, the county, the state, the federal government and private individuals and entrepreneurs. And so, after doing that for ten years, I got involved in another dot-com startup that went dot-bomb. And I said you know what? It’s, it’s B to C for me. It’s back to consulting and back to business. And I’ve been on my own ever since then, that was 21 years ago, and I’ve been consulting, training, financing. And about 14 years ago, I switched to just being a coach because I realized that consulting was really useful because it’s good people need advice, but I was very opportunistic, always looking for a company that had a problem that I might be able to solve and trying to figure out what I could do until I realized that, you know, coaching is like having a playbook. And when you start to recognize that entrepreneurs all have similar- many entrepreneurs- have similar problems, they have similar problems, managing people, they have similar problem problems managing their time and their priorities and their, their, their mindset. And, they have similar difficulties with execution and getting people to be accountable and holding people accountable and putting measures in place. And I thought you know, what, why don’t I just find a good playbook and start to run that playbook by each company. And lo and behold, here I am 20 years later with my own playbook that I decided to run. And I decided to go back to my, you know, my roots because I recognize that my best clients were next-generation leaders in family businesses. Like I was saying earlier, people who were 14, 16, 18- grew up kind of watching mom or dad or mom and dad in the business. And, you know, maybe they built a million-dollar business, maybe a built a $5 million business. Maybe it was even larger- 10 million. And my goal is to take those people and help them to scale up to two to 10 X their business because my passion is about helping people find their freedom. I found mine at an early, I was a gifted mind at an early age, and out of a no bill, like noblesse oblige, you know, the, like the obligation of the noble is like give back, help others do the same thing. So I, that’s a long answer maybe to your story, but I think it’s a full circle and it gives people an idea of like the importance of purpose and calling in your life. Because that’s the first P in my framework is you gotta know your why. You have to know what it is that you’re called to do. And you, you know, people struggle with probably all their lives. I think to find that I think I was blessed at an early age. I don’t know how I think it came from my mother- the sense of purpose, the sense of doing good, doing well, and you know, doing for others. And so that’s my story. And I’m sticking with it. What are The Challenges to Scaling-Up a Business? Jenn DeWall: That’s a beautiful story, though. And I love it. The foundation of your business was this observation when you were younger of your families, starting this business, scaling this business, growing this business. So you have it from maybe more of that observer point of view, but then it went to your own trial and error. You had, I’m sure, so many wins and losses, you know, you had the dot-com or dot-bomb as you called it. And then also learning, oh my gosh, we can’t scale. If all of the talents are within this one individual, we can’t educate anyone else. So I love that you not only have the foundation that’s rooted in just seeing why you want to help family businesses succeed and do well, but then you also have that historical knowledge that people need. Because I think there are a lot of people, whether they are new to the family business or whether they’re new to business in general, that actually just, they have an idea, and there’s just too much around them to actually figure out what to do, which brings me to the first question. So what challenges do you see that maybe family-run businesses or entrepreneurs run into when they’re starting to scale? Jonathan Goldhill: Well, let’s take a page out of Marcus Lemonis’s book, from The Profit on CNBC. Many people have probably watched that show with great enthusiasm. He goes into family businesses mostly and turns them around. And you know, I think his tagline is People, Processes and Profits. I mean, those are probably the cornerstone is like, if you don’t have the right people and they’re if they’re not in the right seats and that they’re not doing the right things, and if they’re not doing the right things, right, which means like being effective and being efficient, both like you can’t build or scale anything. When I was in business school, we had venture capitalists parade through our entrepreneur classes, one after the next, after the next, I mean, it wasn’t literally a parade, but it seems like they were coming frequently enough. And they kept saying over and over again. I heard it drilled into our heads. It’s like, you know, an A management team can execute on a C business plan concept much better than an A concept with a C team. So, in other words, get the right people. And so very oftentimes in family businesses, they just take the family that is there because they sort of fit, but they’re not always in the right seat. Maybe they get, you know, I know every business I ever joined, as I would start in what I call the troubleshooter position, which means that I was like run around and find stuff to do that I was good at, where I could add value. And then eventually you’re like, oh Jonathan, you know, this guy he’s pretty good at communicating with our customers. And he’s pretty good at picking up the phone, and he’s really persistent. And so let’s give them maybe a sales position that that’ll be a good place to put him. So too often, family members don’t have the family member kind of like in the right seat, or they’re not trained so well. And then, the conflict can oftentimes ensue because it already exists in the home. Perhaps there’s dysfunction. That’s normal. And then maybe there’s entitlement. In one family, one sibling feels that the other sibling gets more fair treatment or one sibling is cut out to be the president and wants to be a leader. And the other just wants to be kind of like I’ve seen it where literally, I just want to be like a mechanic in the shop, you know, or like, you know, being what I call a wrench and you can’t pay that person as well. And so, you know, then there gets conflict, like, Hey, my brother’s making, he’s making 150,000, and I’m making 42 like this doesn’t look fair. So you’ve got to deal with this people issue. Defined Roles and Accountability Jonathan Goldhill: And the way I address it is by putting an organization or an accountability chart defining what the roles are. So like, you know, map out an ideal picture of what people, you know, looks like. And, and kind of like Marcus does go in, do an assessment of who’s doing, what are they doing? The right roles? You know, what do I need to mediate between people if, if that’s in existence and then what are the processes look like to manage this business? Because you can’t scale any business beyond yourself. If you don’t have processes that people can follow, so you need to have processes. And so that’s pretty obvious to scale, and people say, you know, profitability, well, that’s just an obvious, but it’s not so easy because first of all, as you scale, your fixed costs change. So your break-even goes up. So you need to manage the profitability at different sizes of your scale. You also have to balance profitability with the balance sheet, which is equally important, which is, are you building an asset that’s valuable and, and maybe sellable or, or transferrable to the next generation. And so managing profitability as a company, scales become different because your costs keep going up. And at sometimes you’re really profitable, and other times you’re less profitable. And hopefully, you’re following that, you know, that stair-step, if you will, with an S curve going up as well, and it’s not that easy to manage that. So those are probably the three pillars of the biggest challenges in scaling a business. Does that, does that, does that sit right with you? What Happens When You Don’t Scale Up? Jenn DeWall: Yeah, I’ve even when I think about the people component, you know, it’s obviously challenging for people, whether you own a business or not, to be able to assess someone’s readiness or skill level. And I think it’s just interesting because you do add in that tension, that conflict, the maybe ego that people are probably going to be a little bit more vocal if they don’t get the position, or there’s going to be a little bit more conflict, whereas that stuff you may not see in a corporate setting or a traditional business setting. And so it sounds like you almost have to be a family therapist when you’re a business coach, initially, when you’re peeling back the layers to figure out what is really going to work for the sake of the business, but also, you know, making sure that everyone can work and run it together. And yeah, I think even as an entrepreneur myself, when I think about the processes piece that is still, and it was the most challenging thing thinking about where do I start? What process do I need to even have? And really, how do I self-structure? I guess if I look at my own journey, initially, it was self-structuring. It was very easy to do everything when someone was telling you to do it. It’s a lot different when you’re in the pilot seat, and you maybe had someone else do that, and you have to flex your skillset. And then, of course, profitability. So let’s talk about the consequences of not scaling. What happens if we don’t scale? What do you see as maybe the challenge or consequence, or outcome of not scaling? Jonathan Goldhill: You know, that’s a really good question. And I used to do a seminar like 10-15 years ago. Maybe it was called if you’re not growing, you’re dying. And I really believe that there, it probably the laws of physics are, you can only stay in one place for so long before you either move up or down. And so I think one of the consequences of not growing is that you’re going to end up losing people because, or good people. Good people, like A players, want to be challenged, and they want to be challenged by learning opportunities, growth opportunities, by, of course, income-earning opportunities. But that’s not the first thing they’re looking for. They want to be challenged as people. And if you’re not growing, then you’re not adding to not only the profitability, but you’re not improving people. And so, like, you know, corporations are basically people. And people need to be working on themselves. You were talking about being a self like you didn’t say self-starter, but you had to manage yourself, right. And it’s not easy, by the way, it’s not easy for a lot of people, even when they’re told what to do, how to manage themselves. You’d be, you know, maybe surprised to know that some people struggle with attendance, getting to work on time, or having a good attitude. And so you constantly have to be coaching people. And like, if you look at people the way, and one of my favorite companies that do this really well is Lululemon. They really are all about developing their people. I think everyone who works at Lululemon or used to like had to go through a landmark education forum, which is basically a communication workshop. And it’s a program that helps you elevate yourself. So if you’re not scaling, then you’re dying. You’re losing employees. Your profitability is going down. You know, processes that maybe should be put into place start falling apart. You’re not keeping up with technological advances, which make your job easier, but it’s, of course, more difficult to implement these technological software programs. I mean, they’re, they’re a beast for some clients to put in place, but the value that you get from them is robust. And so it really separates the A-players from the B and C players. And you end up falling off. I mean, I think you know, growth for growth’s sake isn’t necessarily the right thing. Like in my business, we have in coach the coaching industry, we have a saying revenue is vanity, profitability is sanity. And it makes sense because you have to manage towards that profitability. So, you know, I think each company is going to have a different set of consequences, but I think some of them is just going to be that you’re going to lose your people and that you’re going to lose your best people first. Then you’re going to lose more people next. And, you know, things go into a state of decline. Scaling Up in a Talent Drought—Become a Destination Employer Jenn DeWall: Yeah, absolutely. You don’t have the right people to be supporting the mission. And even right now, I, you know, listening to the news every single day, hearing about whether it’s issues in the supply chain or whether it’s the fact that we just can’t find employees for certain positions. I know here in the United States, I was listening. I think there’s still cargo ships, you know, off the port that they can’t even bring in. And you think about that. And just in terms of what are you doing right now, where there’s this talent drought, and how are you protecting that? How are you being intentional with being able to preserve your people? So this is why you need to scale. And in a second, we’re going to talk about Jonathan’s tips for how to help you scale. I’m curious, what do you think would be the starting point? So now that we’re going into this, like, what is the starting point for how you even look at scaling? Because I think that, you know, I know you talked about people, processes and profits, but where do you, what avenue do you go down? Because there’s likely a lot of problems that a business owner or a CEO sees within their business, right? How do they determine which one is their starting point? Jonathan Goldhill: That’s a really good question. And your comment earlier is instructive of what, where the starting point is, and it’s not even in my framework. And so let’s just go back for a second where, you know, currently we see things like maybe interruptions to the supply chain. Where many people are well aware that there’s a drought talent for employees and you have to create, like, you have to be a destination employer and attract people magnetically with like, I don’t know, with a hook or a magnet that grabs them and says, you know, come work for us. Like, we’re the best thing since sliced bread. I mean, it’s not easy. And so I think the first place that one starts and where I started in my coaching career was as a growth coach was working on people’s mindset. We call it the strategic mindset process. If you’re not thinking, if you’re not working on your business, then you’re stuck in it. If you’re, when you’re working on your business, you’re paying attention to what’s going on in the economy. You’re paying attention to maybe supply chain interruptions. And you know about this stuff because you’re talking to your vendors, your suppliers, and you’re finding out, Hey, what’s going on out there. You’re participating in your industry association. And you’re saying to people who are really maybe collegial, a little more open, Hey, what are you experiencing out there? You’re talking to your customers. And you’re saying, what are you seeing from our competitors out there? I mean, so you have to have the mindset that I’m not going to like bury my head down, but the nose to the grindstone, but I’m going to get up. I’m going to get out and walk around, and I’m going to communicate and connect, and I’m going to do whatever I can to learn. Never Stop Learning Jonathan Goldhill: So I’m going to, I’m going to read books. I’m going to listen to podcasts, but I’ll watch Ted Talks. I’m going to talk to my peers who are going to be part of round tables and peer groups, and industry associations. I’m gonna seek out friendly colleagues who will mentor me and maybe in other parts of the countries, if they’re not, you know, so they’re not geographically competing, perhaps. So your mindset, Jenn, is where you have to start. And what I find is that people who have that kind of a growth mindset, then they can approach the seven Ps playbook, the framework that I’ve given them. And they’ve, they’re ready to scale because they prepared themselves. And not only mentally, but also physically, right? I mean, business is a contact sport. You have to get out there, you have to touch people, but you have to be in good shape for this. You have to eat right. You have to sleep well. You have to, you know, think positive thoughts. You have to deal with negative emotions that might come up in your life. You have to exercise. I mean your body. I know I used to always read about this with like salespeople. The fittest salespeople are the best salespeople. How about the fitness entrepreneurs are like the best entrepreneurs? I mean, you have to take this on. You have to start with learning and your mindset. That’s my answer to your question. And then once you have that, then you can go into looking at, okay, what am I going to implement as far as like a playbook or an operating system into my company, Jenn DeWall: If you yourself are not growing, you are dying. That is what’s happening. And growth is through whether it’s mind, body, spirit, understanding the business climate, and environment or economy that you’re operating in. And I think that’s an important point. Again, it might sound obvious to some people like, of course, you look at the mindset. But I think what I sometimes observe when people are starting a business is that they like to focus on what they perceive as fun to manage, right? And then they don’t want to focus on the not-fun stuff. And the not-fun stuff is relevant, important, essential to being able to sustain that. And so I think it’s important to say, are you looking at that as you, you know, that 30,000-foot view looking down at your business to figure out where can you actually step in and add? What’s really going on instead of maybe sitting within one pocket of that business and focusing on it. So let’s get to your playbook. I’m so sorry. Do you have a comment for that? Jonathan Goldhill: No, I just, yeah, I was on a call with a client yesterday. It was a father and the daughter, I’m coaching the daughter, and she and the father are very much alike. They don’t like certain things in the CEO role. They don’t like dealing with the lawsuits that come with the business that they’re in, which are large and sometimes frustrating. And usually, the insurance companies take care of it. They don’t like dealing with taxes. They don’t like the financial strain that comes with having 40 employees that they have to make sure they have a paycheck for each week. And my answer as a coach is let’s start to address each one of these. I mean, it first might start with your mindset around the lawsuits. Like how do we eliminate having lawsuits in the first place by being really effective in our communication, by having really good, clear sales contracts by having well-trained people who the work, right and the quality control is there? I mean, it’s a joy to run a business that’s running great. There’s nothing worse. It’s a nightmare to run one, you know, where you’re, you know, I mean, look, a lot of people get into entrepreneurship because they’ve got this dream of being independent and then it warps into this like owner’s nightmare. And like, you know, to some degree with this father and daughter. They do not want to deal with the nightmare part, but they’re working at it because they have this positive mindset bias. But you can’t be Pollyanna about this. You have to deal with the heavy stuff, and you have to find maybe a trusted advisor who can take over the stuff that you don’t like. Okay. Scale Up with Jonathan’s 5 P’s Jenn DeWall: Let’s dive into the playbook! So, how can you scale? Let’s talk about you have your playbook for helping businesses scale. What is the first thing they need to do? # 1 – Purpose Jonathan Goldhill: The first thing is they need to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. They, you know, to build a culture in a business, you have to know your why, and you have to attract people who are attracted to your why. Think Apple, think differently. Think, you know, we challenge the status quo, right? That like people became Apple evangelists. Apple became the biggest company in the world at one point, close to still is because they thought differently. They challenged the status quo. They were imaginative. They had a great design, and they attracted people who believed in the calling that Steve Jobs, who was like a prophet, was right. Not the nicest guy necessarily, but a prophet of sorts in the world of business. I mean, look, he was like a success in what, five or six different industries. I mean, that’s pretty amazing. You have to get your purpose down, too. And you have to know what it is. What’s your, why? What’s your calling. You have to establish a set of core values or operating behaviors that everyone will pretty much play by, and you’ll hire and fire and reward by those core values. Purpose is really critical to the founding point of what is your vision. # 2 – Planning Jonathan Goldhill: Second thing, right? You need to have a vision. And with that purpose in the vision, you develop a plan. And so my second P is planning. You have to know, where will you be in 90 days? Where do you, where do you want to be in 90 days? And you need to communicate. What’s the first thing. And the only and the major thing that we need to focus on and what our second and third and other four things that we’ll get to that are also important. But what’s the message that you want to communicate a great leader, a great president, communicates a message over and over and over again until everyone believes in it. And look. Hopefully, it’s a true message, but you know, and it’s not a false message, but you, because if you lose that credibility, then people won’t continue to follow you. But you’ve got to plan beyond the 90 days. What does one year, what does three years, heck, what does 10 or 25 years look like? If you have that big vision, you have to get people to follow along, and you have to put it down on paper. So you can create some alignment around the vision, and you have to share it, and you have to communicate it widely within your company. Jenn DeWall: Jonathan, I’ve got a question about the plan, and it’s something that, you know, as a coach myself, I have watched, you know, I started my business in 2013. And one of the things that I watched my peers kind of do in terms of the planning about their business is just throwing money at everything. And I, well, I just didn’t have that. I didn’t have that starting bucket that I could throw $30,000 at something. So I, in the beginning, was really just learning. I did my own SEO. I did my own marketing. I did all of this so I could teach them how to do it. I did my own taxes until I could get an accountant, and it was challenging, but yet I would have rather done it that way instead of just throwing money, like $30,000 to do this $50,000 to do that. And now, when I see them today, their businesses aren’t even open anymore. And so when I, I’m just curious what your thoughts are and where people get the planning piece wrong in terms of throwing money at everything. Jonathan Goldhill: That’s a really good question, Jenn. And I think, you know, I, I think back to the time when I hired my very first employee in my own consulting firm that was my dollars. It wasn’t someone else’s dollars. And I remember taking a lot of time to think about, like, what’s the worst-case scenario? What’s the downside? What’s the best-case scenario? What’s the upside? What’s the likely and probable, you know, probability. And back then, when I did business plans for clients, I would always do an optimistic, a pessimistic and a realistic scenario. And so I still believe that that’s really important when you make an investment in equipment, in training, in people, in a person, in an office or a factory or industrial space, you have to think in terms of how can I minimize my risk? You have to try, and as entrepreneurs, contrary to what some people think, they’re not risk-takers, they’re risk-averse, they are adventurous, and they’re venturesome, and they’re innovative, but they do everything possible to minimize the downside risk. And you’ve got to look at every investment as a value proposition and figure out, you know, what’s the worst-case scenario. Can I still survive? You know, can I sustain? If I can’t sustain a 30,000 to 50,000, a hundred thousand dollar investment, then I have to be, you know, then I have to be absolutely certain about my investment. You know, look, there are many companies, I probably couldn’t name one off-hand that have failed because they, they believed in one. Okay. Let’s pick, let’s pick some companies we know. Lycos, AltaVista, Ask Jeeves. I’m just thinking of some search engines back, back in those days, right. They state, you know that you know, they staked their vision on one thing that they thought was going to be like, this is the way search was going to be done on the internet. And, you know, and then along comes this company with this crazy look- like there was nothing on the page. I mean, Yahoo was like the bomb back in the day. That was where you’d go. And then along comes Google. And it’s just like, it’s just got a search bar. And it became like the searches came super fast. And that speed was, and the fact that they had like they had digitized the universe and figured out how to deliver up information. The information that you wanted. It was quite brilliant. So we don’t think about the failures, but I guarantee you, most of those failures were made by professional investors with their money, and, you know, not everyone can always be right. I know I’ve heard of people who passed on the investment in Yahoo and Google cause they thought that’d never work, you know? And like, they’re like, you know, and then there are those guys who’ve made those investments that are, you know, billionaires. So but I think that the answer is really thinking through and planning it out. And that’s what entrepreneurs do is they really, they think through the upside, the downside and what’s the likely scenario. Jenn DeWall: And I, I, I think that’s so important to just say because I think there’s a lot of people, as you had said earlier, that get into entrepreneurship because they want the freedom. They want independence. You are managing a business. And that is, you know, so you have to look at the business, and you can’t just get caught up at the potential of freedom and X without understanding those logistics. A Message From Crestcom: Crestcom is a global organization dedicated to developing effective leaders companies all over the world have seen their managers transformed into leaders through our award-winning and accredited leadership development programs. Our signature BPM program provides interactive management training with a results-oriented curriculum and prime networking opportunities. If you’re interested in learning more about our flagship program and developing your managers into leaders, please visit our website to find a leadership trainer near you. Or maybe you yourself have always wanted to train and develop others. Crestcom is a global franchise with ownership opportunities available throughout the world. If you have ever thought about being your own boss, owning your own business and leveraging your leadership experience to impact businesses and leaders in your community, Crestcom may be the right fit for you. We’re looking for professional executives who are looking for a change and want to make a difference in people’s lives. Learn more about our franchise opportunity on the Own a Franchise page of our website at Crestcom.com. #3 – Products and Services Jenn DeWall: So, purpose is number one, the planning piece is number two, what’s number three? Jonathan Goldhill: So my number three is Products or services. And the reason why is because most playbooks that I’ve read operating system books, whether it’s EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system, or even scaling up, which are both books on my bookshelf that I really believe in Scaling Up – Mastering The Rockefeller Habits- How a Few Companies Make It and Why the Rest Don’t. Traction by Gino Wickman. These are really important. I think valuable playbooks that most people find really useful. For, well with Traction in the case of EOS, really good with people and execution. In the case of Scaling Up- people, execution, strategy and cash. But what seems to be lacking in even the Scaling Up book, which deals with strategy, is the marketing and selling of the products and services and the value of those products. And so I felt it was really important for next-generation leaders to evaluate the products and services and the relevance of them to their customers and the way it’s being delivered. So, you know, the advent of technology has made systems and communication tools available to us so that you can manage the customer engagement experience, the delivery, or the distribution experience. And I think that next-gen leaders really need to evaluate their product strategy and their service strategy. So it’s fresh, and it’s current, and it’s meeting the needs of the customers that they’re selling to. So I wanted people to understand also about the threats from like Michael Porter’s, Five Forces Analysis. And understand the threats from industry rivals or competitors or the intensity in the industry. And understand, you know, what’s your position in the market. And so that’s the kind of stuff that I wanted to get into in the product section. I just find some of the basics of marketing have been too often missed. And some people just understand the simplest ways to grow a business. Jenn DeWall: What do you mean? If I build it, they’ll come, right? Jonathan Goldhill: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, you know, and so yeah, I mean, it’s like the simplest thing I was ever taught that wasn’t in business school is that there are five ways to grow any business, which is, you know, increase the number of leads that you’re getting, you know, convert more of those leads, which is a sales function, measure, of course, that conversion ratio and increase the average sale size, and increase the frequency of the transactions. And so, you know, by following some of those types of things, you can grow any business, but wow, that’s too simple. They don’t teach you that in business school. Jenn DeWall: I just wish that more people again would understand these are the essential components of making and running a profitable business and not kind of leaning on the fact, well, I need this and I had this great idea. And because it came into existence that all of a sudden, it’s going to happen. I think that even in the age of social media, let’s talk about when Facebook was really starting to be used for business purposes. You know, this is probably a decade, more than a decade ago. And I think about it. I have an uncle that is a builder, and, you know, and there’s a lot of competition within the building and the area that they are, and he just could not get behind marketing. And I’m like, how do you think they’re going to find you, like, you have to be able to promote your service. You have to show that you’re a thought leader. And I think, again, there’s the piece of, you know, is it then a competence issue? Is it that people are still afraid of selling? Is that, is it that they just don’t understand what marketing is? Shouldn’t they just hire it to someone else? Like, I don’t know what you see in terms of the common one within that? Is it lack of training on how to do sales, lack of a compromise comprehension of that sales cycle? I don’t know what you see most? Jonathan Goldhill: My friend calls small businesses that confuse marketing and sales, and he came up with a term, I think he calls it, “smallketing.” So basically, it’s sales-marketing because they don’t understand the distinction. Sales are really one-on-one face-to-face or phone to phone or whatever, you know, conversion. Marketing is a lead generation function that gets people to know, like trust, buy, repeat, and refer. You know, I’m stealing a page out of John Jantsch’s book. It’s a friend of mine who wrote Duct Tape Marketing, and they’re very different functions. And most entrepreneurs don’t even understand it. And, and by the way, because let’s make this relevant to today, marketing today is for many companies in the service businesses that I’m working in. It’s about finding people to join the company. Jonathan Goldhill: So I tell most of my companies that are in the, I work with a lot of landscape contractors, and I tell them like, Hey, take your marketing dollars that you’re spending on promoting your services. Like you don’t need more leads coming in. That doesn’t seem to be a problem like homeowners are at home. They’re dying to get their properties upgraded, fixed, et cetera, like turn your marketing dollars to sell your company to the world or to your community to attract better quality people. That’s where your marketing dollars need to go is, is attracting talent. So, you know, when you attract great talent, then great things happen also. And like, you know, publicity starts to follow, and I have a client that gets almost all their work, but all their business from publicity and word of mouth. And it’s pretty amazing. They don’t have to spend much on marketing whatsoever. Jenn DeWall: I have never spent a dollar and like advertising. The majority, even as a coach, that the majority of my bookings, my keynotes all have come from just investing in SEO and knowing how to do that. And, but I think back, and so it doesn’t have to be this, you know, I think a lot of people don’t realize that as long as you have a strategy around that, of what you’re trying to do, how you’re trying to, you can make it happen. You don’t have to just throw money at it. I’m curious – what do you- Jonathan Goldhill: And by the way, I’m just guilty as the next person, Jenn, right? Like as a guy who’s been in the coaching business since 2004, I’ve thrown money at so many different ways of trying to build my business. I’ve done it. I’ve done workshops, and I’ve done seminars, I’ve done webinars. I’ve done telemarketing. I’ve done outsourced telemarketing. I’ve done, you know got, I could just keep going on. Networking. And the list goes on. And what I found was, Hey, there were like three core things that worked really well for me in my business for the type of client that I’m going after. And by the way, as I move up-market to better bigger clients, those strategies have to change, but I’ve tried these things. Marketing is sometimes a little bit of a guessing game, but you have to have fun, and you have to have to be willing to experiment with trying new things and doing things differently. Right. If you were still doing direct mail pieces, you might not be having so much success, but then again, you might be having success again because nobody’s doing it. But it’s expensive. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. It’s expensive. And I wanted to ask about that direct mail pieces and the age of the pandemic because people aren’t necessarily going into their business. They might be working from home. So how effective is that strategy, maybe? Or have you seen anything, or is it just kind of a, for some, it’s still effective, and for some, it’s not. Jonathan Goldhill: Yeah. You know, direct mail for me was a highly effective strategy. I’ve only deployed it on a few occasions, and it brought very few leads, but the leads that came in converted. And it was because I was able to put so much in an envelope and give them so much to read. I haven’t tried it recently with the advent of email marketing. It just seems like it’s so much cheaper and faster to do that with less risk. So that works well for me for the type of client that I’m going after. But look, I think it really depends very much on whom you’re trying to reach, how to reach them, when and where with what message- it’s complicated. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. So we talked about number one- Jonathan Goldhill: And that’s all in the product and services- that’s all in the product section, that piece. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. Look, I love this. We’re rocking and rolling. Number one gotta have your purpose and your vision. Number two, you have to have your plan. Number three, make those products and services known to people. What’s number four? #4 – People Jonathan Goldhill: So number four is people. If you aren’t developing your A-team, then you know, it’s really difficult to scale any kind of business. You’ve got to have those core values in place. You have to hire based on those core values because it’s nothing ruins culture more than someone who just doesn’t fit the values. It, you know, it’s like one bad apple, or maybe I should say peach really ruins the whole apple cart. You know, it just, it makes them rotten. So attracting the right people is really important and then selecting the right person for the job to make sure that they, that they fit the position really well. And I spend a lot of time talking about how to find the right person, how to interview them, how to, how to evaluate them during the interview. You know, the old adage hire slowly fire fast. I kind of flesh out more and explain like, how do you hire slowly and why, and what are the tools that you use? And then once you’ve got that person hired, you’ve got to onboard them into your processes, into your culture. You know you want to create engagement with your people. And so that I talk about as well, you know, what are the attributes of a great leader, because you need to, it’s not just about finding great people. It’s like people want to be led, not, you know, and for you to get people to follow you, you’ve got to level up your skills. And that’s where I get back to like, leveling up your personal, like your health, your wellness, your, you know, your sleep, all that kind of like personal hygiene stuff. But people want to follow leaders of competence, of, of character, of, you know, people who are committed, who are enthusiastic and positive. And, you know, so you’ve got to level yourself up and in the process of leveling yourself up, especially I find in some family businesses, there sometimes is like old employees that aren’t scaling up with the program. So you’ve got to deal with, you know, people who are poor communicators or have negative communication styles. You’ve got to get rid of unhealthy conflict from the business. And then you need to have a really solid process for making decisions and for like communicating tools. So I’m really big believer that the people part of this- it’s not the be all and end all, but it’s the most important thing. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. Well, and if, I think even too, when I, you know, my work with clients is around more of like career and life coaching and the number one thing or the last four years has always been, what’s the mission of that company? And so even just connecting what you do, even if it’s not, you know, something that seems super exciting, like how can you connect that to a deeper purpose? Because of the people that I work with, which are predominantly Millennial and Gen Z, they want that number one. So if you want to attract them, it’s getting really clear on what you’re doing and showing them and inviting them on the journey. And I think a lot of organizations, again, they, they may be operated on that past notion of like, and we’re stable, we’re this we’re that. And that’s not necessarily enough anymore to attract talent. What is number five? Okay. So number five is priorities. And here’s where I dive into that. Like, time management is really priority management, and priority management is energy management. And so some of the times some of the things that I’ve weaved throughout this talk so far is if you want to first you need to figure out how to prioritize, and you need to prioritize your activities. You can’t do everything at the same time. You’ve got to pick the most important and then get onto the next and most important. I don’t believe that you can multitask. I think Morten Hansen, in his book, Great At Work, talked about like do less, then obsess. So get into your Zone of Genius and figure out, like, what are your priorities and get those things done. And then, then you can figure out what your, where your time needs to be spent because you know, what your priorities are. Jonathan Goldhill: Do you know, I like the concept of eating the ugly frog first- Brian Tracy- stealing that page from his book is, you know, take on the most difficult challenges first thing in the day when your energy is the freshest. And so this then gets into energy management, right? Your energy has to be in a good place so that you can tackle your priorities and manage your time. And then you need to help your team be doing the same thing. So they manage their priorities, and they’re working on the most important things first. Otherwise, we can tend to work on the trivial many and forget and ignore the vital few, which are the things that you really wanted to get done, but you didn’t get done because you were so busy with the tyranny of all the other stuff. Jenn DeWall: Gosh, and I just want to give like a, a pleading moment for employees- please be clear on your priorities, because the last thing I want is when maybe you aren’t clear. And so you jump on this thing and that thing, you know, that shiny object syndrome, and that’s so hard to add value if things are constantly changing. So that was just my plug for the employees that are like, let me focus on this and help you prioritize on the thing so we can all be successful. Jonathan Goldhill: Yeah, exactly. And you know, in family businesses, they have a unique distinction from other businesses because they need to recognize that not everything belongs in the conversation with employees. So there’s, you know, or managers or leaders. So they need to think in terms of like, Hey, which room should we be in to have this conversation? Is this the family room where we’re just dealing with a family issue? This is between you and me, Jenn, and you know, our siblings, we gotta work this out? Or is this a leadership issue? And the leadership team needs to be aware, this is a management team issue, or this is an employee issue. Like there’s a lot of difference, you can have multiple family members that are stakeholders that might just be an employee, but not an owner. And they shouldn’t be privy to those other conversations necessarily. So you need to know what room we are in? Like, I don’t think it’s appropriate when family members fight in front of each other when it’s something that is not business-related. We should focus on the problem. Not the people might not make it personal and so super important in sorting priorities. Do you want to get to the next P? #5 – Processes Jenn DeWall: For sure! Number Five! Jonathan Goldhill: Which is Processes. And I said, it pretty simple before, you know, you need to have processes that can run in your absence- that people can run in your absence, that you can scale the business. And so you’ve got to have some kind of documentation about how things are done around here. You know, I mean, if everything is in your head, then that’s not going to work. And I basically walked people through how, what’s a simple process to start documenting it. And it’s kind of the same process that I took to write my book. I started by asking like, what are the questions that people need to answer? And then, you know, what’s the organization of those questions. And then what are the sub-questions underneath each one of those? And it’s kind of like you write the chapter, and then you write the outline, then you’re writing the pages of the book. And I think that you know, you need to have that same thing in processes. Jenn DeWall: And that’s one that I hear about a lot of people may be getting caught up in is they feel like they don’t get the freedom and independence that they wanted because they don’t have processes to be able to delegate, or share, or show someone else. And so then the whole reason they might’ve gotten into business is the one thing they can’t really enjoy because they don’t, as you said, it’s all up here. All right. Our Final P! What’s our final P? Jonathan Goldhill: So, you know, there’s no business without profitability, right? As we said, you know, revenue is vanity. Profitability is sanity. Cash flow is security, and you need to understand the balance sheet also, which is the statement that small businesses just don’t even understand or look at. That’s the real value of your business, on paper. And you need to be at least improving the book value of your business. If you’re in anything, that’s certainly an asset-rich business. And so once you understand the three statements, the balance sheet, the cash flow, the P and L, then we have the ability to look at what’s our return on investment because we have choices. We could take our money and invest it in other companies, you know, we’ve got public markets, stock markets, we’ve got cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, whatever your flavor is. Oil, gas, you know, you have lots of different places that you’re gonna invest your money. And you have to ask yourself, like, is investing my money, like a really good return, my getting a return on my investment. I like to think that you should get a return north of 50% annually for an investment in your business because or, you know, I mean, 25 to 30%, that’s not too bad, but, and here’s where you use this. It’s called the DuPont formula. Other people might look at it as a critical success formula. It’s like, it’s your return on equity and your return on assets and your profitability, your profit margin. And, you know, so you can look that formula up, but figure out like, are you getting a 30 or 40 or 50%? Because you have choices, you could just throw your money into Apple. And maybe that would have been a better investment. You could sit at home and watch TV or read a book, or, you know, paint a picture. So we have choices. We should understand. What’s the value of our investment in our business? Where to Learn More About How to Scale up with Jonathan Jenn DeWall: Which I think comes back down to, if you’re not growing, you’re dying as you started. If you’re not thinking about how you’re making money, if you do not understand these key documents that will determine the health of your business, you know, you’re doing yourself a disservice, you’re doing your business, a service like you and your business both need to be growing, or you’ll be dying. Jonathan, how, how do people get in touch with you? How can people get your book? Where, where can we send them? Jonathan Goldhill: Great, well, so you can get my book at the website, disruptivesuccessor.com. There’s a link to an Amazon page. You can download a free chapter. You can grab some free tools, and you can get in touch with me through that website, disruptivesuccessor.com. I do have a separate coaching website, which is TheGoldhillGroup.com and a great way to get ahold of me is on LinkedIn. I’m very active on LinkedIn. I post a lot. You can see my, listen to my podcasts, connect with me there, and we can have an authentic conversation offline. Jenn DeWall: Perfect. Jonathan, thank you so much. How to scale your business to eight figures and beyond. I hope that you are. I hope that everyone listening found at least one nugget of something that they could maybe focus on to just take that next step in stealing their business, getting closer to that freedom. Jonathan, thank you so much for your time and your expertise, sharing it with The Leadership Habit audience today. Jonathan Goldhill: Jenn, thanks for being a great interviewer. Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast with Jonathan Goldhill. If you want to pick up Jonathan’s book, Disruptive Successor, you can get that at his website, disruptivesuccessor.com, or you can connect and start a conversation with him by going to TheGoldhillGroup.com. We’re also connecting with him on LinkedIn. It, you know, someone that is running a family-owned business or is an entrepreneur share this episode, share Jonathan’s playbook with them so they can hopefully achieve that ultimate goal of freedom. And, of course, if you liked this week’s episode of the podcast, make sure to leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming service.   The post Scale Up Your Business with Jonathan Goldhill, Author and Certified Growth Coach appeared first on Crestcom International.

Changing Organizational Culture with Steve Frenkiel, President of Dynamic Connections In this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, Jenn DeWall sits down with the president of Dynamic Connections and Crestcom leadership development client, Steve Frenkiel, to talk about how you can change organizational culture through leadership. Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall. And on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I am sitting down with Steve Frenkiel, the president of dynamic connections. And today, Steve and I are going to talk about how you can change your organizational culture through leadership. And I’m so happy to have Steve with us because he knows, and Steve knows firsthand what it’s like to walk into a new organization and think, how am I going to fit? How am I going to take ownership? How am I going to be this new leader? And what does that organization need to look like? So, Steve, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. It’s really great to have you. Steve Frenkiel: Thanks, Jenn. A pleasure to be here. Meet Steve Frenkiel, President at Dynamic Connections Jenn DeWall: Steve, tell me a little bit about your journey. How did you become the president of Dynamic Connections? What did that look like for you? I think sometimes people think about how does someone get to that executive leadership level position, and so many will take different paths. And so I’m so curious to hear what your path was like. Steve Frenkiel: Yeah. It’s definitely not a typical path. And certainly an interesting one as well. I’ll start from the beginning to give to give listeners some color. So I was an engineer originally by training, studied at McGill. I never actually worked as an engineer, but it always framed my thinking, my approach, my problem-solving. So I really valued that training. I ended up working in consulting for a few years, had a good experience, but realized I didn’t want to really sit on the sidelines of business. So from there, I was career transitioning. And I like to say I I snuck into Harvard Business school. Somehow the admissions made a slight mistake and let me into the program. So I had a really wonderful time and at HBS for a couple of years, getting exposed to lots of different disciplines. And from there, I ended up going into finance—into a discipline called private equity, which is a field where you buy companies and work to make them better. It was a really good fit for me because of my strong financial skills, and it was still very entrepreneurial. You were working with entrepreneurs and helping them improve their business. I looked at other finance fields and decided on public markets and hedge funds. And, and that just felt way too far from entrepreneurs and business, because even at the time, this was, you know, 15 ago, I knew I had an entrepreneurial flair in me. I certainly it wasn’t going to happen at the time. I had lots of debt to pay off for school, so that wasn’t going to happen. But I knew at some point I could end up being an entrepreneur. So private equity was a really good way to build a career and build a skillset and see what it takes to build a successful business. So I ended up doing that for a bunch of years— for about eight years— where we bought and grew a number of businesses. I worked with a number of entrepreneurs, and eventually, that itch or that plane sort of started growing. And eight, nine years later, I decided to scratch it. And I spent almost two years looking for the right business to buy. So I was trained. Yeah, I was, I was, I was trained in private equity to look for a good business, and I spent two years looking for a good business. I spoke to and evaluated over a hundred different companies in the Ontario region. Literally over 100, 120. Most of them, I turned down. And off a cold call, I discovered Dynamic Connections, and it was a good company. And the owner was willing to listen, and we got the deal done. And that’s how I became overnight—the President and Owner of Dynamic Connections. Finding the Confidence to Make a Change Jenn DeWall: Which is an incredible story! And I think we didn’t even highlight some of the even challenges that you faced earlier on. Cold calling that many people to get it done! That takes a level of persistence and resilience that I think I just want to acknowledge because that is a big deal. And many people might’ve been after the first few conversations after the first few calls. Is this really where we want to be?  And that discouragement could have crept in. So what you did, it’s just, it’s fantastic. I mean, if I want to flip that back, you took everything that you are great at, your strengths, your experience, and you found the perfect opportunity to be able to let yourself shine, let yourself lead and let yourself apply all of these strengths, experiences, backgrounds, and insights that you had, which is just an incredible feat. So I really want to acknowledge that because that’s a big deal that I’m not sure everyone listening to this would say that they might’ve done the same thing because it’s hard work. So I’m glad that you came to be. And I also did. I know we talked about this on the pre-call too, but Harvard! You know, I am not an Ivy league school grad. I know that there’s a lot where I think, oh my gosh, it’s Harvard, it’s up there, but you also talked about how people had what we call imposter syndrome there, which I was so surprised to hear. I shouldn’t be because I know that it’s common. Can you tell me a little bit about how you were in this group of people that were likely hyper-competitive, ambitious, driven? How do you sort out your confidence in that environment where I feel like everyone looks like they’re perfect from the outside, looking in, how do you, how do you find yourself and find your confidence and voice in that environment? Steve Frenkiel: Listen, it’s very true, Jenn. You’re absolutely right. A number of people, including myself, felt like they were the admissions mistake, and you know, how do we actually get in there? So you felt like, you know, you look around like, you know, it wasn’t supposed to be here and, you know, part of it was like, yeah, I’m not supposed to be here, but I’m going to make the most out of it while I’m here. So yeah, it, you know, in some senses that, that brings that, that sense of appreciation at calibrates people very well to be a little bit more humble and and and level headed. So, you know, lots of very, very talented people, very diverse especially for guys who are coming from, you know, what is a small town, what I call Montreal, not, not not, not a cosmopolitan of some, some of the rest of the world. And so it was a really, really great experience and just a really good personal development opportunity to experience lots of different types of successful people. Cause it’s not, it’s just not one cookie cutter. Everyone was special in one way or another. And it’s almost— sometimes you took some time to figure out I’m like, oh, okay. That’s how that person was special. And so it was yeah, very, very cool experience. Inspiring a Change in Organizational Culture Jenn DeWall: And thank you for sharing that. And for those that are listening, remember if you are judging yourself, if you’re not feeling as confident or if you’re feeling like a fraud or what they are, how they define imposter syndrome, it happens to everyone. You are not alone. I just have to say that because I think, sometimes we might assume that the people at the top are the ones that maybe don’t have it. And we just have to remember, we all are going through it, especially for taking risks, doing something challenging ourselves, which is what brought you to dynamic connections. Tell me a little bit about why maybe you’re and you were so inspired when you took over as president to inspire a leadership culture. Steve Frenkiel: Yeah, it was, in some sense, it was out of necessity. So remember when we spoke, so the person I bought the business from was an amazing individual, a true visionary leader. But who was as different as I am, as you could be. You know, picture me, I’m a five foot seven, 170 pounds, relatively square guy. And I bought, I bought the business from a guy who was six-foot-two, long blonde hair, drove a Ferrari and partied harder in his fifties than I did in my twenties. So, you know, it was a, it was really a real sort of tale of two cities, a dichotomy of one leader coming in after another leader. So, and we talked about it. Part of that was it almost made it impossible to lead at the beginning because this was a, he was a very, very big personality. When you walked into the room, there was no air left for anyone in that room. So this was the type of leader that you really, you would stand behind him because it was clear that he was leading and he had a vision even if he was leading in the wrong way. Doesn’t matter. You didn’t know because of the amount of confidence he was exuding. You were sort of following. So he had built an organization around it that way, where there was a number of loyal followers, and there was no air left. And there was no question who was the, who was the leader when that person stepped into the room. And people were following sort of in due order. And Changing Leadership Styles to Change Organizational Culture Jenn DeWall: I just have to say that cause I would be intimidated when you observe that or just hearing that I can picture that presence in walking in and saying, okay, how do I actually, how do I, you know, show them that I am here as a leader too? Like, that would just be a very difficult Steve Frenkiel: Yeah, really difficult, Jenn. You’re absolutely right. In fact, it comes down to, you know, picture the first few months of this transition. I am, I’m trying to learn the business. So I’m not even an expert in this business. I’ve done a whole bunch of diligence and so forth. Still, it doesn’t mean that I’d spent 10, 20 years in the industry. So I am trying to both learn the business, develop a rapport with people, lead the organization and still have this, you know, the former owner there sort of in the background, where as soon as he’s in the room, there’s no, there’s no air left to lead. And he’s the expert. He knows more about the industry than I do. So it was a very, very uncomfortable situation for me because it was, it was virtually impossible to lead or to learn or to show him vulnerability because I’m trying to learn. So it was very, very hard. And, and the key there, and we’ll tell, you know, we’ll talk about what I, what I did in terms of changing the leadership culture by necessity. But one of the key decisions I actually made, which some people would’ve thought was crazy after, I think it was four or five months, maybe four months. I asked him to leave. Even though he was the, you know, the godfather who had all the answers, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t grow and lead. With that, there just wasn’t enough air. So that wasn’t an easy conversation, but I asked him to leave because I sort of had some internal confidence that I would figure out the industry, but I needed the room. I needed the space. And I needed the space to grow that I can, I can, I can grow into the leader that the team could rally behind. So I needed that space, and I needed that. And that was a very sort of important decision. I remember my wife helping me through that decision intensely. She’s not a business person, but just sort of the way it was. And we got through it. And so we at that four or five-month mark, I still didn’t know the business well enough, but I knew enough that I needed that I, I took the space back. And then we changed the leadership style, and then we changed it from having one person with a voice to having one person with a really good strategic vision. I’ve always had very good strategic thought and a good eye for opportunity, but I gave more air to other people who had the ability to take it. Part of me as an entrepreneur what I’m good at is seeing opportunities. That’s what I believe most entrepreneurs are. There are people who see an opportunity to do something about it. And what I saw was a number of people in the organization that had the opportunity to contribute even more than they were. And so it was, it worked out very well because I changed the culture up upside down from having a big L leader to still, I’m still clearly very clearly in charge, but I’ve empowered a number of individuals to be in charge as well in their own, in their own sort of unique ways. And those were individuals that had the ability for that. And it’s helped. It’s changed the culture night and day from where it was and it, and it it’s good because I couldn’t be the other person. I wasn’t the big L personality person that he was. I couldn’t be that that’s not, that’s not who I was going to be. That’s not how I was going to lead this business. But now we’ve got a number of people in their own sort of unique and special ways who are leading it with a, you know, a Colonel and a bunch of lieutenants instead of a, just one general at the, at the head. Empowering Your Team to Change Organizational Culture Jenn DeWall: There are so many points that I want to touch on there. I mean, first, because there are many people, whether you’re going into an executive leadership role, whether you’re taking over a company or for someone that might be just going into leading a team for the first time. It can be a challenge to be able to feel like you have to, in some way, be the same as that person or replicate that reputation that they might’ve created. And it can feel a little unnerving, especially when, you know, you’re walking in and, you know, they do have that rapport reputation with them of respect and appreciation. So I want to acknowledge like that moment, but you also talked about, you know, getting into it, like what you did to actually transform the culture of dynamic connections. And how you described it made it sound like it was so much easier than what it was, but you did it. You put in the work. So I know that that wasn’t either. It was not that, I guess, like, yeah, we just did that. You didn’t just make people leaders, like there was a lot more of a conscious and deliberate thought process that came around identifying and seeing, okay, now that you’ve cut off the security blanket, which was huge after having that agreement with the former president and saying, you know what, I have to actually step up, be vulnerable and just put me out there even more. Then what was step two? So step two was then to look at your leadership team and the people in your company to say, are they really doing what they’re meant to do? Is that kind of like the first place when we’re talking about how do you change your culture? Steve Frenkiel: I think one of the secrets of leadership and empowerment is that people actually want the responsibility. I think we sometimes forget that sometimes you try to take responsibility away from people because you think it’s a burden on them but actually gives them purpose. And so when you give people true ownership and responsibility, they enjoy it. They give purpose and they, they very often, if they have sort of, the basic skills will rise up to that occasion. And so that’s, that was part of the secret sauce where I could identify a number of people who had some basic raw skills. We gave them ownership and responsibility. We coached them. I coached them on decision-making. I didn’t tell them how to Jenn DeWall: So important, like from your perspective as a president, why was it so important to give them that ownership? Steve Frenkiel: Okay. Because I believe it gives them purpose. I believe that entrepreneurs are a unique set of people that are sort of naturally driven by the pursuit of success. But most people need some sort of professional purpose along the way. And having ownership and responsibility is the purpose and doing a great job gives you that sense of pride and purpose. You, you leave your work feeling proud of what you’ve accomplished. And so when I empowered a number of people to take ownership and responsibility have real responsibility, real accountability, coach them on decision-making cause they were, they, they, they, they might’ve not have had the same structured thought process that I was trained with to make sort of thoughtful and thorough, decision-making never made decisions for them. I really empower them to make the decision but help them coach them along the way. It made them feel really good about what they were doing. And slowly, over time, developed a cadre of junior leaders. And again— this is in a context where remember— I wasn’t the subject matter expert. All my leaders knew more about transportation, about the technicalities of transportation, about our supplier base about our solutions. And I didn’t, I wasn’t, I didn’t grow up in the industry. I was, I’m an outsider. I’m a former engineer finance guy. So they all had more subject matter expertise. I just helped them coach in terms of decision-making and strategic thought, and basic blocking and tackling of business. Have Confidence, But Not Arrogance Jenn DeWall: I mean, you know, the one thing that I really respect is that it sounds like you were able to really lead by suspending ego. Like it wasn’t about you maybe proving your natural strengths talents, like why you did this. It was about you taking the back seat and maybe observing and listening. And I think there are some people that would be like, what you didn’t have ego don’t most executive leaders have an ego, you need ego to lead, right? You need that to have the confidence of your shareholders, to the people that want the organization to succeed. But I, I love that, that lesson and what you did, Steve, because it’s such an important one is to sit back and just learn and not put the pressure on yourself, which I think a lot of people do. And as leaders to know all the answers to have to know everything, I think a lot of times leaders think, well, if there’s a problem, or if this is going on, I should be able to know everything and have it in my brain somehow, to be able to solve this or think strategically, whatever you want to call it. But you still gave permission to your team to say, I’m learning. That is such a difficult piece within leadership. And I just have to acknowledge it because that’s a big deal. I’m curious about your thoughts on that. Changing organizational culture. Steve Frenkiel: Yeah. I think both of those points are really important. Confidence is incredibly important. Arrogance and confidence are very different. You absolutely need competence. I needed the self-assured confidence to know that I was going to be successful leading this organization, despite not being the subject matter expert, despite loving less than some of my most junior people, but having the self-confidence to know that I was taking the company in the right direction. So it takes a tremendous amount of confidence. It also takes a tremendous amount of confidence to sort of shut up and let other people lead and give them the opportunity to grow. Sometimes you need the opportunity to make mistakes because you have the confidence to know that you’ll repair those mistakes, but that person needs an opportunity for growth. So yeah, it, confidence is it’s a really, really important trait and it’s also, you gotta be carefully balanced between staying humble so that you stay hungry as an entrepreneur there’s anything can change at any given moment. Companies that aren’t moving forward aren’t progressing, are resting on their laurels will find themselves outdated and beaten by their competition before you know it. So you gotta find a balance between being confident and staying both humble and hungry Jenn DeWall: At Crestcom, Steve Shapiro is an author that we had worked with. And one of the things that will always stick with me that he shared is when the pace of change outside of your organization is greater than the pace of change within, that’s when you’re going to be eaten. And I love that message about staying humble because you do have to be attuned to what’s going on. It’s not about always being right or proving yourself, or it’s always about having your ear to the ground to understand what’s going on, so you can make the best decisions. A Message from Crestcom: Crestcom is a global organization dedicated to developing effective leaders companies all over the world have seen their managers transformed into leaders through our award-winning and accredited leadership development programs. Our signature BPM program provides interactive management training with a results-oriented curriculum and prime networking opportunities. If you’re interested in learning more about our flagship program and developing your managers into leaders, please visit our website to find a leadership trainer near you. Or maybe you yourself have always wanted to train and develop others. Crestcom is a global franchise with ownership opportunities available throughout the world. If you have ever thought about being your own boss, owning your own business and leveraging your leadership experience to impact businesses and leaders in your community, Crestcom may be the right fit for you. We’re looking for professional executives who are looking for a change and want to make a difference in people’s lives. Learn more about our franchise opportunities on the Own a Franchise page of our website crestcom.com. Building Credibility to Change Your Organizational Culture Jenn DeWall: Steve, let’s talk a little bit about that transition. So you take over, you know, you, you go for it on your own. How did you initially navigate this call or navigate this transition for changing the organizational culture? Steve Frenkiel: I think I built some very close allies right on the onset. I identified a few people that were really important to the organization. And I invested heavily into those relationships. That means I invested a lot of my time to help further their careers with certain objectives that they had certain goals that they were trying to accomplish. And so by me investing in them very heavily, explicitly and with good strategic thought and built a very sound relationship, a relationship based on mutual trust. And so, to then all of a sudden, instead of being alone, right, instead of going in there and not having sort of any, small team around you, I slowly had a small team of loyal and dedicated people that I was working together with. So, and from there ended up growing, and my influence started growing and getting more so, but it was really trying to at the onset build a small cohesive team to build that credibility and build a group that eventually can, can I was able to rally the rest of the company behind Jenn DeWall: Yes. Which is, you know, that’s what we need with change. Right. We need the champions of change. And so your first goal when you got in there, obviously wanting to manage and maintain and grow the business, but then was really focusing on the relationships. You had also talked about starting with really playing to your strengths. What strengths did you lean into during that transition? Steve Frenkiel: Yeah. Like I said, so I am I’m a good person. I’m good at seeing opportunities and being very strategic, and then executing. So, as I mentioned before, the opportunities that I saw were almost some hidden talents with some individuals that I didn’t think were actually getting tapped into. I saw plenty of opportunities externally, but again, I had to build a really sound house internally before I really grew. Like the first year, I barely added value in terms of growing the business externally, working with customers. I didn’t have enough knowledge base, but I did identify some internal opportunities for some individuals that had skills that could be leveraged in different ways. There was a success that came from our software developer that has now made a tremendous impact on our company, came from our controller, who is a huge asset, incredibly smart and analytical and brought tremendous value both to the finance function in terms of the efficiencies there, but generally for the analytical capabilities of the organization generally. Or one of my best, a salesperson, had natural leadership skills. He was an excellent salesperson and had some natural leadership, which is actually not very common. Most salespeople are better snipers, and they are managers of others, but he was a natural coach. So what does that do? There’s that sales opportunity of hiring more salespeople under this effective sales leader coach who actually the prior owner saw little value in, and he’s my most important contributor right now. So I was good at seeing an opportunity, helping opportunities grow with some coaching and some strategic thinking, some analytical rigor, and we developed some people into a tremendous, tremendous talent. Tap Into Your Team’s Talents Jenn DeWall: It sounds like your ability to identify good or great or not so great business opportunities also extends into your ability to identify talent, which I just think is such great strength, especially being willing to maybe look at someone that maybe others have not connected with for a variety of reasons, right. We know personality differences. It doesn’t matter. We’re human beings. We don’t all necessarily get along, work together, play together in the best way, but you were able to say, actually that individual, like, I think there’s untapped talent. How would the heck did you develop the skill set to be able to identify untapped talent in people? I, it makes sense from a business perspective, because you can take the metrics you can look at, you know, what are, what’s the revenue, what’s our expenses? When you think about people, how in the heck do you do that? That is a true gift. Steve Frenkiel: Yeah. You know, that’s such a hard question. It’s just, and it’s a lot of experience. It has good judgment. I don’t know that it’s taught or learned. I’m not really sure. Part of it was having that sort of analytical brain that can break pieces apart. Part of it is being really intellectually curious that when you meet people, you sort of trying to understand who they are, why they’ve been successful. And then you’re trying to extrapolate sort of trends and patterns. I interview a ton, and I love interviewing. I feel like it’s like being a detective, trying to really get to know the person and trying to understand what makes them click. It’s a little bit of cat and mouse because, you know, I like to say the candidate’s objective going into the interview is to get the job. It should really be to figure out if it’s the right job for them, but their only objective is to actually get the job. So they’re generally giving you answers that they think you want to hear. So they get the job, they get the option of the job. Your job as the interviewer is to figure out if you’re the right fit for the job. So you need to decipher through those questions. So, in the years of interviewing and working with people, I think I’ve developed a good judgment on people and their skill sets. A good optimistic judgment, too, in terms of trying to see the best but be critical, understanding what their shortfalls are and not be blind. But I think it’s hard to say what it is, but it certainly takes a lot of practice. And a lot of intellectual curiosity. Jenn DeWall: You are using words– and I teach leadership. I live, eat, breathe leadership every single day. And so much of what you’re sharing, Steve, is music to my ears. I’m so happy to see that you are leveraging your strengths and not putting pressure on yourself to be the only bright star in the room. Right. We want everyone to shine bright because that means as a collective group, not only is, is our intelligence greater, but we see different opportunities, making more strategic decisions, solving problems faster, so on and so forth. But then just treating, being curious, you keep staying curious, which is something that at Crestcom, we do teach a lot to people, but it’s not always innate for some. Sometimes it’s really hard to be curious because the initial thinking, I guess, is that black and white, maybe they’re good or bad or they’re right. Or they’re wrong. But yet it sounds like you were able to be curious in that, which there are so many things that I really admire about what you shared. And so I just want to acknowledge that, because it’s not easy. And you also were sharing it in a way that people might think, like, oh, no, being curious with someone actually requires you to be curious, and just sit down and observe and not make snap judgments that we might be more trained or conditioned to do. It’s to say, what are they missing? What are their passions and purposes? So there’s just so much that I admire about what you shared in terms of that initial transition. I want to talk a little bit about what your first year was like. So you’re walking into the doors. We already know that you’ve parted ways with the prior president. What were some of the big changes that you made upon, like your first few years when you took over that leadership role? Changing Organizational Culture is a Bumpy Road Steve Frenkiel: Listen, you know, my first year was probably the most anxious year of my life. I invested my entire net worth into this company. It was I was looking for a company to buy. The number one priority was finding a good company. This was good company. This was, this was a company that was in an interesting industry, with very good processes, very good use of technology, a strong team and in a fragmented industry. So I identified the opportunity said, yep, this is interesting. This is good. From the time I made that cold call to when we closed was six months. So for anyone who’s done deals before, it will realize that is a very, very fast timeline. And that’s because I saw something interesting there. And the owner put an ask on it on the business. I saw something interesting. I basically hit his ask and got a deal done. I was a finance guy. I’d never run a company. I never had a team below me. I had some sort of innate confidence that I could do it with, with some hunger and grit. But I didn’t know what I was doing. I explained to you the first few months of that transition where I had some stress with the prior leader. And then, on top of that, I didn’t, I didn’t actually mention two months after I said goodbye to that leader, we lost our biggest customer. So— Jenn DeWall: Let’s paint the picture. You’re the big person in charge, right? The president, you take it over. You say the former owner can leave. And then, all of a sudden, I want to paint this picture for our audience. You lose your biggest customer. This is the, oh my gosh. Like what? Steve Frenkiel: And there is as much anxiety as you can have. It’s a, is it with the sort of having bet the farm still having, not having yet a good handle on the business. And I lost the biggest customer, and it was a very, very trying time. Losing the customer wasn’t any fault of our own. It was a little bit of just bad luck. It wasn’t a service failure. It wasn’t a failure on our end. It wasn’t being out wanting to just, I would say to simply simplify some bad luck, a little bit of geopolitical bad luck. I lost the biggest customer and said to myself, well, I’ve got a problem here. And that’s where I just sort of put pedal to the metal and probably hadn’t worked as hard and put in all our focus on sales. And I became a number one salesperson because that’s what entrepreneurs do. Do they just do what needs to get done? And we were losing lots of sales. And so I became a salesperson, and I went out and saw every single one of our customers, a couple hundred of them looking for opportunities to grow the business. We bounced back. We had a small customer end up being bigger than our largest customer that we had lost, yeah. And through, through mining opportunities and presenting really professionally, we took over some business, and they actually asked us to take over the business. We mined it, and then they asked us to take it over. And we grew from there. So that initial scare at the very beginning of a deal, which was very, a very dangerous, curious time when you have sort of high leverage and debt service requirements. We got through it really through some plain old hustle, like it was just some blocking and tackling hustle. And amazing support I had at home with my wife, who was just sort of steadfast and supportive along the way and didn’t get nervous at all. Even though I told her I took all of her money to do this. Yeah. I’ll tell you a great story about, about my wife. She’s, she’s been a rock that the, you know, the night or the, maybe the week before I closed this deal, I think we’re, you know, we’re out for a quiet dinner. I just say to her, I’m like, Hey, you know I’m taking all of our money to do this. Like, I just want to make sure you’re up for it. It’s like, you’ll be fine. I’m like, are you sure? She’s like, you’ll be fine. So, you know, having that confidence of your partner in your corner, I can’t emphasize enough how important that is. And so we just got through it, it just took some hustle, really took some hustle. It made me much better because I literally became, I became a salesperson and a very effective salesperson for that matter because that’s what the business needed at that point. And we grew out of it, and we grew ever since. We came out of that. We grew past that from that loss. I mean, we’ve grown, ever since we’ve gotten better as a company, tremendously better as a company. Our technology, I put up against almost anyone in the industry. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish. And I think, I think we, the future is brighter than the, than the past, because we’re, we’re so much a better company than we were five years ago that I think we’re going to see even more opportunities. So, yeah, it was, it was a very, very challenging year emotionally, but that’s what happens with challenges. We all know you. If you get, if you come out the other side, you’re going to come out better. And so that’s, that’s what happened to both me personally and to us as an organization. Yeah. Develop Your Leaders to Transform Your Organization Jenn DeWall: I mean, the bottom of the lows are always the opportunity to just get into the climb. And when you’ve climbed, like the top is that much better. So you decided to move forward. And one of the things that you did was you worked with Crestcom, and you brought Crestcom leadership to your organization. For those that are unfamiliar again, with what Crestcom for a one-year-long leadership development program with debriefs and monthly coaching sessions, what made you think that that was going to help or what made you decide to pursue or invest in that in leadership training? Steve Frenkiel: Yeah, listen, I think you know, part of the secret, again, of getting the most out of your people is to invest in them and to give them opportunities to grow. Everyone wants to grow. Every time I do an interview with a new candidate, I talk about growth opportunities. People want purpose in their lives, and they want to feel like they’re evolving as individuals and as professionals. And so the opportunities, being able to provide opportunities for growth in and of itself are effective because you’re growing them because they’re developing better skills, but it’s also, you’re, you satisfy their desires for growth. So it’s a twofold benefit. So finding ways to invest in your people is a constant strategic objective of ours. We came across Crestcom, and we love the concept and the format of teaching some core principles and then having them debrief together on them. My people still say I have two cohorts say that the debriefs are probably better even than the actual content because that’s where they’re really putting into practice what they’ve learned. And as we know, if you learn something, you don’t do anything with it. It’s actually really gone. Like if you learn something from a textbook and you didn’t do it, did it change your life six months, 12 months later? Unless you did something with it, it didn’t, it might’ve felt good at the moment, but it didn’t. So so the sticking part of what we have, what they learn, is in the debriefs that I ended up participating in, whereas a team, we’ve coalesced together, we dissect some principles of leadership that are called pearls of wisdom. And then we actually put some practices in place, and that’s what makes it stick and actually helps us improve as an organization. And a number of things I can point to across our company that has Crestcom written all over because they were sources, and they were ideas that were sourced through our to our debriefs. How Crestcom Helped Dynamic Connections Make Positive Changes Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh, can you share some of those examples of maybe something of how Crestcom has helped your organization? Steve Frenkiel: Yeah. A number of them, the expression of “promote, don’t pollute.” We use all the time in terms of what comes out of your mouth. Are you promoting a positive culture, or are you polluting? And to be sensitive to what and how we speak. We do. We do a, and it’s so obvious. I don’t know how everybody, every company, doesn’t do it. We do a four o’clock Friday company-wide huddle every week, every week, we go, and we huddle the entire company. We’re almost 30 people, some people remote, some people together. And we talk about the results from the week. We talk about strategic imperatives. We talk about what’s going on. We talk about hires. People love people, want to feel informed. And we’ve discovered some of that through our learnings with Crestcom, that people have a very strong desire to be better informed. We thought we were doing a pretty good job about it with our various communications, but it actually wasn’t sufficient. And so we put in place a standing four o’clock, all hands huddle that we do really fun things with, like, we sort of spice it up. It’s not always the same thing we have. Sometimes it’s a problem of the week that we have someone talking about what was the problem in the week and how did you resolve it? Because our life is problems and transportation. Sometimes we have the save the day of the week, like who saved the day for a customer of the week. Sometimes we have the technology initiative that we’re talking about, and the latest one will be, we dig into and explain it to people. So it’s been a that’s been a, an amazing and almost like silly that it’s so obvious that we didn’t think of it ourselves, but that was something that a hundred percent we’ll continue to do. And we continue to sort of spice it up, but to find a regular and meaningful and thoughtful way to communicate and keep your team informed. It has been a major difference, and it was, and we did it before COVID, so you can imagine how important it was through COVID to have that discipline. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. I am feeling like I’m having a, you know, a leadership infatuation moment. I love what you did with your people, Steve, like a four o’clock standing huddle on a Friday. And I like even talking about the problem of the week and getting them to think about how, how can they also contribute to solving problems? How can they make revisions or adaptations to maybe streamline a process? I just love the inclusivity that you create. And again, I’m trying to draw out these themes just so people can hear that it’s not, it’s not a, “just a.” It wasn’t “just a” huddle. That huddle is the opportunity to maybe bridge some gaps in terms of transparency or more communication. That huddle is the opportunity for people to feel seen and heard. That huddle is an opportunity to process our mistakes or the challenges of the week. Like, and so that’s why you’re probably like, why is Jenn just saying this back to me? But it’s because it actually is much more than what I think the average person might realize what that does. A standing huddle does so much for your culture than what you might realize. And how long does that huddle take? And you do fun things with it too. Like how long does that huddle take? Steve Frenkiel: Yeah, we try not to have it go more than 30 minutes. We really track we’re sensitive to people’s Friday afternoon times. And we try to keep it, like, keep it fresh. As a company, an organization, and a culture is like I say, it’s a living, breathing organism. It is. It needs food. It needs nourishment. It needs variety. Like, just like you can’t eat the same thing every day. So does a culture. It can’t take the same thing every day. So, you know what we do in the huddles now isn’t the same thing we did a few months ago. Because you have to keep it fresh and still be pursuing the same call overall strategic objectives. So yeah, we do lots of different things. We do, you know, we, we, we used to do like the during COVID you know, during the height of COVID we were working in the office, we brought people back, we were wearing masks, we were sanitizing, we’re socially distance. We, we used to have, you know, a prize of the week for the person who was the most positive person of the week, they ended up getting the bell. You know, and that bell, every time that person rang that bell, everyone would have to sanitize their hands. So we were trying to make sure that everyone sort of stayed safe. So you have this bell going off, and that person will have that bell have that control. It was just, you know, a bunch of little sort of gimmicks to keep things fresh and sometimes just lighthearted sometimes actual actually sort of sound business, continuous improvement principles. And some things, things just to keep things lighthearted and fun. So you gotta, you gotta find that balance, but it is, it is really, it’s an opportunity to discuss, keep the team informed and keep things fresh. Words of Wisdom- Give People a Chance, They’ll Surprise You Jenn DeWall: I love that. Steve, what would be, so in closing, knowing that we have to wrap up what would be your words of wisdom, right? We talked about a lot of different things in terms of what you did to change the culture in terms of, you know, being vulnerable, being curious, allowing yourself to not be the expert and allowing yourself to learn, leveraging people’s strengths. What would be your advice to someone that might be new to leadership, new to taking over an organization? What would you say to them? Steve Frenkiel: I would say I think most people will be surprised at what someone can accomplish when you put them in a position that you think they might not actually qualify for. I think a lot of people cherish and relish the opportunity, as I said before, for true ownership, responsibility, accountability, and it actually gives them purpose. And I think we all can get surprised by trying people out and actually giving more, giving them more responsibility than you might think they can actually handle and watching them strive and live up to the challenge. I’ve seen that a number of times where a number of people have, we’ve tried them, we’ve given them opportunities, and they’ve stepped up. And I think it’s a win-win. It’s a win for everybody. It’s a win for you as an employer that you feel good. You’ve given someone an opportunity for growth. It’s a win for them because they grew into it. It’s a win for the company because the company now has a more sophisticated and empowered individual. So I think giving people opportunities may not actually be ready for. Actually, I believe more often than not can surprise all of us. How to Connect with Steve Frenkiel Jenn DeWall: Steve. I very much appreciate your people-first approach. I just think there’s so much that other people can learn if they truly want to create a better culture, a more engaged culture, and just a place where people feel valued, Steve, how can people connect with you? How can they hire you? How can they hire Dynamic Connections? Tell me that. Steve Frenkiel: Yeah. Yeah. If they want, you know, a little commercial for us, we have a couple of hundred customers and may two to 300, and I would say probably 95% of them will tell, we’ll tell you that we’re the best company they’ve ever dealt with so if anyone wants to experience best-in-class services, they can reach out to Dynamic Connections for their the third-party logistics. Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much deeper taking your time. I know that you’re busy, but just to share with us and also be vulnerable about the fact that, Hey, it’s not always easy. It’s a scary place, because again, sometimes we don’t get to peek into maybe the executive leadership experiences and hear them in that way. So I just really appreciate you sitting down and sharing with us and being open and vulnerable, and talking about what we can do to create great cultures. Thank you so much for your time. Steve Frenkiel: Absolutely! Thanks, Jenn! Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast. It was a great conversation with Steve Frankiel. And if you want to connect more with him, you can head on over to dynamicconnections.com; Dynamic Connections offers cost-effective and efficient warehousing solutions to meet all of your inventory and fulfillment needs. It was a great conversation, and I loved hearing about how Steve uses leadership to change organizational culture. If you enjoyed this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, please leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming service. And of course, if you’re interested in changing your organizational culture through leadership contact Crestcom.com. We would love to help you develop your leaders.   The post Changing Organizational Culture with Steve Frenkiel, President of Dynamic Connections appeared first on Crestcom International.

Achieve Behavioral Change by Shifting Your Patterns with Adele Spraggon Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall. And in this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I sat down with top  behavioral change expert, Adele Spraggon. Adele is an award-winning author, thought leader and international speaker and trainer. In 2020, she was awarded the Woman of Inspiration award. And in 2021, she was recognized as the top behavioral expert of the year. Huge accolades! Her book, Shift: 4 Steps to Personal Empowerment, has won three awards and is sweeping the globe, transforming how people are setting and achieving their goals. I hope you enjoy Adele and my conversation as we talk about how to repattern and reprogram your brain, as well as at the end, talking about how organizations are now supporting this effort too. Meet Adele Spraggon, Award Winning Author and Behavioral Change Expert Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone, it’s Jenn DeWall. And on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I am sitting down with behavioral change expert Adele Spraggon. Do you know who she is? If not, you need to know who she is. She is a behavioral change expert. What does that mean for you at work? Well, she can help you develop greater or better patterns, better re-wiring. So you can be the best leader that you can be. Adele, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. I’m so happy to have you. Adele Spraggon: Thanks, Jenn. Lovely to be here. Jenn DeWall: So, Adele, let’s, how do you even become, like what, what does the journey of a behavioral change expert look like? How did you come to be interested in this subject, and what do you do today with organizations? Adele Spraggon: Yeah, that’s a great question. My background is in personal development. So I worked for one of the leading personal development companies in the industry. And I did that for about 15 years, Jenn. And the problem was is that everything that I was teaching in terms of mindset and positive thinking and affirmations and to get to your comfort or get past your comfort zone. None of it worked for me. So I was teaching this and fully believing in it. But at the same time, I wanted my own entrepreneurial venture, and I started three of them, and I quit three of them, one after another. And so, every time I got to the brink of success, I would just turn tail. I would run. There was no amount of affirmation, positive thinking, mindset, pushing past your comfort zone that could get me over that hump. And so I started to ask myself, okay, I said to myself, this cannot solely be me. After 15 years of doing this, there is something off with our operating instructions. So I went to University, I got my master’s. I wanted to study the human brain and how we think, and how our mind actually works. And sure enough, I discovered that we were using the wrong operating instructions. And so, I created a new set of operating instructions. I’ve been teaching that for 10 years. The results are remarkable, and that is how I became a behavioral change expert. What are “Patterns”? Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. And I love that. And I know we’re going to talk about it, too. Just, you know, that none of them, I’m sure there are some listeners right now that can relate in the sense that all of those personal development books, you know, they, they give me all these tips, mantras tools, but for some reason, they’re just not working. And I love our conversation because it’s really going to get into understanding how your brain is patterned and how those patterns can impact, you know, and determine how you react in a situation versus at that subconscious or unconscious level versus maybe how you want to, or what you need to do to repattern. Because as you say, in multiple parts in your book, you know, mantras aren’t necessarily the effective thing to get you the behavioral change that you want to see. Just maybe from starting from like a scratch or a foundational point, what are patterns? Adele Spraggon: Well, that’s a great question. So if you think about your brain, our human brain is locked behind this bony skull, in it’s in this dark and silent room, and it has no actual connection to the outside world. The only thing that our brain has to go on is these electrical impulses that are flying through these neural pathways, right? And each of those electrical impulses delivers a particular experience of the world around us. So we think that we’re relating to the actual situation we’re in, but we’re not. What we actually see, feel, hear, think, and smell is given by and neural pathway that pre-exists in the brain. So if you think about your brain in that way, you start to see, oh, hang on a minute. All of this, looking at the outside situation that I’m in— all of this— how do I change my way of communicating. All of this, how do I become a better leader? Just working on fixing what is going on around us or fixing what our thoughts are. That’s actually not where everything is originating, and it’s originating in those pre-existing channels that we have to address first if we’re actually going to make effective change. Jenn DeWall: I like the initial distinction that you made in terms of your brain isn’t connected to the outside world. It’s not, you know, physically connecting to it. Everything that it gets is the data that you put into it, through your experience, through a host of things. Yeah. Adele Spraggon: The best way to see the brain is by predicting or making the best guess as to what is going on around it. Right? Jenn DeWall: Yeah. So your brain is essentially just based on what you’ve programmed into it; it’s then having a response for you. At what age are we starting to actually program in kind of these, these patterns? I mean, is that just something that you’ve had patterns, your whole life? It just started there. Because it feels like there’s the age where we don’t notice that the patterns are being formed and that all of a sudden, we find ourselves, maybe not liking our job, overreacting to a situation. And that’s when we start to be like, oh, could there be something done? And I think even most people don’t even look there. They again look for the mantras. So when did the patterns begin? Adele Spraggon: Yeah, that’s a great question. So unlike other animals, which are born intuitively knowing what to do in this world, human beings are born a blank slate. So we enter this world, and we very, very quickly have to piece together patterns in our brain because patterns take action. Without an act, without a pattern, a person will not have action. Okay. And that’s important to remember. So from the moment, we’re born, every situation that we get through that we survive, we get to the next situation. The brain just takes whatever was happening at that time and just stored it away for future use. So very, very quickly, this brain is piecing together patterns. And a lot of our patterns are created before the age of five, six years old. Then throughout childhood, we continue to create these patterns. In adolescence, there is a massive burst of pattern creation again. But by the time we get to adulthood, around the age, 27, 28, that pattern creation starts to slow down. Now that does not mean that we did not have the capacity to be wire—one of the most amazing findings that are coming out of neuroscience. So we’ve known for a number of decades is that the brain is constantly re-wiring itself. It is. It has what is term plasticity when it’s always trying to upgrade itself. The problem is two-fold. One, once you have a pattern for a situation, the brain prefers to rely on that pattern rather than creating a new one because it’s the fastest route to action. That’s all the brain cares about Jenn DeWall: Efficiency. Adele Spraggon: That’s, that’s what it’s into right now. If you hit a situation where you don’t have a pattern or that pattern that you do have doesn’t line up with the situation, then your brain will re-wire. But at this point, it happens spontaneously— what I like to teach as a method to take that from spontaneity to happening systematically so that when you’re in a situation that doesn’t work for you, you can upgrade the brain on demand. And that’s where we’re going in the future. How do you create Behavioral Change by Shifting Patterns? Jenn DeWall: How does working with brain patterns, you know, thinking about brain patterns, knowing that we just talked about other personal development methods that people have tried and that you found? I know that I found them too. Not all of them work. Right? I know in the book you talk about mind over matter, like what stuff doesn’t work, but how does working with brain patterns different from the traditional approach of maybe working with someone on personal development methods or standard or the more, I guess, popular personal development methods that you see? Adele Spraggon: Yeah. So you literally step out of one identity into another. So I’m going to give you an experience from my life. When I repatterned my pattern for quitting, so let me just describe what was going on because that might help. So every time I was, as I said, I started a new business. I was super excited initially. And that excitement was given by a neural pathway in my brain by a pattern that pre-existed in my brain. I’m very creative. That also is a pattern in my brain, and then I would be going along this path and then boom, I would hit this boredom, and I’d be going, what is going on? Okay, great. The question is not what is going on. Please. Don’t ask yourself that question. The thing you need to say to yourself is, oh, I have a pattern that is somehow hitting boredom when I get to this stage on the path. That’s what I have to say to myself. So what did I do? Well, knowing it’s a pattern, you can then go in and re-wire the brain. So as to remove that boredom. So now what happens? Well, I literally stepped out of one identity in which quitting was my only option into another identity in which you just don’t quit. There’s no need to force yourself. There’s no need to push yourself past. There are no mantras required. There’s no positive thinking required, or it is just, oh, okay. I was this way. I no longer have that pattern. I am now this way because I am now a brand new identity, Jenn DeWall: That is powerful to be able to think about stepping in from one to another. And when I think about, you know, brain development, this is maybe more of a curiosity question. So knowing that the brain is constantly, you know, or it has the possibility to create new patterns, what’s the commonality between our patterns and the personalities that we have. Because as you were talking and sharing like, Hey, I have a tendency to get maybe bored easily. Is it that some of us are looking at what our personality style is instead of thinking about what’s our pattern or because you’re, and maybe it’s because this is just top of mind because it was a topic we just taught at Crestcom, but it is interesting because in personality styles, you know, the notion is that that’s something that’s fixed. But if we look at it in the form of patterns, like maybe my personality style, you know, I hate being bored. But if I look at that as just a pattern for how I perceive the world, that would be a different approach. And it would cause me to find different solutions because I wouldn’t be mining it from the perspective of personalities. That’d be mining it from the perspective of patterns. Is this too conceptual, Adele? Am I going too far? Like in terms of even how this contributes to the personalities or the types of leadership styles that we have. For Lasting Behavioral Change, Let Go of Blame and Shame Adele Spraggon: I love this question because we live, Jenn, in a world of blame and shame. Do you know what I mean by that? Jenn DeWall: Tell me because I have my own experience that feels blame and shame, but I want to hear it at the broader level. I’m a great blamer and shamer for myself. Adele Spraggon: Yeah. And aren’t all of us, frankly. Right? We are so quick to say there’s something wrong with me. I can’t do this. Something incorrect about how I’m doing this. Okay, great. How did we get to there? Because we have been taught that we are a personality and identity, a self. You’re being taught that there is an authentic self that you need to find. You have been taught that when you’re doing something wrong, it is because there is something wrong with you. I like to say in life, there are problems. Life is a series of problems. One after another. Now that’s not bleak. That is life. Right. But how we’re not taught to see life in that way. Do you know how you’re taught to see problems? Problems are mistakes. I did something wrong. Right? Okay. So when we start to play in the world of patterns, when you see that, the only thing that our brain is- is these neural pathways, these electrical impulses. And that’s all it is. Right. Thank you. You can start to say to yourself, and again, this isn’t going to sound bleak, but I’m going to have to re reword it or re-flip it. There is no identity here. There is nothing that is Jenn. There is nothing that is Adele. There are just patterns, and it is patterns all the way down. And now there’s huge freedom and empowerment in that. It’s like, oh, okay. I am arriving as somebody who is bored, that is very different than I am a bored person. I am arising inside this pattern as somebody who is bored. And I have a technique, a tool to repattern that now who will I be? Whoa, who knows. And that’s amazing because who you’re going to be then in the future is wide open. And it’s like, there isn’t one singular path that you have to walk down and correct as you go; it’s the future is just, who are you going to be? Let’s find out! Removing Old Patterns Without Judgement Jenn DeWall: See, I don’t necessarily see that as bleak. Like, you know, an opportunity within to say, you know, what, if something is not working for me today, let’s find a solution. Not necessarily the mantras, but let’s examine and be curious about the pattern. Let’s figure out, you know, what the commonality is in there. And then how do we address that? I love that approach. So I don’t see it as bleak. I say it. I see it as, you know, taking responsibility that we can impact that. Adele Spraggon: And can I change one word? Jenn DeWall: Please do you’re the expert Adele Spraggon: Please do. You said I think he used the word correct or change. No. How about we just remove it? Like, that’s really powerful. How about we stop trying to fix ourselves because there’s nothing to fix. There’s nothing broken. You are a pattern maker. Your brain is a maker. That is how it works. All right. Some of those patterns right now are obsolete. They’re old, and they were aligned with a different situation at one point in your past. They no longer align with who you want to be today. How about we just go in there and remove that. Jenn DeWall: I would love that. Can you do that? I have so many different things. Could you help me be less judgmental? I mean, you talked about the period of blame and shame. Like yeah, I am an overly. I’m one of those people. That’s extremely ambitious. But at the backend, I completely kicked my own butt. Every single time I make a mistake, I do something wrong. Maybe you say the wrong answer. Even though I just didn’t know, and I was doing my best. And if you could give me a tool to say, Jenn, you actually don’t have to respond in that way. In this life. You can think of identified new patterns that help you like that is a new lease on life. That is not bleak. That is an opportunity for how you want to spend your precious time here. Am I right? Adele Spraggon: Exactly. Exactly. We are not fixed personalities. We’re not fixed beings. We aren’t fixed as in stable, as in static. We are patterns that are just constantly evolving and changing or ought to be. There is only one problem on this planet, and that is nobody is taught us how to upgrade an old pattern that no longer works. That’s it. What Patterns do Leaders get Stuck In? Jenn DeWall: They just give you the tool. They give you the mantra. What do you mean? No, one’s taught you just push through it! Fake it till you make it, Adele! I mean, Right? That’s the solution that we have. So let’s go back to the basic level. Like how do patterns work? So how do they work in the brain, or what’s happening? And then we can go into talk about some, of them. Maybe ones that you’ve seen in your experience that maybe are typical leadership patterns that leaders might have. Adele Spraggon: Yeah. So I’ll give you an example, which is in my book. But this is a really amazing example of how leadership patterns show up when they don’t work. And then when they work. And so I worked with one of my participants, her name is Rose, and she’s given me permission to share this story. And she was recently hired in a nonprofit organization. And one of her job responsibilities was running the meetings, the weekly staff meetings. Well, she noticed very, very quickly that these staff meetings would be derailed often. Okay. And once she was able to notice, because she was aware, she had a lot of personal development background. What she was aware of was that she was allowing these meetings to get derailed because the men in the meetings were extremely powerful, and she was intimidated by them. Now, how would typically a leader be taught to deal with that? Well, a number of different ways, right? One way would have been learned, go to the men and ask them to cooperate. Tell them what you’re feeling. Tell them this is not going well. Let’s talk about this. Let’s find a way to cope, right? Okay. Not effective. And I’ll come back to why. The second way she might have dealt with it, and it’s gone and complained to her boss or fired a couple of these men. She was the manager, after all. Right, like got him or her to deal with it and still not affect him. And I’ll come back to why the third way may have been to get more, get more leadership training, right? Be a better communicator, learn how to deal with those, those meetings better, still not effective. I’ll come back to why. All of these things are partly may work, may not work, but Rose at least knew about patterns. She had started working with me, and she knew that there were brains in her pattern, sorry, patterns in her brain that were causing her particular actions, behaviors, and beliefs. Now, what were those? Well, we can actually say, but here’s what we knew. We could see the result. The result was the meetings were getting derailed. Great. That’s where Rose started. Because I’d like you to think about your brain as an iceberg at the top of the water are all of your actions, all of your behaviors, all of your beliefs under the water, we are going to place those patterns. Patterns give rise to actions, behaviors, beliefs, in Rose’s case. She could see that whatever she was doing was not keeping these meetings on track. Fantastic. That’s where we started. I gave her the tool to remove those patterns, okay. To stop being intimidated by these men. And now what happens? Well, the very next meeting, she goes in, and the meeting runs smoothly. The men paid attention. One of the main men came up to her right after the meeting. He said great meeting. What happened? Well, did she stand a little straighter, for example? Was she stopping conversations in their track? Yes, of course, she was doing all of these things, but not because she knew to do these things, but because her pattern was now aligned with the meaning. She was now a different person who led the meetings differently. And that’s what makes pattern-making so effective. She literally stepped out of that identity in which she was intimidated into another identity in which she just wasn’t. And at that point, everybody around her changed. That’s powerful leadership. Jenn DeWall: Yes. That’s powerful leadership. And before I comment on that, I do want to say that for those that are listening, we are talking about some pieces and tools and ideas that are from Adele’s book, Shift: The Four Steps to Personal Empowerment. And so that’s the book that we’re referencing, and we’ll let you know how you can get that at the end of the show. But I love that option of stepping from one identity into another, and you know, the, what speaks to me when I even think about that end outcome or feeling like maybe she’s not heard the meetings are being derailed. You know, I think of one thing, and this is probably a little bit vulnerable, but if anyone has gone through trauma, you might know. One experience that I had to work through very much when I was early on in my career. Any time there was an authoritative figure, typically a man, and it’s a result of my childhood. I would become meek. I would probably sweat profusely. I would cower like a child. I hated being seen. And I just lost. I could be the most competent person, five minutes before that in a conversation with someone else. And then the second that that executive leader came into the room, it completely changed how I even showed up. And so when I hear that, that took me such a long time to even create an awareness around why I did that, you know, that’s therapy, right. To understand what my challenges were in. Gosh, I feel like you’re giving a tool to people that, you know, by even focusing on what do you do or what’s the outcome? Do you start them with curiosity around, like, why do you think that curiosity? Like, why do you think you’re getting this outcome? Is that the next step? Is it kind of that curiosity notion? For Permanent Behavioral Change, First Identify the Problem Adele Spraggon: Yeah. Well, the beautiful thing about knowing how our brain works is we don’t actually need to know the solution. All we have to do is identify the problem, which is really powerful. So how did I work with Rose? Well, the first thing she looked out was okay. The meetings are going off the rails. So I said to her, all right, what is between you and the goal you’re trying to accomplish? So she said, well, I’d love these meetings to go on track. I would love these men to listen to me. And to have them stick to the strategy that I’m trying to do. I said, perfect. So what’s between you and that? She said, well, frankly, you know, like every time one of them glares at me, I just shrink. I said, perfect, that’s your behavior. You’re shrinking into yourself. Right. She said, and then I giggle. I do this most stupidest thing. I said, good. That’s, that’s your action. You’re giggling when you shouldn’t be right. And then she said, oh my gosh. And I have this belief that I just looked like a fool up here at the front of the room. I said, wonderful. That is your belief. So that’s fantastic. That’s where we start now. I said to her under each of those, then,  runs a pattern. And our job is just to remove that pattern. So I gave her the four-step repatterning technique, which is in my book. And she just worked on removing each of those patterns over the course of the week. Now, as she comes into the room, again, she is no longer somebody who feels like she’s making a fool of herself. She’s no longer somebody who giggles. She’s no longer somebody who is shrinking and is intimidated, right. Because, you know, I always say to people, there’s no logic in patterns. They were created. When you were little, you didn’t have to know the originating incident. All you have to know is the result that is arising today. But you know, they worked at the time. Being intimidated by authority figures in her case was probably the correct thing to do, to shrink that, to be small. Great. That, that point when she was a kid that worked really well. Today, it just no longer works, not good or bad. It’s just, oh, there’s a pattern that just no longer works. Yeah. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. I just, I’m eating this up. Like what our typical, so that one is pretty, you know, I love that example. Do you feel like there’s got to be just a host, right? Based on our own uniqueness of complex patterning that we all have. And I’m curious about your experience. I know you work with organizations. You work with individuals. What are typical leadership patterns that you’ve observed that people might have, maybe at a higher level? If You Have a Goal, You Need a New Pattern to Achieve It Adele Spraggon: Yeah. So, you know, I mean there, every person is unique because of our, all of our patterns are unique. So typically, though, there are leadership patterns that we want to achieve, right? So effective communication. Effective creative solutions, being able to guide your staff through or your employees through, to those effective solutions. These are all things that we want. So let me give you new operating instructions. Okay, guys? The first thing you want to do is set your goal. So you’ll have a leadership goal or something that the team is trying to create together. There’s a vision. Fantastic. Your next job is not to ask, how do I get to that goal? Your next job is to ask, well, what is between me now and that goal? So let me just back up for a moment. If you have a goal, it is a sure sign that you do not yet have the patterns to accomplish that goal. Okay. Jenn DeWall: If you have the goal, it’s a sign that you do not have the patterns to accomplish the goal. Okay. Adele Spraggon: Does that make sense? Jenn DeWall: I don’t know. Like if its the goal, you would think that well, if I, you know, if I think that I can do it, so in my head, I got, I’m not versed in this. So in my head, I’m like, no, because if you think that you can accomplish it, or you can accomplish it, but I want to hear that. So if you have the goal, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have the patterns to support it? Adele Spraggon: That’s right. If you had the patterns, it wouldn’t be a goal. It would be a realization. It would be an accomplishment. Jenn DeWall: Ah, okay. Adele Spraggon: So it’s the fact that you have a goal that immediately tells me you lack the patterns to get to that goal. Great. That’s where we start. So your next question is, all right, why do I not have that goal today? Now you’re going to come up with a list of beliefs, a list of behaviors, a list of actions. And it might be as simple as, I don’t know the steps to take. Great under there, there lies a pattern. It might be as simple as well. I haven’t communicated that goal. Great under there, there lies a pattern. And so we just take this list of what you’re doing, what you’re not doing, what you’re believing, what you’re not believing, what you’re behaving as, what you’re not behaving as just simply recognize that under each of those, there’s a pattern remove each one. Then you will take a step towards your goal. Where Do We Start Making Behavioral Changes? Jenn DeWall: That sounds– you know, because it is so layered, right? The layers of an onion. So how do you begin to, I guess, prioritize the pattern, you know, the one that you think, cause if we’re examining it and we’re finding, well, there’s a pattern into why I didn’t communicate it, or there’s a pattern as to why I haven’t done this. Is there some type of a hierarchy that we have to use when identifying the pattern to help us understand like this is your starting point. Maybe it’s my, you know, I’m just thinking of where’s the origin, what’s the start. And when it is that complex, how do you even begin to start processing all of that and say, where do I begin to actually like turn the page on this and actually go forward in exploring that path. Is there a way that you recommend people in terms of how you prioritize your patterns in terms of this is the one that is worth and necessary for you to change versus this is one that’s, you know, okay for the moment, or whatever? Adele Spraggon: That’s a really great question. I do a call that I call a deep-dive call, which is really identifying the actions, behaviors, beliefs that are the top of the iceberg. And the reason I do that is that when we get to the world of patterns, when you drop below the water, Jenn. Patterns are easy to identify. So I’m just going to give everybody, how do I identify a pattern? Okay. Yeah. A pattern is an intertwined physical sensation, emotion, and thought. When the three aspects of our being come together, it causes a particular action, a particular behavior, a particular belief. Okay. So we can identify, okay, what’s working and what’s not working based on how you feel, what you think and how your body is reacting to that situation. And if you’re empowered, confident, optimistic, positive, creative, brilliant, you probably have a pattern that works. If you’re depressed, anxious, scared, angry, you probably have a pattern that doesn’t work. And that’s, that’s the only difference, right? Not good or bad, just one works, one doesn’t work. Okay, great. So when we get to the world of patterns, the world gets really simple. What am I feeling? What am I feeling then? What am I thinking? But at the level of action-behavior-belief, which is where we are taught to experience the world, that’s where things get complicated because we take actions that our conscious mind is not aware of. We hold beliefs that our conscious mind really doesn’t know that we believe they’re all in the subconscious. And that’s where a really powerful listener will be able to hear those and say, you know what, Jenn, I think maybe you ought to be let’s just go down that path a little bit. So you said X, why is that? Can you share a little bit more about that and what that powerful listener is doing is listening for those subconscious/unconscious patterns that then will come up to the surface. Okay. Did that answer your question? Yeah. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. The question that comes to mind too, because I think, and I read this in your book and I love this, you know, one of the institutes that I went to for my coaching certification, one of the ways that they have us typically start is with that thought determines what you do, or the action that you take, and then how you do it or the emotion that you feel. But one of the differentiators, and I know one of the differentiators that you make, is that we actually don’t really think first. We feel first. And I think that actually goes against how some people are actually, you know, maybe educated. And because I appreciate that. So could you tell a little bit more about why it’s not necessarily about focusing on the thought, like what’s wrong with me, it’s focusing on what your body is actually noticing, sensing, and feeling. Adele Spraggon: Yeah. So one of the surprising findings that are coming out of neuroscience in the last few decades is that the unconscious regions of our brain light up first before the conscious mind considers the action it’s going to take. So that’s going to take something to understand. So I’m going to, I’m going to explain it this way. Let’s say that we could hook a person’s brain up with a brain scanner and watch what is going on in that brain. And let’s say that that person picks up their phone at two-thirty-six oh two, right? That brain scanner would be able to know that that person would go to pick up that phone. Two thirty-six-zero-zero a fraction of a second before they pick up the phone. Okay. They think they’re in control of that action. We honestly believe that we are choosing to pick up the phone, but when we know how our brain works, that changes everything. So it is true that our emotions occur first. Before our thoughts, before our thinking mind comes in and says, I want to do something. The impetus to act is already occurring at the level of the unconscious. I like to say you want to know why your hand is in that cookie jar. That’s why it’s nothing to do with choice. It has everything to do with patterns. And I’m not talking habits here. I am actually talking about the unconscious guides the show like puppets on a string when it comes to that conscious mind. So if we’re going to change anything, we got to start at the level of pattern. What’s the Difference Between a Habit and a Pattern? Jenn DeWall: So what’s the difference. Because you just brought that up, and I didn’t think to ask this, what’s then the difference between habit and a pattern? Adele Spraggon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Habits of repetitive actions that we do over and over and over again, but they’re still driven by a pattern. It’s just that that pattern happens to be, well-used call it that way. Jenn DeWall: So your pattern determines your habit. It’s not. That’s the easiest way to determine it. So they are different; whatever pattern you have will dictate. What type of habit you have A message from Crestcom: Crestcom is a global organization dedicated to developing effective leaders. Companies all over the world have seen their managers transformed into leaders through our award-winning and accredited leadership development programs. Our signature BPM program provides interactive management training with a results-oriented curriculum and prime networking opportunities. If you’re interested in learning more about our flagship program and developing your managers into leaders, please visit our website to find a leadership trainer near you. Or maybe you yourself have always wanted to train and develop others. Crestcom is a global franchise with ownership opportunities available throughout the world. If you have ever thought about being your own boss, owning your own business and leveraging your leadership experience to impact businesses and leaders in your community, Crestcom may be the right fit for you. We’re looking for professional executives who are looking for a change and want to make a difference in people’s lives. Learn more about our franchise opportunity on the Own a Franchise page of our website at Crestcom.com. How do You Shift Your Patterns for Real Behavioral Change? Jenn DeWall: Let’s, let’s dive into the meat of how do you even start? And I know that we went on two different tangents, and that was my bad, but how do we start to even get awareness and start to change our patterns and where I kind of took our conversation in a different direction was on identifying the pattern. And so, how do we start? Like where do we start to even change our patterns? Adele Spraggon: Yeah. So when I teach a four-step technique, a four-step repatterning technique, it starts by identifying the pattern. So once we know what actions, behaviors, beliefs are in our way, once we’ve set that goal. And we said, okay, what’s in the gap? And we’ve come up with a list of actions, behaviors, beliefs. The next step is to identify the pattern that is driving that unwarranted, unworkable action-behavior-belief. So that’s a three. As I said, there are three parts to a pattern, physical sensation, emotional thought. It’s just a matter of identifying where do I feel that in the body. What is the emotion that goes along with that pattern? And then what is my thinking process along with that pattern? What’s my mental activity, right? That’s step one. Step two— We wouldn’t flip that switch. Remember I said that your brain is locked inside this bony skull, and there really has no access to the outside world. Okay. So, you know, I’m looking at a tree right now, outside of my window. I really believe that I see that tree. I’m not. What I’m seeing is a neural pathway in my brain that is delivering tree, right. The experience of tree. Okay. So we need to flip that switch. We need to start owning what is going on in the outside world as the result of a pattern and not as a result of our situation. And that’s just a matter of owning that the pattern is a pattern. We actually use the words I created that. Right. But not from a position of blame, not from a position of I’m doing something wrong, but more from a position of, at some point in my past, I created that pattern, and therefore I own it. That’s powerful. Okay. Jenn DeWall: That’s extremely powerful to understand that. And I’m curious, like, you know, maybe you’ll touch on this too. Like what level of, what happens if you don’t take autonomy or excuse me, responsibility for creating that pattern, you know, then what does that look like in your life? But that’s a tangent. So many ideas are going through my brain right now, all through this conversation. Adele Spraggon: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I can answer that question, but let’s, let’s do the other two steps first and then remind me of that question. We’ll come back. So then the third step, now we have to do something interesting. Remember, I said that the most powerful thing we can do inside the brain is not to change a pattern. Because what that would mean is that you’re just using another pathway in the brain. But if you could do what you need to do, you would not have a goal. You would already have accomplished what you want to do. So what we need to do is remove the pattern that doesn’t work, and that’s step three. And we do that through a process of surrendering. The only way to do that is to get to the unknown. All right. So we, that’s a tricky step for some, but it’s very doable. Once you get it, you get it. It’s like, oh yeah. Okay. I can do this. And then once you do that, removes that pattern. All right. And then the fourth step is then to create that new pattern. But if we miss that step three, we’re just moving around an existing brain that doesn’t yet have the solution. Taking Ownership—But Not Blame Jenn DeWall: So we’re just essentially keeping ourselves stuck because we’re not willing to take ownership and responsibility. So I guess that does come back to the question, what happens when we’re not willing to take ownership or take responsibility for that? That essentially means that we’re probably not even able to get to the point of step three because we’re not. I mean, we’re not obviously even at step one because we probably don’t see it as our challenge or our problem or faulty programming. Adele Spraggon: Yeah, no, that’s absolutely true. You know, once people understand patterns, then they willingly take ownership of the patterns because it’s so refreshing to be able to say, oh yeah, that’s mine. I can actually do something about that. But until we are taught about patterns, we really are a victim of our patterns. We really do end up just doing stuff and then not understanding why we do stuff. Behaving in ways that we didn’t expect to behave and going, what’s wrong with me—and creating that world of blame and shame internally and externally. And that’s what happens. Jenn DeWall: I think about the example of even, you know, I feel like I did a lot of learning and maybe this is for some people later on in life, tried, I made some mistakes. I’m like, oh, outside looking in. Here’s what I could have done. And when I think about even the first time that I received feedback, I initially went to that place of the victim, which is, well, this is me, this is me. And I can’t do anything. And so I guess like, what do you kind of see people? Where do you see people stunting in the process of feeling like, well, woe is me? I just, I can’t do it because shifting into responsibility, I see, can be a thing that some people are unwilling to do, or they’re still really holding on to maybe the blame. And they’re just not ready to even assign any or take any personal accountability for that. How do you overcome that resistance or maybe that pushback from people to want to take that responsibility for addressing it? Adele Spraggon: Yeah. That’s a really great question. And every leader out there, I’m sure who is listening right now, is his ears open going, how do you do this?? Because it really is difficult if you’re trying to support somebody who you’re leading and they just don’t want to own anything, right. It’s like, no, that’s not me. I draw the blame on other people. So the first thing to do is the theory of repatterning is really a way to start. Because when you understand that there is, let me just back up for a moment. Are you, Jenn, responsible for your actions, your behaviors, your beliefs? Jenn DeWall: I’d say—Yes. Adele Spraggon: Ah, I say, no! Jenn DeWall: Oh No! Why? Adele Spraggon: Remember I said that that action-behavior-belief originates in the unconscious regions of your brain, and it is given by a pre-existing pattern. Right? So you are not responsible for anything that you do, anything that you believe or any behavior that you would adopt, but what are you responsible for? You’re responsible, but in the true sense of the word, as in able to respond to the pattern that gives rise to that action-behavior-belief. Okay. So when we know about the brain, when we know how this brain is working, there is no blame. There’s nothing that you’re doing that you’re choosing to do. Your patterns are choosing on your behalf. So the only thing you need to do is reflect back on the action that the pattern took and said, did that work? And if your answer is no, to know that it was just a pattern and to be, then have a tool in your pocket where you can remove that pattern. That takes all the sting out of everything. I mean, as pattern makers, I watched them blossom because they’re able to just take in all of whatever other people say, all of there and just go. Thanks for sharing that. I’ll take care of that. What do they mean by that? Thanks for sharing. I will go and take care of my reaction to what you’re saying by dealing with and removing my pattern, which is a reaction. That’s power. Jenn DeWall: That’s total power, but here’s my next burning question is how do you make it? Because I think it’s one thing to identify the pattern. And then it’s another to understand, like where you want to go, but then it’s the, how do you reinforce the new pattern? Because I imagine like, how do you stay on this new path of where you want to be versus falling it back to your default, subconscious? Like where, what would be your tips for that? Or how do you see people navigate that? So that’s gotta be the biggest challenge. We’ve had some bad programming and bad patterns for a long time. Adele Spraggon: Yes. Yeah. Great question. So again, we need to come back to the brain. Think about your old pathway in your brain that is connected like this. Okay. So for those of you who are just listening to the audio, I have my two front fingers together, and we’re just going to go in there, and we just want to gently tease that pattern apart. Remember that pathway is responsible for an action, behavior or belief. So we have a belief in our hand that says I’m small, or I can’t. Okay, great. It is just going to go in there. And we’re just going to tease that pattern apart and that channel, your brain has plasticity. The next thing that’s going to happen is it’s going to re-wire. It’s going to snap into brand new channels, and it will not have a void there in the brain. So it’s just going to re-wire itself. Now, do you think that you can possibly take that action again? The old action, the one that didn’t work, my action of quitting, can I go back and now be a quitter? Jenn DeWall: By now, you’re describing it? Yeah. Like you wouldn’t be able to, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it? Is that kind of it? Adele Spraggon: Once you upgrade the brain, you will not go back to old unworkable actions, behavior, beliefs. That’s got a brain is brilliant. Jenn DeWall: And for people then they’re like thinking like, I don’t like this, it can change. I can change these patterns. Adele Spraggon: Yes. Permanently. I’m not talking temporarily. Like we would with hypnosis or affirmations or positive thinking. This isn’t a temporary shift. This is a brand new person that arises into the space called you. A person who is now effective, where you used to be ineffective. Capable where you used to be in a capable. Jenn DeWall: How liberating, just to know that, like I don’t have to also live in that pattern. You know, I can actually truly put it to bed assuming that I did it in the right ways of being able to address it, overcome it surrender to it. Right. If we don’t use that, if you don’t surrender, that is just to me. So liberating. There’s just so much peace that comes with that sentiment of feeling like I can detach. It no longer has to be a part of how I see myself experienced my life. So on and so forth. So you’re basically giving the gift of peace to people, Adele. Behavioral Change, Happiness, and Peace of Mind Adele Spraggon: I say happiness, peace of mind. That is your birthright. That is what your brain is designed to live. Like we have made everything so complicated only because we haven’t known about brain patterns. It’s only been in a few decades that neuroscience has had the brain scanners to be able to peek inside the brain and noninvasively. So all of this is brand new, and it’s going to revolutionize the way we do everything on this planet. Leadership is just one starting point, but it will revolutionize everything. And yet absolutely peace of mind, happiness, confidence. These are built into your brain when you know how to work the brain. Jenn DeWall: I love that. Like I know before our call, or before we actually started recording the podcast, you were sharing that you’re doing a lot of work with bigger corporate clients. I’m curious because again, we’re talking about something that I feel like CEOs aren’t addressing that they’re not talking about their employee patterning and what that needs to be, but how are you actually seeing companies, organizations, leaders start to really embrace this way of how we can look at, you know, making greater impacts or being the person that we want to be. How are you seeing them really embrace this approach of patterning or really human behavior? Like how we can, I guess, take part in that versus saying, we just want to train you to be able to do this skill. Mental Illness and Old Patterns Adele Spraggon: Yeah. So, you know, I mean, we were talking about whole beings, right? Like, like really creating corporations in which the whole being shows up rather than just the skill or the talent shows up. Right. And so what’s going on today, Jenn, that is creating the need for repatterning. Because one thing that we have to know as human beings is philosophies do not arise out of the blue. Okay. They arise because of needs. And there is a huge need that is arising today, which is causing us to have to rethink how we were looking at the brain. So what is that need? Every age has its plague. As I like to say, and ours is not COVID-19. Our plague is mental illness. Why, what’s going on? Well, when we look at the world today, we can see that the world is what I call speeding up. Changes are occurring more and more rapidly. Yes. As more people come on this planet, more changes are occurring on this planet. The more the planet is speeding up. So what does that mean? Well, there was a point in history. Let’s go back 200 years where a person could create patterns in their childhood, and their life was stable enough that those patterns would carry them through to old age. And that’s no longer the case. Let’s face facts, right? Your life changes year over year, over year. Let’s forget decades. It’s changing that fast. And people today will need three or four different careers in their lifetime. That’s typical. I think that that was the latest stat, right? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So what does that require? Brand new patterns, right? You can’t rely on those old patterns. We’ve got to face huge changes, which are global. And the pandemic is just one of those changes that are going to come at as fast as in faster and faster. So this is why now corporations have to wake up and say, okay, I cannot just expect this person to come in and do this job because they’re dealing with all of these external stressors, which are pushing down on them, and the corporation has to be aware of that, or else you’re going to have massive amounts of absenteeism and presenteeism. Do you know what that means? Jenn DeWall: I don’t! Like they don’t, what’s presenteeism? Adele Spraggon: That’s when you have people coming up, draining the coffee pot, but they’re actually not doing anything. They’re not contributing. Right. So both of those are massively on the rise. So if, unless we start to address people’s whole being, those problems are just going to get worse and worse and worse, and mental illnesses are just going to get worse and worse and worse. So all of that is the reason why corporations have to deal with it. And how, why is repatterning or things, tools such as repatterning is showing up in the world today? Jenn DeWall: I, you know, I love that there are a lot of organizations that have obviously like I’m more and more of a vested and more connected interest in supporting mental health. But what would you say to the organizations that may still be separate, right? It’s like the separation of church and state, except for the separation of your life outside of this and how you respond to that and what you do here. What would you say to those organizations? What would be a piece of advice that you would maybe share to those that still kind of believe like that’s not where we give you a paycheck? Isn’t that good enough? Why should we have to step in and support your mental health, Adele? Come on. What would you, what would be some advice that you would share maybe considerations like that they maybe haven’t thought about before? Shifting Patterns to Build Resilience Adele Spraggon: Yeah, so the biggest buzzword in the corporate world today is resilience, right? Jenn DeWall: Yep! It sure is! Adele Spraggon: What is resilience? It’s the ability to bounce back from adversity. It’s the ability to take a challenge and deal with it and bounce back from it and create those creative solutions that are needed. Deal with the emotional upset that comes with those stressors. As I said, the world today is speeding up, and those stress factors are pushing down into the corporate world. So it’s not that the corporation itself has to change. It’s that those external stressors now are going to force the corporation to have to change. It has to take care of its employees, or else they’re not going to survive. That’s going to be true. Absenteeism is just the first of the problems that bottom line will start to be affected more and more and more as people lose focus, as people are struggling with worries at home, lack of sleep, all of that stuff is going to start affecting the entire team. Jenn DeWall: It’s not even necessarily a choice anymore. If you want to, you know, preserve that productivity. It understands that there’s a force that’s happening beyond that corporation’s control. That’s already going to push it, and you can just choose whether to deal with it or not. And you’re going to see the positive and negative consequences that come from that. Adele Spraggon: Yeah. Yeah. And, and because there are some fantastic tools out there today, mine just being one of them. Why not? Why not be a front runner and deal with it and attract those good people, those skills that you need because people today are not just looking for a corporation to give them a paycheck. They’re looking for a place to call home. And so why not be a front runner and say, Hey, yes, I’ll, I’ll take care of you. You take care of us. I, and to me, that just makes total sense. Jenn DeWall: Yeah, no, it absolutely does. When I think about when I initially started out as a coach, people would be like, I’m looking for a career coach. And those ambitious people are like; I’m looking for that career coach that’s going to help me elevate my performance and the piece I’m like, I’ve always said, I call myself a career life coach because you don’t get to put them into a vacuum and manage them accordingly. Like that, that is just not the way that we are designed. That’s not how our brain is going to think because I can’t shut off my emotions at nine and be like, you know what? I know that my grandpa’s really sick, but it’s. I’m on the clock now. So I can’t care about that anymore. Or I’m really disturbed about this. Like, Hey, I’m at a meeting. I’m not going to think about it. Like, that’s just not happening. Oh my gosh. So how do you work? Like how, because I really, I believe in the work that you do and I think it’s so essential. So how are you working with some of the organizations? Like what are some of the work that you’re doing with their teams, with their leaders to support this? I just think it’s such important work. Adele Spraggon: Oh yeah. So what’s super exciting is I partnered up with a client of mine. She’s an amazing powerhouse. And she has a company called Heartbeat AI, in which she measures emotions within the corporation. So she comes in, she researches, she can actually measure the level of resilience and the level of stress. And she can predict what the issue is going to be in the future, based on that emotional pulse of the corporation. So her and I partnering together is amazing because she comes in, she can measure, she can show exactly where the problems are going to be, what needs to be targeted. I come in. I support the team members, only those who are willing. I don’t even have to work with the entire team. We can shift a team just by working with key people within that team. So shift their patterns, which shifts the resilience within that team. Then she comes back in and measures, and we guarantee our results because we can see them right there in the surveys and what she does. It shows the real results week over week, over week. And you just watch the resilience go up, and the stress comes down. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. I would love to go back to so many organizations that I’ve worked for and be like, well, you check the pulse of this. Because I would just be curious to kind of see what the observations the findings are and then just say, yeah, all of those problems actually did happen. I mean, what if, you know, what if organizations actually had a rating system of like, this is your organizational policy, it’s a B, or you’re feeling it, or you’re, you know, it’s an, E for excellence. Like, is there a way that you could actually go out and say, here’s all of our data that we’ve collected? And if you’re doing these things, like you’re at an F, and here are the things that have you don’t address them. This is only going to have an impact on your decisions, your profits, your turnover, what else comes down the line. But I think it’d be so helpful for organizations to have that because right now I think the grading system that they have are, you know, employee survey results, which, who knows if the employees even do them, if they did them on a good day or bad day. Or you have people that went to your glass door and are like, I love this company, or I don’t love that company, but I like that you’re coming up with a real tool to assess, like, this is really what’s going on. And it’s not necessarily from maybe the people that you always want to hear from. So it might be more biased; it’s from a different level. I just think that’s so important. And I wish more organizations could actually be if you think about what that would do, if I knew as an employee that an organization had an A-rating for a, you know, its pulse for its culture, how it treats people, I want to work for those cultures, how I don’t want to work for the ones that are the F, or they don’t have and see me as an individual that has flaws that are still working through stuff but also has best intentions for what I can do for you. Like, I just wish that you could almost take that data and make it public. So people could be like, how do I find those people? Cause I want to work at those companies. But I mean, most importantly too, I mean, at least the work that you’re doing is not only being able to identify it but then saying here is a roadmap for how you can change. Like you’re not stuck there. Going back to how we even opened the conversation is like, they’re like change is something that can always occur. If there is willingness, if there is, you know, I don’t want to butcher it in the way that we’ve talked about it from patterns, but we can always grow and change. We can always choose a new path. And so maybe it’s not the place for that organization, and blaming and shaming themselves, but it’s just saying what the new path you want to create for your team is? Adele Spraggon: The beautiful thing about resilience is it’s actually occurring on two different levels. There’s resilience within a team, which we can measure based on the level of optimism within that team. And we find we’re finding that the more optimistic a team is, the more resilience there is at the individual level and vice versa. If you can rebuild, if you can rebuild, sorry, if you can build the resilience within individual members of that team, that increases the resilience of the entire team overall. So, you know what you said? Not from a position of blame and shame. Absolutely. Because there are some members of teams who are– okay, can I just say it– they are not at the maturity level to own their own patterns to take on that level of responsibility. Jenn DeWall: Are you saying that there are a million people that are like, yes, I’ve worked with that person, thank you for saying that? Adele Spraggon: And so it’s unfair to say you have to because they can’t. All right. So, so we don’t have to, we can just work with a portion of that team and just work with 20% of those who are willing members of their team to own their patterns. It increases the entire resilience of the entire team because each supports the other, which is amazing, How to Connect with Adele Spraggon Jenn DeWall: It creates a true ripple effect in terms of how they all interact. The work that you’re doing is so important. I’m so glad that you even took time out of your schedule to be able to talk and sit down with me for our listeners of The Leadership Habit. We talked about your book. I know that you’re working on more. So Adele’s book, Shift: 4 Steps to Personal Empowerment, Adele, how can people get in touch with you and how can they work with you? Where’s your, where would, where would they go to get in touch with you and learn more? Adele Spraggon: The best place is my website, AdeleSpraggon.com, they can get to, and if they want a free copy of my book, you can get it there, but you can also get it at Shift4Steps.com,  And that’s the number four. And I’m sure you’ll put all of this in the copy notes. Yeah. Yeah, so, and just, all I ask is that you pay for shipping, and I will send you a signed copy. Jenn DeWall: Oh my God, that is a fantastic offer. And again, I started reading this book. I’m about a quarter to halfway through, and I can tell you that you have said things that I actually have not been exposed to yet. And so I just really appreciate the way that you’ve shared this and written this, and most of all, I appreciate the work that you’re doing to help people truly maximize the type of life that they live. Adele, thank you so much for being on the show today. It was great. Adele Spraggon: No, thank you for having me, Jenn. It was a pleasure. Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast. I hope you enjoyed my conversation without a doubt. Now, if you want to know more about a doubt, connect with her, get her free book. You can head on over to her website, adelespraggon.com. And if you know someone as you were listening, that could really benefit from hearing Adele’s message. Don’t forget to share this podcast episode with them, help them see their new possibilities or the potential outcomes vacancy as a result of reprogramming. And of course, if you enjoyed this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming service. Until next time.   The post Achieve Real Behavioral Change by Shifting Your Patterns, with Adele Spraggon, Award-Winning Author appeared first on Crestcom International.

Managing Conflict with Kevin Mowers, CEO of Extended Management, a Crestcom Franchise In this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, Jenn sat down with Kevin Mowers, the CEO and President of Extended Management, a Crestcom franchise located in Northeast Ohio. In his business. Kevin focuses on leadership development, using a specific process that ensures that leaders grow into great leaders through a change of behavior. At the end of the day, Kevin’s personal mission is to move hearts in Northeast Ohio by making people into better individuals in their personal and professional lives. Kevin and I are going to be talking all about conflict today. And Kevin has lectured and presented on many topics, such as restorative justice, social justice, organizational development, and leadership development theory. He’s also a contributing author to the Little Book of Restorative Justice for Colleges and Universities written by one of the godfathers of restorative justice or “RJ.” Dr. David R Karp. Join our conversation as Kevin and I talk about where we get conflict wrong and how to resolve conflict in a productive way. Meet Kevin Mowers, CEO and Crestcom Franchise Owner Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall. And this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast. I am sitting down with Kevin Mowers, President and CEO of Extended Management, a Crestcom franchisee, and you’re located in Ohio. Kevin, how are things going for you today? How are you doing? Kevin Mowers: Oh, it’s gorgeous here in the Northeast. Ohio. Sun is shining. Northeast, Ohio is actually known for being one of the cloudiest places in the country. So the fact that the sun is shining right now is a good thing. Jenn DeWall: Good day. Well, Great! Kevin, tell us a little bit about yourself. You are a Crestcom franchisee. We know that The Leadership Habit podcast is hosted by Crestcom, a global leadership development organization, but you are one of the people that’s bringing leadership development to organizations. And I just want you to tell us a little bit about yourself before we dive into our topic today, which is all about how to resolve conflict in a healthy way. But Kevin, tell us a little bit about yourself. Kevin Mowers: Yeah. Well, thank you honored to have this opportunity to talk with you. It’s just a passion of mine as far as talking about conflict, and so looking forward to our conversation today, a little bit about myself. So originally, I was born and raised in Michigan. So I’m a transplant here to Ohio. You know, so, so moved down here to Northeast Ohio about eight years ago. I spent my career working in higher education prior to doing what I’m doing now with Crestcom. You know, I always had that leadership aspect of it, but to do it now full time is a great thing. I love the outdoors, so my people that are in Denver, Colorado, I’m a little bit jealous of everything you have out there to offer. But I do spend my time outdoors here in Ohio. Love to get outside and do some fishing and play golf. One of my passions, something that a lot of people don’t know, is I’m actually a competitive Archer. So I’ve been shooting a bow since I was a little kid, and probably the last 10, 15 years, I got into it competitively. So I practice probably once a day, at least an hour in the backyard, just shooting my bow, workarounds and skills. And then, I compete in monthly tournaments around the state of Ohio and internationally at times. So I’m married, two kids, two beautiful little girls. I’m a girl dad and absolutely love it. I wouldn’t change it, trade it for anything. But yeah, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s awesome. Things are going well here in Northeast Ohio. I love what I’m doing right now. Jenn DeWall: All right. Impromptu question. How would you relate archery to leadership? Kevin Mowers: That is a whole other podcast. So we could do that. There are so many overlaps, especially from the mental side of the game. But to do it well, to compete, it takes a process- which is leadership. So I could talk about that all day. We’ll say that for another conversation. Why Did You Join the Crestcom Franchise Network? Jenn DeWall: Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough, Kevin. So, I know that your, you know, your background is within higher education, and I know that you’re passionate about leadership, right? That’s why we’re here today, but what made you invest in the Crestcom franchise? Kevin Mowers: Yeah, you know, a couple of reasons, one, I was at a point in my career where I said, you know what, I’m missing the things I love to do day in and day out, which is, you know, the development of people. So one of my final roles, when I was at Kent State University, was as the Director of Housing, so I oversaw the entire housing population, but it removed me from some of the day-to-day conversations around what does it mean to be an effective leader? What does it mean to be a better person, day in and day out? And I missed that, so I knew it was time to start looking at what I want to do to really make sure my purpose in life was being fulfilled day in and day out. So that was a big factor in it. There are thousands of trainer training programs that are out there. I started looking for something that was going to be different. And I found Crestcom! When I started looking at Crestcom, I could tell that there was a difference between both the process and the people that were involved with it. And I think for me those are the two things and which I would say are the reasons as to why Crestcom is what I do. Because when we develop our program, we develop our process. It’s intentional. It’s purposeful. It’s built off of foundational things that you need to be a leader. So that was really important for me, you know, to know that I could have content that was sound, that was proven, that was vetted and developed in a way that’s going to actually move hearts; in a way that makes people become better. But the other part of it too, Jenn was, you know, when I had the chance to go to Denver and to meet with the team at headquarters, you know, I saw something different there, you know, like they were nothing but supportive. You know, they did all that they could do to help me get to where I wanted to be when it comes to this business. And that continued after, you know, I bought in and started doing what I needed to do. So you know, there, there is this element of a family when it comes to what we do here at Crestcom. You know we’re all doing leadership work, but it takes something a little bit different, with a little more intent, something personal that that really separates us from our competitors and why we do what we do. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh, I love that you said, you know, you use the word heart, but we’re both passionate about leadership, but still, sometimes people don’t necessarily add heart or love into that equation. And I just think that’s so special that that’s one of your pieces is to want to lead with heart. And because I do, I love Crestcom as a global organization. That means that there are individuals all around the world that are developing leaders and, you know, all of us in our missions and purposes. I know that we’re going to create or help others achieve greater heights and greater outcomes that they couldn’t before. But I just love that heart is one of the things that brought you into this business, and I’m sure, oh, what were you going to say to that? Kevin Mowers: That’s spot on. In fact, I take my personal mission a little bit further. So my mission, my life purpose, beyond just what I do with Crestcom or doing with coaching individuals or, you know, the volunteer opportunities that I’m a part of here in Northeast Ohio. What I am trying to do day in and day out, my personal mission is to move hearts in Northeast Ohio. That’s why I made the career switch. That’s why I joined Crestcom. That’s why I do the things I do today. When I volunteer my time, that’s what I do in the archery world. You know, believe it or not. I move hearts. I want people to become better as individuals day in and day out. When we’re better at work, we’re better at home. When we’re better at home, we’re better for the relationships that we’re a part of. You know, that’s what it’s about- moving the heart. What Interested You in Conflict Management? Jenn DeWall: Let’s talk about how we can move the hearts in the frame or frame of reference of conflict. So now we’re going to be talking, we’re moving into, you know, talking about how to resolve conflict in a healthy way because there are so many examples of when conflict is not handled appropriately. And of course, as a leader, as an employee, you know, conflict at work is a part of work, but it doesn’t have to be this, you know, atrocious, heavy, awful thing. It can actually be the thing that helps us move our teams forward helps us make better decisions. But Kevin, how did you become interested in understanding conflict? So you’re getting your doctorate right now too. Like, I mean, we haven’t really touched on your background of why conflict is an important area to you. So if you could even share or shed some insight on that as well. Kevin Mowers: Yeah. It’s a story. You know, I love storytelling, which you’ll hear me talk about a little bit later in our conversation, but you know, for me, well, I got to go back a long way, right? So I think all of us probably can think back to our earliest childhood memory. Okay. And if you think about that for a second, like it might not come readily available, but for me, my earliest childhood memory is actually not a good situation. It was a violent situation. So I grew up in a household with two parents, siblings, but there was a lot of violence that was associated with my upbringing. Without going into detail about what that memory is, it wasn’t good. It, it left some scars, it left some, some emotions that I didn’t know how to deal with as I grew up. It bled into a lot of other things that happened. And one of the parts of my story that I often talk about is all the things that have happened to me. Now, I can actually trace lines all the way back to that moment, how I made decisions, how I respond to certain things, how now, as an adult, certain things play out, and I make decisions as a result of that. And then all comes around like how to deal with conflict, how, how emotions are tied to that. And what happened to me was, you know, as I grew up, I found myself in situations in which, you know, I, as a guy, as a male, I was actually rewarded for being, you know, violent at times, tough guy, tough guy, masculine. I played sports. So the harder I went in sports, the harder I hit, you know, the more aggressive I was, I got my name in the paper, you know, I got, you know, rewarded, you know, at the end of the year, you know, my dad would praise me, you know, the coaches would, you know, elevate my status, you know? So, you know, I was getting all these messages that, you know, as a young man, like, this is what you need to do. This is what it takes to be a man. And for me, I always struggled with it cause it was like, okay, I have to do this, but it doesn’t feel right. I don’t know how to deal with this. I don’t want to deal with these situations where, you know, I, I find myself in these conflict situations, I was taught as a kid. You either fight or flight, and it was unacceptable to run away. So you toe the line, you throw up your fist, you grit your teeth and take care of business. Right. That doesn’t work when you go to college. You went to college, first-generation college student, you know, I didn’t know what that experience was going to be like at all. I quickly realized that my way wasn’t going to work, and fortunately, I had an RA who sat me down and said, Hey, Kevin, you can’t do this. And you can’t do it because it has an impact on others. It’s, it’s having an impact in ways that maybe you didn’t see. That was the first time I ever said, wow, okay. It’s not about me. I can’t run around the dorm saying whatever it is I want. I can’t run around the dorm being a bully and getting away with things. Like, I gotta be mindful of what this means. Right? So fast forward a couple of years, you know, that, that was kind of a pivotal moment as well. I became a Hall Director, a professional. Managing Conflict with Restorative Justice Kevin Mowers: I graduated from college, you know, got hired as a Hall Director, had the opportunity at the University of Michigan to learn about this thing called restorative justice. You know, when conflict happens, there’s a way to manage it. There’s a way to deal with it, focusing on harms more than anything else. When I heard that for the first time, I could truly say, Jenn, that there was a weight lifted off of my shoulders because my whole life, it was this, it was fight or flight. It was put your Dukes up, and let’s go. You know, and I wasn’t fighting people at work, but boy, I was taking that hard-line, aggressive approach when I realized, and I learned that there was a different way. I got extremely passionate about it. I wanted to pursue that and learn about it because I realized that conflict was always a part of my life. I was always finding myself in situations, which crisis and conflict was there. But boy, at the end of it, I wasn’t feeling right about what it was, how I was managing. I was a part of that process. So I really wanted to find a way to do it differently. I wanted to stop the cycle of things that happened in my life. So it didn’t impact, you know, my wife and my girls and the people that I care about in my life. Like the people I work with and who I lead in certain places. So the quest, and the reason why conflict is a passion, you know, again, it started a long time ago, but it hasn’t ended in any way, shape or form. It’s a journey. It’s a process. Just like anything else we talk about when it comes to leadership, you know, I’m still learning, I’m still growing. You know, I’m still finding ways to talk about this and to share this and, and to learn about it so that, you know, I can benefit others because again, it’s about moving hearts. It’s about making people better. So that’s kind of the “why” – abbreviated version. I can actually give you a, probably a two-hour talk on just that story alone. But again, maybe we’ll say that for another podcast. Jenn DeWall: Well, I think, Kevin, you said a lot of very insightful things and also just great points of —hopefully— reflection for our listeners. We are so thinking and reminding ourselves that obviously, conflict is emotional. And conflict, whether it, you know, obviously it doesn’t, even if it doesn’t go physical, the burden of conflict of feeling in conflict with someone, or even getting energetically into conflict and riled up around conflict is emotional. It can add more stress. It can damage our relationships. It can impact our ability to think clearly or make decisions or, you know, even sleep. I love, you know, just reminding people like this is why we want to find a healthier way to resolve conflict, which is what we’re going to be talking about because it is emotional. So when we don’t address it or just pretend it doesn’t exist, it’s actually just playing, you know, it’s still making an impact. You just may not be able to see it. But the other thing that I liked that you shared too, Kevin, is that I think something that a lot of people don’t really talk about, like in the sense of how did you learn how to resolve conflict? And for many people, that likely is their upbringing. Whatever they observed in their home became this tool of how we understood, or maybe a process or a way of how we thought that we should approach conflict. And so hopefully to our listeners right now, they’re thinking, and I’m talking to that person like maybe it’s that person that was you in the dorm, right? When you knew that you were not handling conflict, maybe that was me in my twenties. Like I always had this proven thing. I always needed to prove myself to people. And I felt like I even damaged relationships cause I was more concerned about being right than I was about necessarily doing the right thing or detaching from the outcome that didn’t really matter. And so I feel like there are a lot of people here that if you found that you maybe didn’t respond to conflict in the best way, maybe there’s this example that you’re thinking of, that this is still your opportunity and what Kevin and I are going to be talking about today to find healthier ways. So long story short, just don’t beat yourself up for it, but also take responsibility and, you know, find a different way so it can improve your relationships. And, of course, your own mental health and ability to be successful. So Kevin, what is conflict? What is it? What is Conflict? Kevin Mowers: Oh, great question. I think if we had figured this out by now, I think the world would probably be in a totally different place. That question has always been my starting point in this conversation for a couple of different reasons, but I think every one of us knows what it feels like. I think everyone can kind of put their finger on a situation in which, you know, the conflict has happened. I challenge it to some degree, and what I mean by that is when we think about conflict, and if we define it in its basic forms, conflict is, yes, a difference. So a different opinion, but what makes the situation truly a conflict situation is when it becomes a prolonged, ongoing difference, but something that also has a serious and significant impact. Okay. So think about that for a second. If my wife and I have an argument over where we want to go to eat, is that a conflict situation? Jenn DeWall: I mean, if it’s not prolonged, so by that definition- it’s not necessarily prolonged. Kevin Mowers: Right? Right. So, you know, it’s an argument. Like she wants to go to Applebee’s. I want to go to, you know, Subway as an example. Food choices aside, but that’s not a conflict situation. We had a disagreement on what we wanted for dinner that night. Now, what would happen in that same situation? Right? What would happen if, if every time we wanted to go out to dinner, I chose, and she had no voice in saying where she wanted to go. Would that then be a conflict situation? Jenn DeWall: If she’s frustrated by it, absolutely. Because every time you’re picking the place to eat! Kevin Mowers: Right, so it’s this prolonged notion, but it also will have a significant impact on her at some point too. Right. Maybe from a health standpoint, maybe from a mental standpoint. That prolonged process is a part of how I pushed back and defined what conflict looks like. Because in reality, we find ourselves in conflict situations all the time. You know, like they say that there’s no conflict in our life is a bald-faced lie. And I would challenge anyone who says they don’t have conflict in her life. Now the difference between arguments, fights and conflict, there are some subtle differences in it. You know, an argument is, is a simple disagree, you know, you and you and I, for example, right? Like you think podcasts are the best way to reach people. Maybe I think social media is the best way we could argue that. Okay. Is there a significant impact at the end of that conversation for either you or me? No, we have a different opinion, but is there a prolonged argument over it now? You know, it’s, it’s a one-time thing. We’re not in a conflict situation. Okay. What would change that is if you and I were working together on a regular basis and we were in the same office space trying to do this work and my belief that social media, it was the best route and your belief that podcasts are the best route for best outcomes. And, and you insisted that this has to happen in my life then becomes impacted because I don’t buy into it, then maybe we’re in a conflict situation. Okay. There’s the difference. So when you ask me, what is conflict? You know, my response is it’s a different certainly, but what makes it different? What makes it really switch into this world where it’s a conflict situation is when we have prolonged, you know, arguments, prolonged, differences that start having a significant impact on us as individuals. And when I say us as individuals, not just me, but it’s also you, it also could be the people that are around us. So if we’re an office building, it could be our coworkers, if we’re at home, you know, so if my wife and I are constantly arguing over the same issue over and over again. My two girls are going to be impacted by that. That’s going to impact their friends. That’s going to impact my in-laws because every time we go over to their house, you know, we’re arguing and fighting, right? Like that there’s that for me, there’s that shift from, all right, we had a disagreement, to this is now a conflict situation because of those two factors. Jenn DeWall: I think it’s important that you referenced that. And maybe this is as you were talking about that definition of conflict and it being prolonged the thing that kept popping into my head, or maybe people that might initially be conflict avoiders and how really, think of it in the situation where if you’re a conflict avoider and you are observing a situation, and it is perceived to be a single or individual instance, it’s not really conflict. It’s just a difference of opinions or a difference of approach. And I liked that because it softens, it, it becomes a greater conflict, you know, obviously as you’re talking about when it’s prolonged and then it escalates, and it has a greater impact on both of us, but maybe this is just an opportunity to help reframe this a one-time event? We can resolve this. It’s not going to be a full-fledge to like, you know, conflict, have a choice on how you show up and how you manage the situation. Managing Conflict by Personality Type Kevin Mowers: Yeah. And I think that’s a spot-on point. It is a moment for us to reframe what this looks like. You know, because immediately what comes out for that question is what does conflict look like, why does it exist? How does it exist, right? Like where does it come from? And in my argument, there is that, you know, this is a natural response for us as part of our personalities. Okay. So this month across Crestcom, we’re talking about how to manage personality traits. Right? Right. Great topic, you know, there are thousands of personality trait assessment tools that are out there. You can take any one of those things and figure out personality traits. And I will guarantee you that if you split them down, the middle half is going to be in conflict. Avoidance and half are the ones that usually cause conflict. Okay. So if you take ten people and put them in a room, five of them don’t want to deal with conflict in any way, shape or form. And five of them are like, yeah, I’m good with that fact, I’m going to probably poke a little bit to make conflict happen. They might not say that, but that’s their natural tendency. That’s their personality traits. So for me, kind of going back to that story I shared before, I thought I was good with conflict. I thought I could manage it. But when you break my personality traits down to who I really am day in and day out. I am in conflict avoidance all day long. I’m a peacekeeper. I want to do all I can to avoid conflict situations, which is why I didn’t handle it well. And also that natural response, you know, and it’s part of who we are. That’s why these things exist. You know, conflict is always going to be here, you know, because we’re, we’re talking about people, you know. And anytime we’re talking about people, we’re talking about emotions, we’re talking about things that are bringing things out from deep inside of who we inherently are. So if emotions are tied to this, then we know people are tied to this. And if people are tied to this, there is a reason why conflict happens. And I’ve always said that because a lot of people will sit back and go. I don’t know why I’m in conflict. I don’t know why I’m always in these situations. I don’t know why X, Y, and Z happened. I push back and say, actually, there’s probably a reason. Let’s, let’s step back a second and say, all right, the people are involved. Why and how? And then why are they involved? Because of the emotional response? Is it fear? Is it anger? Is it frustration? Confusion? You know? So, so for me, why it exists, where does it come from? It, it comes from an inherent part of who we are deep down inside, you know? So for me, knowing that it’s then tied to a reason that we can then figure it out. We can figure out how to respond in a way that makes it healthy but also productive in resolving that conflict. Jenn DeWall: So if we’re to, if there’s someone listening right now, that’s thinking I might be that person that always finds myself in conflict. The first thing you would say, why does, why does that happen. It’s because it’s the natural response. It’s part of your maybe personality style, your learned behaviors. Why else do you think conflict? Yeah. Kevin Mowers: You know, you mentioned it before, and I’ll kind of bring it out who we are today based on our experiences in life. Our experiences in life drive our beliefs. It drives our values. So that’s a big part of this conversation, right? Like we, we, we make ourselves who we are based on those experiences. And as a result of that, that’s where someone’s emotions will come out. And the beauty of it is we get to change. We can always stop and pivot in different directions, which is a beautiful thing to dismiss that inherent drive an inherent part of who we are and not recognize it as a part of that conflict situation actually will cause more harm down the road. So one of the things that I’m studying right now and really spending time focusing on is this intersect between how our personal identities and conflict exist. So usually, when conflict situations happen, we don’t talk about how we as individuals are deeply impacted. More importantly, when we figure out what the solution is, we don’t account for how to repair that damage caused by those identities, which is causing leaders to then make ineffective choices on how to move forward. What happens then is you always, and you hear this in our media, you hear it, you hear it all over the place. You know, somebody will do something as a result of a situation, but then they’re retracting a statement, or they’re issuing an apology, or they’re doing something to kind of back that up because it caused more issues, you know, for the group or the organization. Right. So how we make decisions, how we move forward, how we repair the harm. And I’ll talk a little bit more about that here in a bit that all stems from this inherent drive, who we are as individuals, based on our personality types. That’s why it exists. That’s why it comes out the way it does. Understanding Your Own Reactions to Conflict Jenn DeWall: I mean, it’s the simplified way of understanding that. It’s just who we are. And I guess the example that I think of, you know, as it comes down to who I am in terms of values. One of the things that I had observed was even how I treated people that were late for meetings because one of my values was respect, and within that definition of respect. It was, you know, you respected me my time if you showed up on time. And I have just found as I’ve gotten older that while that might be true at some point in time, how I learned that message. I actually do not think that even works anymore for values, because especially in this virtual world where many people are going back to back in meetings like they are going to have to maybe grab some food, check on the kids, do whatever they need to do, or remembering that people aren’t intentionally trying to make things hard for you, but it honestly took me to be me going to a show with a friend who was late, and she always has late, and it still to this day. It does not matter. Like now, I just laugh, and I’m like, we’ll just see what she gets here. It’s fine. But it took her going, like going to the show and us being late for the show, for me to say, Hey, I’m going to let you know stuff that this is actually one of my boundaries, but I just decided that instead of being frustrated with her because I love her so dearly that I, I was just going to change the way that I approached it. Instead of looking at respect, as you know, in that definition, I actually had to adjust my definition of respect. Because it truly, in that situation, Steff wasn’t trying to disrespect me. Steff just doesn’t manage her time well. Like it’s not about me. It takes time to realize that. Kevin Mowers: Yeah, that’s a great story. I’m going to come back to that story and use that as an example a little bit later because it ties into how we then can respond. I think what you did and how you responded to this beautiful there’s purpose and intent. And it ties directly back to the conversation we’re having today. A Message from Crestcom: Crestcom is a global organization dedicated to developing effective leaders companies all over the world have seen their managers transformed into leaders through our award-winning and accredited leadership development programs. Our signature BPM program provides interactive management training with a results-oriented curriculum and prime networking opportunities. If you’re interested in learning more about our flagship program and developing your managers into leaders, please visit our website to find a leadership trainer near you. Or maybe you yourself have always wanted to train and develop others. Crestcom is a global franchise with ownership opportunities available throughout the world. If you have ever thought about being your own boss, owning your own business and leveraging your leadership experience to impact businesses and leaders in your community, Crestcom may be the right fit for you. We’re looking for professional executives who are looking for a change and want to make a difference in people’s lives. Learn more about our franchise opportunity on the Own a Franchise page of our website at Crestcom.com. When Does a Disagreement Become Conflict? Jenn DeWall: So let’s go into like, so when does it become a conflict? So it’s when it’s prolonged, and there’s a significant impact. When does it, when else does it become? So we know why conflicts happen. It’s differences of opinion. It’s people, it’s your values, your beliefs, but when does it actually become a conflict? Kevin Mowers: Yeah, exactly. You know, the piece I would add to this conversation around when and how and why- you know, outside of this inherent drive- there is a power play at hand that we’re talking about. You know, normally when we’re in these conflict situations, it’s one versus another, that there are elements of a power struggle that are in place, you know, and it could be boss/employee. It could be, you know, relationship-driven, husband/wife, partners, whatever the case may be. But there is this push and shove notion around how to establish power, and establishing power also comes from a natural place. We do that so that we protect ourselves. We do that to preserve the things that we care about. And I always, you know, at this point, I always say, we, we can look around us right now in our world and our culture, and have examples of good leaders and bad leaders. And they all have power. Okay. There are some bad leaders with a lot of power making some really bad decisions, and it impacts a lot of people. Okay. But there are also some really good leaders that have significant power that can make a really big difference in their organizations or in the things that they’re leading. So this power thing is not a bad thing. I say it as a part of the conversation because it’s part of reality. When we’re in these conflict situations- especially with other individuals or with driving values or beliefs– there’s that push to want to establish power from a preservation standpoint to protect the things that we care about. That can cause harm. I always challenge people, especially from a social justice lens of how do you use your power? How do you use your privilege to make a difference? How do you maybe create equality? How do you create these situations in which conflict situations are managed in a way that is actually healthy? What’s the difference? Okay. So when you asked me, you know, where does it come from? You know, I always come back to here- the heart, right? How do we drive ourselves? But recognize that there are inherent flaws in that process. And we make choices to your earlier point on how we manage them and make choices moving forward. Jenn DeWall: And I think you mentioned, or you alluded to this, that like, when we’re looking at conflict and, you know, talking about it as kind of competing or shift in power, power, isn’t necessarily a position of a leadership position. I have this authority over you. Power might also just be feeling like you are seen and heard and having your voice actually make an impact, or just having, having someone listen to you. That is a form of power. So power isn’t always a title. And that’s what I hear you say, right? It’s not just about, you know, who has this authority. It is about maybe getting your voice, your idea heard, or just feeling seen as an individual. Kevin Mowers: Yeah. Empowerment, right? Like yeah, exactly. You set a spot on. I don’t even want to add to it because it was perfect. Managing Conflict in Real-World Situations Jenn DeWall: So, what type of conflicts have you seen at work? Kevin Mowers: Any and all, but probably not nearly enough to be honest with you. So but I, I think one of the experiences I had working in higher education. Working on a college campus, you see a lot of stuff, right? And I always, you put, you put 18-year-olds in a ten by ten dorm room. It really comes out. And one of the ones that always pops in my head is– I call it the burrito story. So one of the roles I served in a previous life was when something happened on campus, especially if it was a violent situation. My role was to come to campus and actually make a decision at the moment to remove the student from campus. Okay. So I get a call at two o’clock in the morning, one night, you know, I’m a fast asleep phone rings. I’m like, oh, here we go. So I answered the phone. You know, the response on the other end was from one of our police officers. And the officer says, Kevin, we need you to come in. We need you to the decision to remove this kid from campus. And I’m like, okay, what happened? He assaulted his roommate. Okay. I’m on my way. Didn’t get all the details. I just had to get to the campus. Right. So get the campus, you know, they had this young man in custody in one of our offices. I walk in, and I say, okay, what, what happened? This, this young man, was intoxicated. He wasn’t putting together two words, and I’m like, all right, this is not good. Ask the officer what happened. So the officer proceeds to tell me that, you know, this young man came home from a party, walked into his dorm room. His roommate was fast asleep, sleeping in bed. He flips on the light, walks over the refrigerator, pulls out a burrito, sticks burrito in the microwave, you know, starts to nuke it. His roommates start saying, Hey, you know, I’m trying to sleep, shut the lights off. Do you know how come on? It’s two o’clock in the morning. Like you shut the lights off this kid. Doesn’t say anything. He’s intoxicated. Microwave goes off, you know, beeps. He pulls off the Brito, takes one. Look at his roommate. Throws a burrito at his roommate. It hits his roommate in the face, gives his roommate a third-degree burn. Look, the guy sends his roommate to the hospital, so there’s the assault side of it. So, you know, the police officers were like, Hey, he assaulted his roommate. He needs to be kicked off campus immediately. He needs to be removed from this University. Okay. Yeah. I- it’s hard for me to argue that. Okay. Like that is a bad situation. Is it a conflict situation? Ah! Okay! This is where it gets a little challenging. Right? So I’m dealing with a situation in which, you know, you’ve got a young man who’s highly intoxicated. He’s not even putting together sentences. I have officers that want him removed. What did I have to do at that moment to be a leader? Okay. How did I have to make my decisions? It was a challenging situation. Ultimately, when I decided to remove him for the evening. He had alternative housing off-campus. The next morning, we scheduled a meeting. We talked about the w we bring them in, asked him what happens. He doesn’t even remember it. We explained the situation, realized that they had ongoing conflict leading up to that event, that they were having roommate issues. They’re constantly fighting. Removing this kid from housing was appropriate. Removing him from campus was a different story because I would be jeopardizing his four-year degree at that point. Right. That was going to be determined at a later date. I share that as an example for a couple of different reasons, right? Because you can look at that and say, that’s a terrible situation. Of course, he needs to get kicked off campus, but the kid was not a bad kid. He made a very bad choice. One that had a significant impact, right? One that had caused significant harm. Should he lose his opportunity to a four-year degree? That was a totally different conversation, different, you know, set of parameters that we had to look at another time and date, right. I was brought in to make a decision about immediate harm and impact to the campus community. All right. I wasn’t going to make a determination that was going to impact this kid’s life for the rest of his life. I was a part of that at a later point. But I share that story for a couple of reasons. Like when you asked me what kind of conflicts have I seen? That’s probably the extreme side of it. You know, I’ve seen personality arguments. I’ve seen, you know, significant mental health issues that, that have an impact on our community. I’ve seen, you know, situations in which personal life struggles come into play at work, you know, the impact, how people make decisions. Right. I love that question. And I appreciate it because while I can continue to go on and get countless examples, almost every one of them is going to come back to an emotional response that people have. So come back to something that’s impacted who they are, you know, their values, their beliefs, something is leading up to it. And that’s why I make the argument and go back to what I said earlier. There’s going to be a reason behind something that’s going on. Now, if we make a rash decision and make decisions off of limited information, are we going to cause more impact? Are we going to deal with these complex situations in unhealthy ways? Chances are, we probably will. I rather make a decision with, with as much as I can so that I make healthy decisions, make healthy choices, make decisions that I know are going to deal with conflict in a healthy way. When Managing Conflict, Make Sure You Have ALL of the Data Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh, this is why we as individuals always need to be, I guess, very attuned to how we’re feeling. Because as you talked about the fact that it’s prolonged. So that incident, you know, with the roommates, might’ve been pretty clear. Like you could see the conflict brewing after you had the conversation, but when for those that are still struggling to maybe get their brain around all these perceived isolated incidents. Where like that’s still a conflict? Well, the reason that it’s prolonged is that maybe you have been telling yourself, my company is not treating me well, my boss isn’t treating me well, or like this is happening and you’re not seeing anything, right. Conflict avoiders this is when we’re pushing down, not saying anything, not saying anything. And then, you know, all the stars align and then it becomes a conflict. But really had we been more attuned to who we are or do more, self-reflection processed our emotions, all of the things that sometimes we have a tendency to just think like, oh, that stuff is fine. I’ve got stuff to do. I don’t have time to sit and evaluate how I’m feeling about something. If we actually lay that groundwork, we can be better. And I just love that point of conflict because it is really putting the accountability on the individual to say, you have to take responsibility for what’s irking you, bugging, you, stressing you. And if it’s something that you can control, it is then your responsibility to have a conversation to take that action. And because that’s what makes it prolonged is it’s yours. It’s the response around conflict, or maybe what we’ve been tolerating because we don’t feel like we have a voice. I think that’s so powerful because I, it really just, it helps people for me, it helped me understand that prolonged part. At first, I just kept thinking of it being a prolonged conflict, the same situation between two, you know, two parties, but really it’s, it can also just be at the individual level of perceived, you know, misgivings, misfortunes, frustration, so on and so forth. And that if you don’t take responsibility, it just could be that next situation that causes you to respond in a way that you know you didn’t want to do or show up that way. Kevin Mowers: Exactly. Let me, let me show you another way people often get this wrong. Okay. So let me ask you a question, Jenn, what is two plus two? Jenn DeWall: Four! Kevin Mowers: Are you sure?  The thing is—No, seriously. Think about second. Are you sure? Like really? Two plus two is four? You think so? Jenn DeWall: Yes! Two plus two is four. Kevin Mowers: Okay. All right. I don’t know if I agree with that. Are you sure? One more time? Are you sure? Jenn DeWall: I mean, yes, should I think it’s not anymore? Kevin Mowers: Yeah. All right. So thank you. So, all right. Let’s process this for a quick second, right? Okay. Two plus two. All right. What was the question? What’s two plus two, right? Well, “too” plus “to.” Those are two different words. I’m not even talking about numbers, Jenn, and you know, you went to the numbers right away. Right. So what happened in the next question? It seems silly, right? But this is a great example for a couple of reasons. One, you and I, I was asking them about something totally different. I didn’t frame it the right way. We talk about how that plays out, but you went to numbers. I went to words. Okay. That’s one issue when I questioned you. What happened? You’re like, what? What?? You know, like you had this emotional response, right? You at one point, you were like, “I think so?” Like also you have this uncertainty, you might even have a little fear. Like, “What? Like I got this wrong?” But I sense a little frustration. I guess at some point, and you’d probably be angry and be like, “no, I’m right.” At some point, you’re looking at me, and you’re gonna make an inference about me going, “Kevin, you’re a dummy.” Like, what are you talking about? Like, I am done with this conversation. I call those inferences. Like we are constantly pulling data, making these inferences, assuming that there are things that are happening in a way because of what we know. Right? And of course, two plus two is four. We know that. Right. But, but you could see in that quick example how that conflict situation could have played out if that emotional side of it really drove the response. That’s what happens in these situations, and what we are finding, especially now in 2021, is that people are landing in these polarizing and extreme places. Right. You know, they’re talking about something simple, like two plus two, but if I’m saying it has nothing to do with numbers, and you’re saying it’s all about numbers. Well, guess what, Jenn, you and I, we can’t be friends anymore. I can’t associate with you anymore. Your opinion does not align with my opinion. I don’t value the same thing that you value. We’re done. Why are we going to have this conversation again? You know, like that, that right there is harmful. That has a significant impact. Like that’s where people get it wrong right out of the gate, you know, is that those inferences take place. We jumped up what I call the ladder of inference. And I’ll talk a little bit about what that looks like here in a second, but we jump up these ladders of inference, and we get to a place where it’s like, you know what, polarizing extreme. I don’t even want anything to do with it anymore. Also, when there’s this conflict, is it a conflict? Okay, let’s back this up a little bit. Effective Discourse and Managing Conflict Jenn DeWall: I’m glad that you bring that piece up. And I mean, because in the U.S. And of course, every country, every country has a unique, you know, challenges whatever’s going on. But as I’m talking about even the US for the last year and a half, two years, it has been like that in terms of how people have resolved the conflict. It has been extremely divisive. There have been a lot of assumptions, regardless of what side you’re on. Like, if you believe in this, you’re a complete X. If you believe in that, you’re a complete X, and it really has created a divide. And I am so tired of allowing politics to be a reason that I don’t connect with people. Because for so long, I’ve had many friends that we have different points of view. We do not agree on the same things. And for so many years, we can have those conversations and still be friends. It’d be fine. Who cares? And then it felt like within the last few years, all of a sudden, you were meant to really take a stand and like no more– no more trying to work with them. It’s just all judgment on their values, what you perceive for them to believe. And you miss out on all of the wonderful characteristics of how diverse we truly are because you just take one judgment and assume that that is who they are, the person that these are the values that they stand for. I am so sick of that device. And truly, for leaders, it is your job to figure out how you can unite those opinions. Like I’m sick of it. Or there are so many people that I love that we may not have the same views on a lot of different things, but it does not take out the value that they bring to my life, how much I care about them. I’m so tired of the divisiveness. I’m so tired of it. Amen to that. It’s a challenge, right? It has shaped the way that we operate in 2021 and beyond. What I will say is this is a chance. This is an opportunity for us to reframe how we approach conflict. You know, because those are conflict situations. When you make, when you have an argument, a disagreement, and then you make it polarizing, you have jumped so many different places to get to the extreme that there isn’t a chance for that to come back to Well, what’s really going on. And that’s a part of this process. It’s a part of repairing the harm caused when we find ourselves in these situations. You and I simply having a disagreement about something does not make us enemies. It does not make us, you know, polarizing where I can’t associate with you. But yet the narrative that has been written today is that. I say, as leaders, reframe that, I say, let’s back that up and really push the notion of what does it mean to have discourse? What does it mean to have arguments? What does it mean to be in a place where, you know, my values, my beliefs still may be different at times? Because that brings value to the organization, brings value to the people that I associate myself with. I don’t want to be. I don’t want to hang out with people who are all like me. That makes life really boring. And it doesn’t allow us to move forward as organizations, either from a leadership standpoint. Right. So how do you, how do you navigate, how do you create these environments for which this lives in a healthy way? That’s the key. The Ladder of Inference Jenn DeWall: So hopefully, this podcast can change people’s perspectives, because again, it’s our role as leaders to unite and value those differences. I know you wanted to come back to the ladder of inference. What the heck does that mean? This is an expression I’ve never heard before. So what is the ladder of inference? Kevin Mowers: Yeah, so, you know, for me, this is, this is probably one of the first critical steps in helping resolve the conflict situation. So if you find yourself in these conflict situations, I want to give you some tips and things that you can do to actually help resolve conflict in a healthy way. Right? So the first and foremost is this notion of a ladder of inference. So, we have decisions that we have to make all over the place. Right. You know, think about driving, for example, how many decisions do you make while driving a car? Thousands, right? You have to collect data. You have to make decisions like you are constantly making these inferences of things that are happening. The same thing applies in relationships when somebody does something you know. We have to make decisions in order to move forward. Otherwise, we’d be frozen literally in time. We wouldn’t go anymore. Okay. So let me go back to an example you gave earlier. Okay? So you’re my boss, I’m your employee, right? You schedule a nine o’clock meeting. I show up at nine 30. I knew the meeting was scheduled at nine. But I’m showing up at nine 30. Now you can sit there and go. Kevin knew about that meeting. Why was Kevin late? Well, he deliberately came in late. Well, if he’s coming in deliberately late and he does this on a regular basis, he’s always late. That means Kevin is a bad employee. I can’t count on Kevin. He’s unreliable. Which means I’ve got to let Kevin go. All right. It’s not working now. All right. Does that seem unreasonable? No. If I’m always late. Okay. Is that a conflict situation? Yeah, it’s prolonged, right? It’s caused an impact. You scheduled a meeting, and I’m not there. There’s, there are all kinds of things that come out of that. Right? Well, let’s back this up a little bit. So you jumped from Kevin’s always late to Kevin needs to get fired. What’s really going on? All right. I scheduled a meeting at nine o’clock. He didn’t show up until nine-thirty. Let’s engage in a conversation. Jenn says to Kevin, Kevin, why are you late? What’s going on? Kevin responds back with Jenn. I apologize. I have to drop my kid off at eight-forty-five for school, and traffic getting out of school right now at the beginning of the year is terrible. The soonest I can get to work is nine-fifteen. You know, then once I got here at nine-fifteen today, I couldn’t find a parking spot. I got here as quickly as I could. Okay. I understand that. So this has happened quite a bit. Yes, Jenn is the beginning of the school year, three weeks in, and people can’t figure out how to drop their kids off and get them out on time. I think this is going to change. I think it’s going to get different. Okay. Kevin, what do we need to do to help that conversation? I think if we scheduled nine-thirty meetings instead of nine for the next two months, it might help me out. Okay. Different conversation, right? Different outcomes. It’s not getting fired. Kevin doesn’t feel like I don’t want to talk in the third person, but the course of that conversation changes. So when I talk about the letter of inference, what I tell people is, all right, when these things happen, our response is going to be emotional. So we put that in check. Don’t jump up the ladder of inference to the point of drawing bad conclusions. Walk that step-down, walk up the rung of ladder one step at a time, find out the right pieces of information. When you get to the top of the ladder, essentially, what you want to do is you want to take action, right? If we’re standing at the base of the ladder, we have all this data. We have to figure out what data is relevant. We have to figure out how to interpret it. We have to then make conclusions that allow us to take action. We can’t do that if we’re making rash decisions. So the first tip I have as far as resolving conflict in a healthy way is to stop personally, and make sure that you’re collecting the right piece of the data. Make sure you’re having the conversations, the dialogue, asking the right questions. That’s going to help you land in a place where you can then make decisions. Okay. Does that make sense? Jenn DeWall: Yeah. And I think that’s an important real-life example. I know in my experience in HR, I had a similar situation. There was an employee that had some personal things. I think they were actually also school-related for her children. And she had asked the leader if she could, you know, they had already had a little friction. Right. And it was something unrelated. And then she asked him for two days of the week if she could adjust her working hours to later because of school drop-off. So it was something around that. And this leader took it all the way up the ladder to getting HR involved, to thinking like, do we need to let this person go? When in actuality, this person was a great employee. There was, I would say, just an individual thing that was going on with their kid, with their schooling, that she just needed a little bit of accommodation, not a reason to lose that employee. And my heart, even hearing that employee, I was just more from an HR perspective. Bless the hearts of like. You know the type of employee relations. HR professionals have to, you know, work and manage through because some of them are just, you know, it’s a result of someone, as you said, going all the way up that ladder of inference. And making a decision instead of being like, is there something I’m missing here? Can we do this a different way? And then you watch the employee being upset. You watch the manager being upset. When it didn’t have to get to that point. So, I really appreciate you sharing that because there are a lot of examples. I’m sure other leaders can think of where if we had just backed up and walked, you know, down and then back up the ladder, we could probably see the situation in another way. So that’s one tip. So what is the, so the ladder of inference is one tip. What’s the next tip? Managing Conflict Through Better Storytelling Kevin Mowers: Yeah. So the second tip I’m going to give you is storytelling. So I’d mentioned storytelling a few times now, and I mentioned just in that last example of the ladder of inference, understanding and trying to learn more, the importance of storytelling when it comes to conflict is huge. I would say probably the biggest thing you can do to help resolve conflict. Okay. Jenn DeWall: What do you mean? Storytelling! I don’t have time to hear or listen to your story. Kevin Mowers: I’m saying, take the time. Because you know what happens? I think we know how to tell stories. I think we can, we know what that looks like, so I’m not going to spend time there. But what happens when you’re telling stories is one it’s allowing you to understand the other person’s perspective. It’s helping you get a deeper insight on what that emotional response is. Asking the right questions in those stories. That’s going to be critical. You know, so dialogues are great. In, in the restorative justice world, we have things called circle dialogues in which there are people that are involved, you bring the people together in a circle. We’ll talk about it Jenn DeWall: Like a circle formation – Kevin Mowers: Yeah, a circle formation, but that, you know, the point is people that are- everyone who’s impacted everyone who’s involved. They share their stories so that everyone gets to hear that. Using a trained facilitator, a trained mediator, to help ask those questions. Those are all good things to help tell a story. The other reason storytelling is important and why it needs to happen when it comes to resolving conflict is that it breaks down walls. Okay. So when we are in these conflict situations, the first thing we do is have these emotional responses. The second thing we do is build these walls. They’re defensive walls. Jenn DeWall: Oh, I’m a professional wall builder. And by the way, I was teasing about storytelling before, but I am definitely a professional wall builder, even though I know better. Kevin Mowers: And also, we tell these stories, we ask people to share their stories. We listen to help break those walls down. That’s the significance of it. You know, it helps us understand, as people who are trying to resolve the conflict, understand the impact, the harm that’s being caused of it. But it’s also allowing the walls to come down because if the walls are still there when it comes to trying to implement a solution, nothing’s going to happen. We want those defensive walls to come down so that we could talk about, you know, the next best thing in this process, tip number three, which is finding solutions that address the harms. Okay. So number one, tip, check your ladder of inference. You know, tip number two, storytelling, find ways for people to share their stories when they’re in these situations. The third thing is to find ways to repair the harm. Kevin Mowers: Okay. Let me talk about one thing real quick. Before I jump into this, there’s a difference between rules and impact. Okay. Our society is driven by rules. Think about it for a second. If you, if you drive down the road right now and you go a hundred miles an hour, it’s against the law, right? What’s going to happen to you? Jenn DeWall: Yeah. I could get a speeding ticket. I could hurt someone. Kevin Mowers: Yup. Yup. If that happens too many times, you’re going to lose your license. They can lock you up, insert whatever situation. Typically, there’s going to be a rule that’s tied to that our society is driven off of that premise. So if you break the rule, then the question becomes, how do I punish you? All right. Jenn DeWall: What’s the consequence. Kevin Mowers: What’s the consequence in this conversation. What I’m saying is, instead of saying, what is the rule? I’m saying, what is the impact of that rule being broken? So in that specific situation that we just talked about, you driving a hundred miles an hour, you could get in a wreck, get severely hurt, you might hurt somebody else. You’re causing an officer to have to pull you over to deal with you when they could be dealing with someone else. I mean, you could go on as far as what the level impact is, but there is a difference between this notion of rules versus impact. What I’m saying is a tip number three— is focus on the impact, focus on the harm. Okay. Go back to my wife and me, for example. Okay. You know, we, we, you know, we can get an argument on how our finances are used, right? You know, where we spend money, how we spend it, all that stuff comes into play. I could get really upset about her spending 40 bucks at Kohl’s, or I can come back to the conversation and say, Hey, I’m struggling with this because that $40 could have paid for the kids’ basketball camp this year. You know? So it’s not only impacting me because I’m upset about that. But you know, it’s impacting my daughter. She can’t do, she can’t do basketball camp. And that’s just an example. Right. I am focusing on the rules. So instead of my wife’s spending $40, I’m not worried about that. That made me upset. I had that moment. I’m then talking to her about all right, the impact of that then, is this. That’s the difference? Okay. So when we find ourselves in these complex situations at work, somebody showed up late, somebody broke a rule, somebody did X, Y, and Z, okay. That lives, that has its place. Focus on Impact Instead of Blame Kevin Mowers: But then our conversations lead to then shift to what is the impact? What is the harm that’s caused by that situation? All right. When we check our inferences, when we story-tell to understand the full, you know, aspect of what this looks like, we understand a little bit better what that impact and what that harm is. That then allows us to focus on solutions that address those harms first and foremost. That’s how you start resolving conflict in a healthy way. That’s what leads you down the path of saying, all right, there’s a solution to this. There isn’t an extreme polarizing. I’m right. You’re wrong. You broke a rule. I’m going to punish you. Okay. This happened. Let’s figure out how to resolve it in a way that’s going to make a difference. Jenn DeWall: I think you pointed or to a place that I think a lot of people get it wrong, right? They miss the opportunity. Because when we think about storytelling, it’s connecting people to the big picture. But to remember that your new hires, people that might be new to the workforce, are not going to be thinking big picture because that’s just not what they’ve needed to do, or they haven’t been a part of your organization to really understand that. And your storytelling allows them to see their impact. And without it, without connecting to the why you can keep telling them to do the exact same thing. But when they don’t know why they don’t necessarily have the motivation, or they don’t understand the consequence of not doing something. And maybe it’s your, even if you’re thinking about that employee, because I know that they’re there that are like, I hate the grunt work. I don’t like the stuff that’s redundant. Well, you know what, you’re the stuff that you perceive as grunt work is actually essential to how we treat our customers. It’s so important. And so I think, you know, just taking the time to slow down, to speed up and actually start with that storytelling allows you to find the solution. So I love that, but why, so why else? Because you have other benefits, like why else? So when we focus on identifying the impact, which I also thought of even having, I know this as a problem, not a perfect example as it relates to that, but this month at Crestcom, we’re talking about, or we share the story of Sully and landing the plane on the Hudson. And when I think about, you know, some of the, I guess, feedback that he received after this, it wasn’t great, right? He didn’t follow protocol. He, but yet when you look at the impact, he saved all of those lives and landed it, you know, appropriately. And I even think about that. And sometimes, yeah, we have to determine and not only stick to the rule but think about the outcomes that we’re getting. So not sure where that is relevant, but I did connect that. Kevin Mowers: If it’s relevant, right? Because I think that forced the aviation industry to reframe how they approach a situation like that. Right? You have rules, he broke the rules. Let’s punish him. Well, actually, no, we have rules. He improvised. He actually did all the right things, saved lives. We need to check ourselves. We need to back this inference up a little bit. We heard his story. We heard what really took place. Let’s figure out solutions. Then that makes sense. We’re not going to punish them. We’re not going to fire him. We’re actually going to hold them to esteem in what we do. So, so thank you for sharing that. You said something that kind of triggered a few thoughts, you know, the why. Why is this important? You know, why should we look at inferences? Why should we story-tell? You know, why should we focus on solutions that think about the harm and impact? When we start thinking through those lenses first and foremost, what that does is, is it rebuilds trust. Repairing Harm Kevin Mowers: So when we’re in these situations where conflict happens, trust usually as the first thing that said question, okay, to what degree? Totally different conversation. But we allow ourselves to start rebuilding trust in that conversation. The other thing it does is it advocates for the needs of the things that are taking place in those situations, typically the emotional needs, but they’re also may be other needs at play. Right? So that, that latter example I gave you, I need to drop my kids off at school. My needs are there. I can’t. I can’t just send my kids and say good luck. Right? You get to advocate. You get to actually help me in this. You’re advocating for my needs. So building trust, advocating for people’s needs in these situations are important. We can respond with purpose and intention, which is huge. How many times have you ever been in a situation where somebody says, Hey, I’m sorry, Jenn. And you’re like, yeah. I don’t think you are. You know, that really didn’t feel like that didn’t feel like you truly are apologetic or sincere. Well, you are repairing harm. Having somebody actually do things to repair the harm demonstrates purpose, demonstrates intentionality behind us, moving forward through this conflict situation, getting to a resolution. The other piece that I’ll throw in there. And you mentioned accountability several times, and I’ve yet to mention that it is a huge part of this conversation for a couple of different reasons. But when you engage in storytelling, when you engage in the social checking where biases aren’t inference that are at play, when you focus on repairing the harm, that’s where true accountability takes place. True accountability happens when somebody understands the impact that they cause to somebody else, you can quote me on that. It’s actually in a book, okay? Whose story? The little book of restorative justice we’ll get to that. But accountability is a big piece of this know. So we, we, we’re driving accountability by engaging in those processes. And accountability needs to be present. You know, if I was to say, what are the staples? What are the foundations of being restorative, thinking about impact and harm when it comes to conflict, it’s rebuilding trust. It’s advocating for people’s needs. It’s responding with purpose, and it’s active accountability. Those pieces have to be a part of that question. I often get this point in the conversation, is great. You know, this sounds awesome. You know, also sounds kind of magical. And I don’t know if it’s going to work in every situation. Let me, let me address that because that’s real. It’s not. This stuff is not applicable in every situation. I think it’s applicable in most situations, but this doesn’t work when 1 – people aren’t actively accountable in the process. Conflict Management Requires Real Accountability Kevin Mowers: If you have somebody who doesn’t want to engage, if you have somebody that doesn’t take ownership over this, if you have somebody who’s just downright dismissing the situation, this isn’t going to work. It’s going to be a real challenge. You’re going to be an uphill battle. Not saying it can’t work, but you’re going to be in a battle. Basic moral, good versus evil. Okay. Somebody can’t comprehend what is good or bad. And I’m talking about the worst of worst in our society. This is where it doesn’t play out. Okay. So am I advocating for restorative justice when it comes to the, you know, murderers, you know, that do the most bridges, grievous crimes in our society, not necessarily but– But there are examples in which restorative justice has been used in murder situations. Okay. That could be a whole other conversation, but I’m not dismissing that at the same time it makes it challenging. The other piece, I think is probably the most important, is when there is such an impact, such a harm, cause that it can not be repaired. The challenge was that we had to look here internally and say, all right, can this be repaired with me first and foremost? I’m going to make the argument. In most cases I can, if our hearts are in the right place and our hearts are and move forward in the way that we’ve been talking today, there’s a chance. But there are situations that happen in which harm can’t be repaired. You know, for example, you’re at work. Boss is constantly doing things. You’ve done all that you can possibly do, you know, to address the situation, but yet it continues and you continue to get impacted emotionally by this. Well, maybe it’s time for you to leave. Maybe it’s time to find a new place to work. Right. maybe that conflict situation that has then become a prolonged, significant impact, it can’t be resolved. Jenn DeWall: I think that’s an important piece to bring up because a lot of people might still be tolerating situations that aren’t great for them, whether that’s in a relationship or whether that’s even your work environment, whether or not that’s healthy and productive and a place that you need to be is that sometimes there has to be the point where we say it can’t be repaired. And I’m not going to endure XYZ to be able to try and live off of hope. Like, I’m just going to say it can’t be repaired. And some things it can be, Kevin Mowers: That’s the difference, right? So you at least then have a reason versus, Boy, Jenn, I just don’t like you. And I don’t like what you believe, thus, I’m not going to have anything to do with you. Like there is a difference, right? It’s not polarizing. And there’s a reason as to why you make that decision. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. And that, I mean, I think the accountability piece is huge just for each of us as individuals, you might have to take a hard look at yourself. You might have to reflect on some situations that maybe you’ve had conflict, just like myself. I don’t love how I showed up in my twenties. I think that there are people that probably loved working with me. And there are definitely people that were like if I don’t see Jenn ever again, its totally fine. And I, you know, I respect that, but it’s, it is hard. I don’t want to say it’s hard. It’s, it’s not even easy for me to share these moments of imperfection and mistakes. Right. It’s hard, but it has to start with that because if you don’t own it, you can’t control it. And if don’t own the fact that sometimes I get too emotionally riled in situations, then I can’t manage those emotions in those situations. Or I can’t even make a repair attempt to apologize. Hey, I have a tendency to XYZ. And so I love that. Just talking about, you know, if we don’t take accountability, there’s no, there’s nothing that’s going to happen. Learning to Manage Conflict is a Journey Kevin Mowers: No, that’s why I said what I said at the beginning. For me, this is a journey. It’s one that I don’t see it ever ending in any way, shape or form. You know, I have talked about conflict for years now. You know, I’m studying it. I’m passionate about it, but I hate, I don’t like conflict still. Don’t in fact, I’m probably the worst at conflict in my immediate family, with the ones who I love the most, which is really a sad story. Okay. And I admit that, you know, but I also admit it saying not there’s an opportunity here for me to grow, to become better. I want to be a better dad. I want to be a better husband. I want to be a better business owner. I want to do things better day to day. I want to move hearts. I want to move my heart in this conversation. Right. Like that’s the difference. And that’s why I say it’s a journey. It’s a process. It does not end in the thing that, you know, conflict and master it and will never happen again to you. Again, I will challenge and I will say, nah, that’s not real. I’m gonna, I’m gonna call BS on that one. Jenn DeWall: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. Kevin, I think there are just a lot of really interesting considerations in terms of why we can’t resolve it, how we can resolve it. What are any final thoughts that you would like to share with our audience before we wrap up? Kevin Mowers: Yeah. Yeah. I think what comes to mind that maybe I haven’t talked about yet is one, if it’s not, if it’s not uncomfortable, you’re probably not doing it right. And I’ve often said that in context of asking the right questions, are we doing all that we can do? But when it comes to the reality of how these things play out in the work that we need to do with it, there’s intentionality behind it. There has to be purpose behind it. And if that’s not uncomfortable, you’re probably not engaging in the right conversation. So I would say, keep that in mind in the conversation, you know, this work has always done with people, not to people. So if we want to have a good, healthy conversation around conflict or a conflict situation, we do that with each other. I don’t do that to you as my employee. I don’t do that to you as my friend. I don’t do that to you as my wife, we do this together as an example. And again, I think for me, the biggest thing, our, all this is, is think about the harm. Think about the impact. You know, if we’re focusing on that, that first and foremost, it sets the catalyst to every other facet of how we engage in storytelling, how we engage in how we look at our inferences that we’re making our biases and those conversations. So, you know, think about those things. You know, the three tips, inferences, storytelling, thinking about harm. It needs to be uncomfortable to some degree to do it well, to do it right. And we do this with people. It’s all about the relationships and the people that we have. Jenn DeWall: We are in the business of working with people, not robots. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. I just love your passion for this. It makes me even think that I want to have you back to even talk about what are questions that we can ask to help people embrace conflict, because there are, you know, you talked about questions that there are still people that are like, I don’t want to go into that discomfort that you’re recommending Kevin, but maybe it’s just giving people some guidance on how to navigate those conversations, which is what we can bring you back for. I would love to have it. Kevin, how can people connect with you? Kevin Mowers: Best way. Shoot me an email at kevin.mowers@crestcom.com. I’m on all social media platforms. Well, LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me. Kevin Mowers is where you can find me on all those platforms. Jenn, I appreciate the time. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh, Kevin, thank you for what you do. Thank you for just developing the leaders in Ohio. But obviously, now you’re touching the hearts of a broader audience, and we’re grateful for you. Kevin Mowers: Thanks, Jenn. I appreciate it. Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast. I hope you’ve enjoyed the conversation with Kevin, and if you want to connect with him, you can connect with him at LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-mowers/, or you can send them an email at Kevin.Mowers@crestcom.com and also connect with them on any of your social media platforms. If you enjoyed today’s episode or know someone that could benefit from talking about conflict and finding healthier ways to resolve it, share this episode with them, share it with your team members, share it with your leaders because we know that when we resolve conflict in a better way, great things can happen. And if you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to leave us a review on your favorite podcast, streaming service.   The post Managing Conflict with Kevin Mowers, CEO of Extended Management, a Crestcom Franchise appeared first on Crestcom International.

How to Drive Your Career with Leadership Coach and Author, Ed Evarts Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall, on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit. I sat down with Ed Evarts, who is the founder and president of Excellius Leadership Development, an organization focused on coaching mid to senior-level leaders and their teams in business environments. With over 25 years of innovative leadership and management experience, Ed possesses the ability to build awareness, create action, and deliver results. He is known for his business acumen and his ability to resolve complex human relations issues, and his enthusiastic, accessible and responsive style. Ed partners with managers and leaders in business teams to explore clarity and communication and traverse conflict and change. And today, Ed and I are going to be talking about how you can drive your career. Meet Ed Evarts, Author of Drive Your Career Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone. This is Jenn DeWall. And on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I’m sitting down with Ed Evarts. Ed and I are going to talk all about how you can drive your career, which is such an important topic right now is we’re hearing things like the mass resignation or people are talking about burnout, or maybe people have just been waiting ideally to determine what that next move is. Or maybe you’ve just been sitting there because you’re like, I don’t even know where to start. And those are the questions that we hope to be able to answer today. So Ed, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Ed Evarts: Thank you, Jenn. I’m thrilled to be here. Jenn DeWall: So can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your business Excellius what do you do? Ed Evarts: Sure. So today, I am a leadership coach. I’m a team coach, and I also do small business strategy. I’ve authored two books, Drive Your Career, which I hope we’ll talk about a little bit today. And my first book, Raise Your Visibility and Value. And I also host a podcast called Be Brave at Work, where we talk a little bit about how people can be braver in the workplace and hopefully leave them with one or two ideas or strategies and things they can do in order to be more successful. In my prior career, before I became a leadership coach, I worked in human resources and provided business strategy to mostly retail organizations from college for the first 20 years, and then worked at a business to business services company for the next ten years. And then, I  left that company in 2008 to start my own practice. Why Should We Drive Our Own Careers? Jenn DeWall: Yes. And well, you’re doing important work, and I guess starting out, I kind of have a question because a lot of organizations, you know, I, for my first time, I just got brought into an organization to talk about career development and I don’t see a lot more organizations necessarily bringing in someone to talk about their career development. And why do you think that is? Like, why do organizations kind of shy away from taking a role? And it really just lies with the leader. Moving Beyond Performance Reviews Ed Evarts: Well, organizations evolve as time passes. And you know, I think we’re finally getting to the point where we realize things like performance assessments, the way we have done them for the last 40 years, are not working. That training the way that we have done it for the last 40 years isn’t working. And organizations used to be the place where you, where you went to work, and they would do all this for you. They would provide you training, and they would provide you all these things. And I think that’s evolving as well, where they now expect you to do it, right? So, Hey, we’re not going to provide you the training necessarily. There’ll be some basic skill enhancements, but then, you know, some people call them softer skills. I call them harder skills like communication, delegation, accountability, conflict navigation, things of that nature. You know, we’re not going to provide you. You have to go off and find that as well. So it’s a fairly subtle change, but you can see it happening in organizations around the globe where you are becoming more the person that you have to take responsibility to do those things versus your organization, doing it for you. Jenn DeWall: Yes. I appreciate that insight. I just, as you were speaking, I was thinking like, how happy would the workforce be if we could change our performance appraisal conversations, or even the whole process, which depending on what your organization does, it can feel really long and tedious. And I often used to wait for the email reminders just to be like, this is your last day to submit, but wouldn’t it be lovely if organizations could replace that whole process with just more dialogue around how to drive your career at work and talking about how are you going to achieve this goal? What can you do? How can I help you? How can I support you? I mean, bringing in all of the Ed Evarts in the world and helping people navigate this, instead of feeling like, okay, what’s going to be my goal for this. And I mean, I’m not sure about the clients that you’ve worked with, but I know in my experience, sometimes it feels so redundant to do a performance appraisal because it’s something that is a set and forget. I don’t feel like every company actually monitors it. And so you spend two, three hours again, depending on how time-intensive it is. And I’ve, I’ve done a few of them, but why, why does someone forget? Like why are we continuing to help or make people do this? It is just. It’s the definition of insanity in my book because if we’re not going to use it, why are we wasting people’s time and having them create it just so we can check a box and say they did it? Ed Evarts: Oh, no, that might be their motivation. I agree with you. I think it would be lovely if we moved away from kind of the structured annual performance assessments, which have failed. They have not achieved whatever it is that they were originally intended to achieve. And by the way, this is a model that was created back in the forties and fifties where the work structure and the way that we operate we’re different. And so today, we’re much more technologically advanced. We’re much more conversational. People know things about you and me that, you know, ten years ago, they never would have ever known because they can look us up on LinkedIn and Facebook and the internet and find these things out. So, you know, companies need the model and mirror what people are experiencing. And so clients that I work with, and there are some that still have forms or online systems that use people still get numbers. Ed Evarts: Like you’re a 4.5 out of five and things of this nature. And it just feels so archaic. And what I’m attempting to do. And I have colleagues who do this only for a living. They manage performance assessment processes is move people to more frequent conversations about how you’re doing what you need to do to be successful more frequently. So we can fix it at the moment versus waiting until the end of the year when so much time has gone by. I can’t even remember what it is that you’re talking about and helped me at the moment. So I hope organizations kind of wake up and see that there are more effective ways to manage performance, manage career and manage people. Then these stuffy processes that we inherited from people of the past. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. And just to all the leaders right now, think about the time that you would get back from having to do because all of the leaders have to then do their own work for each employee’s performance appraisal. And that is also insanely time-consuming. So we’re planting seeds right now. We’re planting seeds efforts are hoping that people will start to say, like, yeah, there’s gotta be a different way. So we’re going to dive into, Ed Evarts: I guess, just quickly, Jenn, I mean, and to your point, people don’t do performance appraisal writing effectively. So it’s not just the process itself that doesn’t work, but I would guarantee you that nine times out of ten, most performance assessments are written the night before that, you know, people put it off because they don’t enjoy it. They don’t get energy out of evaluating others. And so I put it off, I put it off and then Monday is the day I’ve scheduled to meet with you. And I will guarantee you that Sunday night, I am working to craft what it is that I want to talk with you about. So it’s not just the delivery system that doesn’t work. It’s the creation system that doesn’t work either. It doesn’t work for anyone. What Inspired You to Write Drive Your Career? Jenn DeWall: Yeah. That’s great. I appreciate that insight because you’re right. It’s, it becomes then less about, you know, really thinking about what that person is and truly evaluating them and more about being, you know, short to complete the appraisal before the meeting. And so then I think it leads to more generic feedback, not thought out, probably, maybe he was like maybe more of a knee-jerk, emotional response that’s close to. So whatever you experienced in the moment, instead of thinking about, you know, the length of your relationship, I just, oh my gosh. I think that’s such an interesting perspective and where we get it wrong. We’re going to be talking about your book, drive your career. So nine high-impact ways to take responsibility for your own success. What inspired you to write this book? Ed Evarts: Well, I’ve been a leadership coach now for about 15 years. And my first book, Raise Your Visibility and Value was really based on my 18 years in corporate America. And what I had experienced as a leader growing and evolving, and sometimes not growing and evolving, in order to be more successful. And after 15 years as a leadership coach, I realized that there were certain stories that I would share with clients repeatedly. And regardless of whether they were a president or a frontline supervisor, these stories came up naturally. I didn’t bring them up purposefully, but based on their situation and their needs, you know, these stories came up and, you know, one of those shower moments where I said, you know what? I should pay attention to what these stories are. Because I noticed one day that I once again shared another story with another client, and I ultimately identified nine behaviors or actions, whatever you’d like to call them, that I think people should be more aware of in order to drive their career. Most people or many people are more passengers in their career. They end up wherever they end up, and I believe people need to be more of a driver of their career. They need to think about where they want to go. They need to then think about how they’re going to get there, and then the need then need to take action in order to make it happen. So what do you want to do? How do you want to have an impact? Where do you want to go? And let’s drive your career in that direction Jenn DeWall: I really appreciated your book. I mean, not only the nine strategies on what we can do or the ways, you know, the techniques, but really those stories because the story is normalized. I think some of the shame, or just fear that we have around our career development, but before we dive more into some of those stories, cause I want to talk about that when we talk about the nine ways, why is it important to drive your career at work? Are You the Driver or the Passenger? Ed Evarts: Well, as I mentioned a couple of moments ago, most people wake up one day and say, how did I get here? What am I doing? I don’t enjoy it. You know, why am I doing what I’m doing? Right. They have this moment where it just doesn’t feel right or doesn’t sit right with them. And so I’m attempting to help people really restructure the context of how they’re operating to say, well, when’s the last time you asked yourself, am I doing what I want to be doing? You know, some people are even in the wrong career, they may be in, you know doing audit and the finance department, and they don’t like audit or don’t want to be doing auditing. Right. So, you know, the needs and experiences of people are significantly different. So it’s more about restructuring the context and saying, Hey, let me think about what I want to do next, where I want to go and what I want to do. You know, Jenn, we hear a lot of people have these mid-career moments where they were an attorney at a big New York City law firm, and they quit. And they now run a bed and breakfast in Vermont. Right? I mean, it’s just like significant changes. And it’s like, well, how did that happen? Well, it happened, I think because they said at one point, why am I here? What am I doing? I’m not enjoying this as much as I thought I would have. Now. I thought being an attorney at a big New York City law firm would be wonderful, but it’s not. It’s not what I thought it would be. And so this is designed to help people earlier decide what I want to do. Where do I want to go? Where I want to be and take certain steps and actions in order to make it happen. Jenn DeWall: Oh gosh, I, I want to ask the question because I think that’s where the meat is. Why do we stay the passenger? I know in both of our work as coaches, we likely have a lot of, we see a lot of different things, a lot of different things. And why is it that people still stay stuck from your perspective? Why is it that we remain the passenger instead of jumping into that front seat and owning it? What do you think what’s the motivation or the narrative or the messages that we’re telling ourselves that we’re just not, you know, building up that motivation to actually change. Ed Evarts: Yeah. I think it is more of a narrative, and I’m not a sociologist, so I have not studied this technically, but the workplace moves quickly, right? We work in places at time, goes by very fast. And you know, we always joke, I can’t believe it’s already X month in the year, or I can’t believe it’s X year, or I can’t believe I’m turning X age. Right. I mean, we’re very tied to time, and I believe it just goes by very quickly. So, you know, we’re just not in an environment where people ask us to think about what we want to do next and how we want to do it. That’s why going back to our earlier comment about performance assessments, you know, I believe those conversations also need to include career development, and you should be asking people who are great auditors, or great attorneys, or great manufacturing professionals. Do you enjoy this? Is this providing you what you hoped it would provide? What’s missing from what you’re doing. I mean, these are great motivating conversations to have with people. And who knows that attorney might’ve said, it’s so funny. You should ask that because I was just speaking with my spouse yesterday, and I don’t know that I’m enjoying this as much as I thought I would. That would be brave to say at work, but those are the types of thoughts and comments. But you know, I think it’s a narrative based on just how fast the world turns and time goes by. And now I sit here and say, Hey, I’m going to join this company. I’m going to stay for about a year and then move on. And then the next thing, you know, five years have gone by, and it’s like, how did that happen? So I think it’s time moving quickly and faster than our ability to keep up with it. Jenn DeWall: I’m curious. Do you still see, because I hear a lot of this that, you know, people staying stuck in their career become, it comes down to, well, there’s either the comparison. Well, I feel like everyone else’s wants this in my organization, so I should want it too, or what I notice a lot more with gen Z and millennials is that there’s this pressure or perceived expectation that their parents want them to do this. Or that the people there need to see them, you know, maybe pursue this organization or this type of, I guess, career. And so they feel like if they don’t do what other people want them to do, then they’re not getting it right. And so then they just stay there and tolerate a job that they don’t like or they’re not passionate about. Ed Evarts: Yeah. There’s a lot of reasons why people do what they do. And just to echo some of your thoughts, some of its hierarchy, my parents were teachers. So I thought I needed to become a teacher. Or the parents may have said, we want you to become a teacher. It’s a great life. And you know, we really want you to do this. Some of it might be financial, right. There may be times where you’re now at a salary rate that you just can’t give up and of your personal finances and the house you have and the cars you have. You just can’t walk away and say, Hey, I’m going to leave that law firm and become a bed and breakfast owner because the drop of income will be so great that I just can’t do that. So, you know, I think there’s a number of reasons why, and they all vary, by the way. Your reasons may be different than my reasons, but may be different from someone else’s reasons. Ed Evarts: But you know, we all have reasons why we are doing what we’re doing. Now, let me pause for a second and say, there’s a lot of people who are doing things they love doing. I’m not suggesting everybody is stuck in a role that they don’t enjoy. You know, there are many people who do exactly what they want to do, and are really, really good at it. And you know, certainly celebrities and people that we see in the news, maybe examples of some of those. But, you know, there are a subset of people who may not be doing exactly what they want to be doing or enjoy it and need to stop, pause and drive their career. Create a Positive Relationship with Your Boss Jenn DeWall: Yes. I love that. And maybe that’s time to dive into it because it’s, this is an important conversation. If you are sitting here, you’re in the passenger seat; we’re going to help you shift into the driving or the driver’s seat. And even just thinking that no matter what your age is, no matter what your background is, no matter what the financial limitations are, you can still change. Now. I’m not saying the change is going to be easy, but I am saying to, you know, keep an open mind as Ed and I are going to dive into his book, drive your career, to talk about the nine ways that you can drive your career. So let’s dive into it. And I love this. And I want you to share that story from chapter one by talking about your first one. So one of your first ways was to have a positive relationship with your boss. Tell me a little bit more about why that’s essential in driving your career. Ed Evarts: So this is such an important characteristic of behavior, of most work environments, and I’m sure many of your listeners are shaking their heads saying, yeah, I need to have a better relationship with my boss, or I do have a great relationship with my boss, but you know, our boss-subordinate relationships are so critically important because your boss is really the gatekeeper for your career. If there are projects or assignments or roles that are being discussed, they’re the ones who might say, Hey, Jenn is a great person for this. I think she’d be perfect for that. If you don’t have a great relationship with your boss, that may not happen, right? They may pass you over or not think about you, or don’t want to think about you because you don’t have a great relationship with them. So my point in the chapter is that it’s important to sit back and say, you know, on a scale of one to six, if I was to think about the relationship I have with my boss, where would I score myself with one being horrible? You know, we don’t talk to each other, and we avoid each other at all times. Or we’re a six, right? We finish each other’s sentences and know we love each other. And we go out to dinner every Friday night. We’re great friends and coworkers, et cetera. So, you know, where are you? And not suggest that if anybody is at a four or lower, that there are things they need to be doing, and this is you, not your boss. And that’s another challenge people have. They say, well, why shouldn’t my boss do it? And all change starts with you. So if you want to have a better relationship with your boss, you have to start doing things in order to plant the seed or get that conversation going. And I will guarantee all of the listeners that the better your relationship is with your boss, the better career experience you will have. The worse a relationship you have with your boss, you are not having a good time at work. Jenn DeWall: Right? That is the place that you love. I love you’ve shared one of the stories here, and I think it’s important because someone might be thinking right now. Well, I have a great relationship with my boss. I don’t even need to worry about this. I’ll tune out for this part of the conversation, but you have a story here about a gentleman who had, you know, received or achieved a lot of different success. He had a great relationship with his boss, and then things changed. Can you share that story with us? Ed Evarts: Sure. This is, you know, all the stories in the book are based on real-life experiences. So the names have been changed, of course, to protect the guilty. But in chapter one, we talk about an individual who was hired by a boss with whom he had a great relationship. And during the six years they worked together, everything went great. Salary grew, the role grew, goals, projects were given to this individual, and they had a great relationship to the extent that, and I didn’t mention this in the chapter, but to the extent that the employee may have taken it for granted like, Hey, this is just how it is. And this is how I’m experiencing it. And everything is fantastic. The boss ended up leaving for another opportunity, and a new boss came in, and the individual and his new boss could not be more different. So this new person was not like his prior boss could not be more different in respect to leadership style and behavior. The individual in the chapter did not make any effort to say, gee, this relationship is not great. What am I going to do in order to improve it? Projects diminished, visibility diminished. The island this person was on got smaller and smaller until the point he was laid off. So this is a very common activity. When new leaders come into an organization, oftentimes, new leaders bring in people they used to work with because they know these people, and they know that they can work with them well. That doesn’t mean that the door for you is shut, but it means you need to go into overdrive in respect to ensuring, Hey, you’re a new boss, I’m a new employee. Let’s talk about each other’s styles and how we can work together because I want to be wildly successful for you. I want us to have a great relationship and ensure that things work out well. These are not conversations that we’re having in the environment. And if chapter one, if that employee had had that conversation with the boss, you know, my impression would be that they would not have been laid off, and things would have gone a lot better. Take Ownership of Work Relationships Jenn DeWall: What would you say to people that think that maybe the leader is the one that needs to drive that conversation? Because I think there are plenty of leaders that probably aren’t having that conversation with maybe a new employee or someone that they’ve inherited. As you talked about in the book. What do you say to the individuals that feel like the ownership is on the boss to drive that conversation? Because I think there are probably people that feel like they might be overstepping a boundary if they’re the ones that are driving it. Ed Evarts: So, you know, all I can tell you, Jenn, is that if you’re feeling something you own taking action on it. So if you’re feeling that you don’t have a great relationship with your boss, you need to do something. You can’t sit back and wait for your boss who may not know, or may not care about the state of your relationship. But if you don’t think you have a great relationship and it takes bravery to say to your boss, Hey, I think our relationship is fairly strong, but I think it could be better. Are you willing to work with me to identify two or three things that we could both be doing a little bit differently to enhance it? Of course, I would hope the boss would say, absolutely. Let’s talk about it and you figure it out two or three things it might do. And that’s just the start. That’s just getting going so that you can continue, can continue to have these conversations with your boss. This isn’t a time discussion, but this is an ongoing annual or twice a year type conversation. But you know, all I can tell you is that if you’re feeling something we can’t, we can’t manage the emotions of others. We have to take action in order to improve it. A Message from Crestcom: Crestcom is a global organization dedicated to developing effective leaders. Companies all over the world have seen their managers transformed into leaders through our award-winning and accredited leadership development programs. Our signature BPM program provides interactive management training with a results-oriented curriculum and prime networking opportunities. If you’re interested in learning more about our flagship program and developing your managers into leaders, please visit our website to find a leadership trainer near you. Or maybe you yourself have always wanted to train and develop others. Crestcom is a global franchise with ownership opportunities available throughout the world. If you have ever thought about being your own boss, owning your own business and leveraging your leadership experience to impact businesses and leaders in your community, Crestcom may be the right fit for you. We’re looking for professional executives who are looking for a change and want to make a difference in people’s lives. Learn more about our franchise opportunity on the own a franchise page of our website at Crestcom.com. Jenn DeWall: Now in that chapter, you also talk about something that I think doesn’t come to mind earlier on it. I mean, it didn’t, at least for me in the early part of my career, which is what your bosses’ goals are? What are their career aspirations? What are they hoping to accomplish? Why is that important to understand what your boss wants? Ed Evarts: Well, in this fast-paced environment we work in, we are all obsessed with our own goals, our own projects, our own performance, you know, it’s all me, me, me, me, me. And in order to build a great relationship, you have to find space and time to understand what’s important to others. Because if you are all me, me, me, then that’s all you will ever be. And you won’t have great relationships with others. So in that effort to have a better relationship with your boss, one of the things you might ask is, what do you want to do? How do you want to be successful? What’s important to you as a leader in this organization, because I want to help you get there. But if I don’t know what they are, I can’t help you. Now it’s disappointing in some respects that bosses don’t know this and say to people, Hey, I just wanted to get the team together. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about what I think is important. What I think we should be working on, et cetera, lots of bosses don’t do that. But I think it’s a great relationship enhancer. If you find time to talk with your boss about what’s important to him or her on their career and their goals, how did you get here? What are you looking to do? What’s important to you. For our listeners, I think that’s a great thing and a great activity to do in order to enhance the relationship. Are You a Helper or a Hurter? Jenn DeWall: Yeah. And you talk about the notion of being a helper. And I think that when you think about it, through the perspective of being a helper, it gives you may be a sense of purpose and how you can develop that positive relationship because you’re there to serve, right? It’s servant-based leadership, then what can I do to help? And hopefully, there’s reciprocity in that where that leader will then, in turn, say, how can I help you? But let’s talk a little bit about being a helper. And I forget the other word that you had said, be a helper, but not a blank. Ed Evarts: A hurter! So if you do that, if you do that exercise of assessing where you are on a scale of one to six, if you’re a four or lower, you might be a hurter. And you know, it sounds overly simplistic, but it’s how we think about people. You know, when you think about your team or think about people you work with, some people are helpers, right? If you need something, they always say yes, or they challenge you and ask you a little bit more about it, whatever it might be, but they help you in respect to moving forward and making great progress. Others are hurters, right? They’re what we call high transaction people. They take too much time. They ask too many questions. They pull down the energy and the mood. In order to help things move more effectively, I would tell you that as a spouse, as a parent, as a next-door neighbor, as a leadership coach, as a person, I want to be a helper. I want to be somebody who, if somebody crosses paths with me, even if I only direct them to somebody else, they’re always going to view me and see me as somebody who felt I do not want to be seen or be experienced as a hurter with anyone. Now, there may be one or two people that that might be appropriate. I’m not saying the world, but in general, you know, I want to be a helper. And so you should think to yourself when I think about my relationship with my boss, and by the way, you can also think about this with peers and subordinates. Would my boss say I’m a helper? Or would my boss say I’m in the middle? Which isn’t great. Or would my boss say, you know, quite frankly, Ed, you’re asking the question, and I want to be honest with you. I feel like you’re a hurter, right? That you’re hurting our efforts. You’re hurting our organization, and you’re hurting the projects. And here’s why. So it’s hard to hear these things, but you can’t make progress unless you know how people feel about you or else you’re always going to be in la-la land thinking that it’s better than it really is. You Need Self-Awareness AND Self-Management Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh, I love this. And I think it’s a great segue into the second way. But you know, as we wrap up the first way, have a positive relationship with your boss, you know, get to know, understand their career aspirations. And I love that asking yourself and asking them, are you a helper or a hurter, but that leads us into self-awareness which your second way is that no one knows you better than you do. Why is that an important piece in career development? There’s a lot of ways I think people get that wrong, even though they’re the ones that know themselves the best. Ed Evarts: Well, lots of people I’ve worked with. And again, these stories are based on client experiences. And many of the people that I work with never took time throughout their career. Again, due to the pace and the effort on goals and projects and meetings and initiatives to reflect back on themselves and know why do I feel the way that I feel? Or why am I experiencing what I’m experiencing? As a leadership coach my number one goal is to help people build their self-awareness so they can self-manage more effectively. That doesn’t mean it’s all strengths. It doesn’t mean it’s all weaknesses. All of us have strengths. All of us have areas of opportunity. I need to know them so that I can manage myself a little bit more effectively. I’m sure we have all worked for people who have low self-awareness and are like the proverbial bull in the China shop who just operate in a way that we’re like, how did this person ever get this job? Ed Evarts: I mean, you know, they are so bad at something or the way they handle themselves or how they interact with others. And that’s because their self-awareness is low. And they don’t either care or are interested in building their self-awareness. And so chapter two is really to remind folks that, you know, once or twice a year, you should find even a half hour and a whiteboard to sit back and say, how am I doing? What’s important to me? Am I where I think I should be? And if not, and if there’s gaps in those answers, what can I do next in order to close those gaps? And so nobody knows you better than you do. Jenn. Nobody knows your truths. Nobody knows your lies. Nobody knows little things that you’ve done, that you haven’t ever told anyone about, better than a spouse, better than a parent. Nobody knows you better than you. And is the strongest asset you should use in order to make great progress. If you’re not honest with yourself and doing what you believe you should be doing, you’re never going to get there. Jenn DeWall: You know this, and you’ve answered this in this chapter. And I want to talk about it because we also asked this at Crestcom in our emotional intelligence course, but what is the difference, right? Are self-awareness and self-management the same thing? And that’s, you know, getting people to really think about that question. Cause I think a lot of people think they’re the same. Yeah. You’re shaking your head. No, we know it’s no. Tell me more. Ed Evarts: Well, self-awareness is your ability to understand how others experience you self-management is doing something about it. Right? So I might know how people experience me, but I don’t care. And so I don’t do anything about it. We have all had great bosses, and I’ve had bosses. So I’m like, how did this person ever get to this role? But if a boss, for example, is somebody who takes over every meeting. And even if there is an agenda, and even if there are important things to talk about, they just take over and talk, and they know they do this. That’s self-awareness; self-awareness isn’t just good things. It could be challenging things as well. Self-Management is somebody who says, wow, I understand I do this. Now I’m going to do something different in order to have a positive influence. So I see them as significantly different. Self-awareness is your understanding of how others experience you. Self-Management our actions and behaviors to modify it, to have a better experience. Jenn DeWall: Yes. Thank you for answering that because you absolutely can have great self-awareness and not do anything about it. And you share a story, and I definitely want to get to that story. And it just makes me think of a personal experience for me. I have always been described as passionate, right? I’ve always been described as passionate. You are so passionate. And I had just the sweetest, I think of this boss, Dave Meyercord bless his heart. He was my boss in my second position of my career post-college. After I got my first promotion and I just remember him sitting me down and saying, Jenn, and this is all related to emotional intelligence, which I was this 20 something. I had no idea about this. And he was just like, Jenn, you weren’t so passionate. And I’m so happy that you are passionate. We are so grateful to have that, but you also need to tone down your passion. Because what passion really looked like, if you’re talking about, am I a helper or hurter, passion then was that I would get so frustrated if things weren’t maybe done my way or the right way is how I perceived it. Or just thinking about all the different things I would be, you know, integrity was a huge value. So when someone would do something wrong, like that would be massive, like triggers for me. I honestly didn’t have a clue about emotional intelligence. And you know, it goes back to the first piece of, I had all these positive relationships with my boss. I had gotten all this feedback. I’d always gotten it right. I knew I was so passionate, but that’s not, you know, that’s your strength, but that’s also your weakness. And going back to having a positive relationship, I feel like that passion because I was aware of it, but I didn’t manage or do anything to really take that feedback into consideration actually caused me to be a hurter and not have a positive relationship with not my direct boss, but my boss above. And you talked about an example. I think her name was Sarah in the book, how she knew this whole time, all of the feedback, but yet she didn’t do anything about it. Or you tell me in your experience, how do you see this play out? Ed Evarts: I see it play out all the time. And I typically ask clients when we get feedback. And in many of my client engagements, we do a 360 where we go out and ask people confidentially and anonymously. What do you think of, and how do you experience working with Jenn? And please tell me candidly, right? Jenn even does the invite to let people know that this isn’t some kind of test being done, but she is curious to know. And so, she collects the feedback. And when there is feedback, that’s constructive. Like Jenn’s very passionate, but sometimes it takes over, and it would be good if she managed it. I say, is that news, is that new for you? Or is that something you’ve heard? Oh, I’ve always heard that. Jenn DeWall: We always know! Ed Evarts: No again, nobody knows you better than you. So you do know in most, although you might deny it or suppress it behaviors or activities that you’ve gotten little pieces of feedback, even going back to junior high and grade school and high school. A lot of the behaviors we demonstrated have been consistently with us. So, you know, we do know these things, but we’re not motivated or we don’t have the incentive to modify it. So we just keep going because that’s who we are. And that’s what we do with our career as well until somebody like your boss sits down and says, Hey, here’s your strength. But if it’s not managed, it becomes a weakness, right? So I need you to manage your passion so we can ensure that you are a helper, not a hurter. I just want to pick up Jenn. You also mentioned a key word that has to do with self-awareness, which is triggers. And we all have triggers and these are words or phrases of behaviors that set us off and self-awareness apply is somebody who realizes a trigger has happened. And rather than reacting, without thinking, and then coming back later and apologizing. Self-managing. So that’s a great example of the difference between self-awareness and self-management. Self-awareness is recognizing that you have a trigger and it might be a word. It might be a phrase. It might be a behavior self-management is how you handle it when it happens. So you’re not constantly reacting. And then sending an email later that afternoon, apologizing to everybody cause you so overly reacted and so forth and so on. So you know, very, very important differences between self-awareness and self-management, Use Self-Awareness to Drive Your Career in a New Direction Jenn DeWall: I mean, I laugh, I’m just laughing and giggling through this, because when you said, like, we can typically know it earlier, I think of in high school, I was a pretty driven student. I really needed to get scholarships because I needed to fund college. So I, you know, signed up, volunteered, participated in numerous school activities. Right. I mean, it’s kind of embarrassing how big my high school bio is because you know, none of that really matters today. I mean, not to say it doesn’t matter. It does to some extent, but it’s just funny because I laugh because I’m like, why was I like that? And I think of one piece of feedback I got from a friend of mine when I was younger and he’s like, Jenn and how would I describe you in college? Or excuse me, in high school, you were overzealous. And if I think about passion and overzealous, I always had drive. That feedback was always there. I just wasn’t willing to admit it. And so I’m just giggling for that because a lot of you if you even think here’s your self-reflection for the day, think about a common theme in the feedback that you’ve received. If you haven’t taken time to really, you know, take that half hour to ask yourself those questions, at least think about what are the similarities and the common themes. But one thing I also want to talk about because the big change for me in terms of knowing yourself, right? No one knows you better than you do is when I was in this first career, right where I was in a buying track. I loved it. I loved what I did, but yet I just didn’t fit in, in that culture. I don’t know if I’m even a misfit, right? A corporate misfit. I’m not sure if I fit there fully, but when I thought about passion as being something that was always, maybe a negative attribute. Now, when I think about passion, right? It’s actually a strength. It’s a strength because I can use that in podcasting. I can use that in speaking. I can use that in coaching. And so even thinking to people that sometimes when you hear all this feedback, maybe you’re in the wrong environment? Maybe you are in the wrong place where you just cannot let it, you know, it can’t necessarily show you in a positive light. And so that self-reflection. Are you actually in the right place? Any takes on that. Ed Evarts: Well, I, you know, I’m not bad enough for it to pick up on that story, right? There are, there are famous comedians who were not always a comedian. They were business professionals and they just constantly heard from people. You know, you are so funny. And then they did open mic night at a local restaurant just to give it a shot. I have a good friend who did an open mic night at a restaurant, you know, not locally, but in this state that we’re in. But you know, it’s, it’s finding that point in time where you finally decide you want to drive your career and I could stay as a business professional and be told that I’m really funny, or is there something I could be doing that makes me happier and satisfies me greater that I could switch. And, you know, I use that attorney to bed and breakfast owner jokingly, but those are real stories, right? I mean, I would almost promise you that most bed and breakfast owners were not always bed and breakfast owners. I would guarantee you that used to be in some other type of corporate role. Now, some people might say this is moving from one chapter to another, that I love my job as an attorney, but felt that I wasn’t doing anything new. So I wanted to do something different. I fully recognize that and get that as well. But you know, it’s knowing yourself, and that’s what chapter two is about. No one knows you as better than you do. And if you have certain strengths that you can utilize and capitalize on, are you, and if you’re not, it might be a good time to think about it a little bit because there might be something else you could be doing that utilizes those strengths more effectively. The Bell Curve of Great Ideas Jenn DeWall: I gosh. Okay. I, oh my gosh. I’m just loving this conversation at, and I know we don’t have time to go through all nine ways, even though that’s why everyone’s going to have to get the book. But I do want to talk about bell curves rock, because in my experience, I don’t know, did you, can you guess what I’m going to probably say, like, I hate bell curves. Tell me why you love them. Why do they rock? Ed Evarts: Well, first of all, my wife is a former math teacher and she says, I use the term bell curves incorrectly, but I think it’s just a good visual because you know, too often what happens in organizations because we are so focused on success, that we focus on the right side of the bell curve, which is the positive side. You know, the number of people who are doing things really, really well. And we don’t spend enough time on what are the risks of what I’m suggesting, even if I love the idea, what are the risks of what I’m suggesting, what could go wrong? You know, what might somebody say or ask negatively about what I’m suggesting? So I don’t go in like a cheerleader thinking that what I’ve got is the greatest idea ever, only to have someone raise their hand and ask something that is de-energizing to the idea. So it’s important to recognize that all ideas and all behaviors are kind of on a bell curve, and you should spend as much time on what could go wrong and what tough questions might you get? What are some of the more risky or behavioral-type questions that might influence it? And what is the good stuff? You certainly want to spend time on the good stuff as well. And here’s why, if you don’t do that when you get the tough questions, you won’t have good answers, and it might deflate the impact you’re attempting to have or delay it and say, well, look, I don’t have those answers. Give me a couple of weeks. Let me figure it out. Now there’s a couple of weeks added. And a couple of weeks turns into a couple of months, et cetera. If you think about it in advance and get an accountability partner to say, okay, what’s wrong with this idea? What don’t you like? What tough questions can get asked. And at that meeting be prepared. And if somebody says, well, you know, this sounds like it’s going to conflict with our budget or what else? And I’ve got those answers. It could get approved that day and we’re moving, right? So it’s just thinking about the whole bell curve and the pluses and minuses. So you’re more prepared to move forward effectively. Jenn DeWall: Okay. So what I’m about to say, like driving your career, when I think about, you know, understanding the bell curve, I think about that as suspending your own ego. Not saying that I need to be right. Not saying that I need to be perfect or have the best answer, but saying there’s a possibility that, you know, something else could happen. It’s actually not about me. It’s for the benefit of the team or for the organization, but yet we are still in our career, I think, you know, that’s the misstep in terms of driving your career, is that fundamental desire to be right or desire to push your idea through. Which newsflash—   may well alienate you from other people in your organization. They may not like working with you if they feel that you’re a bulldozer. What have you seen in terms of behaviors and leaders in your experience? Ed Evarts: Well, I think what you just described is accurate that I get so caught on the benefits of my idea and even seduced by the benefits of my I’m not spending any time thinking about the risks or the issues or the challenges that might exist in it. And so I go in thinking about, oh, I’ve got this great idea, and it’s going to wow you all, and here I go, and all I get hit with are negative or critical questions or reactions. And I’m stuck because I didn’t spend any time thinking about all of those. So I think it’s potentially part ego. I think it’s a potentially part seduction with the great idea. We all love being right. You know, when we grew up in junior high and high school and college, we were expected to always have the answer, right? The teacher would say, you know, what country is this or who is the 12th president? And they expected every hand to go up because we were expected to have all the answers. And so this is kind of how we’ve been raised. And so now, when we present ideas, institute solutions at organizations, we want to present the good stuff and focus on that. And the experiences that I’ve had with clients is that if they had spent more time, not more time, but additional time on the issues or challenges that their strategy might’ve presented and the positive answers that they can provide to address it, the likelihood of the answer getting accepted would have been more effective. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. I, I just, I love what you just shared because it just makes me think of what would happen if we just detached and let things go, right. How much happier would we be in our careers? How much happier would we be if we didn’t put that pressure on ourselves to have all of the answers and just said, Hey, here’s one consideration open to others. I am not, you know, because together we rise, right? You need other people to be the bastard to find the best solution or outcome. But how much more, I guess sanity- I would just say- and he would exist at work if I could just relieve that pressure and stress to feel like I have to know and be everything to everyone or have the right answer. I feel like you can see everyone. Ed Evarts: Yeah. Well, I think it’s also its part vulnerability, right? That you don’t think that you’ve got the right answer and there are no other answers out there. So it’s part recognizing that there could be modifications to your idea that are welcome. It’s part, empathy. You don’t want to come in as a cold business person, but recognizing the impact that your idea may have on others. That’s always a critical area that people don’t think you’ve thought through the impact that something is going to have on others and the potentially negative impact that might have on people. So I think there’s a number of behaviors you want to demonstrate to show that you’ve thought through the idea, both the positives and the critical to ensure that the idea that you have amongst multiple ideas is the best one. Pausing is Powerful Jenn DeWall: Let’s dive into one more way because you’ve got nine. We don’t have time for all of them. That’s why you’re going to have to get the book. Pausing is powerful. What does that mean? Because you know what, we’re in this fast-paced environment, and we’re supposed to move and do everything as fast as possible. Are you telling me to slow down? Pausing is powerful. Ed Evarts: Right? Well, that’s part of the pressure in respect to pausing is the culture is so fast-paced that we think pausing is going to allow our competitors to get ahead of us. And that the only way to make progress is to go, go, go, go, go, and never pause. And you know, I give an example in the book, and some of us might remember the 2017 Oscars where and I’ll just tell the story quickly, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, who was celebrating the 50th anniversary of Bonnie and Clyde, that they both starred in, we’re giving out the best picture. And they were given the wrong envelope. And all Warren Beatty had to do was say, Hey, I think I’ve been given the wrong envelope. Can I get the right envelope that wouldn’t have been earth-shattering? Right. They would have said, oh yes, Mr. Beatty, we apologize. But that’s not what he did. What he did was he looked at it. It didn’t make sense. People thought he was melodramatically dramatic. Jenn DeWall: Wait, tell me, because I don’t even know this story. What was in the envelope? Ed Evarts: It was the best actress. So he was so it said Emma Stone for LA LA Land. So he’s looking at it and he, and this is live TV and he’s pausing and people think he’s being melodramatic. And so he hands it to Faye Dunaway and she opens it and says, LA LA land won best picture, which is not at all what the card said. So the LA LA Land people come on stage and they’re celebrating. And as they’re talking, you could see this head in the crowd going around. And it was a you know one of the employees and they then grabbed the person who was speaking, whispered something into his ear and he handled it beautifully of all the people up there. The one person who handled it beautifully was the producer of La La Land, who said, Hey, I’ve got to pause right now. There’s been an error. We did not win best picture. The best picture is Moonlight. And the Moonlight people are like, nah, you’re just kidding. And he’s like, no, he goes, no, I’m serious. They were given the wrong envelope. So Warren Beatty had to apologize. Jimmy Kimmel had to apologize. You know, every, it was all this time taken out. If Warren Beatty had just paused when he got the wrong envelope at the beginning and said, Hey, I think I’ve been given the wrong envelope. None of this would have happened. Pausing can Actually Speed Things Up Ed Evarts: So pausing is not about slowing down. It’s not about letting your competitors get ahead of you. It’s about ensuring whatever you’re about to do. You take a little time just to think about it. So if you’re at a meeting and you’re about to kick off a new project, you might say to your team, Hey, we’ve talked about a lot of ideas. Everybody’s leaving here with deliverables. I want everyone just to think about everything we’ve done today for a couple of days. And on Friday, if you have any concerns, any new ideas, any issues, any things that we should know, let us know because this is important, right? But oftentimes, we don’t do that. And so we leave the meeting, and everybody goes, and then down the road issues happen, which delay the deliverable. So more than one project has been delayed in life because something we didn’t anticipate happened or we didn’t think about something. And so that’s where this behavior plays a big role. That pausing is a great way to move faster versus move slower. Jenn DeWall: And I think even the pause could also, you know, it’s related to also looking at your career possibilities, looking at, do you have to keep, and again, this is me and my twenties, and our listeners have heard this probably many times before, but I was a very, Ooh, let’s call it overzealous. Right? Very driven person and wanted to do great things. That when I thought about a pause like that’s what I determined and labeled a lateral move. Well, that’s just a pause. That means I’m not growing. That means I’m not achieving. Why would I do that? That’s a waste of time. And now that I know more, I, you know, it’s hard to try to help people suspend your ego. Lateral moves are one of the best things you can do for yourself to be the best business driver. You get a broader perspective, different points of orientation around the business. It’s not a pause. It’s an opportunity for you to actually develop a different, unique insight that makes you more valuable. But yet, I don’t get the accolades when I do that. They’re like, I don’t, I don’t get to say like I got that promotion, that raise. It’s I got a lateral move. You know that again, ego comes in the way. So embracing the pause, curious how you see that play out. Ed Evarts: Well, I think it’s largely due to culture, and we’ve grown up in environments where you had to climb the corporate ladder, and you started out in the mailroom at IBM and you retired 40 years later as the senior vice president of sales at IBM. And you held all these roles in between. That’s no longer how the world is working. Again. These are all very subtle changes. Performance assessment processes are subtle and career development is very subtle. And it’s a very effective tool to move laterally to other areas of the business. And oftentimes presidents will tell you of companies that one of the reasons they’re there is because they spent one, you know, one or two years as the SVP of sales and they spent one or two years as the SVP of operations and they spent one or two years as the SVP of human resources, right. They were being groomed and trained in order to get that higher role. So it’s a fantastic career builder to demonstrate the people that you’ve not just been in a funnel in sales ,to pick that as an example, but you’ve also had some other areas of opportunity, which makes you more valuable. So it’s hard to do. And of course there’s financial impacts and there’s kind of career growth impact, but longterm, it could prove for many people to be a really effective strategy. How to Get in Touch with Ed Jenn DeWall: Yeah. Embrace the lateral move. And thank you so much for taking time to be on the show today. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. I wish we had time to talk about all nine ways. How can our how can our listening audience get in touch with you? Ed Evarts: Well, first of all, Jenn, I just want to say that your passion today was a strength because it helped me feel more passionate. So I think we had a better conversation because of your passion. So it was not an area of development today. So thank you for demonstrating that. I think folks can find out more about me at my website, which is Excellius.com E X C E double L I U s.com there’s information and stuff about the books and the work that I do there Jenn DeWall: At Everett’s. This was great pickup as book, where can you get the book at, from the website, Amazon drive your career nine high impact ways to take responsibility for your own success, because it’s on you. We can’t blame it on anyone else. Where can they pick up this book? It’s a great read and there’s so many great stories. Ed Evarts: That’s right. Change that. Start with you. Yeah, it’s available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble.com, on my website. You can order it as Jenn DeWall: Well. Great. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Ed Evarts: Thanks, Jenn. Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast. If you want to connect with, add, get to know more about him, you can go to Excellius.com, or you can head on over to Amazon, and you can purchase his book, Drive Your Career. If you know, a friend that is maybe in the midst of making it for your change. And it’s just not sure what to do, share this episode with them. And if you enjoyed this, please leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming service. And don’t forget, if you’re in the midst of even thinking about my team needs this or my team needs leadership development, reach out to Crestcom.com. We would love to come to your organization for a two-hour leadership skills-building workshop. Thank you so much for listening until next time.   The post How to Drive Your Career with Leadership Coach and Author, Ed Evarts appeared first on Crestcom International.

Become a Better Storyteller with Chief Story Enabler, Keith Bailey Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall here, and on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit, we are going to be sharing with you tips to tell better stories. I sat down with Keith Bailey, who has a passion for it was had a passion for public speaking since experiencing a seminal moment in the fourth grade. From the hospitality industry to global corporate sales, you learn the power of storytelling for profit, influence, and of course, fun! Sixteen years as a personal and corporate coach, Keith is motivated by the success of others in his quest to help you live a life well-spoken, knowing that speakers are created and not born. Keith started Articulated Intelligence to help prevent unintentional audience abuse through a proprietary gamified storytelling technique called “With One Word”. I hope you enjoy our conversation. You’re going to be hearing us play Lifetime One-Word, and I hope that you walk away with tips to tell better stories. Meet Keith Bailey, Chief Story Enabler Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone. It is Jenn DeWall. And in this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I am sitting down with chief storyteller, enabler, Chief Story Enabler, Mr. Keith Bailey, Keith. Welcome. Oh, wait, why? Wait, what, why are you coming on live with this video? Why do you have a bag over your head right now? Keith? What do you mean? Like, why do you have a bag? Keith Bailey: I learned this. I learned this during the pandemic. This is how you can show up to virtual meetings with your camera off. It’s like showing up to an in-person meeting with a bag over your head. You know, I can do things under here that you can’t see that I’m doing. Jenn DeWall: Yup. You can feed yourself. You could probably be sleeping. I mean, with you, Mr. Bailey, we’ve got to start showing up more on our camera. I get that zoom fatigue is a real thing. But think about the reality of it. Would you go to a meeting in a conference room with a bag over your head? Like, what is Mr. Bailey doing right now? Keith Bailey: The answer is absolutely not, Jenn. Absolutely not. Yeah. It’s just, it’s just a little goof, to really point a lens, if you will, to the importance of when we show up virtually is to show up and to be there and to be engaged, right? I mean, just, just the fact that you can only see from here up on me, you’re already missing out on so much body language, and then we turn that camera off, and it just, it just really leaves too much up to the imagination. It’s too much for the listener to process. You’re actually better off having a phone call. So if, if you’re not going to have cameras on the resort back to the good old days and just call each other and have a conversation that way, Jenn DeWall: I like that. Conference your team in, don’t put everyone. If we don’t want to talk over Zoom, we get it right. Acknowledging the reality of Zoom fatigue, or WebEx fatigue, whatever that might be, that it happens. But that sometimes, cause we’re going to be talking about storytelling today that if you’re trying to influence someone and yet it looks like you’re not engaged, or it’s hard to tell if they’re engaged, which can maybe distract you from getting your message across that, pick up the phone. Yep. It’s a concept. Keith Bailey: And you know, not everything has to be Zoom. I think when, when, when all this funding game start with like zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, and we’re learning now that that’s not always the case. Now I’ve had quite a few client conversations that I’ve had that are just by phone. And it’s nice to have that, that differentiation. So if you’re going to be living in this virtual realm, either have a phone call or have the agreeance to where. Hey, you don’t need to show up to this meeting and have your camera on. But if it’s, if it’s a board meeting or if it’s something where you really need to come across, and you need other people, you be able to see your audience, perhaps the social graces on that is, Hey, we all agree that we’ll all have our cameras on. Yeah. Jenn DeWall: I love that. I think it’s important, especially for people that may be, let’s think of what, even the people on the team. And I know we’re going to get into storytelling, but maybe people that aren’t even as comfortable talking in public or speaking up in a meeting, that sometimes having your camera off can be a little bit intimidating. It might make them think that they don’t really care what you have to say or that they’re not really paying attention. And so that can even add more pressure when you’re trying to communicate. So Keith, I, you know, I love working with you. I’m so excited to have you here on the show. You are a Chief Story Enabler. What does that mean? How did you come to be? You have your company, Articulated Intelligence. Tell us about yourself and what your organization does. What is a Chief Story Enabler? Keith Bailey: Yeah, yeah. The whole Chief Story Enabler title— it came about because a lot of clients that we work with when we start talking about storytelling, like, oh, I’ve got no great stories to tell, nothing exciting has ever happened to me. And then, once we take them through our proprietary gamified approach of tapping into your bottomless story-well of experiences and memories, the stories that come forth, people were like, oh my God, I do have a story to tell. And the answer is, yeah, if you’ve lived life, you’ve had experiences. The difference between a storyteller and a non-storyteller is the lens through which we look at the experience. So as a non-storyteller, it’s just a benign thing. As a storyteller, we look at that benign thing and that we’re able to shape it and craft it and add a resolution and meaning to it that gives it purpose and relevance. So when the audience, right, and let’s talk about the Shakespearian, all the world’s a stage. So if it’s an audience of one in a networking situation or like yourself, you’ve got a keynote coming up in all places of Wichita, Kansas, how we connect with that audience and how that story lands is, is absolutely critical. And how we tell that story will define whether we’re going to be memorable or not. Becoming a Better Storyteller Jenn DeWall: Yes. You know, storytelling is so important. It’s funny. We have our family in town, my sister-in-law and her husband are visiting us from Spain. And one of the things that happened to come up over a dinner conversation is that she doesn’t feel like she’s a good storyteller, and she just wishes that she could tell better stories. And she started giving examples of different friends. And I know that we’re going to get into this, but a lot of people, you know, can shy away from wanting to even think about a story because they just automatically deem themselves as I can’t tell a story. And I feel like it’s the same thing as I’m not creative or I’m not innovative or innovative. And so, Keith, how did you become interested in storytelling as an art as something that you can help leaders and organizations do better? Keith Bailey: The pivotal moment for me was after I left corporate America, and I started down this venture, of helping people really with, with their presentation skills and with their stage skills. What started to come out of this was they would show up with all the content and all the data. They’d have all the facts and all the figures. Well, the thing with that is facts and figures- they fade. So we were always looking for a way to make the data and the content relevant and what it all was boiled down to was a story. What are the stories that help support this? And one day, I was out for a run, you know, very much like Einstein. I was out for his bike ride the day he thought of, of relativity, the theory of relativity. I was out for a run when I had the aha epiphany of like, Hey, well, what if, what if we were to just look for stories? What if we were just to tap into people’s story-wells of experiences because we can take pretty much any story and be able to find meaning to it. It’s one of the things that we as humans do. We look at our experiences and try to attach meaning to them. And from that, our gamified approach called “With One Word” was, was created. And what we do with this is we take trigger words, and then through a guided visualization, we show you how to start looking back into your experiences. We’ll look at a very specific experience and then have you share that experience. And then we take, and we mold it, and we shape it, we attach meaning to it. That was really the aha moment for me was working with business professionals. But with regard to stories, stories are everywhere I have from, from the moment we’re born, the interactions we have and the stories that our parents tell us growing up to the fables, to the movies, to all these things that happen in our lives are always delivered to us in the form of the story. So when did I first become aware of stories? Gosh, probably when I, when I look back over my life and my childhood, I grew up in Holland, and Holland is a very enchanted place of canals and bricks and moss and all the kubouters and all the things that happen. Fairytales. That was probably my first interaction with stories as a kid. Are You Guilty of Unintentional Audience Abuse? Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. And it’s such a, you know, I love that. It’s talking about how facts and figures fade, you know, the one thing that always stands out because you and I know each other outside of this is, and it will always stick with me if you want to know one of the lines or I would say the missions of Keith Bailey- it’s to prevent, and this is your phrase, but I love it, unintentional audience abuse. Tell me what that is because I think it’s an important thing for us to remember as we go out to think about who we’re trying to influence. What we’re communicating is that we ultimately want to prevent unintentional audience abuse. Tell us what that is from your own words. I just love that expression. And I think it’s really helpful. We want to obviously make a great experience where people, you know, hear what we’re trying to say. They connect, so on and so forth, but what does unintended audience abuse really mean? Keith Bailey: So the unintentional side of it is the speaker. The presenter doesn’t mean to do it. They’re not doing it with malice. It’s unintentional. And we have all been the recipients of it and guilty party. I have abused my audience. And the way audience abuse comes about is when you’re just espousing facts and figures and data your in your, on your so. And you’re never getting to the point where the most grievous ones that I’ve experienced was a presenter who, when it was their turn to speak, the PowerPoint slide came on with this beautiful image. And then the lights went dark. And suddenly I felt her sitting down next to me, and then it went to the next slide was all this information. And she started to read from the front row with her back to the audience, her entire presentation. The reason- I talked to her afterward, I’m like, why, why would you do that? She’s like, well, they need to know these things. And this is the only way that I know I can ensure that they get all the information. That makes total sense while this approach is, is right for the betterment of the audience. What we know is that that’s not how you connect with your audience. That’s not how you win them over because they don’t remember what you say. They remember how you made them feel. And I don’t remember who imparted this statistic upon me, but it’s just stuck with me because it’s just a good litmus to move forward with. When you get done speaking, your audience will forget 50% of what you said within about the first 30 minutes. If you’re a good speaker, they’ll remember 5% of what you said one week later. Jenn DeWall: 5%!? Keith Bailey: 5%. That’s if you’re a good speaker. And we’ve all seen those incredible speakers, but try to go back and remember those incredible speakers. How much of a do you remember what they said? You remember how they made you feel. You remember perhaps some of the messages that they carried forth. You might even remember a story that they shared. So when we look at how we communicate, what we teach is moving away from a sense of presenting and starting to build more outward. We call facilitation, and facilitation has multiple parts to it. It has your content and your data. You need to get that part across. It has stories that you can tell that relate to your content and your data. This next part is incredibly pivotal. It has audience participation. When the audience participates in the actual experience, now they have a stake in the outcome, and the audience will do whatever they can to make sure that the outcome is a favorable one. So now you’ve got their buy-in to it, and then you need to have the audio and the visual piece to come into it. When you bring those things into play, and you’re constantly moving between them and having this facilitation, you have a greater chance of avoiding unintentional audience abuse. Because here’s the thing, Jenn, with an audience, and if there’s one thing you walk away with today, and the next time you’re standing before an audience, and you have to present, just know this, the audience wants only one thing. They want you to succeed. They want you to be successful. They want you to win. They are your biggest champion. They are rooting for you the entire time. And the reason they do that is that they can see themselves standing where you’re standing, and it scares the hell out of them. So know that your audience is very empathetic to your mission and to your plight, into what you’re there to do. And all they want you to do is win. So all you need to do is give them what they want. And facilitation, in my experience, is one of the best ways to deliver that level of engagement because you’re also speaking to all the different ways that people learn and retain information. And the kinesthetic part of it is critical. So knowing that they’ll all going to take away 5% and each audience member is going to remember a different 5%, what 5% are they going to remember? This is why content stories, audience participation, audio, and visuals all play into that complete mix of that facilitation. Yeah. Networking and the Storyteller Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. And so important. I love that you give, I think even just for those that are listening, that I might be maybe a little reluctant to want to get into storytelling, or maybe you’re just nervous about public speaking because that absolutely happens. I really liked the point that you said that your audience wants you to succeed. So as a starting point, if any of you are nervous and trust, they want you to succeed because they obviously also want a return on their time investment. They want to make sure that they’re, you know, getting something out of it. They want it to be fun. They do want you to succeed. So you started an organization called Articulated Intelligence. Can you tell us a little bit about what Articulated Intelligence does? Keith Bailey: At Articulated Intelligence, our focus is to help business professionals live a life well-spoken. And I mentioned earlier that we believe that all the world is a stage. So we’ve created modules and training platforms that work with business professionals on those different stages. One of them that’s a really popular one for us right now is the networking stage. We’ve all been told, go out a network, build your network. It’s incredibly important. You need to network. Yet no one has ever taught us how to network, right? What is it showing up, going to the bar, getting loaded, and asking everybody what is it that they do? And just having, you know, superficial connection. No, that is not networking. RIght, that’s not a meaningful conversation. So what we teach is we teach you how to maximize your R-O-N, your return on networking. And we build out a strategic plan. That’s really specific to the individual. You get to build out your own plan of how it is that you’re going to prepare for this networking event. What are the permissions you’re going to give yourself? Right? I, my goal is to have three meaningful conversations, and then I can leave if I so choose. We never really go about doing that. Like we’ve like the way to be here for a period of time. And I really don’t know what I’m going to accomplish. So to have the strategic part of it is great. The other thing that we teach you is through actually this methodology called “With One Word” is how to become a really good listener too. When people hit trigger words, that trigger memories for you. Because when you’re speaking, even during this podcast right now, our audience, we know that you have left this room and come back again. Perhaps I mentioned something about Europe that made you think of something, your travels through Europe. Perhaps I mentioned something about the PowerPoint presentation, and you, too, had that experience. So in a networking event, we have these little jumping-off points. All you need to do is listen, have a jumping-off point, keep it in the back of your mind as the person is speaking. And then, once they’re done speaking, you can do one of many things. You can say, oh my God, I’m so there with you. I, too, had this experience one time, and then you bring the focus back to them. But I’m really interested in more about this point. You tell me about that. That is a strategic thing that you can do to have an engaging conversation with anyone. So networking is, is a really big platform for us. Another area that we work on is keynote presentations. But one of the big ones is the conversations you’re having with your customers. Because a huge thing that we focus on is teaching you how to put people before profession. I had a boss many, many years ago when I sold cycling apparel, spandex, everything. And, and he, he told me, he said, he said, Keith people don’t buy from companies. They buy from other people. So don’t, don’t try to bring the company first, build the personal relationship. And then, over time, you’ll build that relationship. They’ll be able to come on board. And what I learned from that is the best relationships that I had and the best clients that I had. It took me time to build that relationship—the ones where I didn’t have that are the people who show up. Like, I want your product. I love your product. I just want to buy your product. It was oftentimes just a one and done, but if I had the relationship that was returned business, and we know from a business standpoint, it’s better to hold on to the business that you already have than to spend the money, to go and find new business Jenn DeWall: And see if there are already many ways that anyone can leverage the party or the gift of storytelling and communication. I liked that you talked about your ROI and the return on networking but then also using it as a connecting point with your customer. So why, why do we need to, so let’s go into it. Like, here’s why you need to listen to what we’re going to talk about today. Why do we need to be better storytellers? Keith Bailey: It’s in our DNA, right? It’s in our chemical makeup. We as, as a species, that’s how we process things. For the majority of the population of fine, I’m gonna apply the 80-20 rule. I know that’s not the correct statistic, but it’s just the ease of numbers. 80% of people process information best when there’s a story attached to it. 20% of the population are the engineers and the ones that are the very front brain and the neocortex, or the, just give me the data, give me the data, give me the data. But the story is still key because when we tell a story, there’s a specific part of the brain that we’re speaking from and to. And this is where science and voodoo come together, and it’s absolutely incredible. When we tell a story, we’re speaking from an area of the brain called the limbic mind, also called the mind’s eye. It’s where all of our experiences and all of our memories, and all of our feelings are stored. There are no words here. It was just emotional feelings. When we’re telling a story from that, we’re actually reliving that moment. When you tell the story, and this is a critical component to telling good stories is when we tell the story in real-time, as opposed to back in such and such a year, I was doing this, saying the year is 2011 and cautiously, I’m crossing the street. We’ve built out the scene. The audience is right there with us. We’re moving forward through this moment in time, right along with us. And as we relive this experience, the listener is reliving the experience right along with us. And when we arrive at our conclusion, they arrive at their conclusion at the same time. So if you want to be persuasive, storytelling is one of the most powerful tools that you can use. In fact, the people who’ve perfected this are known as con men. They’re awesome at it, which is, which is why storytelling has a little bit of a bad reputation, a little bit of a dark side, but con men- or con people- let’s be PC, or we’re the best at this because they will just get you wrapped up in the story and believing it. And then you’re making an emotional purchase, which is how we’d make most of our purchases is on an emotional level. So when we’re telling the story in real-time, the listener is listening. We’re speaking from our limbic mind, speaking to somebody’s limbic mind, and we are actually imprinting our ideas and our feelings and our thoughts into their mind. And then, when you make the jump from the limbic mind to the rational mind, the neo-cortex that elasticity comes around and makes the two connect. The 80-20 Rule Keith Bailey: So now we’ve got the 80-20 rule, right? You’ve got people that are story-bound. They’ll think of the story and then think of the facts. And you get people who are fact-bound. They’ll think of the facts and relate the story on its own. You’re all going to be speaking to a small slice of your audience. And even then, what’s missing is the why. All right, the story is your why, right? We’ve all had a boss come out to us, and he’s like, Hey, I really need you. I, I washed dishes for a long time. Yeah. You, those pots aren’t clean. You need to scrub those down a little bit further. I’m like, Nah, I put them back on the line again. And then he comes back to me. He’s like, you know, when I was in your position, I was scrubbing pots and pans. And one time, I didn’t get, I didn’t get it completely clean. And there were bacteria that built up inside of it. And as a result of that, we ended up getting a foodborne illness in a restaurant that I was working at. That’s why I need you to clean the pots and pans to where they are clinically and hermetically clean. Oh! Oh, that’s why I need to do this. Okay. I’m more likely to clean the next pot and the pan to a higher degree than just being told what to do. So your story is, why do you do what you do? And if you can lead with that, right? I know we’re jumping around a little bit here. This is the joy of talking to someone with ADHD. The joy of this is like in a networking environment. When were common questions you ask or get asked is what, Jenn? Jenn DeWall: What do you do? Keith Bailey: What do you do? I’m in finance. I’m a doctor. I’m a lawyer. I’m a dentist. There’s the. I’m a plumber. There are so many of those. They’re just going to lump you in. What’s your differentiator. You’ve, you’ve missed that opportunity. So as opposed to leading, with what you do, you can lead with a belief statement, which for mine, you’ve heard Jenn say when I’m in a networking situation. And somebody says, so, Keith, what do you do? I start off with. I believe that unintentional audience abuse is preventable. And they get to people just to kind of like, cause they’re not expecting it. I’m leading with a why statement. I’m leading why it is that I do what I do. I want to prevent this thing that you’ve never heard of. Right. And then what that allows me to do from there is, is to parlay it into a story like, well, what, what does that mean? How do you do that? When did you first figure this out? All these things have additional stories to go along with them, and you have a chance to be engaging. Avoiding Unintentional Audience Abuse Jenn DeWall: So what’s funny, Keith is I was doing a different, I think I was doing a podcast interview, and I quoted you, right? Like I, that Keith Bailey always has this expression, you know, that you prevent unintentional audience abuse. And this person had to write it down because it, I feel like that’s such a captivating, relatable statement that so many people are like, yeah. Oh my gosh, please, could you please do that for either my team meetings or do that for the next organizational event? I think it’s so relatable. And I like that. Yeah. It does break away from the traditional. This is what I do. This is how I do it. I don’t even like answering those questions anymore because I feel like it’s so no, one’s really listening. Right. We’re just sitting there. Cause it’s the same thing. But then you see a statement like I prevent unintentional audience abuse, and yeah. It’s absolutely like, wait, excuse me, tell me more. So yes, you’re quoted. I quote you now! Where do people get it wrong? Where do people get started telling wrong? Are you, and where, what is really the accidental audience abuse look like, or does unintentional audience abuse look like? Keith Bailey: In a story. Right? And in a story specifically where, where does that unintentional part happen? A good story is a short story, right? An anecdotal story. What tends to happen is people, they, they start telling it like they, I, I feel like I to go back to the beginning of time when the earth was still cooling to get people to really understand my position and where the story comes from. They don’t. What you want to do is you want to start the story as close to that moment in time where something happens. Right? If you think about the story about the presenter, right? I’m sitting in the theater, the lights go down, and she sits down next to me. The action is starting. I don’t have to give you anything. You know the viewpoint from the dove’s perspective. I just need to land it at the moment. So people who do that, someone who never gets to the point, I, the story goes on and on, and your audience is like, why are they still talking about that? What are they even talking about it? Jenn DeWall: That’s when people start to shut off their zoom cameras, Keith Bailey: Right? Like, oh, look at this pretty thing that tells me great stories. I look at social media, and social media is all about telling short stories, whether it’s in pictures, right? A picture’s worth a thousand words. In that, it’s a short story, and the Instagram post and the TikTok posts and all those that do really well tell a really good, specific, concise, and memorable story. So if your story doesn’t have one of those or all three of those elements in it, it’s likely not a good story. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. And I, you know, I like that. You’ve mentioned here’s your first start. Think of the story, but only start the story at the point of the action, because yes, that’s when it does border on it becoming too long, or I think then someone ends up, you know, describing, starting the story and then they describe everything up to it. And then they start with, well, a long story short, and then they get into the story of what actually matters. The Long Story Short Storyteller Keith Bailey: When somebody says long story short you’re in for a long, long story. We have a great friend of ours, and everybody has tells, which is why I like playing poker. And his tell was when John would take a knee, and you’re done, that’s it. He’s going to be down there for a while, telling you the longest story that you’ve ever heard. And all you can pray for is that his knees start to hurt. So he stands up, but his knees aren’t going to hurt because John’s a plumber, and he’s comfortable in that position. Jenn DeWall: So yeah, people are too long with it. Maybe even what about the information that they provide. So if they tell a story that’s too long, but what about in terms of how we’re crafting the story? Where do we get it wrong? Keith Bailey: Trying to get too many points across. And that’s one of the things that also led me down this path to where I am now is when I started working with business professionals on their presentations. They’re like, all right, I got 10 minutes, and I need to get these six points across there. Isn’t a story in the world or an audience of the world’s gonna be able to retain all of that. Right? It means— pick what is, what is the this is where the one word came from is on these presentations. I would ask them. We need to boil this thing down to one word. What’s the one word that really encapsulates and embodies the message you’re trying to deliver. So with what it is that you’re telling, if your story has like six different meanings, that’s okay. Pick the meaning that is correct for the audience. Because what you’re delivering to lawyers is different for the meaning that what you’re going to be delivering to civil engineers or what you’re gonna be delivering to college students, right? The ones that you’re going to be chatting with. So be aware of your audience and what their needs are and tailor your stories, meaning to fit that audience because nothing is worse when you’re sitting there. Another form of unintentional audience abuse is when the story is told, and it has absolutely nothing to do with you. Jenn DeWall: And then I found $5. That’s what comes to mind is when people add expressions like that to try and make your story more interesting or have more excitement to it, for those that might be unfamiliar. That’s just a, maybe a sarcastic phrase that people will attach if someone is telling a story that doesn’t have maybe a point, and then they’ll try to make it interesting by making a joking comment like, and then you found $20, which adds that excitement. But yeah, we all know it’s so interesting. We all know what a bad story looks like because we feel it, right? Like that’s when you feel it where you’re either maybe disconnecting, or you’re just kind of confused as to why they’re telling that. And I know we want to, we’re going to dive into now tips to tell stories, but are better stories. But before we get into that, the one thing do want to talk about is the one-word concept that articulated intelligence did come up in share. How Storytellers Find Their Story Jenn DeWall: So some of you might know, I know the director of the Denver chapter of the national speaker’s academy, and we brought in Articulated Intelligence to help our speakers with their storytelling. And I want to bring up the one word because there’s a lot of people that initially, even though they’re professional speakers, were initially like, how do I find my stories? What do I share? And the one-word concept that you and your team had developed was one of the most impactful takeaways. I think for the participants that went through academy because it made storytelling easy and it was a formula. That, and so I, I just want to give you some props for those that might be thinking that storytelling is still hard, or where do you even start that you did laid out a really great framework for how you can do that and how you’ve been, recall your own stories, just thinking and using that one word. I’m not sure what we can share on the podcast because I don’t want to take away from any proprietary information, but I just Keith Bailey: I have to share this. Because it’s, it’s, it’s such a fundamental tool. And if you, if you, if you embrace this. For us, it is foundational, right? One word is a foundational tool. I’m happy to share it with you because of so much of the work that we do. We come back to this foundational tool. And it’s one that allows you to tap into that bottomless story-well and a lot of the work that we do after this that I, I’m not going to share on this podcast. One, we don’t have enough time for it, but if you just embrace this tool for the next time you have to present, you’re going to find relevant stories because of what happens as well. And this is, I think this is a really important tip is that the first story that you think of may not be the right story for your audience, right? So to be able to go back to the well again and what tends to happen sometimes with us, it’s like we stress out, and I can’t think of anything good, which is why the tenant that we preach is, first thought the best thought. It’s the way that Allen Ginsberg, the poet, explains how he came up with this poetry is like, I would just open my mind, and the first thing that popped in my head, I would write it down. And he would just go through his exercise that way. Now, granted afterward, he would go back, and he’d clean it up, and he tightened it up like it wasn’t the first draft that he would publish, but this idea first thought best thought is liberating and freeing. So when you’re sitting down in a creative state, adopt this whole first thought best thought because if you disregard the first thing that pops into your head, you’re like, Nah, I can cope with something better. It creates stress for the brain. And when stress happens in the brain, that part of the brain shuts down. It goes to fight or flight. First Thought, Best Thought, Last Thought, Worst Thought Jenn DeWall: So what’s an example of like a first thought, best thought, like how, what would that look like for someone that might be like, I don’t know, what’s the first thought I have a lot of thoughts. Like, how do you just decide? Is it starting? Who’s your audience, and what is the first thought you have? Keith Bailey: Not even, not even, not, not at first, at first, no. In the creative process. This is, this is long before I sit down with the audience. I just want to be able to just pull some things out of my head. I just want to just come up with some stories and come up with some ideas. I’m not initially audience-centric. That is something as I’m moving further along. I have this collection of stories. Now I have now I don’t know who my audience is. I’m going to start shaping that story to bring it closer and have it really fit my audience. But to start in the very beginning with an audience in mind, because as a speaker and a presenter, we’re going to be speaking to different audiences and we can mold those stories. In the first thing that I focused on is let’s, let’s, let’s just go find some stories. Let’s just go look back and let’s start looking at our experiences in our life, through the lens of a storyteller. That, to me is the most important skill that we can teach. Because once I’ve taught you that skill, you can pretty much take any, any event that’s happened in your life, mold it and shape it and be able to attach a meaning to it because our minds do that automatically. And the way we do that, I’ll change my background here in a second, but I want to give her credit where credit is due because the game that we’re about to play, was not my idea. “With One Word” is my idea. And there’s a, a game that comes after this one that we really focused on our proprietary process. This game came to me or this format came to me as a result of, of this book, which is absolutely brilliant. Keith Bailey: If you’re into reading anything, it’s called Storyworthy. It’s by Matthew Dicks, I’m going to send you a couple of links that you can put in the show notes. One of the stories that’s in the book, and I recommend getting the audiobook and because storytellers tell stories. He has on a, I think that’s on oh, he was a “Moth Grand-slammingest Champion Ever.” And it was the Director of The Moth who imparted this knowledge upon him of playing this format. So I want to give credit where credit’s due because I did not create the format I’m about to show you. The whole with one word as a, as a trigger and the guided visualization and all that stuff. That’s, that’s all this, this, this brain housing group here. Jenn DeWall: Okay, I’m ready. I’m ready. Keith Bailey: You want, you want to play? Do you want to play a quick game? Jenn DeWall: I do want to play a quick game. This is the first time playing a game on the podcast. So yeah, I’ll take it! Keith Bailey: All right. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s play a game. We’re going to play a game called First, Best, Last and Worst. And the way that this game works is a word is going to appear in this box. Actually, we’re going to give you words. I don’t have a slide that puts the word in there, but we’re going to give you a word. And what I want you to do is the only thing about your first experience with that word, way to think about your best experience with that word, your last experience with that word, and even your worst experience with that word and know this about worst experiences, what is terrible for you, is awesome for the story. Because people love, you know, they love have a good a good, terrible story that has a great ending to it. Jenn DeWall: This is one of our ways that we can start to craft better stories. Keith Bailey: And, and I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna give you a word. It’s one of our foundational words that we’d like to use because great stories come out of this, but you can put any word into this box and, and, and play this game over and over again, to start tapping into that story-well and pulling those ideas out. Jenn DeWall: Okay. Okay. I’m ready. Keith Bailey: So our word, Jenn DeWall, our word is the word teacher. Now I want you to think of your first teacher that you can think of. Think of a name. If you can, or description, just visualize it. Don’t say anything. Think of your best. Think of your last and think of your worst. Got them all? Okay. The story that you’re going to be sharing with us is going to self select after I save these next words. And as soon as it self-selects, that’s the story you’re going to focus on. Okay. A story is about a moment in time where something happens with one of those teachers. What is a moment in time where something happened between you and that teacher? Do you see it? Jenn DeWall: I’ve got two that come to mind. Yeah, Keith Bailey: Pick one. Okay. I want you to go back. You can close your eyes if you want to wait. Just put yourself back into that moment. Where are you? Who is there? What is happening leading up to this moment in time? What is the moment in time? And what does it mean to you today? Jenn DeWall: Yes, I’ve got, I was so reluctant to want to share the story, but I’ve got the story. Keith Bailey: That’s all right. That’s and so what we focus on is we focus on, on search, shape. And the critical part you’re about to do is the sharing of the story. If you’re going to become a storyteller, don’t sit down and start writing your story now because you’re becoming an author. Share the story out loud. And a first telling is a beautiful telling, right? Ladies and gentlemen, unscripted, unrehearsed, un—well slightly—prompted, Jenn’s story on “teacher”. The stage is all yours. Jenn DeWall: Okay. So when you gave the word of teacher and you talked about first, best, last and worst, and then with your additional prompts, I was initially going to talk about best. That was initially where I think of Mr. Van Gompel and how I even got to be interested in leadership. But the answer as you gave the prompting questions came down to I’ll leave this individual anonymous, but this was a teacher that I had when I was, I had him through high school and I didn’t necessarily care for him. I felt like this teacher maybe got a little bit too involved in student dramas, if you will. Like, it was just very awkward to have a teacher that was so engaged in maybe some of the happenings between kids. And I’m going to just release, or I’m going to show you that I was maybe not the greatest kid, but my senior year, right before graduation, I had been good all through high school. I was a big rule follower. And then right before graduation, I decided to throw a party. And so I threw this party and, you know, and mind you, this was right before graduation. I had a few speeches lined up because I was in NHS and I had a few different scholarships that I was given because it was upon graduation, but I threw this party. It was two weekends before graduation. I threw this party and I get back to school on Monday morning and this teacher pulls me into his office and he says, like I heard from Peter that you had a party this weekend. And I was like, I did. And he’s like, do you know that I could take away all your scholarships from you right now? Just because of what you did and my smart response. Right? So this will, I’ll always remember is this teacher would often have students over to drink at his house after graduation. Jenn DeWall: And so then my smart response was to him, well, if you want to take away my scholarships, then you’ll probably have to stop serving kids under age, such a bad story, but I always think of it because it was this moment where I realized that like, there was a double standard between maybe how someone was showing up and what they were putting on me because you were maybe disciplining me and I get all the rights. Right. I, you know, there were all these scholarships that I definitely was justified, but on the flip side, you were trying to reprimand me when I know also that you had just had a bunch of people that were my age over in your backyard to do that. And that was so inappropriate. So I don’t even know where that story went. I cannot believe I shared this story of high school, but I always think of it because it really, really made me mad. And I was so good during high school that to be caught out and like, have someone want to pull that away from me right towards the end when they were also doing not okay things! It really got under my skin. I don’t even know if that was a story you were looking for. Get to the Action to Be a Better Storyteller Keith Bailey: That’s a perfect story. That’s a perfect story. Let’s talk, let’s talk about this circus., this conversation is about storytelling right now. We have a raw, fresh example of a first time of, of a telling of a story. And my encouragement is, is after this, you need to tell this story again to whomever you have a house full of people. The stuff you shared with us leading it’s two weeks before high school and, and all that I would I’d get trashcan that I would, I would scrub that away from the story because we want to get as close to the moment in time. Right? So you can start the story off with, we also want to tell the story in real-time. So it’s Monday morning, two weeks before graduation, and I’ve just thrown the party of a lifetime. Mr. Such and such, who has been the bane of my existence, pulls me into his office. And I’m like, oh, what does this guy want? As he’s sitting across from me looking very intimidating, he says, and then you say whatever the words are, right, what’s happening here is we’ve given a moment where it’s in real-time. And now there’s a dialogue that is happening between you and another person. So we filled the stage with another person. That enriches the story, and we get to, as the listener, experience this exchange like we’re sitting in that room. Perhaps you give a little descriptor, right? It’s his office, which I swear is the janitors’ broom closet. It paints a picture of the mind’s eye, and we’re sitting in there, and he’s grilling me on this stuff. And as he’s doing this, I’m thinking to myself, what a hypocrite, what a complete hypocrite, and the words that come out of my mouth to this day, I don’t know where they came from. Because that leaned across the table, and I said this. And that’s where you deliver it. Right? Because we know that you just had a thought while he’s berating you, and then you deliver your, your story and then you can end it there because that’s, that’s the end of it. And then turn and give your meaning to it. Right? I don’t like the double standards in people, which is why I believe that you need to be who you are and whatever, meaning you attach to it. Or like there’s so many like if you’re gonna present this for your college students, we can find what it means for college. If you’re gonna be delivering this, for business professionals, we can find what it means to business professionals. But it’s a great analogy of a story where you experience someone who was not doing what they were saying. Storytellers Find Meaning in Any Story Jenn DeWall: Yes. And I love that because you’re so right. Suppose I think about the audience of even of this podcast and why I would be mortified that I share that story. But I’m just even thinking about if I use this for leaders, that basic thing I would say is you’ve got to, you know, walk the walk. Like if you’re not walking the walk, how are you ever going to anticipate or expect someone to follow in your footsteps or to listen to what you’re saying? Keith Bailey: Because, because your subordinates will see through you, right? You can say, so let’s talk a little about circle reference real quick. You can make that open-ended statement, which on its own is weightless has zero value in zero resonance to your audience of leaders that you’re speaking to. Like, you need to walk the walk. You need to do this. It’s like that guy telling me. Do you need to scrub the pans? Why do I need to scrub the pants? Right. You’re on board. And we’ll see straight through this. I remember when I was in high school was Monday, two weeks before graduation. I had just thrown the party of my life. Right now, you’ve given the meaning. You’re about to tell the story. You’re subordinate in this story. And you end up setting the leadership straight with your defiance. And as a result of that, that’s why you don’t ever want to do that. While your subordinates may not say anything to you, they’re thinking it right. That’s, that’s when that story. And you can make that thing really, really short and concise has such power to the meaning that you’re trying to deliver. Because you are in the circle, you’ve said it twice. This is what it means. Here’s the story. And this is why it means that. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. So for those that are following along, this is, I love this tool, this game, if you will, because we obviously did not talk about this. I, I don’t know if I would have shared that story in the podcast, but really what, for those that are joining this via audio and listening to this, what Keith has behind him is a sign that says one word. And so the word was teacher. And then my goal was to think of my first teacher, my best teacher, my last teacher, and my worst teacher. And that that’s all it was to come to that story that all came down to a head of, you know, this example for leadership. You, you’re prompt, wasn’t, what’s a leadership story. It was think about your first teacher, your best teacher, your last teacher, your worst teacher, and derived from that was a story about leadership. I just, I love the simplicity of this, that we did that and came with a story and obviously like, you know, I can still, I have to fine-tune it, but it’s, it’s really great that you can do that in such a short amount of time. And that’s where I think what this tool is. So it’s just helpful because people think that they don’t have stories. This is a simple tool to be able to start to find your stories. And just like you coached me through, like, we found a meaning that I didn’t ever really realize. I never planned on sharing my defining moment of being 18. This is 20 years ago. And what I would have said. Keith Bailey: But how likely are you to use this story now, now that you have this great meaning behind it? Like, how is it? Is that is that the next time you see this double standard happening? Right. Are you gonna use it then you can use it in a presentation? Jenn DeWall: Yeah. I mean, I think about it now. Like even when people, if I’m talking to people about how to work with kids like kids know I was 18, and I absolutely knew what was right and wrong. And I was also not afraid to talk about that because I was probably just the level of inappropriate in my insubordination, but because I’m a little bit more direct like that. And I think integrity is my high value, but I just love how quickly that we could deduce that. And yeah, maybe I would share that story of that person because it is still something to this day that sticks with me because I just, I couldn’t handle the fact that they were scolding me for something that they don’t follow themselves. And it’s, it’s awful to feel that someone’s reprimanding you, berating you, saying whatever, if they’re not following through it. So I just, there’s so many ways that I can think about that. So you talked about the circular reference, telling the story in real-time. So knocking out the fact that you know, I was there like here I was on Monday morning. What is Otey’s observation? That was another tip that you put in there. Otey’s Observation – Details Make a Better Story Keith Bailey: David Otey! David Otey is a professional speaker. He’s a member of the national speakers association, Colorado chapter. He’s an engineer. And he speaks to storytelling for, for science and for engineering. And Otey’s observation is, is when you add a color and a number to a story, it makes those little details in that story, just that much more memorable. And, and he doesn’t know why. We’ve had conversations. I’ve done some collaborations with him and I’ve seen him put it to work and he’ll tell the story. And then later on like a long time later on, he came back to it again and said, and who can remember the color of my pants? And it was like khaki! Right? What was what was the color of my truck there? Like it was black, right? And like, he pulls these things forward. Keith Bailey: How many years had I been in the business? Oh, 23. Like people are able to recall these things because they stand out. So a adding a color on a number really helps with making the picture just that much more rounded can make the same thing, what we said, right. Given that location and giving an analogy, right? My teacher’s office was, I swear, he was put in the janitor’s broom closet. It paints the picture for the audience, or just able to allow, to allows them to visualize what a janitor’s broom closet looks like. And perhaps even smells like, or perhaps even tastes. Jenn DeWall: It was a science lab. It was a chemistry teacher. And it there were beakers everywhere. You can think of the Bunsen burners at each of the tables and yeah it smelled like formaldehyde. Great Storytellers Embrace the Pause Keith Bailey: So in your story is you don’t have to say the beakers and the Bunsen burners. Cause you just, by saying it was a science lab that had this pungent formaldehyde smell that just opens up a whole window of senses and imagination that your audience, this is the gift you give to your audience by not overexplaining someone right by trying to draw out what the, everything in the room look like. It’s too much. We want to leave things to the audience’s imagination, which is why pausing is so important. If you were to tell this story is Mr. So-And-So pulls me into his office, which is the science room. Pause, let the audience fill in the room with stuff. And it had an overarching pungent smell of formaldehyde. Pause again, let the audience smell the formaldehyde, let them take in some kind of, you know, a malodorous odor and scent. Let them experience that. So one of the biggest gifts you can give your audience, silence. Silence allows them to fill in those little tiny gaps and those little things within the story and enriches the story for them. If you just bulldoze right through the whole thing and speak like the micro-machine man, which dates me, he’s the man who could speak the fastest. So if in any language talked fast and was able to sell things, you sell a ton of microcars, but if you speak that fast, your audience is all they’re trying to do is keep up. Yeah. Jenn DeWall: That’s a great final closing point because I know we have to go. Embracing the pause and giving people the opportunity to place themselves in your story. With that pause, not thinking that they’re just waiting for you to get over as fast as possible, which I sometimes think when you’re a little nervous, we can feel like our audience wants, but they want you to be successful. And that’s maybe how we’ll end it here. How do people get in touch with you? Keith Bailey: Yeah, absolutely. You can find me on LinkedIn, Keith M J Bailey. You can find our website Articulated-Intelligence.com. And then my email is Keith@articulatedintelligence.com. Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much. Keith Bailey: Or, or you know what, or you can do, you can reach out to Jenn. She’s got my cell phone number and she’ll be able to put you in touch with me right away. Jenn DeWall: No, you reach out to Articulated Intelligence. I have seen your work with these speakers. I can’t tell you enough just how you made storytelling so easy. And this might sound like a commercial, but I think it’s just such an important skill that people need to know that it was so neat to watch the competence of one of our speakers, especially that took the story and went all the way to moving up in their Toastmasters competitions, all because of the story. So if you want to reach out to the team at articulated intelligence and Keith, I would recommend it heading over there. I’ve seen it work key. Thank you so much for sharing this tool with us. And I just thank you so much for being on the show. I really am grateful for you and yes, for those, please stop and think about how you can prevent unintentional audience abuse. Thank you so much, Keith! Keith Bailey: Thanks Jenn. Appreciate it. See you guys soon. Live life well-spoken Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Leadership Habit podcast. I hope that you had fun hearing how we can play that one word and that you are going to take that technique or reach up to Keith and his team at articulated intelligence. For those that want to connect with Keith, just as a reminder, the website is articulated-intelligence.com. They can help you with your storytelling, help you to network better, get that R-O-N. And, of course, engage your customers. If you know someone that could benefit from this podcast episode, please share it with them. And, of course, if you like this week’s episode, give us a rate and review on your favorite podcast streaming service. And finally, if you want to be a better leader or want to develop a team full of great leaders, please reach out to us at Crestcom. We would love to come into your organization or your team to help you develop your managers into leaders, leaders that show that they care and get results. Until next time.   The post Become a Better Storyteller with Chief Story Enabler, Keith Bailey appeared first on Crestcom International.

Tap Into Your Deep Genius with Executive Coach, Nancy Marmolejo Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall. And on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I sat down with Nancy Marmolejo, who is an award-winning Latinx, executive coach, and keynote speaker. She teaches leaders and entrepreneurs how to tap into their deep genius, that one-of-a-kind combination of innate strengths, life experiences, and learn expertise that only YOU can bring to the table. And let me tell you a little bit more about Nancy as the founder of talentandgenius.com. She’s committed over 15 years to uncover what makes us great and putting that into a compelling, authentic message, founder’s stories, leadership, training, communication, skills, development, and personal brands. She’s a popular speaker at leadership conferences and business events. Her work has been featured in Forbes, the Huffington Post, Latina, Univision, Smart Money, Redbook. I could go on, and her clients include leaders in the hospitality, industry, engineering, aerospace, global consulting teams, and so many more. Now I hope you enjoy our conversation as Nancy and I sit down and talk about how you can develop and tap into your deep genius. Meet Nancy Marmolejo, Founder of Talent and Genius Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone, it’s Jenn DeWall. And in this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I’m sitting down With Nancy Marmolejo, an executive coach, and keynote speaker. And today, we’re going to talk about how to tap into your deep genius and discover the strengths of your team. Nancy, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. It’s great to have you, Nancy Marmolejo: Jenn. I’m really excited to be here. Thank you so much. Jenn DeWall: So Nancy, how did this, how do you even start to maybe become interested in this subject of finding a deep genius? I mean, it’s a big conceptual topic, and I know it’s important, but tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey. Nancy Marmolejo: Sure. You know, I, I look at the word genius, and if you look it up in the dictionary, it doesn’t just mean that you have a super high IQ or this extraordinary intellectual ability. It also means extraordinary creativity or other natural abilities. And so, I truly believe that we all walk around with extraordinary natural abilities. It’s just a matter of seeing them, finding them, claiming them. In my very first career, I worked as a teacher, and my students were the kids who were falling through the cracks, and the system really wasn’t there to champion their success, unfortunately. And I would look at each one of them just so deeply and look at their life experience, look at their innate strengths, look at the things that I could see they were doing well, and reflect that back to them. And suddenly, there was a whole different way of viewing themselves as students, as just members of society. And I, I, when I started my business, which was a few quite few, well, a few years ago, I’ll just say, I’ll drop that over a decade. You know, I took that concept to work with business owners and professionals and leadership organizations to show people. Nancy Marmolejo: We have so many folks just walking around, not understanding their value and, and sort of being gaslit to think that they’re not all that they are. So that’s, that’s my mission. And that’s, that’s what I’m out here, you know, preaching the gospel of deep genius. What is Deep Genius? Jenn DeWall: But it’s such an important gospel. And it’s such an important message. I think about even where I was at earlier in my career. I would have benefited so much from hearing someone say, Hey, you may have gotten some feedback, and you may have really taken that personally and use that to make assumptions about yourself and your capabilities, but guess what? That’s not actually true. It doesn’t have to be true. And let’s maybe challenge that. Like, I think that you know, you don’t realize that when you’re even starting your career or even when you’re starting at a new company, you don’t realize that we can still be malleable, that we don’t have to take on like the pain feedback, whatever that is and use that to dull our light. And that it’s also not “cocky” to like talk about your deep genius. I just think the work that you’re doing is, is so important. What do you see as the biggest problem with work today in terms of understanding deep genius or maybe just getting people to be able to identify their own values? Nancy Marmolejo: Well, the feedback that I get when I deliver workshops or keynotes or any kind of training with, especially in corporate environments, is people always come back to me, and they say nobody’s ever bothered to find out more about me. What people are doing is looking at what’s on paper. You know, the resume is great, but it doesn’t tell everything. And when we find out like we, well, here’s an example, this one is really easy. Like when we find out that somebody is a student-athlete and you know, we see these people in the Olympics, and they’re, you know, they’re winning gold medals, and they’re in medical school, and they’re, you know, valedictorians, it’s like, wow, that person has some amazing capabilities and some amazing leadership and some self-discipline, we can put that all together—just that same way. There are things in our lives where we’re the equivalent of an Olympic gold medalist or, you know, in that school or valedictorians, what are the things that we have done in life? The life experiences that we have had, sometimes it’s not necessarily things that you want, everybody that everybody you know, finds out from your LinkedIn profile, but it has that understanding that we bring life experiences, we bring innate strengths, we might have some different kinds of training. And all of that puts us together into a very unique, valuable bundle, not being able to have the space to expose that and explore that I think is one of the biggest problems that we have. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. And it’s that, you know, looking at that resume, it’s, it’s so limiting, right. A resume. How could I possibly put my personality into a resume? I don’t know if I would that make it colorful, maybe have it scented, you know, there is so much that’s missing, right. It’s very flat. I mean, it’s a piece of paper, but it’s very flat. And I also, you know, I’m curious what your thoughts are too. Like one of the problems around not only leaders or organizations taking the time to get to know someone at a human level through their diversity, but also that as individuals, I know for me sometimes if I wasn’t achieving an award, if I wasn’t doing something grand, like being picked to be on a committee or something, oftentimes I also am like, well, I guess if they want someone that’s like that, and I’m not that then I guess I don’t produce value. Right. So I guess I thought of, as you said, and used those examples of the athletes like I’m not winning gold medals, so what value do I have? You know, I think sometimes that’s easy to believe or to start to tell yourself, so let’s dive into what a deep genius is, what is understanding or deep genius. Cause we’re going to help our audience really understand how to tap into that today. So how do we discover a deep genius? And before we get there, what is it? Deep Genius Starts with Our Innate Strengths Nancy Marmolejo: Sure. And let’s just pretend that we’re all in a workshop together. I’m guiding you through one of the deep genius events and exercises because that’s really where it gets fun. So you want to think about a couple of different things. One is that we all have innate strengths. We all have things that come easy to us, and they’re things that we know how to do without knowing how we know how. Does that make sense? Jenn DeWall: Yeah. I think that’s strange, like when I think about people are like, oh Jenn, you, you do speaking. And you like that. And that is honestly one of the things for me. Like, I don’t know how I can do it. I’m not trying to be cocky. It’s just something I feel very comfortable in. And I could not tell you how. Nancy Marmolejo: Yes, we know people who are naturally good with numbers, naturally good with taking things apart and putting them back together again, naturally good at sensing how others are feeling you can look back at when you were a kid. And these are things that you’ve just always had and always been true for you. Maybe there’s a natural sense of design and aesthetics or a natural sense of engineering and understanding how things work. These are the innate strengths and gifts that we have. And they could be either a skill such as something that you know, how to do. Like I’ve always loved to write, and I’ve always, and I was, I was talking like, my mom told me that when I was little, I just started talking. There was no baby talk. There was no, and it’s like. I went from like, you know, a baby to like, Hey, how are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, and there was just, I just went into that. It was like, I, you know, and she reflected that back to me when I was older. And I thought, oh, you know, that’s, I I’ve felt comfortable teaching and talking in front of others before I even knew what that was. Some people I notice have this amazing sense of empathy. They could just look and sense somebody. Other people have the leadership, you know, they’re not afraid to take charge that Daredevil the adventurer, all of these things. And whether it’s nature or nurture, there are so many sources of it. It just is. So that’s the first piece of it is things that you’re innately great at those things that you know how to do without really knowing how you know how to do them. Jenn DeWall: So here’s our message, right. So right now, everyone, like you, have an innate strength. You have an innate strength. Even if you’re driving in your car and you’re thinking or comparing yourself to someone else, you absolutely have an innate strength. Nancy Marmolejo: Yeah, think of the things you’re the go-to person for, or they come easily and naturally to you. And what happens more often than not is we overlook these because they come so naturally to us. It’s like, oh, come on. That’s so easy. Well, when I hire a plumber and pay plumber prices, you know, that takes the person two seconds to fix something. I think to myself, oh my gosh. But they have that. They have that gift. You know, it’s easy for them, but not easy for me. So I can say, oh my gosh, you know, you’re so talented. And you just did that. They might not think, well, I just, you know, I, it was nothing or somebody who’s naturally you know, a speaker, a writer or a leader, somebody else might look at them and say, I just don’t know how you do that. And they said, I just, I just do it. They might think everybody can do that. Well, not everybody can do it. What happens is we can’t always see it in ourselves. You know our eyes are on the inside, looking out. Our eyes aren’t on the outside looking in. The one thing I always tell people is, imagine what it’s like when you’re in a store, and you see yourself on the security camera. So do I look like that? I need to start standing up a little straight. Jenn DeWall: Yeah, at Target when I’m checking out. I’m like, is this what I look like? Nancy Marmolejo: Yeah. Like, oh, pull that, pull that stomach in. Or it’s like, suddenly we’re aware of ourselves or, oh, look at me. I look pretty good. We, we don’t see ourselves sometimes it’s helpful for somebody else. That’s why, when I do deep genius, you know, any kind of workshops around this, I love having a group and getting people into small groups and breakout sessions and pairing up with somebody and, and just reflecting these things back and forth because we can’t always see it in ourselves. So, so that’s the first part is the innate, the innate piece. There, there are two other, two other areas where I advise people to look, so I’ll share those, too. Okay. So I also encourage you to look at your life experiences; life experiences teach us things, and whether it’s the highs or the lows. The birth of a child. Falling in love. If we find out about, I never knew I could love so much. I never knew my heart could burst open caring for somebody in the end-of-life stages. The loss of a loved one is that, that deep grief. What did it teach you? What is something that you, maybe you thought I could never go on? And then you found out that you can. You know, where I am in California and, you know, you’re in Colorado, we are just, you know, wildfires happening all around us. There has been loss. There have been catastrophes. And what some people find out is I never knew I could be the support system that I am. Or I never knew I could get through a natural disaster. So many different things, or maybe, you know, traveling or living abroad, having you know, live, move from one country to another being an immigrant. We have life experiences that show us things about ourselves. And I encourage people to take an inventory and look and see what the strengths that were gifted to you as a result of that experience, whether it was something that was difficult or something that was really beautiful and joyful. To Find Your Deep Genius – Stop Comparing Yourself to Others Jenn DeWall: What a great place to start. I think you know, what comes to mind for me is that what you’re saying is that no matter who you are, look for your, you know, your highs, your lows, and the messages that can come out. And I think sometimes people miss out on those life experiences. And I’m curious if you agree, because we often when we look at the lows or the lessons in life, I feel like I sometimes the way I compare myself to someone else. And so then I minimize my experience because it doesn’t seem as difficult, tragic, you know, glorious, amazing as someone else’s. So again, it’s that ugly cycle of not even missing out on that opportunity to learn because I’m somehow saying the life experience wasn’t what someone else’s was. Do you see that a lot with your clients? Nancy Marmolejo: Yeah. And I think it’s part of it is sharing the stories and having somebody else, you know, tell me a story about a difficult time in your life, and you know, what came out of it. And you tell that story, and the person who’s listening to you sharing starts spotting other things. It’s like, wow, I see creativity. I see leadership. I see innovation. I see resilience. And they start reflecting back to you, things that you might not have taken inventory. And that’s where we start to build this understanding that there’s more to us than what it says on the performance review or what it says on the resume. And one of the metaphors I like to use is- where I live, I’m near the Redwood forests in Northern California. So I go hiking through the redwoods. And one of the things about Redwood trees is that they’re fire-resistant, which is interesting. And you wonder, I wonder why their bark is fire resistant. You know, trees that if there’s a fire, they actually, it’s hard for, for a Redwood tree to get completely burned down. You will go through the forest, and you’ll see these black scars all over the trees because fire has touched them, but it continues on. And so one thing I look at it, and I think, well, that is resilience. I’m going to go hiking through the redwoods to remind myself of any trauma or pain I’ve experienced. And I’m looking at this tree standing tall and mighty and think to myself, okay, I can rise too. What are the strengths I brought along? And interestingly enough, with Redwood trees, their little seed cones, the only way those seeds can get released is through intense heat. So it’s like they have to experience that fire, that, that, that would, could be like that hardship in order to even go on. There are so many. There are so many lessons that you can get. That’s why people love hiking in the Redwood forest is; you just like, feel the wisdom of the earth all around you. Jenn DeWall: Wow. I had no idea. And that makes me think of a diamond. I know that a diamond comes to be if your pressure, but I had no idea that Redwood seeds needed that heat to be able to grow. Wow, beautiful stories about resilience and growth and overcoming adversity. Nancy Marmolejo: I think about that in our own life stories, like where have we had to go through that? Do you know? And then, and then the last piece that I ask people to look at is, okay, well, let’s look at some of your formal training and how has that meshed with your innate gifts? How has that mesh with your life experience? And I think, well, people have probably heard the story of this college dropout who had this beautiful sense of aesthetics but was also very strong-willed, some people might say kind of a jerk, but a visionary and strong-willed, and the sense of aesthetics who had the life experiences of traveling and going on a spiritual journey and then had the training in electronics and in calligraphy, oddly enough. And then this person dropped out of college and ended up partnering with another person to start a computer company that introduced us to beautiful fonts and a minimalist aesthetic. And the sense of design that prior to that, you did not equate computers with beautiful lettering and a sense of design, or even the shape and size of the computer or the various devices that this company came out with and their aesthetic. So do you know who it is that I’m talking about? Jenn DeWall: I mean, that’s gotta be Steve jobs. Nancy Marmolejo: It’s Steve Jobs. Yeah. He had a background in calligraphy. He took calligraphy in college. He was like a total, like in college, he was just like, you know, I’m just going to take calligraphy, you know, but it, he fell in love with fonts. So what, so what happened when, when Apple computers started, as we started exploring beautiful lettering, we can you know, thank him for that. How Your Life Experiences Can Help You Tap Into Deep Genius Nancy Marmolejo: And, and so we look at these different life experiences, I think about Malala, who at the age of 14 was shot in the face for being a proponent of education for girls in her country. And, and now she is, you know, an international spokesperson for education for girls women’s rights. I mean, there are so, you know, her life experience and all the things that came out of her presented us with this leader, and she couldn’t be where she was now if she didn’t have this natural curiosity and leadership capability if she wasn’t, you know, mentored her father was a teacher and created a school for girls and her life experience of this horrific, horrific act of violence that then made her become just the symbol of, of a movement worldwide. So we have so many different things that place us where we are now as, as geniuses, without really we didn’t set out and say, okay, I’m gonna be this. It’s, it’s just following the trajectory of life and paying attention to how these three components are all acting together. Jenn DeWall: I love that. Okay. So deep genius for those that are still wondering is the combination or the, you know, the combination of our natural abilities, our life experiences, and then maybe our education and skills development, or just development in that way. And so that combination brings us to where we are today, and it leads us on our path for where we can go tomorrow or how we can continue to evolve. Why don’t people connect with it? Like, what do you see? Why, why don’t people connect with it? Or how did we get lost from being able to see our deep genius? Nancy Marmolejo: I just don’t think we have enough opportunities to even have the conversation or do the exploration. And w and then also what I said before is like, we don’t always see it in ourselves, but then again, what you just mentioned, like the resume and the education, we look at the school, we look at the, you know, like, oh, they went to that school. We better hire them. That means they’re good. Not necessarily. There are people who, you know, if you look at somebody who didn’t come from the right school, but they have this life experience that is far more valuable than the institution or the degree they received, or they have this inmate combination of gifts that you think, well, that is, you don’t see that often. So if we’re only going by what’s on paper, that’s something I, I gave a workshop to a large aerospace organization that they send people, you know, to outer space. We should know who they are, four letters, anyhow, they and at the end of this, we were giving feedback, and somebody had said, I wish this was part of our onboarding process. I wish that when we stepped foot into this company, somebody would just find base things out about us because there is, they think, oh, we don’t have the talent for that. We have to keep seeking. We have to find all these people. And the talent is right under our noses. We just need to take a moment. I think it saves a lot of money to just find out what are the assets and then the gems that we have right here. Dig a little deeper into who is currently here right now, as opposed to saying, oh, we, we, we lack this. Let’s go on this big expensive quest to find that position when meanwhile it was right there, and that person is sitting next to you, you just didn’t have the opportunity or the structure to find it out. You may not have asked to be that simple. You just never asked. A Message from Crestcom: Crestcom is a global organization dedicated to developing effective leaders. Companies all over the world have seen their managers transformed into leaders through our award-winning and accredited leadership development programs. Our signature BPM program provides interactive management training with a results-oriented curriculum and prime networking opportunities. If you’re interested in learning more about our flagship program and developing your managers into leaders, please visit our website to find a leadership trainer near you. Or maybe you yourself have always wanted to train and develop others. Crestcom is a global franchise with ownership opportunities available throughout the world. If you have ever thought about being your own boss, owning your own business, and leveraging your leadership experience to impact businesses and leaders in your community, Crestcom may be the right fit for you. We’re looking for professional executives who are looking for a change and want to make a difference in people’s lives. Learn more about our franchise opportunity on the owner franchise page of our website at crestcom.com. Understanding Your Deep Genius Jenn DeWall: How do you start to begin this journey to tackle understanding your own deep genius? Like, how do you, you know, figure out like, okay, now that I’m looking at this, like, especially if you’re still stuck with maybe the limitation believing that your education or your degrees or your something makes you qualified. How do you start to maybe peel back to be able to see this more inclusive sense of value that represents the three components? Nancy Marmolejo: Well, some people can do it on their own, and there’s a self-awareness that it allows them to say, oh, look at that. I see this about myself. Boom. There I go. Other people you really need to, you know, whether it’s with a partner or a coach or a group of people, there’s something the thing about being seen by somebody else, having that space of being able to be, have somebody reflect back to you, what it is that they’re seeing and hearing, that’s very valuable. Or if a person just can commit to doing some self-reflection and understanding that, that, that little voice it’s going to pop up every now and then saying you have no right to claim that. No, that’s not valuable. Everybody can do that. You’re not the one; you’re a fake, all of that imposter talk, all of that. I’m a fake talk. I understand that that might come up, and just keep doing it. Yeah, know, just, just for fun. I would tell my clients, it’s like, just humor me, just humor me and write it down. Okay. Let’s just pretend that we could put that inner critic in the other room for a moment and, and you know, what can we do to just honestly get an assessment? And so once we, I tell people just, just write it in three columns, here are your innate gifts and here’s your life experience and here’s your education and start looking, add it. And the fun part and this is, this is the part that I liked the most is when you, you start looking for unusual combinations. Where are the unusual combinations, and what does that say about you? So a few years back, I was at a leadership conference for women in engineering, and I had them pair up. This was when we were in person. We, I had them pair up, and it was so interesting because, before the conference, somebody said to me, oh, they won’t like this. This is engineers. They’re going to want you to just be straightforward. Tell them what to do, let them go out. They don’t want to think they don’t want it. And I said, oh, you’re kind of generalizing, but let’s, I don’t know. Let’s see, because they accepted my proposal for the conference. So maybe they’ll like it. Well, first of all, it was standing room only. There were so many people that just filled this room. And then, once they got into pairs. We found out there was somebody who was trained as an opera singer and a chemical engineer. And I mean, and she had kind of a mish-mash educational background. There was somebody who was into like crystals or somebody who just had a breakup. I mean, there were all these different life experiences and combinations. So rather than looking at this room and saying, okay, they’re all engineers. I can make all these assumptions about them. I now have these levels of depth and nuances about who they are. And the great thing is, is that at the end of that workshop, there were people pairing up and going into the hallway, and they were like, we’re going to start an app. Or we’re having a meeting. It was it just like it created these connections for people where they didn’t realize that that person sitting over there was exactly that kind of combination of skills and strengths and innate gifts that they needed to be in contact with. So you just have to. You just have to put it out in the open. We can’t just read minds and assume that we know. A Simple Exercise to Start Tapping Into Deep Genius Jenn DeWall: Okay. So here’s the assignment for all of The Leadership Habit guests. This is where you’re going to take your piece of paper. This is coming from Nancy. You are going to write down what your natural abilities are and put your self-doubt to the side because we all have that. Or I love when people say they don’t have self-doubt, Nancy. And the second thing. So put your columns, right? So first column, what are your natural strengths? Second column? What are the life experiences that are unique to you? And you don’t even have to find a meaning to that. Like, think about the ones that stand out. You don’t have to attach it because you had said, and then do your third, which is your skills, education, or background, and then combine them all together and look for your own themes. Don’t try to make them into something to say, well, they’re not, you’re enough. Just be curious about it. That’s the first assignment. I hope that everyone does that—those who are listening to this podcast. Nancy Marmolejo: That’s the starting off point. That is the starting off point. And I think there’s something that when we realize that we do have a very unique combination. I mean, that’s not the ending point. That’s the starting point. And people will sometimes contact me and say, Nancy, tell me what my deep genius is. And I’m saying. I’m not— I don’t do readings. I can see you. I can work with you. I can reflect back to you. What I see together. We can identify these pieces, but then the next question comes up. What do I do with this? What am I here to create? What am I here to lead? What am I here to innovate in? What do I need to communicate to the world? Like, okay, I got this thing, now what? Personal Branding and Explaining Your Deep Genius to Others Jenn DeWall: Yeah. You have the self-awareness, but what do you, where do you even begin to apply it? Okay. So what do you do? Nancy Marmolejo: Well, everybody’s going to be different. It depends. So for some people, it’s around, like a lot of the work I do is around personal branding, but the personal branding work that I do, it’s not like a cute little tagline. And you know, let’s find a gimmicky title for you or, or, or create some kind of a persona it’s like, let’s just honestly, authentically and accurately explain you. I always tell my clients they have to control the narrative because if you don’t control the narrative, somebody else will, and they might not get it. Jenn DeWall: Right. Perception is reality. Nancy Marmolejo: So you have these, this one opportunity is around just being able to say, oh my gosh, there are these things about me. And I don’t know how to tell the world. I said, okay, well, let’s do that through personal branding. And then from my leadership clients, they’ll say, okay, well, I understand this about myself, and I have this, you know, personal brand. How do I communicate that as a leader? How do I use this as a leader? And so, you know, what is the vision that you have for your company? What is the vision that you have for your team? How can you call upon these unique strengths and innate gifts to show up fully as a leader that people will say is the person who I am following. Because if you come up there and you’re just strictly technical and giving out instructions and step-by-steps, that’s not necessarily leadership. That’s more just, here’s a list of things. Say you’re a taskmaster. So are you a visionary leader, or are you a taskmaster? And having this understanding of your deep genius elevates yourself as a leader. So you’re not just, you know, barking out orders, you get people enrolled in your vision, and you know, everything seems to happen a lot easier, a lot faster, and a lot smoother when everybody buys into the vision. Jenn DeWall: What happens Nancy, when, and maybe, you know, this is kind of our conversation that started, you know, during our pre-call, when you do this reflection, you think about what are my natural gifts, what as my life experience, what as my background in education, and you kind of come up with this belief, right? Awareness around who you are and how you can provide value. But then you recognize that in some area of your life, you’re actually working counter to those things. So you’re maybe not leveraging a strength. You’re maybe doing something that you’re not qualified to do, or maybe from a life experience, doing something that you don’t want to do. So, cause I feel like that’s kind of the reason choice that I made to make that resignation from that board. It isn’t because I don’t love that board. It’s just that doing an assessment around like this actually doesn’t work for me anymore, but what do you, what do you do? Like what would your advice be to someone when they look at that? And you’re like, and you make you connect it back to your life. And you’re like, I’m really not leveraging my deep genius. Like how do you then start to move into that trajectory? Identify Your Values to Tap Into Deep Genius Nancy Marmolejo: Well, you need to make some decisions. And I never push anybody out into the deep end of the pool and say, all right here, go figure it out. I’m a firm believer in having a foundation underneath you before you do any of this. So when I start working with people through this process, we actually will look at core values. What are the things that you stand for? What are the things that are important to you? What are the things that, when they are dishonored, get you angry? Because sometimes people say, oh yeah, these are my top values. And I said, okay, well, tell me about the last few times you’ve gotten mad at anything. And then we’re going to pull out what was the, what was the boundary, the value that was, that was crossed. And so then you realize, well, I was disrespected, so I got angry, so, okay. So respect is one of your core values. Did you name it? Well, no. Well, it’s showing up. This is how it’s showing up. And so we look at, you know, making sure that we have that understanding, making sure that we have the right words that describe who we are in our genius. Some people are geniuses at simplifying complex processes. Do you say the word simplify when you describe yourself? Do you let people know that simplifying things is one of your jams? No, you don’t? You need to start doing that. Are you a person who optimizes, you know, things you’re always, you’re like that process improvement ninja everywhere you look around, you’re always looking at like, this could be better. And like, let me tell you how. There are people that just seriously walk around like that. Are you that person who really senses others, and you realize that that’s a deep gift of yours? So empathy and emotional intelligence. Are you letting people know that? So that’s part of it. It’s like you first have to, under, you have to understand those core values. They have to understand those. I call them your power words. And are, are you just kind of keeping that to yourself or letting the world know? So that’s important. And that’s, that’s one of the pieces of where we start. Jenn DeWall: So how do you find those words? I mean, so I get being able to maybe do that assessment of yourself, but I know one of the challenges is to truly embody that because we are still marginalized, maybe what those things mean. So how do we begin to maybe embrace it in a way that’s confident and positive and connecting with who we truly are instead of being like, I don’t know, I don’t want to come off as cocky because you’re not, you’re supposed to, you know, just do what, think of the messages that we’ve all been told? Like, oh, like it’s everyone has strengths. Don’t talk about yours. How do you, like, what are those barriers that will naturally come up? I think I picture just fighting off those messages. Like Jenn, like, you’re not that great. Like everyone can do it. Don’t worry. I say all of that stuff all the time. I’m just a total jerk to myself, and just like some people listening might resonate with. And if you don’t, I’m jealous of you because I hate inner-critic talk. But what do you like, how do you find those words? How do you start to actually like to live it, breathe it, own it? Nancy Marmolejo: Well, I mean, I provide my clients with like lists and lists of words. I mean, if you want to find the words, there are lists of words I have. I don’t know if you want to go search them, like, you know, strong verbs. I mean, whatever it is, you don’t always have to say them because it might sound kind of weird. You don’t walk up and conversation and say, I maximize productivity. That would sound kind of weird. But if you know, in the back of your head, that’s what you do. There’s something about the knowing, you know, when somebody has swagger, they don’t tell you how cool they are. You see it, you feel it, they embody it. So you just have to let it sink into your bones and let people know that about you without you having to necessarily pronounce it. I think that’s one of the reasons why I do a lot of work in personal branding. Because I always dislike the way people are taught to communicate because it’s, it never sounds natural. It never sounds like it’s in the flow. And I think it comes on a little strong and you can say, well, that person’s sure full of themselves. And they don’t really mean to come across that way. That’s just how they were taught. I’d rather somebody feel so comfortable in their own skin, that the language that comes out when you’re, when you’re talking about yourself when you’re, you’re in your deep genius, you want to communicate that, it’s natural and authentic. It doesn’t feel like you just had to suddenly, you know, pull out a script and start reciting something that somebody taught you how to do. But there are simple ways of doing this, that you, you know, if there are words that we can latch onto that really energize our conversations and help people get a mental picture of you in your deep genius. Forget the Elevator Pitch and Really Connect with Others Jenn DeWall: But we have to find those words. And so one of the things you just touched on is that you do. So once you find your deep genius understanding of the three areas that you know of you that combine together to create a unique value, then it comes down to how do you brand it? How do you give voice to that? And so your work is also, you know, obviously, you’re a keynote speaker, you’re an executive coach and helping people find that deep genius, but then it’s how do you brand it? So what’s the starting point. And I know that there’s a tool that you can share with our listeners, too, that maybe are on this journey of thinking about how do I brand myself? What does that look like once you find your deep genius? What happens after that? Nancy Marmolejo: It’s so much fun! I mean, you there, one of the things I tell people to just have as many different ways of communicating or, or being confident in your deep genius to be able to have this conversation. So don’t just rely on the one elevator pitch that you learned at some networking event or whatever it is. And that can serve its purpose sometimes. But, but don’t just rely on that. I always tell people, like they say, well, we need the 32nd elevator pitch. And I said, well, if you’re pitching like pitching for funding, going to an actual pitch-fest. Yeah. You have to say it a certain way because you are hardcore selling an idea right there. But if really I’m in the elevator with you and I just want to meet another human being. I don’t want to be pitched. I don’t know. Cool. You know, I know that there’s that urban legend of somebody who was in the elevator, and they had the right thing that they said. And the next thing you know, they’ve made the billion-dollar deals, and everybody lived happily ever after. You know, sometimes I just want to. I just don’t want all that broadcasting in my face. I really truly want to know you as a person. And, and so what are some different ways we can do that? And you’ve asked me a couple of times about words. I want to throw a couple of words out. These are some of the most common ones that I watch people use and feel really comfortable with. But for example, I use the word simplify. There are some people who are very good at simplifying a complex process. If you do that and it comes easily and naturally to you. Use that language, simplify, let people associate you with the word simplify or streamline or demystify. Or for me, I was. I started my life off as a teacher. The word teach, I mean the word, teach. That is me! That’s what I do. I teach. And I reflect somebody talks to me. It doesn’t matter who you are. I mean, it could be the person putting the cable in. It could be somebody coming over and, you know, dropping off a package. I could like immediately reflect back to somebody what I see as their strength. It’s I can’t live my life without doing that. That’s part of my deep genius. So when people know me as, when, who teaches, and who reflects, I use that language, they know that about me. There are people who make connections, just authentic connections with people. So just think about that and put, put words to it. Jenn DeWall: Yes. Oh my gosh. So Nancy, how does our audience get, get in touch with you? How can they potentially work with you to maybe help discover their deep genius? Find Out More About Talent and Genius Nancy Marmolejo: Well, I have, if you can come to my website, talentandgenius.com and there, you know, a few different ways you can contact me there if you want me, you know, for speaking, for coaching, for training, that is a really easy thing to do is just go to talentandgenius.com. There’s a free resource there that I call ten message starters. And this one has been so much fun. I have used this with entrepreneurs. I’ve used this with aerospace engineers. I’ve used this with CEOs. I’ve used this with, oh my gosh. People in health and wellness, I mean just every kind of industry, and it’s ten sentence-starters. It’s like these ten little frameworks, almost like Madlibs, you could fill in the blanks. But they range from everything to, you know, more of the formal, you know, I simplify complex processes. So companies can make more money to have a cross between Mr. T and Mr. Rogers to I’m a geek whisper. What do you do with all of those different things? And so I show people how they can create these interesting little message starters, and then like the next level piece of it is how you can even piece them together and create a new bio for yourself or a new way to introduce yourself or a new way to be identified. It’s really fun. And the people that I’ve taught this to, as I said, from a wide range of fields, everybody always has some kind of an aha moment, and they’ll take it and apply it. Like LinkedIn profiles start getting changed, or some of the things, you know, talking in a different way about themselves when they’re introducing themselves around the table. It’s, it’s been pretty life-changing for a lot of people. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. I imagine it also just gives a different boat of confidence to truly appreciate ourselves and the contributions that we offer to a team, an organization, the community, our friends. I love that. So if you want to get the ten message starters, or just, you know, get to know more about Nancy’s work, they can head on over to talented genius.com. Is that right? That is correct. Nancy, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you so much for your insights on how we can tap into our deep genius. It’s an important topic, and I hope that people walk away with seeing their own unique gifts. Thank you for helping them find that. Nancy Marmolejo: Thank you for having me here. It’s been a pleasure Jenn DeWall: So much for listening to this week’s episode of the leadership have a podcast. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Nancy. If you want to get her tips on how to talk about yourself in 10 message starters, you can head on over to talentandgenius.com there. There you can also book Nancy for speaking, coaching, training. You name it. If you enjoy this week’s episode, please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. And most importantly, if you thought of someone that could benefit from this, don’t forget to share this with them. Thank you so much for your attention. Your organization is looking for leadership development training, looking to develop your managers into leaders, head on over to Crestcom.com. There you can sign up for a complimentary to our leadership skills workshop to help your team succeed! Until next time.   The post Tap Into Your Deep Genius with Executive Coach, Nancy Marmolejo appeared first on Crestcom International.

Building Relationships for Sales Success with Kelly Mark Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone! It’s Jenn DeWall, and on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit, I sat down with sales, leadership expert and strategist, Kelly Mark. Kelly has over 25 years of experience in solution selling and managing successful sales teams. She helps them to focus on the pain points that organizations face as the pace of technology continues to grow and change rapidly. Kelly consults companies as they search for expertise around integrating technologies as digital transformation and collaboration are at the forefront of any company’s strategy. Kelly began her career with Intrado, gaining unparalleled experience in the telecommunication space while also establishing herself as a respected sales leader. Currently working as an area vice president for boss solutions, Kelly is widely known for her collaboration technology strategy and consultative approach. She has consistently been a top performer selling IT automation, collaboration, technologies to key strategic partners in large global enterprises. Kelly’s commitment to the evolving IT Industry is showcased in our passion for our relationships with our customers, partners, and peers. I hope you enjoy the conversation as Kelly and I sit down to talk about how you can build and create sustainable relationships. Full Transcript Below: Meet Kelly Mark Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone! It’s Jenn DeWall, and I’m so excited to be sitting down on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit with Kelly mark. For those that are just getting to know Kelly, she is an area vice president of sales. And today, we’re going to be talking all about the art of building relationships because, let’s say, if we’re breathing, we likely need a relationship. Kelly, thank you so much for joining us on the show. Kelly Mark: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to talk about this, especially in the times we’re in, so it’s an exciting topic. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. Yeah, because I think it’s also a topic that we kind of forget, right. If we don’t have that face-to-face interaction, how are we building these relationships? Or how are we even getting in touch with people if we can’t do networking events or if we can’t do so much and so forth? So yeah, I think it’s a great time to have this topic, and we haven’t talked about sales in a while here at The Leadership Habit. So I’m excited to just be talking about it because, let’s be honest, we’re all in the business of influencing in some way. So Kelly, before we jump into it, just tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you become, like, how did you, what was your career trajectory? How did you become interested in sales? Because I know that you’ve had a successful sales career, clearly you’re an Area Vice President of Sales. Tell us how you came to be. Kelly Mark: Sure, sure. That’s such a great question. I mean, I never sought out to be in sales when I was growing up or even in my really young twenties. But I grew up in Northern California, and, after high school, I was starting to go to college, and I was really trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And I waited tables, and I was a bartender, and I was always in a relationship type of role in everything that I had been doing. And I started I actually met somebody as I was bartending, who said you would be really great at sales. And I started working for a software company. I ended up getting this job through somebody that was literally just a customer, and we hit it off. I ended up getting hired. I ended up on a very fast track, starting as a customer service rep, moving into a junior sales role, and then into more of a leadership sales role there. And from there, it just started evolving. I started working for, you know, from there we were acquired, I, you know, moved over and started doing some dot com work because, at the time in the late nineties, that was the big thing to do thinking I was going to make it really big. And unfortunately, people around me made it big, but I did not. So I kept working, and you know, through an evolution of different roles in sales, I ended up sitting in my hairdresser’s chair one day, knowing that my job was going to come to an end. It was a brand new division that, you know, just was coming to an end of life. And she said you gotta meet my friend, Anna. She is amazing. She’s dynamic. She runs the west coast for an organization in tech. And I had a couple of years under my belt at this point and ended up meeting her. And as I was sitting in front of her across her desk, she said, Kelly, I am hiring you, and I’m not hiring you because of your skills. I’m hiring you because of your energy. You’re tenacious. You’re alert. You’re a good listener. Like I just connect with you so much that I can train you on anything you want to know. And so I’ll train you on the technology part. And from there, it was history. I grew in that specific position and then ended up following her to a couple of additional companies and ended up back at the company. She hired me. And, and there I’d spent 20 years at one organization, which evolved over time. We were acquired a couple of times over, but I really wore several different hats in the sales arena and built a very good reputation around my relationships. And when I say that my relationships were very focused, not just externally with my prospects and customers, but internally within my organization, which is another element of how we sell, right. It’s how we connect with people. So I did that for 20 years. And then I ended up about a year ago during the pandemic making a switch. It was just time for a change. And I currently work for a company called boss solutions. And it’s really over the past 11 months that I’ve realized how critical and important the art of building relationships is because being somewhere for 20 years, you’d get comfortable. You know, everybody, you are competent in your role and how the company works and really making a jump. After 20 years into this new role, I had to start over. I had to figure out the internal processes, who I was working with internally, who might target ideal customer profiles that I was really focusing on building these relationships with and selling to essentially. And quite frankly, it worked out in my favor of having some great initial first opportunities to sell into companies that Voss had not been a part of before. And it was all due to people I knew in the industry and just people I knew in general. The Art of Building Relationships Jenn DeWall: I love how that’s already coming full circle of, you know, we’re talking about the topic of the art of building relationships you recently began or transitioned to a different company within the last few years. And it’s because of those relationships that you’ve established. I mean, one company for 20 years, I can only imagine how many people you met throughout that experience. Still, coming back and recognizing that it’s thrown all of those seeds that you planted really helped you find and create more success to where you are today. How did you become like, I mean, I love that your, that your friend had, or initially not your friend, but your colleague had initially pointed out, pointed out like your tenacity, your attitude, your ability to connect, your listening skills- all to say, like, I don’t even necessarily care what you know, but I know that you have this and it sounds like it’s a secret sauce. So how did you become interested in really wanting to focus on building relationships? Kelly Mark: That’s such a great question. I think I think, of course, part of it’s a little bit innate in who I am as a human being. And I think just the way I was raised, I, I always knew that what made me excited every day was connecting with people, connecting with people on some level. And so, you know, as, as competitive as the job market is whether it’s today, right, 20, 25 years later, or even back then when I was sitting across the table from Anna, I knew that, you know, I needed to differentiate myself. So I needed to be different than what everybody else was doing. But I also knew that connecting with her personally first was going to help me in a professional way. And I guess what I mean by that is it’s important to engage. It’s not all about your goal and what you’re focused on. You know, obviously, my goal was to get a new job. But outside of that, I was interviewing her as much as she was interviewing me. And in order to really build and understand where you want to go, I think it’s critical to connect with somebody on a human level. And so I think, I think that’s just something that I’ve always been really focused on because of competition and because I wanted to be different. Right? And, and the challenges we have in today’s world are different than back then, but we still have to absolutely differentiate ourselves at the end of the day. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. And let’s talk about some of the challenges, and I love that. It’s like you initially chose, like, this will be my differentiator. Oh my gosh. I just wonder what an organization would look like if everyone legitimately like all of their actions reflected making relationships a priority because you had also said like you want to connect at a human level. Picture if leaders were connected with their staff at a human level all the time. Just the success we could have, because we’re going to talk about today, like the important things about relationships, but whether you’re in a sales role or not, you’re in the business of relationships. And so we’re just talking about that. And so even if you’re initially like, wait, but we’re going to talk about sales. No. I want you to think about the insights Kelly is going to share with you have to, how you can show up for your team, to how you can build better relationships with them. Kelly, what do you think is the most important thing to know right now as it relates to building relationships? People are Yearning For Connection Kelly Mark: Ooh, that is such a good question. I think right now, when I look at the job market or when I went to relationships in general. People are yearning for connection. So I think right in the here and now, there are a couple of different components. One is we are going through a pandemic, hopefully at the tail end of that pandemic. And so we have to think about how we can connect with people in a different way than we’ve ever had to before we may not be going into the office. We may be just on a lot of conference calls. You know, people are hurting, you know, people have got different circumstances happening in their personal life that we don’t know about when we’re doing business. So how do you connect with them on that personal level? And it’s really about asking questions, getting to know people, you know, leveraging video, right. It’s starting off conversations and discussions without jumping into the goal or the purpose connect with them, right. Connect with them on a personal level because the chance, the chances are that they are going to appreciate that, especially in today’s climate. Jenn DeWall: I love that you share that because no one wants to be. I mean, I think I would call it “networked on,” or I think they call it the show-up and throw-up method where you don’t care at all about maybe the person that you’re talking to. You just want them to hear what you have to say. And that’s for those that are unfamiliar with that phrase. That’s really what that means. Right. Show up and throw up. You’re just giving them your pitch, and you’re not even getting to know them. You’re probably not even aware if they’re like breathing, listening, hungry, irritable just because you are more focused on making sure that your topic or what you came to do is presented and put in front of them. Like when you talk about right now that people are craving connection, that’s like the worst thing that you could do right now is show up and throw up, sorry to interrupt you on that. Kelly Mark: So true. And I think that’s. I think that’s really important to highlight. Not only for people we may not know very well, right. That we’re trying to get to know, but also for any leader out there that is leading a team, it’s really easy to jump into the meat of what needs to be discussed, whether it’s a weekly team meeting or a business review or business planning or collaboration session, whatever that is. If you take a few minutes to connect with your people, it helps build that trust, which I know we’re going to talk about. Trust is such a big component of building those solid relationships. So I think, and I’ve had examples of that throughout my entire career. I’ve been very fortunate where I’ve worked for people that are connectors that are very good at it. So I’ve been able to emulate a lot of the things I’ve learned over time as well. But it’s important to highlight that it’s not just when you’re in front of a customer prospect. It’s internally too. How do We Start Building Relationships? Jenn DeWall: So let’s do dive into it. I, I know, like we had a few questions drafted, but the one that I really actually want to start with for those that might be a little bit more intimidated. How do you even start a relationship? How do you start a relationship? Whether it’s with a prospect that could potentially invest in your product or services, or maybe even a new hire, how do you start? What do you think is the best way to actually go about starting a relationship or maybe initiating it? Find Common Ground by Doing Your Homework Kelly Mark: I love that question. So the, I think starting it, if you’re talking about a prospect, or, you know, hopefully, a new or a new customer, someone from a business perspective externally without outside your organization. I think I think into that, the one thing to think about in today’s world is information is available at everyone’s fingertips. So you can Google anything. You can Google on a technology on, you know, a product on a service. Most information is out there. So your buyers or the people that you’re working with are savvier than they’ve ever been because they can quickly get access and gain access to whatever you have to offer. So I like to set the stage there because we have to think three steps ahead. We have to think about who we are meeting with. How are we leveraging, whether it’s social media for understanding the buyer, who are they, where did they go to school? What are their hobbies? Like, are there things in areas that you can learn about those individuals that may help with connecting with that? So, and not in an ingenuine way, I mean in a genuine way, maybe there’s some common ground or some area you see that you’ve got something in common with that individual. So I think that’s one component. As far as the company itself outside of the buyer, it’s ensuring you’re doing your homework. It’s making sure you listen to their investor relations call if they’re a public company. Are you looking at their 10 K report, which is in basically the financial documentation? Are you looking at their website? Are you looking at who you’re connected to that may be working at this organization? It’s about doing your homework, and less is more when you’re relationship building. So in the world today, there are so many AI technologies where people are trying to touch hundreds of people in a very rapid way and hoping that it’s a numbers game and something comes back, then those things are all important. They’re very important in today’s business. However, if you’re talking about the relationship, it’s, it’s really creating a smaller target list of people that you want to connect with, Right? And, and if you’re, if you’re honing in and doing that in a smaller bite-size way, you’re able to carve out more time to do the work that’s needed to really understand the client or potential client and who they work for. So sorry, and you know, going on and on, but it’s really important to make sure you’re one step ahead, right? Before you even get on that first phone call or first live meeting. Make a Genuine Connection Jenn DeWall: I feel like that’s a step that’s often overlooked. Like sometimes the, you know, whether you’re hiring a new person to your team, you may not even do the due diligence to like, get to know them, look at their LinkedIn, understand like their background and what maybe experience they have, or even just scheduling that one-on-one like, tell me about you. But this also brings me probably my pet peeve that I’ve really seen over the last two years as LinkedIn obviously is a very, very popular way for buyers to connect with potential sellers. I just find that I feel like very few salespeople on LinkedIn actually understand how to start a relationship. Or I feel like there was a minute where everyone would write something that was like, “I really like the work that you’re doing- Love, John.” Not that they say, love, sorry. If they were just generic messages, like, oh, it seems like you’re doing really great work. And in my head, I’m like, first and foremost, do not think that because it felt like there was a trend where that was the kind of technique that everyone was doing. And I was like, this is no, no, do you know how many messages I get? Like, what are you even doing? How are you trying to connect with me? All you’re trying to do is sell me. And I’m just never going to respond. But I do dislike that so much with LinkedIn because I feel like you have a lot of information at your yet. You’re not using it. You’re just looking at my name, my title. And then you’re trying to figure out if I can sell you something. So it just drives me bananas. So I love that you talked about doing your homework and actually get to know them at a personal level. Like you can give me really, I would call them like empty compliments, but that’s not going to make me want to engage with me or engage with you, nor is it going to make me want to trust you because I don’t even know. And you’re telling me that. Kelly Mark: Right. And I think it’s all about. I call it earning the right, earning the right for them to take time, to meet with you. Right. Earning the right. Right. You’ve got to earn the right with understanding them as a human, you know, a person earning the right to understand our company and maybe what’s happening in that company. And then, then you can, then, then you can confidently ask for time. Right. Which is very valuable for all of us. And I love the point you make because I get hundreds of messages just like that every day on LinkedIn. And the only ones that I will take a step back and go, okay, this is really good. Is if they’re touching, they did their homework on the organization. So they know something specific about Voss. If they know something or can connect with me on a personal level, they’ve done the research on me, or they did something really fun and creative. That’s another kind of component to kind of grab somebody’s attention. Maybe they sent me a video snippet instead of just an email. And the video snippet was them. I’ve had one person who did such a great job. They held up like the white cards with writing on it. It took to get the appointment with information on it. And it was really creative and unique and different. So you’ve got to, you’ve got to think things through in that, in that regard. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. And not just treat me like, don’t just treat me like a transaction. I’m a human being. And maybe I’m just a little too, like sensitive to it because it really just drives me bananas. Anytime I see that someone because I’m a coach. So on LinkedIn, I’ll get a lot of the— I help coaches do X— and in my head, I’m like, great. But that doesn’t mean that I need your help. And so telling me that I do great work and you work with coaches. I know you say the exact same thing to everyone. So that’s also just, it’s like really bad pickup lines. How can we help people learn better lines to connect with people? And I mean, I don’t even accept those requests anymore just because I feel like I don’t want them in my network. I don’t want them to also reach out to anyone else in my network if that’s the way that they go about it. But I know we’re kind of going on a tangent. So let’s yeah. One of the things that we’ve talked about is, so that’s kind of how to start a relationship, like doing your homework, making sure that you understand that. And this goes again, if you’re bringing someone onto your team, do your homework, get to know them, even down to having an open entry interview. That’s like, what, how are you motivated? How do you like to receive feedback? Like having those types of dialogues or if you’re going to actually try to sell someone, making sure that you actually get to know who you’re selling to, and that you’re not just doing the show-up and throw-up. But now we’re going to talk about how to build and sustain relationships or how to build sustainable relationships, said in a different way. And you have seven different ways that you recommend that if people were actually going to, you know, once they start that relationship, they do their homework. And then if they want to keep that going, the first place to start, but you had said is to build value. Tell me more about that. Bringing Value to Build Relationships Kelly Mark: Well, I think this is a great segue into what we just talked about. We talked about doing our homework first, right before you even get in front of that prospect customer, et cetera. Once you have that, bring ideas to the table where you’re not expecting anything in return, right. Have you ever thought about implementing this technology to address the issue that I read about in an article about, you know, XYZ company? So you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re bringing tidbits of information. Maybe you’re targeting as an example, a chief information officer, their job is to have information on all the technologies in the market and while they’re smarter than ever before, because they have access to the information, unless they have a pain point, they may not be in the know on some of the technologies. So maybe you’re just saying, Hey, did you know that this company just launched a brand new version of X software? I mean, you can bring value without really knowing exactly what, you know, what is going on in their business, but continuing to deliver something of substance, right. That’s happening, market trends, industry trends, things like that. So I think that’s a good way to start, right? To start that relationship off is bringing that value. I love that. It doesn’t. It sounds like it doesn’t even necessarily have to be something so grandiose or really expensive in terms of resources. It could be, Hey, did you see this new article that’s in your industry that can be relevant to your organization? I just thought I would pass it on because I know this is something you’re working on. I love that approach. Like no one has sent me anything like that on LinkedIn. That’s like, oh God, I think that you would really appreciate having this. It’s like, no, try my app so you can buy it. I’m like, yeah. But so yeah, building value without expecting something in return, and it doesn’t have to be grandiose. I think it probably just has to be genuine and thoughtful. That’s where you’re doing your research. Kelly Mark: A hundred percent. Yes, absolutely. And it does work. It really does. I’ve had it worked time and time again. 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We’re looking for professional executives who are looking for a change and want to make a difference in people’s lives. Learn more about our franchise opportunity on the own-a-franchise page of our website at Crestcom.com. Active Listening is Key to Building Relationships Jenn DeWall: So then the second piece of building value without expecting something in return. And again, this is where it comes down to. It’s not always about your agenda. You’ve got to get into their agenda. And the second piece is all about you had said actively listen. So what are we looking for? What are we listening for? Kelly Mark: So for salespeople specifically, I think there’s a large percentage of us out there that have a hard time listening. It goes back to the show, right? So it’s very important, critically important to spend the first few meetings listening, data gathering, but listening. It’s the whole 80/20 rule that we used to talk about. Really, they should be doing 80% of the talking, and we should be doing 20% because if we don’t listen to what’s going on in their world, what their pain points are, what their strategic initiatives are. We will have a really hard time bringing value with whatever we’d like to show or sell to that prospect. And so the listening is just, this is what I see most salespeople skipping over. They may think they’re a good listener, but they’re not really actively engaging and listening. So when someone feels heard, that’s one piece of it, but it’s listening enough to be able to understand exactly what’s going on in their world. And that one is just critically important. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. What are my pain points? And that’s where I also, you know, think about that. If you’re trying to build the relationship, you’re also talking at me sometimes when you don’t do your research with very generic pain points that actually may not be relevant to me. Like I may not need the thing that they’re selling, and they’re not even asking to see if that is my pain point. So again, it’s all about that, but I appreciate actively listening and the prescriptive advice of, you know, I want to keep that in my head that they should be doing 80% of the talking and I should only be doing 20%. So here’s the rule. If you are trying to influence someone, you’re trying to get to know them, build that relationship, practice the 80/20. I think that’s a great way to go about it because, yes, there are people like me that I love to talk to, but I might be missing a lot of valuable information if I don’t just zip my trap. Or just be asking very curious open-ended questions and then just allowing them to think about it and respond. You know, I think that leaders even forget about that too. They just are so busy. It’s that pushing, right? Like even leaders show up and throw up like push, push, push, and we don’t even recognize what’s going on. And then we’re not necessarily as adaptive leaders because we don’t. We’re making decisions off of or with limited information. So, actively listen. Yeah. Kelly Mark: Really listening. And I think in order to actively listen, you have to be present. And if you’re not present and you’re always thinking of what’s next, that’s when people start talking too much. That’s when people are just jumping ahead rather than being in the moment. So I think that’s another key buzzword to think about so that you can actively listen. So just another way of looking at that too. Building Relationships Requires Transparency Jenn DeWall: Yeah. I love that. So your third recommendation is transparency. I thought you weren’t supposed to share it all right. Especially if you’re in sales, I thought you’re supposed to keep some things close to the vest to aid in your negotiating power. Kelly Mark: Think from that angle, you know, there’s a time in the, in a place for everything that makes sense. But I think, you know, when I look at my personal experience here at Voss, it’s, it’s, you know, we’re, we have our own proprietary technologies. So what we’re doing and what we’re providing is a way to tailor automated technologies that do different things for different people in different customers. And the good news is, is we can do almost anything. We’ve got open API APIs, which allow us to integrate into multiple technologies. The part where we have to really watch how we position ourselves as some things we can do right out of the box today. And some things may take development, and I’ve been in positions in my career where, you know, it’s easy for sales folks to go, yes, yes, yes. We can do it. Yes, yes, yes. Everything’s a yes. When in actuality, it’s not always a yes, right. There are things that have to be done in order to make that advance. And so as important as it is to be able to provide these solutions right. To these prospects and customers, it’s really critical to be transparent because that’s another trust-building element to a relationship. Hey, you know what, we don’t, here’s what we do have today. Here’s what we could explore. But we’re, you know, we’re looking at, it might be six to seven months, you know, a timeline to be able to deliver that to you, but here’s what we’re committing to you. So I think it’s, it’s how you communicate in your delivery in that. But transparency is so important by just experiences with a recent partner that we’ve just worked on in the process of onboarding. And even if you even looked at the Zoom CEO, Eric, he does such an amazing job of building these relationships in the market with his customers. They have a huge security issue that happened about a year ago, but people were okay with it. He was transparent about it. He addressed it. We talked about when the solution was coming out, and people were. People were totally comfortable and confident that it was going to get handled by the way he handled his customers. So I think it’s, it’s time for us to, to think a little bit differently, especially in sales, but for all of us to be a little bit more transparent. Jenn DeWall: I think that’s all important you know, at cross cabin September. And I just thought of this because one of the stories that we talked about, a few different stories and examples of companies owning their mistakes, right? So one of the notable ones that came about that we talked about was, you know, decades-old with Tylenol, Johnson and Johnson and people passing away and how they owned it. They took obviously a very quick and swift action and were able to remedy it without necessarily a big drop in sales. And it’s all because of how they manage that their transparency. And even Netflix made price changes. And then that CEO was like, well, you know, apologize, like, Hey, I made a mistake. Let me make it up to you. I think transparency goes a long way. And it also helps because you’re hitting, you know, when I think about sales, I’m such a skeptic, right? I’m very, very skeptical. And it’s because of the fear of the oversell, the over promise, and under deliver. And I recently made a big investment while I made the investment probably in January, but still pretty recently. And when I was talking to the person in the sales rep before I was going to invest in this program, asking him all these questions, you know, he like made one like, Hey, this is what they’re going to do in the program. I asked specifics about it. He lied. But here’s like, here’s the piece is like, is it a lie? Or is it that your lack of communication or your lack of people having proper training and awareness around your, what you truly can do? Like, was that just a sign of like, there’s a complete operational breakdown, and this is why this individual presented that in that way? Or was he really just trying to get me to buy? And I did eventually buy, but I’ve now the trust is completely broken. Like I don’t even want to like very much work with that organization. It was a pretty hefty price tag. I invested in it, they over-promised and under-delivered, and he sold it one way than what it was actually like what it was. And like, I just can’t, I will never tell anyone to invest in that program, or I’ll say like, let me tell you what it really is. Like, here’s a perfect example. So I’m in a speaking business, right? And in this program, they were like. We’ll give you leads to organizations that you can reach out to, to speak. And these would ask the leads. I’m like, oh, are you giving warm leads? Are you giving cold leads? And he’s like, oh, we’re giving warm leads. I’m like, wow, like that’s incredible. And a warm lead for those that might be unfamiliar or someone that could be a little bit closer to you at a relationship level. So then it might be easier to make that move forward. Whereas a cold lead is someone that you maybe have limited or no experience with. Then you’re just making an outreach. It’s cold. And so he told me they were all going to be warm, that they had this established partnership. They’re all cold; everything was a lie. And it’s just so frustrating because now the other people that I’ve even interfaced with that are a part of that organization. I have a reluctance to trust them because I just assume that like that one person that they’re all kind of, I don’t know that again. So over-promising and under-delivering like that, that’s what happens when you’re not transparent. Kelly Mark: I think that’s what happens. Yeah. When you’re not transparent, I think you bring up a couple of things that I think are really important. Number one, communication, that communication, you have that communication with the salesman, right? It’s ensuring too that, I mean, as a salesperson, we need, it’s our job to make sure that there’s no breakdown. And because what do you want for your customer? If you don’t want them to have a return on investment, then you shouldn’t be in sales. And that happens to your point. Now your ROI is affected by what you invested in. It’s the same in any business. It’s the same in anything we do in our personal lives. When we go buy a product or a service, or, you know. You’ve got to make sure that the expectations are clear, they’re in writing, and that the salesperson needs to make sure that they understand the ROI that’s expected from that provider. Right? What is the ROI that they’re expecting? Because at the end of the day, don’t you want somebody to go refer you to someone else, right. Especially big-ticket items. So it’s, you’ve got to look at the long game. You gotta look, you don’t look at the immediate wipper snap, I want the sales, and I’m just going to go sell, sell, sell. You got to look at the long game of how it’s going to impact your long-term reputation and business. But it’s really about ensuring that you’re on the same page with the ROI expected and that you have, you really want it, that stuff in writing too. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. That I will never, probably like do that again without getting everything in writing, and I think that, you know, in, in the line of men, people try to sell to speakers, coaches all the time, right as individual entrepreneurs. And I think there are a lot of people that are still a little newer to meet me being an entrepreneur. And so you are more to, I would say, misrepresentation of sales promises or ROI. I mean, I think my favorite kind of hook that lives in the coaching space is “six months to six figures.” Watch me give you, make you a million dollar X. And it’s so interesting because if you look at the statistics, only 6% of people that are entrepreneurs actually get to or get above a six-figure income. And so then it’s just, there are so many misleading things because it’s all about the spin, but we’re not going. I mean, there are so many different ways I could go from pain. We could talk about this all day. And this is also about reminding you of what not to do, like not to sell something that has a misleading hook or that doesn’t, that won’t realistically actually get you the ROI that you’re saying that they will, because once you do that, I mean, I forget if this is a legitimate stat real-time, but I thought what I had heard is that an upset customer will go out and tell 15 of their friends how bad it was to do business with you. Whereas someone that’s happy, it will still probably only tell like one to two. So you make someone upset. They’re going to let everyone know. And obviously, with social media, you can do that so fast. So your reputation can be changed in a second. So again, like transparency is huge and maybe that’s because I think it all really comes down to the value of like integrity and how you do your business. Right? Kelly Mark: And you want testimonials, well, positive testimonials, right? Or case studies, if, depending on what you’re doing. But yeah, you got to look at that long game. That’s just, that’s so important. Know Your Buyer’s Personality Type Jenn DeWall: So number four, understand the different types of buyers. Oh my gosh. I wish everyone understood this one. Why don’t they know? What does that mean? Kelly Mark: Well, I think it’s important to look at a couple of things. When you are in a position where you’re building a relationship, and you are looking to sell something, number one, it’s the personality type, right? And then number two, it’s what, what is their role within the organization? So we talk about personality type first. There are different types of personalities. There are the connectors like us, right? We’re talking about how to become more of a connector. But there’s also the analytical, you know, there’s the reserved, there, there are different types of personalities where you kind of have to maneuver and tweak the way you work with them based on their personality. You come in all rah-rah, ready to, you know, that’s my personality, I’m a rah-rah, you know, high energy. I can be too much for people. And that’s okay. It’s knowing what type of buyer you’re dealing with so that you can, at least, maybe you can’t become analytical per se, as an analytical person, but you can come down to, you know, to where they are. I shouldn’t say down. That sounds negative, but you can tweak the way you work with them based on the type of personality type they are. Right? So maybe you are working with an analytical person, and you need to come to the table with more numbers- numbers, percentages, stats. Maybe you’re working with somebody that doesn’t give a lot of information. So you gotta, you know, slowly prod, you know, you’ve got to slowly work and massage that relationship because that might take a little longer to get something. So it’s just looking at the different types of personalities. The other side is who are you selling into? So for me, I’m buying an IT organization, or I’m selling into the IT organization. For the most part, there are other buyers and customer success and customer experience. And there’s also the procurement, right? The person that’s in charge of the money, the vendor manager, the person that wants to work on, I’m going to beat the salesperson up until I get the price I want. And so you have to think, how do they work? So the procurement vendor manager is a great example because we are in conflict. I’m trying to sell services, and they’re trying to save the company money. So how do you create a win-win right? How do you come in with a win-win mindset? How do you look at getting transparent with what do you need to do to be successful in your role? I want to know because there may be a creative way that we can work together. Maybe we stagger the way you pay. Maybe we focus on a more cost-effective solution for the first 12 months. I mean, there are different ways to learn about the different roles so that you can create a win-win because maybe it’s doing that for that buyer, but in the long run, you know, the ROI is going to be so great. They’re going to be happy in the long run anyway. But it’s understanding who they are because it’s easy to butt heads. This is the price. This is what you’re gonna do. No, that might not be the way you can work with that specific organization. So just thinking about the actual buyers that we’re in front of as well. Jenn DeWall: You know, I think that’s a valuable insight again, I think maybe it’s just that people don’t know, maybe it’s that they, you know, have so much ego that they’re like, well, whatever I’m saying is the best anyways. So then they don’t even think about the other person, but I do think people will oftentimes really forget that important piece and leaders to write for bringing it into what it truly is, is adaptive leadership. If you want to get someone to do something on your team, you don’t get to lead all of them the same, just like you can’t sell to every buyer in the same way. I had a friend that he is really successful in sales. And one of the things that he said, and sorry if I’m offending at the engineers, but he had said, if you’re selling to a group of engineers, you’re going to need an hour. If you’re selling to anyone else, you’ll need 15 minutes. And really, his point in saying that is we have different personality types. So we process information in different ways. We might need more time. We might need less time. I’m more impulsive. So I probably will need less time. My husband is an engineer, and he typically needs more time to really think through and research that. But so many people sometimes look at that as a barrier. Oh my gosh, there are two different, oh my gosh. Is it that? No, it’s preparation. Just think about what, think about it from their perspective, knowing that we could continue to go on. So yeah. Understanding your type of buyer, the next piece that you had said. Building Trust is Key to Building Relationships Jenn DeWall: So number five is to build trust. And I love talking about trust. Here’s a quick plug next month for Crestcom, our webinar, complimentary webinars, all about building trust. So please join us at the end of September. But tell me, Kelly, like, how do you even, like, what are the ways that we can build trust? And also, what are the ways that we can break it? Kelly Mark: I think I think every step that we have talked about leads up to step five, right? The building value without expecting something in return, but active listening, that’s transparency that understanding the different buyers and connecting with them that those are all baby steps and key steps in order to build trust. I think to add to that, it’s, you know, it’s delivering, right? It’s everything that you said. All of the commitments that you’ve made that you’re pulling through that you’re following up. I think you know, ensuring that your acting, your actions are based on everything that you’ve committed to. So I think that’s really important. I think communication is also a really big one. It’s easy to be busy. We’re all multi-tasking. We’re all doing a million things at once, but being proactive and Hey, I’m going to deliver this proposal to you on this date. How about, you know, working together on this demo for this timeline. If you feel like you’re gonna miss something, communicate,  just following through and over committing or not over committing over-communicating in some sense of the word you don’t want to communicate just to communicate, but if you have something to say, it’s, it’s really important to pull that through, especially with action items and owning the relationship, taking that ownership. So I think communication, I think, you know, exceeding expectations and making sure that you’re following through on your commitments. I think what breaks trust is the opposite of that, right? It’s saying you’re going to do something by a certain date, missing that date. Number one, you’re missing it. Number two, you’re missing it and maybe not even communicating about it proactively. I think, you know, selling something or providing something to someone where it doesn’t give the results that they were expecting, that’s going to break trust. Jenn DeWall: So it’s really, that’s what all these steps are. It’s just so important so that the communication is open and that you are continuing to do what you say you’re going to do. So it’s not only what you say. It’s your actions behind that. I like that example of what you say because I think that initially, there’s a certain level of trust that’s established. And I think about the example that’s coming to mind is we had to have some landscaping done, some trees trimmed. And when the individual came to give the assessment, you know, it was a great conversation. I really enjoyed him. He seemed super knowledgeable. It was fun to learn about the vegetation in my yard. Fast forward to like me being so excited. We found all this common ground and then fast forward to missed- like they just, the first one, they rescheduled the service and sad for X, Y, and Z reason. They couldn’t do it. The next one, they never even called me and said they were going to miss it. So then I had to call them, and then I did give them an ultimatum because it was six weeks. And I’m like, if you can’t do this tomorrow, I’m going to go with someone else. And this is what floored me is that the CEO actually messaged me and said. We don’t operate like that. Like, you can find another person. And I was like, that’s totally fine. But if you want to say that, then I’m also going to assume that you never had an intent or ability to actually meet your expectations. You couldn’t own it. You couldn’t communicate with me. And I had to follow up and say, Hey, you were supposed to be here at eight, and you’re not here. Oh, he just forgot to tell me that you weren’t coming. But I was just so taken aback by noticing that the CEO’s approach I’m like right now, I think people will give a lot of empathy to small business owners knowing that staffing is hard. But if you don’t own it, it’s really hard for me to work with that. And that’s when, when I have to invest my time, that’s when I start to get frustrated. But I’m glad that to talk about that because now it’s broken. And of course, I went right to the Yelp page and was like, let me tell you about the awful experience. I had, I never want anyone to experience this. And I’m actually a good writer. And so you don’t want like, no, I shouldn’t be that. But it’s, we don’t want that. And I, right. Speaking of all my pain points in terms of sales, but this is why trust is so important. Proactive Communication is Key to Building Trust Kelly Mark: And even if you can’t meet something, that is where it comes back to transparency and ownership on it, and communicate mistakes are going to happen, right. Mistakes. Then it’s inevitable the key there. And I always like using this analogy. It’s like a bank account. You want to be in the positive. You want the deposits to continue, right? When you get into the negative, that means you’ve been making mistake after mistake, and you lost the trust. You want to continue to provide value and be good with your word and over-deliver and set the right expectations, and communicate. And that all builds as positive love in your account. But it is, you know, if you have a lot built up one, mistake’s going to bring it down, but it’s not going to bring in the negatives. So I love using that because it’s all about how much you’re contributing and giving. And I think saying that we never make mistakes is unrealistic. Right? That’s going to happen. How do you handle it? Jenn DeWall: Yes. So what do you do? Like how can you leverage the relationship or continue to move forward once that trust has been established? So we talked about, you know, essentially when you have that point of trust, you likely have a deeper relationship with that person. Maybe, you know, more personal things about them. Maybe you just feel like they’re more dependable, but what can you do once the trust and value have been built to the customer or, you know, to your employees? Yeah. I think this is once that is established. This is really critical because this is where some salespeople disappear, they built trust, they’ve sold their stuff. And then where are they? They’re MIA, right? Or not? They’re barely connecting and communicating with maybe the same customer as an example. Building Relationships with a Personal Touch Kelly Mark: This is where you have to continue to show up, right? This is where we go back to step one, bringing value without expecting anything in return, right. You’re continuing to engage. And hopefully, when you build trust, and you have what you finally have this customer, the goal and the hope is that not only do you develop your relationship into a stronger relationship, but you know, the account and the company more, right? So then you can dig in and look at other parts of their business, but are there other areas of value you can bring, maybe without a sale, but maybe they’re just ideas. So continuing down that path is very important, bringing value, staying engaged, open communication, quarterly business reviews, where you talk about the trends of what they’re doing in their business. And it’s an open discussion of what’s working and what’s not working. What do we need to do differently and more of and better? So it’s, it’s continuing down that journey. And I think, I think, you know, it’s important to ensure that you’ve got folks that are doing that, right? But the sales, you know, the sales strategy around, around continuing to bring that value. And then there are other little things that you’ve been doing. I mean, you stay connected through LinkedIn. You know, from there, hopefully, you can ask for referrals. But one thing that I really like doing is no. Some people do client gifts. I know something, you know, some accounts and companies in the market are very strict on gift-giving. But one thing that I think that’s gone away because of technology, right? We’ve got an email, we’ve got texting, but a lot of things that we can do, but personal cards, writing a personal card and sending it in the mail, is such, it’s been such a game-changer for me personally, in my business. I’ve had VPs reach out to me to say I haven’t received a card in the mail in 10 years. And thank you. Thank you. And it could be just thank you for your business. It could be on a personal topic that could be, Hey, I’ve got the idea. Call me. It doesn’t have to be a substantial message, but personal cards are, I think at least in my business, they’ve been a game-changer. Jenn DeWall: You know, I love that you bring that up because that is a really important piece. A lot of people do operate on autopilot once the sale is made or the set and forget. And you know, now we’ve made this, and they forget about keeping that relationship going that even if they might be done using your services, maybe it was a one-time thing that you have no idea who they could connect you with or who else you could potentially provide value for. And I love the idea of even just writing someone a message. That’s just saying a handwritten card. Like, Hey, I just wanted to check-in. I hope that you’re well. I noticed this, and you’re not trying to sell anything. Or maybe you’re then also providing value by sharing an insight that they haven’t realized. But I like the check-in when there’s nothing to gain from it. It’s just truly to say, like, how are you? I think that that’s beautiful. And I’m just trying to think if I ever had that. I don’t know if I’ve ever had that. Yep. I would appreciate that a lot. Kelly Mark: Yeah. It’s great. It’s and I, I mean, I know I love receiving parts too, so it’s, you know, it’s a reciprocated thing I love, I love sending them, and I love receiving them, and it’s definitely a game-changer in the business world, in today’s environment. Jenn DeWall: Kelly, thank you so much for the conversation today. Just so many great insights and perspectives. I mean, again, I want to remind myself 80% of someone else should do 80% of the talking. I do 20% of the listening. Like there are so many things that I want to really like walk away and do differently, but really at that, you know, the one other thing I wish everyone would remember is just being, you know, taking ownership, being transparent, and then doing your research, please, as a result of listening to this, do not send me another LinkedIn request selling me something that I’ve no desire to buy or at least try to get to know me and make a connection. I don’t know, drop where I went to school. But Kelly, thank you so much for all the tips, techniques, and insights that you’ve shared with us. It’s been a great conversation. And just out of curiosity, how can people get in touch with you? How can they connect with you? Maybe they’ve got questions offline. Where can they go? Where to Find Kelly Kelly Mark: The best place to go would be LinkedIn. Cause we’ve been talking about LinkedIn today, and I’m just under Kelly Mark. So you can find me there. That’s the best way to get ahold of me. I’m on other social media outlets, but I’m probably on LinkedIn the most. And thank you so much for having this conversation. I think it’s so needed. It’s so important. And going back full circle to when we started this conversation, you know, with the pandemic, people are yearning for connection. They really are. And I think some of these tips are a great way to get there. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. Connect with people and see them build the human connection. Hopefully, that’s one thing we can all take away, too! Thank you so much, Kelly. Kelly Mark: Thank you, Jenn. Thanks so much. Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit, where Kelly and I talked about building relationships. I hope that you walked away with some great insights and techniques or tips that you can implement to build better relationships. If you enjoy this episode, please share it with your friends and leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming surface. If you want to connect with Kelly, you can connect with her on LinkedIn. You can find her at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellymark/, and as a reminder, she works for Voss Solutions. I’m sure that you could reach out to her with any of your relationship-building challenges or even just how to get your foot in the door in this pandemic world. Thank you so much for listening today until next time.   The post Building Relationships for Sales Success with Kelly Mark appeared first on Crestcom International.

Minisode: 5 Tips for Hybrid Leaders Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall, and in this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, we are going to talk about hybrid leaders and managing hybrid teams. Yes! A Minisode devoted to the challenge and change that many of us are making in leadership today. Why does this matter? What’s going on right now? We know as a result of COVID, many of us have shifted to either a fully remote or a hybrid environment. And I just want to share a few stats to support why we want to continue to talk about this. So we can be the best leaders that we can be. Microsoft 2021 Work Trend Index survey found that 73% of the 30,000 people surveyed across 31 countries want the option of flexible remote work to continue, which means that you likely will have a hybrid, which is a blend between maybe a fully remote, partially remote, partially in person or fully in person. And that people are still craving that one-on-one time. As a matter of fact, from that same Microsoft survey, they found that 65% of workers crave more in-person time with colleagues, which means that the future workplace will be hybrid. It’s going to be that mix of fully remote William person and blended schedules, which means that today’s hybrid leaders must rethink their approach to managing successful teams for exceptional results. How are Hybrid Leaders Different? So what is a hybrid team and how are hybrid leaders different? Here’s the definition from Owl Labs. A hybrid team is a flexible work structure where some employees work remotely, and other team members work from a central location or office. Hybrid team structures allow employees to decide whether they prefer an office environment or working from anywhere remotely. And why do employees, why do they prefer remote? Well, it gives them increased flexibility. They can choose how they’re living their life, how they’re balancing and integrating their life and work responsibilities. It also can create a better environment for them to focus. For some individuals, a busy office with maybe a cubicle setting could be very loud, and it could be distracting. And it also could leave them open to a lot of people, maybe saying, Hey got a minute. And then that distracts them from being able to be as productive as they can be. So focus is another reason they want it. Right in with it is then to be more productive. When we can focus, we can clearly then give ourselves the time and attention to focus on a given task. So we are more productive, and we’re again not juggling those water cooler conversations that we can get pulled into, which of course, are enjoyable. But sometimes, we’ve got a lot on our plate that actually needs to be addressed. And then the fourth reason employees still prefer remote is for the work-life integration. People want to figure out, or I should say, people, are no longer looking at how can I live to work? That’s not what the younger generations want. They want the opportunity to figure out how they can create a type of balance or the new buzzword “work-life integration.” How can I maybe balance an appointment, my child, or after-school care along with my job? That’s just a brief example or a few brief examples. And why does this matter? Well, why do we need to care? So those are four reasons why people want remote, but here’s the thing you want to be really cautious before encouraging or demanding all employees return to work. Because according to a recent McKinsey study, they found that 30% of employees say that they are likely to switch jobs. If they had to return to full on-site work, meaning that they do not want to go into the office full time again. So you might want to check in with your top performers and make sure before you make this drastic change to go back all in the office if you’re coming from fully remote that you’re not at risk of losing some of your top talents. So what do you need to be aware of as a leader? Jenn’s 5 Tips for Hybrid Leaders I want to talk about a hybrid leader’s role in hybrid teams. There are five things as a leader that you need to consider to make sure that you’re doing your best at managing this new type of leadership of the hybrid worker, or if you will, the blended employee, you need to focus on five things, building collaboration and connection, creating structure, setting, clear expectations, promoting equity and inclusion, and then monitoring burnout. Build Collaboration and Connection So what does it mean to build collaboration and connection? Obviously, now that we are not necessarily on the opposite at the same time, it can be a challenge for hybrid leaders to build a cohesive team. One where people feel like they see one another, they know who to go to. And as a matter of fact, the challenges with building connection and collaboration are many. You might have the challenge of having different work schedules or trying to onboard and integrate new employees, or maybe your challenges are that your organization doesn’t have an onboarding process. And so, if you’re trying to bring them in, in a remote setting, without a clear structure for them to follow, they’re not necessarily engaging with the organization or the team in a way that you would hope. Another challenge that leaders will have with building connection and collaboration in this hybrid world is visibility. You may not necessarily see every single person on your team, which means it’s that much more important for you to be intentional about scheduling that quality time. Then, of course, communication is a challenge. You might say something in a live meeting that someone that was not present or that’s in a virtual role may not have been privy to and vice versa. And then, of course, organizational silos are that much greater. So here’s what you can do to build connection and collaboration in your workforce in a hybrid team, build a team schedule, make sure that everyone is aware of when people’s starting and ending times are, and they also have people update their calendars. This will ensure that people check in with individuals or they know the best times to get in contact with them. The second is to schedule team coffee or lunch breaks, give people the opportunity to replicate that water cooler conversation that typically happens in live settings, and also consider creating team-only connection time. And if you’re also onboarding a new employee and you want them to get greater exposure into the culture of the organization, I would also maybe consider adding in not only team-only connection time but networking groups, where you join up with other departments. This gives your new hires the opportunity to meet other people that they wouldn’t typically meet, especially if they’re fully remote. Another way to create and build connections and collaboration in group brainstorming sessions is to invite everyone into a meeting and allow them the opportunity to share their feedback. Another way you can do this is to build water cooler time into your team meetings. Instead of having a 60-minute meeting that just covers a variety of agenda events, consider adding five to ten minutes where you mandatory required people to have their camera on so they can talk, connect, get to know one another, check in with how they’re doing, and then if they want to take their cameras off, of course, they can. Now those are just a few tips and techniques for building connection and collaboration. Create Structure The second thing the hybrid leader needs to pay attention to in a hybrid work environment is structure. And the challenges that you might run into are more than a few. You might run into people finding that there are unclear expectations, there’s poor communication, uncertainty about what communication tools to use and when. Or maybe your staff is on different schedules or time zones. So the tip for creating structure within your team is to identify the core or peak hours. Now, these are the hours that you might find that everyone overlaps. So these might be the best times for team meetings or just team-building opportunities. Another way to create structure is to determine and create communication norms. This also includes the response time. So you might think about email and say, we can send emails. I want you to check emails, but only during these certain hours. And then also, I expect you to reply to emails within 24 hours. Even if it’s just simply, Hey, I can’t answer that right now, but I will get back to you by the end of the week. In addition, set clear expectations of what communication modality to use and when, which means, when do you want your team to text or to use instant messenger, or to use a slack channel? Another way to create structure is to identify common “what if” scenarios think about the problems that your team might face these problems, especially if there’s something that’s been solved or they’re repeated because they’re common, it’s helpful to create a guide or resource if you will, for what people can do or what should they, what they should expect to do if they encounter this situation. That will allow your employee to continue to follow along in their job instead of creating a bottleneck in the process where they have to stop and ask for help. And then another way to create structure is to also provide adequate levels of decision-making authority. Your employees want this, and you may, at a subconscious level, not be realizing that you’re de-motivating your employees or creating more inefficiency by not giving them the appropriate levels of authority. So, you can build structure by allowing them to understand and take ownership over a given project or a task. Set Clear Expectations The third thing that leadership or leaders need to pay attention to in managing hybrid teams is setting clear expectations. Now, the challenges that you might run into in setting clear expectations is that maybe you’re not a strong communicator, or maybe you only communicate something one time, and you assume that everyone got it. Now, that is not the case. And at Crestcom, one of the best practices that we say is to communicate everything seven different ways, seven different times. This ensures that depending on the learning style, what else is going on, that your message is being heard. Another challenge that you might bump up against setting clear expectations is maybe creating a goal, strategy, task, or to-do list that’s too broad or ambiguous, or open-ended where people aren’t sure what’s expected of them, what success looks like, or who to even turn to, or who owns what, which leads into unclear role responsibility. You need to make sure on your team, especially in a hybrid environment, that people understand what is expected of their role, what projects, strategies, responsibilities they own. Otherwise, they may not have that opportunity to just pop over to someone and say, Hey, are you on top of this? Or it might just create a stall in your process. So our tips for creating and setting clear expectations. First, identify core and goals that can be simple and easily understood. Try to create goals that can be stated in two sentences or less that make sure that people understand what the main priorities are. The more complicated the goal, the more room there is for error and miscommunication. The second piece is to reinforce your goals and expectations often. Leaders sometimes take the approach where they set a goal and then they don’t follow up, which not only tells your employees that that goal is not, that isn’t that important, but it also could create an opportunity where you’re not addressing challenges. When we build in milestones or check-in opportunities to reinforce the goals and expectations, then we create feedback loops. It allows us to be more flexible and agile to address any challenges. And then also make sure that our staff and team and employees understand what’s important. And when you’re setting clear expectations, be sure to state the “why.” people want to understand why you want them to do something, not just go and do this task. When we understand the why that can create meaning, which we know Google has surveyed, it, Microsoft has surveyed it. And countless other organizations have found that one of the predictors of strong team performance is understanding the why, and essentially having meaningful work, or work with impact when you provide the why people can connect, or you can help to facilitate the connection of why you need them. Another way to set clear expectations is to make sure that you’re holding your employees accountable. This means having tough conversations, having one-on-ones building in opportunities and deadlines to reconnect, to make sure that something is on task too often. We don’t hold others accountable. And when they don’t do what we need them to do, we become frustrated. When in actuality, have we just set the expectations appropriately and followed up with them, we would have found a different result. And last, but certainly not least. And this goes with our last point, make sure that you’re also setting norms and guidelines, make sure that your team understands appropriate rules, such as how to communicate, how to resolve conflict, and who owns what; this will help make sure that you’re as efficient as possible. Practice Equity and Inclusion The fourth thing that every leader of a hybrid team needs to do is to also promote equity and inclusion. Now, this is one of the biggest challenges in a hybrid environment because you’re not necessarily going to be able to access or see every single individual every week. It requires you to be intentional, to carve out that time. And here’s an interesting consideration. Careful consideration of equity and inclusion is equally, if not more important, in a hybrid workspace, as visibility and access to leadership can play a large role in advancing our careers. Employees need to be visible to managers to access the resources that they need for work and to stay informed. This needs to be top of mind, but what are the challenges? Well, the challenges that you’ll bump into when promoting equity and inclusion are knowledge silos, finding out the different people in different locations have access to different information. Or there might be different distractions depending on where you work, or someone might be wearing multiple roles. So here are our tips to promote equity and inclusion in a hybrid workplace. Make sure that you’re scheduling one-on-ones. Practice vulnerability and curiosity. Again, remember you don’t just want to assume what’s going on with an employee. You want to leverage open-ended questions and lead with curiosity. Another way to promote equity and inclusion is to reduce meeting times to allow for work-life integration. You might have one employee that maybe doesn’t have a lot of meetings, or maybe they’re in the office. And then another employee that is still teaching their child from home, or maybe they’re managing a different responsibility. If you want to truly create an inclusive environment, make sure that you’re setting your meeting times in a way that everyone can thrive. One recommendation is to shorten your meetings from, let’s say, 60 minutes to 50 minutes to allow people that might have different roles at home, such as being a mom, being a teacher, or a parent, give them an extra five to ten minutes to maybe check-in or go to the bathroom or eat because many of us are used to, especially in the zoom setting, going back to back to back. And that’s not realistic when we’re maybe working in a more remote environment with those additional roles. So make sure that you’re reducing meeting times to allow for that work-life integration. Again, if it’s a 60-minute meeting, maybe cut it short at 55 or 50 minutes. If it’s a 30-minute meeting, try and see if you can get it to 25. Another way to promote equity and inclusion is to encourage all voices to be heard. Now in a virtual platform, it’s easy to stay silent. That will require you as a leader to directly call on people, to ask for their feedback, and make sure that if you’re starting to also have any important conversations, either in a virtual platform or in a live setting, try to see if you can make it and move it online. This way, you can offer up and invite everyone to attend so they can be privy and they don’t miss out on this valuable information. And last but certainly not least, you want to promote equity and inclusion, be sure to identify mentoring and development opportunities for people to grow and educate your team on personality, cultural and style differences. This will help us all work better together, especially as we may be communicating over different modalities. Monitor Employee Burnout Now, the last thing that a leader needs to consider in managing a hybrid team is how you are going to monitor burnout when we’re face-to-face. It can be really easy to see some of those may be nonverbal cues that can indicate to us that someone is overly stressed, frustrated, or burned out. And it can be difficult to identify that in a virtual setting. So what you need to consider then is your lack of visibility, or maybe you work in a workaholic culture. What are you going to do to monitor burnout? Because it’s that much more challenging, especially when we find it more difficult to set boundaries when we are working from home to actually stay engaged and protect our time. So here are our tips for monitoring burnout. Make sure that you’re talking about it. A good leader needs to talk about mental health. It’s top of mind, and that should be one of the primary responsibilities and priorities of your team. So talk about burnout, educate your team on what it is, the signs of burnout, and encourage them to ask for help. Another thing you can do to monitor burnout is to embrace flexibility. If employees are coming to you because they feel burnt out, try to see if there’s an opportunity to maybe delegate or shift around deadlines to give them a little bit more breathing room and encourage your team to build in mental health breaks. These might be breaks that happen throughout the day, ten minutes in the morning, ten minutes in the afternoon, five minutes here or there, but these are just opportunities for them to unplug, reset, and focus on a different task. The bonus is that you can pull them out of that stressful, maybe project that they’re working on. And when they give themselves that break, they can relax and rest their mind and hopefully come back to it with a fresh perspective or new energy. Another way to monitor burnout is to always be the example. You can’t expect your team not to become workaholics. If you are a workaholic, you are the one that’s setting the example for your team. So if they notice that you’re in at 7:00 AM and you don’t leave until 7:00 PM, and then you check your emails at all hours of the weekends, you are subconsciously setting that expectation that that’s what you want them to do as well, which when they jump on that schedule might create burnout. So it’s so important for you to be the model, not only in the structure or how you structure your day, but then also making sure that you’re taking your PTO or your vacation time, making sure that you’re also taking breaks and making sure that you’re continuing to talk about mental health. And last but certainly not least, make sure that you’re encouraging your team to use their vacation times, allow time for special projects. This gives people the opportunity to switch gears, use a different part of the brain, maybe leverage their passion and focus on something else that can fill them up with joy, new perspective, and curiosity. And then last, encourage time for play. Give people the opportunity to have fun at work. And this is especially important for your younger generations, but I would argue that everyone wants to enjoy work given that we spend the majority of our time there. Jenn DeWall: Now those are our tips for what you can do as a hybrid leaders to be successful. If you know someone that is a hybrid leader that could benefit from this episode, please share it with them. And, of course, if you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to give us a review on your favorite podcast streaming platform.     About Crestcom: Crestcom is a global organization dedicated to developing effective leaders companies all over the world have seen their managers transformed into leaders through our award-winning and accredited leadership development programs. Our signature BPM program provides interactive management training with a results-oriented curriculum and prime networking opportunities. If you’re interested in learning more about our flagship program and developing your managers into leaders, please visit our website to find a leadership trainer near you. Or maybe you yourself have always wanted to train and develop others. Crestcom is a global franchise with ownership opportunities available throughout the world. If you have ever thought about being your own boss, owning your own business, and leveraging your leadership experience to impact businesses and leaders in your community, Crestcom may be the right fit for you. We’re looking for professional executives who are looking for a change and want to make a difference in people’s lives. Learn more about our franchise opportunity on the own a franchise page of our website at crestcom.com. The post Minisode: 5 Tips for Hybrid Leaders with Jenn DeWall appeared first on Crestcom International.

Building Psychological Safety and Resilience in Teams with Executive Coach, Brad Reed Jenn DeWall: It’s Jenn DeWall. And on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I sat down with Brad Reed to talk about building resilience in creating psychological safety on your team. Brad is an Executive Wellness and Performance Coach, who after spending years suffering from mental health issues and severe chronic pain, healed himself, changed his life, and moved to Asia. He is currently an executive coach and is the founder of Repurpose You, a coaching and training business that centers around optimizing the happiness wellbeing mindset and EQ for leaders and professionals, which helps to improve team dynamics and psychological safety and optimize individual and organizational performance. I hope you enjoy our conversation where we discuss the foundation of creating psychological safety, as well as what tips and techniques you can do as a leader to make sure that your environment is a place where all feel comfortable to thrive! Meet Brad Reed, Executive Coach Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone, it’s Jenn DeWall, and in this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I’m sitting down with Brad Reed. Now you may not know him, but Brad is an Executive Wellness and Performance Coach, and he’s located in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. So this is probably a very different times difference or time zone change for both of us as it’s 7:00 AM for me here in Denver; what did you say it was, Brad? It’s 8:00 PM for you today. Yeah, but we make it work. Right. That’s the great thing about this. You know, we, no matter where you are located, leadership is the thing that bonds us. It’s the experience. And it’s a challenge that many of us can relate to, and it does truly transcend cultural borders. So Brad, welcome to the show. Could you go ahead and just tell us a little bit about yourself? Brad Reed: Thank you so much, Jenn. I think it’s a real pleasure to be here, and thank you for the introduction. That was a very kind little bit about me. If I can make it short- again, I’m an Executive Wellness and Performance Coach, and I’m based in Ho Chi Minh City, although I do have clients globally that I see one-on-one. I founded a business, Repurpose You, and it’s my goal with Repurpose You is to empower people, to remember their deepest potential. It’s really focused on deep personal growth and development to live a more fulfilled, purpose-driven, and happy life. So I do that with individuals, and at the organizational level, I help leaders, managers, professionals improve performance by understanding the science of wellbeing, happiness, growth, and change. And that’s a beautiful combination because when we look inside of organizational performance productivity, we find that what underpins all, if not most of that, is our state of wellbeing. Our team dynamics, the way we communicate. And most importantly, of course, the way we feel. And so we optimize ourselves, we optimize our team. Most of the challenges of the organization are then they take care of themselves. And the ones that remained are far easier to deal with. That’s a little bit about me. Thank you so much. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. I feel like I need to optimize myself. There are so many things, especially here coming out of the tail end of summer, feeling like maybe, oh, I need a reset. And so I love that word, optimize. It’s really coming to your true potential. Today, Brad and I are going to be talking about understanding how you can build team resilience, which you know, and we’re also going to be talking about what comes with that. If we want to have a resilient team, we’ve got to create an environment for them to thrive. So we’re also going to be talking about building psychological safety, which obviously has been so important, you know, through the pandemic. And it’s going to continue to be, as many of us are going back into lockdown again, and the world is continuing to change. But prior to that was so important and maybe not given the attention that it deserves. So from your perspective, where do we even begin? Because it seems like such a broad problem to address, to build team resilience, and create psychological safety. That can seem like a, especially if your organization might be big or maybe you feel that you don’t have the opportunity or the power or the means or whatever that might be to be able to make an impact, right? It’s just a drop in the bucket. How do you even start to look at building team resilience and creating psychological safety? How Do We Create Psychological Safety? Brad Reed: That’s a fantastic question. And I’m going to go off of something you said towards the end there, which is the feeling that you can’t make a difference. And the thing is, no matter what level you are, no matter who you’re interacting with, you absolutely can. Okay. When you learn to empower yourself, become a better version of who you are, communicate more clearly, then your behavior starts to have an impact on other people. It’s our actions that affect other people. Okay. In NLP, we always say communication is the response you get, which is really interesting. So, and if we look at the way that conventional leadership training is done, we start at the top and work our way down because emotional intelligence, resilience, psychological safety is spread, built, and compounded through the currency of behavior. And so yeah, every single choice you make, every action you’d make can have a difference. So that would be my supplement to what you said. There is my addition to the earlier part, which is a whole. What do I start if the organizations are big, small, little? Well, if it’s a smaller organization, you’re in a better position because you’re forming and forging your culture as you go, and you have a little bit more in essence control or a little bit you’re in a better position to make changes faster and to bring in the right people who match your vision, your mission, your purpose. If you’re trying to build a team that’s high-performing at a larger organizational level, well training, coaching consulting. Okay. And what that means is buy-in from leadership, human resources, and policy at every level of the organization. So you can’t hope by holding, you know, yoga sessions twice a month at a company that wellbeing is going to be transformed miraculously. It doesn’t work that way. It has to be a holistic, integrated process at every level of the organization at the behavior of the individuals. That includes the behavior of the leader. That includes the behavior of HR. That includes the policies inside the organization. That includes the behaviors, the managers, the team leaders, and the individuals on the team. So again, it starts with the intention, the purpose of changing. Okay. And I have a process that I can share with you that helps reify that if you’re interested, so sort of a framework that people can go through to get started if you’re interested. Jenn DeWall: Yeah! Let’s hear it! How to Start Enacting Change in Your Organization Brad Reed: Okay. Okay. Okay. So, first of all, you need to determine if you want to sort of enact change where your team or your organization is. That’s really important. You know, we get a lot of very well-intentioned people from HR or in leadership who hear these buzz words like wellbeing and high-performance and, and transformation and ETQ and they go, oh, let’s do a, let’s do you know, a magic Mondays or, you know, yoga Wednesdays or whatever it may be without having done the prerequisite of understanding where the organization is and what the needs of the company are. Okay. There are different ways you can build happiness and resilience inside of a team. You can look at purpose. Okay. You can look at resilience. You can look at kindness. You can look at empathy, you can look at EQ. So there are different facets that go into that. So understanding the needs and the pain points of the people that you’re trying to help is really number one. Jenn DeWall: I think that that can feel a little intimidating for some people I know. And even for me, depending on the relationship with someone, it can be really difficult to maybe identify that. And so I guess I, do you have any tips for how you can maybe assess that and say like, what is their need? Is it reflecting on metrics like turnover or absenteeism, or is it having an individual dialogue with people? Brad Reed: Yeah. There’s, I mean, there’s so many ways, and again, it depends on the size of the organization. So for example, KPMG did a, a, a organizational-wide survey when they’re trying to uncover why it was that their employees and their, their colleagues and associates found purpose so important. Why was that such a key ingredient to, for their overall ability for their overall drive and motivation to work at KPMG? And so they, they administered system-wide surveys and got feedback from the entire organization to understand the answer to that question. So at the organizational level, the large organization level, you can do internal surveys. For smaller companies, something as simple as a Google survey, you know, 15 questions. What do you feel? What do you feel is missing in the workplace? Do you trust leadership? How well do you get along with your colleagues? How, how able are you to express your true opinions? So even something as simple as a Google survey, an anonymous Google survey that you can send out to the team gives HR and whoever may be looking at implementing something new, some metric to go by, there’s also plenty of companies. I won’t name them all. We’d be here all day, who do psychological safety surveys, emotional intelligence, surveys, and assessments, which can give you an idea of where your organization is at at the level of emotional intelligence, psychological safety, resilience, and performance. And so there’s all kinds of ways, but again you want to pick the one that’s most conducive for the size of your organization and the makeup of your organization as well. Jenn DeWall: Sure. That’s like, I love, you know, the conversation around this of how do we figure out why? Because I think it just gives us the opportunity again, to continue to adjust our mindset. And I think many leaders today are still working through that voice. Maybe that says emotions don’t exist and people should be happy that they have a job, especially right now where there’s a lot of economic uncertainty, depending on where you are in the world. You know, it can be hard for some organizations or leaders to even acknowledge that starting with who the individual is, is the right starting point, because there’s the piece of, they should just be happy that we’re here. Brad Reed: Sure. That’s like me saying, Jenn, water isn’t wet. You know, it’s just, it, it, the, the emotions are so critical and key to our performance. And I’ll give it just to give you some interesting metrics. I mean, 95% of our decision-making starts at the unconscious level. And our value structure is located in our limbic brain, which is our emotional brain. Okay. Which is fascinating. A lot of other things that we don’t realize is that again the ability to have higher empathy is one of the key factors in leadership development today. And when I say leadership development, I should say actually leadership progression. If you look at the causative relationship between emotional intelligence development and how hard, how high you rise in an organization, it’s crystal clear that to be successful leader in 2021 and beyond, and over the past several decades, you need a high level of EQ and EI. So the data is crystal clear. That’s the thing, it’s that there’s no ambiguity in what the data is telling us. If you look at longitudinal studies, global studies where it equates, where you’re looking at emotion, intelligence development on the X axis performance on the Y you see companies that develop EI and EQ same-same, interchangeable, performance improves across the board. And so it is fundamental and vital, and it’s crucial, and we can’t escape it. And there’s different techniques that I use in my workshops to give people sort of an implicit, intuitive understanding of why this is, and then they can’t escape it because they felt it and they realized, oh, yeah, okay. I can’t escape my emotions. But the data’s crystal clear. Jenn DeWall: So yeah, emotions exist at work. I mean, it’s, I’m passionate about saying about like, getting this out there. It’s not obvious. And there are a lot of people, you know, as we do this work on understanding and understanding how to create psychological safety and understanding emotional intelligence, you know, it’s just that important reminder that we just have to stop shutting down emotions, and we’ve got to start using them as a beautiful indicator for how we can forge deeper connections. So your first piece of like how we begin is understanding where we are. What’s our second step. First, Understand Your Issue, Then Implement Strategy Brad Reed: Yeah. So once, once you understand, you want to implement something. Okay. So the idea of implementing whatever you do, you want to make sure that something’s done. So wherever your need are addressed the need and implement something, whether that’s, you know, it could be a wellness program that’s six months long, or it could be something like a four day EQ training. Or offsite training for leadership development around emotional intelligence, something like that. It could be team coaching, or it could be a policy change. Okay. So again, based off the need from the initial survey of understanding and getting, meeting your team and your organization where you are. Then implement something that’s most conducive to try and rectify that problem. Okay. And whatever that is, it is going to be, again, very unique to each organization. So I’ve seen some organizations that, for example, their biggest issue was employee dissatisfaction, high turnover rates. And so what they did was they installed a one-year wellness program that was very multifaceted. It had eating, yoga, mind, body reward, systems, achievement, everything you can almost imagine in a wellness program. And turnover went from 35% to 20% in two years. Isn’t that wonderful, right? That was a great strategy. And so again, it re you know, in, in ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, a lot of companies they’ve taken a family first policy. So when COVID hit, it was, we’re not terminating our people. We’re keeping everybody, even if it’s a reduced salary. And that was, that was something that was addressing the need because the need at the time was I want to have a job that gives me meaning I enjoy this position and they didn’t want to demoralize everybody else in the organization by terminating people. So they, they went in the communal effort and said, look, we’re willing to keep everybody, if we can take a wage cut of 20%, for example, and that really galvanized and codified it, and brought everybody together in a meaningful way, created that community, that family feel inside of the companies and people still performed well. In fact, in a lot of the instances we saw here in Ho Chi Minh City, the companies that did that performed better. Okay. They perform better during the COVID crisis. The first time I came here, then they did before, which was a really fascinating outcome. So again, implement something based off the needs of your organization, your people and your teams, and that can look different for every organization. About Crestcom: Crestcom is a global organization dedicated to developing effective leaders companies all over the world have seen their managers transformed into leaders through our award-winning and accredited leadership development programs. Our signature BPM provides interactive management training with a results-oriented curriculum and prime networking opportunities. If you’re interested in learning more about our flagship program and developing your managers into leaders, please visit our website to find a leadership trainer near you. Or maybe you yourself have always wanted to train and develop others. Crestcom is a global franchise with ownership opportunities available throughout the world. If you have ever thought about being your own boss, owning your own business, and leveraging your leadership experience to impact businesses and leaders in your community, Crestcom may be the right fit for you. We’re looking for professional executives who are looking for a change and want to make a difference in people’s lives. Learn more about our franchise opportunity on the own franchise page of our website crestcom.com. The Foundation for Psychological Safety at Work Jenn DeWall: So, and then just to kind of bring it back for everyone, we’re talking about the foundation. This is creating the foundation of how we can actually have that culture, where our teams are resilient, where people feel psychologically safe. We’ve got to begin with kind of an assessment of our organization, the team, our hierarchy, our individual role, where are we at? What are the challenges that we’re facing? Maybe we’re facing turnover. Maybe we have increased conflict. Maybe we’re just not communicating in that way. Or maybe we’re not healthy. Maybe we’re noticing more absenteeism or mental health challenges. And then take action, implement something based off of what, what you see. So this is the foundation of what you can do. We’ve got to understand our problems, and we’ve got to start addressing them. Where do we go after that, Brad? Brad Reed: Yeah. So once you implement something, you want buy-in and participation at every level of the organization. So here’s where a lot of companies get it wrong and that the staff and the teams feel it, they feel like it’s sort of a, it’s a gesture from leadership to make them a little bit happier, but they feel that it’s hollow. So, for example, I’m not trying to pick on yoga. I love yoga. Okay. But if you’re doing just yoga Fridays and leaders aren’t showing up, managers aren’t showing up, and it just feels like it’s a practice that has been put in place for the sake of doing it. Staff recognize that. Because it’s not getting integrated into the culture of the organization. It’s not permeating and touching people where it needs to. Because real change again, happens at the level of behavior. And that’s really important. So you need to integrate whatever the strategy is at every level of the organization, leadership needs to be bought in, management’s bought in HR is bought in policy changes reflect it, activities reflect it, and ultimately most important, you see a change in behavior with everybody, and then it becomes part of the cultural ethos. I mean, humans, we’re tribal creatures monkey see monkey do okay. It’s really quite simple. When three people in a team start behaving differently, the fourth and fifth are far more likely to do it. And so, again, these ideas, these concepts are spread to the currency of behavior, and it’s crucial in particular at the top leadership that they have buy-in and they’re participating as well. So that cannot be underscored. It’s absolutely essential. And it’s super, super important. Generating Buy-In for Sustained Behavioral Change Jenn DeWall: No, absolutely. I mean, at Crestcom, one of our, I guess, beliefs is to use leadership development to get sustained behavior change. But yes, it has to come with buy-in. I have had, well, I’ve had one time when teaching leadership development that there was one person that I think the boss was probably like, I think that this individual would really benefit from leadership development, but yet this person had no interest in doing that. And they were miserable. They would join things with. They would cause everything went to zoom. So they would join with their camera off. I would notice that they weren’t paying attention, and this happened month after month. And no one else in the class had this issue, but yet this person just did not buy into it. And so as novel as the idea may be as, you know, grandiose and beautiful, whether it’s yoga time, whether it’s like, maybe it’s yoga with goats, maybe we’re taking it to the next level or something. But we have to understand and get the buy-in that we can’t just force actions on people. And yes, people can tell if we’re not being authentic in our approach, like we’re checking a box. Now we can compete because we have this wellness program. Well, why are you doing the wellness program? And is it truly integrated within your culture? Or is it just something that you can say that checks the box? Or is it something that everyone talks about? Because I think, you know, the role, what’s the role of leadership and getting this buy-in from your perspective? Because the role, like we are the ones that are tasked with, how do we get everyone together? And especially now as many organizations are going to hybrid that the research is showing that really the ownership of culture comes down to the leader because not everyone is going to be in the office in the same way. So the leader has more, I would say, of an expectation to really preserve, create the culture, get the buy-in than ever before. How would you, what are some ideas that you have for how to generate buy-in? Brad Reed: Yeah, so that, that’s a really interesting question. And again, I’m going to come down to behavior. And we’re going to talk about this a little bit more. When we talk about development, specific ways we can develop psychological safety, okay. People respond to behavior, you know what I mean? People don’t respond as much to ideas or concepts or philosophies. They respond to behavior because that’s our biology. We’re inherently hard wired to perceive things a certain way and feel things a certain way. And so we respond to things that we perceive, which are in the form of actions and behaviors. So one of the things is, you know, leaders need to appreciate that at the very, at the very least, they need to have a good conceptual understanding of why this program or why this philosophy or why EQ, or why EI is important. Okay. And that’s why sometimes when you’re presenting these ideas, as I do to different levels of the organization, I have a different conversation with HR than I do with the CEO, sometimes very different conversation. But the point is at the end of the day, they’re bought in for the same reason, they see it as an opportunity for growth. Now, what I would is when you’re having a conversation with the leader, it’s critical that they understand implicitly how important their role is. And a lot of that has to do with education. A lot of that has to do with leadership support. You know, we can’t just expect leaders to go in and, you know become magical intelligence gurus without support and training for themselves. And that’s really, really important. So if we’re going to equip the organization, we also need to simultaneously equip the leadership team. And that’s something that some of the initiatives that were so interesting at Ford, that we saw. So the chairman of Ford and I believe his name was Bill, implemented some mindfulness programs, right at the level of the board of directors. And he was bought in and everybody started practicing these mindfulness programs. And I believe a few of them were off-site, but that permeated the culture of the company. And that was a, that was a terrific example. Some leaders, again, I’ll backtrack. They need to have a good appreciation of the value of this concept. And then they also need to be empowered to fulfill their role because they are integral to the implementation of these ideas, philosophies, and practices inside of our organization. So make them aware how important it is, empower them because their role is equivalently important. Hope that that helps. Yeah. Yeah, Iteration – Try and Try Again! Jenn DeWall: Absolutely! Getting them connected. And it, you know, it comes back to even like, the survey that Google did on team performance, understanding that individuals, if you want a high-performing team and, you know, we have to have dependability structure and clarity in our role. But two of the things that they also found were meaning, purpose and impact. It sounds like, you know, if we want buy-in and we’ve got to start with why. And we’ve got to connect with that meaningful work, and then we also need, you know, the other thing they found is psychological safety. So do you feel like this is our three core way of like the foundation of what we need, we need to do an organizational assessment. We need to take action and then we need to get buy in. Is there anything else that, or that a leader would do after that? Brad Reed: Iterate! You may not get it right. The first time that’s step four, really iterate. It’s like, okay, what went well, what didn’t, how can we improve? But keep going. That’s the idea. And be willing to admit that, you know, things maybe weren’t executed properly, or we could have got better results, or we can try something different. And how do you do that? Get more feedback. So it becomes, you know, it really becomes, in essence, it become a, you know, a positive, positive feedback loop. It’s like, okay, we get the initial assessment, do the implementation, get the buy-in and everybody’s on board and then iterate. What’s working? What isn’t? Let’s try it again, get some more feedback, gets more buy-in. So it becomes, in essence, you want to, as much as you can make it a co-creative process, make the company, or make this culture change, feel like it’s being co-created by everybody. And everybody’s got to say, therefore, they think it’s for them. Therefore the why is much more clear. It’s not topical and superficial. And it doesn’t feel like icing on the cake kind of thing. It really feels like, oh man, this is actually something that is helping and empowering me. And I have a voice and things didn’t go well, but they’re trying, they admit it’s a fault and they keep going. So those are that. That would be my suggestion for you. Giving and Receiving Feedback—It Takes Practice! Jenn DeWall: Yeah. So it sounds like it’s like if we’re making an iterative process, then we’re also just completing this process simultaneously or again and again, like you want to, it’s not a set and forget, right. Even needs change. The pandemic showed us that there can be a total disruption to the way that we work, the way that we live. And we got to be able to build in processes or feedback loops so we can address those real-time challenges and changes. So that starting back with that assessment, where are you at? What are you trying to be? What are your challenges and going from there? And I, you know, I just love, again, the, the reinforcement that we have to continuously ask for feedback. And there was someone that had interviewed Hillary Blair on a past podcast episode. And one of the things her background is in theater. And one thing that’s very, very common. And I believe, hopefully I’m saying this right, but is that, you know, in a cast it’s very common to openly share feedback. Because that’s how together you put together a great performance. But yet, and there’s open and honest feedback. There might be someone that might give you feedback that, oh God, like they might actually give you the real deal of feedback that you need to hear to help the whole performance go off. But yet, when you bring that into a corporate culture sometimes people get afraid to get feedback or there’s too much ego and we don’t step back and look at that big picture. And I think that was just a good reminder, again, that we’ve got to get more comfortable giving each other feedback and to not be afraid of it, understand how to receive it. I get feedback all of the time. And I’m sure you do too, from being more in a setting where you’re just, I guess more publicly, like, not like a celebrity, but like publicly recognizable, right? Like you’re doing webinars, you’re doing things that, you know, many people might see of you and yet, and then there’s a lot of opinions about who you are. And some of those opinions are really, really helpful and there’s great feedback. And then there are some that I don’t necessarily jive with. I’m glad that someone took the time to do it, but I’m maybe won’t follow it, but we have to get okay with building that competence to say like feedback is just an opportunity to do better. Brad Reed: I think that’s such an important point. And like I said, the pillar of today’s conversation is resilience, which by the way, you and I are talking about that right now. Okay. You, you empower the organization to improve wellness, happiness. Then resilience is a by-product of that. You know what I mean? It emerges from people feeling safe, feeling bought in, people having a sense of purpose. It’s an emergent property. Resilience is a state of being. And so when people feel safe, when people feel they have a voice, when people have that sense of purpose when people are communicating, then resilience is a by-product to that. So just for the listeners, it may not seem that Jenn and I have addressed that question directly, but we have. And so I just wanted to touch that in the idea of feedback is critical and foundational to our second point, which is psychological safety. And that’s a really interesting can of worms in itself. Why is Psychological Safety So Important? Jenn DeWall: Yeah, let’s talk about it. But how do you build psychological safety? Because this is, we know that we’ve seen it. So I just referenced Google’s study, which many of you are likely familiar with. I’m all about, you know, what they found of the five characteristics of a top performing team, that psychological safety, it was one of them, but then Microsoft also did another survey from the Microsoft Work Trend Index where they found a supportive culture, which I’m going to go ahead and say again, that comes down to psychological safety. Do I have a place that, you know, people care about me and they don’t just care what we for what I do, but they care about me as an individual. So we know the research is there that psychological safety still relatively a newer concept. Right? I know that when I started my leadership journey twenty years ago, they weren’t talking about psychological safety. They just weren’t. And so it’s, you know, it’s still, I’m going to call it relatively new and maybe a newer expression to some than others, but how do you begin to address psychological safety? Because that, that is big and it’s so important. If you want to maintain your engagement, if you want to reduce turnover, if you want to get buy-in and accomplish your goals, people have to feel safe and secure at work. Brad Reed: Sure. What I’m going to do is, is fundamentally, I’m a coach and I love to ask questions. So I’m going to ask a question to you and to the listeners, because I think this will reify it for them at a more experiential, emotional level. And so Jenn and anyone listening, imagine inside your team or organization, you could share any idea, any concern, any thought, any problem, any feeling with anyone on your team, including your leader. Just take a moment. And you know, if you can’t imagine what that would look like or what that would feel like more importantly, and as a follow-up, how empowered would you feel? What kind of communication barriers could that overcome? And how quickly could you solve problems? You know, I use those questions to bring it home because how many communication issues are, because things are not being communicated to begin with. Right? I think people just aren’t being raw. How many problems aren’t solved because we don’t get to the root cause and we’re doing things at a topical level? How many conflicts are created because people are misunderstanding each other? And there’s so much more under the surface that’s not getting expressed. How much has performance lowered when people feel disempowered and they don’t feel inspired or motivated to share the real ideas. And for everybody listening, remember in today’s economy, human capital is a critical component. The idea of the knowledge economy, which is ideas, ideas sharing is so fundamental to innovation and creativity today because that’s a cornerstone of where the future’s going. It’s ideas. You know, the idea of human capital as labor, physical labor is quickly fading away. But the idea at least, you know, in the developing countries, and so what’s left human capital as ideas. So the free flowing of ideas is essential in the team in order to increase creativity, innovation, and competitiveness. So having a culture which nurtures and supports that is absolutely essential. So those of you who are listening, who are a little more analytical looking at KPIs, ideas of results, innovations results, creativity results, navigating challenges. Results makes you more competitive, but you don’t grow green plants and in terrible soil, okay. It doesn’t work that way. So the soil that cultivates that kind of free flowing expression of ideas is psychological safety. And it’s a roundabout way of, and I’m going to get into how we build that now. But I just wanted to start with that because I want people listening to appreciate that on an experiential level on what psychological safety is or what it could be when it’s done right? Jenn DeWall: Yeah, absolutely. I found myself as you were asking those questions, being like, yeah! You know, and sometimes it’s not even like this, because psychological safety doesn’t have to look like, maybe just feeling like, oh my gosh, I’m afraid to share my ideas. That is one piece of it. But psychological safety can be like, I don’t know, like last time I shared an idea like this, it didn’t go well. So I’m just not going to do it anymore because I just don’t want to engage in it. So it doesn’t have to be that deep. So just as people are thinking, this can sound like a very heavy topic. If we’re looking at behaviors, it could just be someone that’s like, I’m not even sure if this is worth messing with anymore. And when we do that, then yes, like it changes our ability to adapt. It changes our ability to address challenges. I think the piece that happens for me most often in an organization would be feeling like over time, your ideas aren’t heard, they aren’t valued. And so then you just stop and you just kind of watch. Like, you’re like not my circus, not my monkeys. However that expression goes and you just kind of watch as like an onlooker and say, well, just give me my marching orders and I will go and do this. And yeah. Then that’s a very disenfranchised way of maybe living and doing my role. I want to say that because I do think sometimes people think of the concept of psychological safety as like, you know, really, really heavy. Like we have to make sure that we’re addressing that emotional component. It can be small actions that we’re telling people we don’t care. Psychological Safety Starts With Organizational Culture Brad Reed: Sure. And you know, the idea is psych safety can be easy to build, but even easier to break. And we’re going to talk about that a little bit. Yeah. And I just want to share Amy Edmondson’s definition because I really enjoy it. And she said psychological safety is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. I don’t think that’s a great definition. And if we look at, and again to reify with psych safety is, let’s look at psych danger. So psych danger is fear of admitting mistakes. It’s blaming others. Team members are less likely to share different views. And this allows group dynamics to affect the poor. It leads to poor decision-making, which, and then that whole loop repeats. Then you get more fear of admitting mistakes, et cetera, psych safety people are comfortable admitting mistakes. They’re okay. Learning from failures, it’s normalized, everyone openly shares ideas. It’s part of the culture. And then you get better innovation and decision-making, and the study that you pointed out before; again, psych safety was not only a part of that. It was foundational. And by far the most critical component, which was a really interesting result from, from the study that they did. And so it, it really is the most significant predictor of high-performance teams. And it is in essence, the edge, some of the ways that we can build that directly through behaviors that we can start doing immediately. And I’m going to stop. I’m going to first talk short-term strategies and then long-term strategies. Okay. Brad Reed: Some short-term strategies are really quite simple. Okay. So like modeling fallibility. And so what a leader can begin to do, or a manager can begin to do, or the team can begin to do is admit that they don’t have all the answers. And what that does is it creates a culture where there’s permission to help people, Jenn, I need your help. And I say to you, I need your help on this. Or I might miss something, ah, you’re bought in to help me. And I’m acknowledging the fact that I need you and you need me. I could say, you know, I’m not so good at details, Jenn. So your job is very important. You’re far more detailed than me. That’s what I need you for. So invite the input that, and just be candid that you can’t do it alone. That’s a great way to model fallibility and vulnerability to a great, I mean, I have lots of tips here, but embrace messengers. When people speak up. Yeah. So when people speak up, you know, point to problems and offer ideas and concerns, even if it’s sometimes contrary to status quo, thank them and make it a very positive experience for them. So you want to reinforce that in a very positive way. If somebody’s voicing a concern and opinion, encourage it. Thank you so much. That’s really appreciated. Awesome. Never punished the messenger and embrace and celebrate the messenger. Like you said earlier, be open to feedback. Number one, problem. I get management training, Jenn, they always say, Brad, how can I build a culture of feedback? And then they, they immediately, what they do is I train them on it. I see them a month later and they come back and they say, nobody’s doing it. They’re not listening to me. And I say, are you accepting feedback first? They say, no, no. I thought everybody else did. I say no, you have to model it and be open to it yourself. That’s something you can do and behave in a way that says an invite it, what can I do differently? How can I do better guys? What can we do differently next time? How can this project go more smoothly? So be open to feedback personally and professionally about tasks and about yourself. Embrace the Messengers Jenn DeWall: Like, I just want to let him going back to maybe my 20 year old self. When I think about embracing messengers, I worked at a culture where, and I wouldn’t say it was broad. Like this was maybe a systemic issue throughout the organization, but I will say it wasn’t the specific department that I worked in, but even just sharing suggestions or opinions. I cannot even tell you how I, and I had worked with this organization for four years in two different areas. I had had a lot of success. And then all of a sudden I found myself in a new division with new leadership. And what I found there is that there was so much ego, so much that the ego from the executive leadership at the top really shut down any ability for anyone to offer ideas when you would offer ideas. I cannot tell you how many times that I would get the look of, do what I told you to do. And that’s just so disenchanting. And then it also would be like, in my head, I’m like, why are we doing some of these things? Or explain the why to me in a way that I can understand it, because for the workload that you’re wanting, this is going to be something that we’re going to do for a week. Like, is this realistic? Is it actually going to be executed? Probably not. Or I think of just different things that I can think of this leader. And they just were never receptive to things. If it did not come and originate from their own idea, it could never, it could never work. And matter of fact, if you had something contrary or something that wasn’t in alignment, then you were seen. And that’s why I was seen as kind of like this black sheep, like, oh Jenn, like, you’re just trying to ruffle the feathers. You’re not falling in line. And I mean, I know our listeners have heard, I’ve gotten experience from that same organization or feedback. That’s like, you need to be working with more vanilla and more of a yes man. And that should be the Testament of like, that’s a culture that doesn’t support the messenger, right? Like if you’re going to, if you’re giving employees your feedback to be more vanilla, clearly you do not want them to have a point of view. And just that perpetuated this disengagement and just like, oh my gosh, does leadership even exist? Is that just a myth that they taught us early on to get us to like be inspired at work? You know, there was just so many and the mental health challenges that came from that. So just being mindful of the role that ego plays. And then I said, what if we did, I like to say like, look at everyone as if we’re all like kids in the playground. Like, we’re all just trying to figure out the task. We’re all happy. We are so innocent and pure and you know, trying to do our best that we don’t have to maybe take it as this like me versus you. Like, we’re just all trying to do our best and work together. That’s my, my side tangent. And it came from my own place of pain. So yeah. Embrace the messengers, like drop your ego trust that people are- assume positive intent trust that people want to do. What’s best by you, the team and the organization. Check Your Ego – Building Self-Awareness Brad Reed: Yeah. Fantastic point. What I would say to that is, and I had an interview with a CEO today, and he was really talking about servant leadership at the end of the day. It’s our, it’s our role to serve our clients, the community, the organization, and our team members. And he means that holistically, it wasn’t just a talking point. He embodies this through and through. And what can that look like? Sometimes it looked like shared success and shared credit. So if you have someone who wants all the credit wants all the accomplishments, wants all the fame, it’s going to disempower the people around. You give people the, you know, give people successes, give them quick wins, and then they go, okay. Oh, that was my idea. Wonderful. You know, because sometimes in leadership, their suggestion becomes a commandment. So allow people to own their own ideas and give them credit for it really shared credit is wonderful, great tips that, you know, there’s a few more long-term stuff, which really helps in all of this in particular, if you want to build high-performing teams and organizations is building self-awareness and self-regulation. Understanding yourself is extremely important to growth. You know what I mean? A lot of this stuff is topical and behavioral, but if you start to build self-awareness and self-regulation the application of everything that we just said, come so much easier. It’s just a by-product of who you are and who you’re being. And so the developer development of EQ and EI and organizations is a big part of what I do is really, really important. It’s crucial. Managing emotions and staying calm is essential for engagement in building psychological safety, because let’s admit Jenn and you’re right. I’ve received a lot of feedback, when you’re not used to it at first, it can hurt. And you have to find ways to deal with that, which requires self-awareness self-regulation. And so those would be my, my, my quick and long-term strategies for building psych safety. And I’ve done quite a bit of research. A lot. And I’ve looked at all the meta-analyses and the major leading studies in the world. So sort of encapsulate this into a couple of phrases that make sense for people. And I call it, Brad’s not-so-boring summary of the research. Okay. So I’ll, I’ll say save you the boring analytics and all this stuff that I had to read to get to this, but in short, and I’ll define one more term to hear psychological capital, that’s individual performance. That’s the individual resilience. Psychological capital is made of four components- self-efficacy or the belief people have to perform and do well, the confidence they have in themselves, hope, resilience and optimism. And so it’s so important to make sure that the individual has a lot of hope, a lot of optimism, a lot of resilience and a strong sense of self-efficacy. And that can be built at the level of the individual and the level of the team and concurrently the really positive feedback mechanisms. And when you look at all the research and you sum it down and distill it like I did, I found that emotional intelligence. So EQ development, EI development at the individual, the team, and the organization, as it applies to building both psychological capital, which is our ability to feel good and perform well, and psychological safety, which is what we’ve been talking about- team resilience, shared ideas, performance innovation, creativity- is a critical factor in building organizational performance and competitiveness. So I’ll really say it again. As we build individual and team EI and EQ, psych capital goes up, that’s our ability to do things effectively and perform well and feel good. Psych safety goes up, which is the teams. Interdynamics the energy, the ability to innovate, create, communicate, and produce amazing results. And together that produces increases in organizational performance. And so I hope that was clear. And it made sense, Taking Responsibility For Your Choices Jenn DeWall: You know, just as a reminder of we’re talking about psychological safety, I love the strategies admit that you don’t have the answers, like show that you’re human. People want to work for humans, not robots and embrace that messenger. And then also you had suggested like the long-term like, you know, as an individual, you’ve got to take responsibility for how you show up. You have to also understand the role that your ego plays in things. I know that in my twenties, in my career, I was far more egocentric than I am today. I don’t necessarily need all the credit. I don’t want, I don’t even do great with accepting positive feedback anymore because I’m like, why do you need me to do, to do better, but understanding that it’s on us and that we can change the way that we work, we can change what work actually feels like when we start with ourselves. And my work as a coach, it’s similar for your work. As a coach, it’s starting with understanding our choices. How do you want work to be, you know, work can be the thing that you love, or it can be the thing that you love, but you’ve got to build that self-Awareness to understand what are your triggers, what are the things that are working, not working, and take responsibility. Stop living the, this is my bosses fault. And I don’t want to actually marginalize that because there are a lot of things that managers can do that disrupt their workplace. But we do also have to understand that the power that we have is in how we respond, but really focusing on self-efficacy. So thinking about psychological safety, you know, how are you building people’s confidence in their roles? You know, you talked about throughout this, like understanding and getting that, buy-in helping them understand the why. The why they are there. Really building that support and helping them say like, yeah, absolutely. I’m of needed valued person. And so I, yeah, just long story short to kind of recap. Yes, absolutely it made total sense, Brad. What closing comments would you want to share with our listeners? Brad Reed: I would always say, I want to double down on what you said. Because fundamentally, personal empowerment, you know, responsibility breeds, empowerment. And so for anybody here who is possibly in a toxic work environment, look at yourself first. I’m not saying that the culture can’t change or the manager can’t change. I’m not saying that at all. But always look inwards and see how we can reframe how we can change our perception, how we can embolden ourselves and embody ourselves and how we can improve our happiness wellbeing. Take a deep look at the decisions, behaviors, and thoughts that you have first, because sometimes what I find is a lot of the issues. Again, they go away. When the individual’s perspective changes when they’re feeling good, when their life outside of work is balanced. Marshall Goldsmith did a lot of work on this in the early, early years when he was developing his brand. And he was looking at people’s satisfaction score outside of work and satisfaction score inside of work, strong correlation. They’re not satisfied out. They won’t be satisfied in. So look at yourself, build psychological capital, mindfulness, resilience, training, yoga, health, whatever it is for. You always make us, you know, a diligent effort to improve who you are personally and professionally. It’s immensely rewarding. I’m going to double down on Jenn with that, for sure. Absolutely. Second, start somewhere. You know what I mean? Start for leaders and managers in HR- start somewhere. It’s okay. Even if it’s baby steps, start somewhere, okay, we can assess. Then we can implement. Then everybody gets buy in and then we iterate, but we have to start somewhere. And so having an intention is great. Having an action is better. Because then we get to start to move in the direction that we want to go. And remember psych safety. And what we’re talking about is spread to the currency of behavior, not ideas or information. Behavior. When we change the behavior of the leader, the manager then, and the team, the whole organizational behavior changes. And what emerges from that is better performance, better wellbeing, better happiness, just a great culture. All around humans are the future in 2021 and beyond. Take care of the human capital by psych safety, psych capital, and your organization will not see and end to creativity, innovation, and that all comes from happiness. So those are my closing thoughts. Where to Find Brad Reed Jenn DeWall: Yeah. Don’t just talk about it, be about it. You know, as a leader, like actions speak louder than words. There’s a reason that these expressions have become popular and stayed around. Think about the power of your actions, Brad, how do people get in touch with you? Brad Reed: Yeah. Great question. You can find me on LinkedIn. It’s quite easy. Brad Reed, or I love getting emails as LinkedIn’s my main medium to communicate with people, emails to brad@repurpose-you.com. Jenn DeWall: Perfect. They can also find it in the show notes, I’ll find it in the show notes. No worries. Thank you so much for joining us on The Leadership Habit podcast today. It was great to have you. I hope that listeners are walking away with just different ideas, different inspiration for how they can create a truly more resilient and psychologically safe environment for all to thrive. Thank you so much. Brad Reed: Jenn. My absolute pleasure. Thank you for being a terrific host. Thank you. Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast. If you want to connect with Brad, you can go to repurpose-you.com or you can also email him at brad@repurpose-you.com. Or you can connect with him at LinkedIn. And of course it’s https://www.linkedin.com/in/brad-reed. Now you can also find this information in our show notes. If you enjoyed this week’s episode of the leadership pivot podcast and know someone that could benefit, please share it with them together. We rise. And of course, if you enjoyed it, don’t forget to leave us a review on your favorite podcast, streaming service and last, but certainly not least. If your organization is looking for leadership development, please reach out to us. We offer a complimentary to our leadership skills building workshop and would love to help develop your team.   The post Building Psychological Safety and Resilience in Teams with Executive Coach, Brad Reed appeared first on Crestcom International.