The Leadership Habit

In this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, Jenn DeWall welcomes Gerardo Segat, an international leadership coach, to discuss the pressing issue of overcoming the common fears that hold us back as leaders. Gerardo is on a mission to humanize leaders and organizations. As leaders, we tend to put on certain masks and try to hide our insecurities.  However, fear-based leadership can result in harmful behavior like judging, blaming, ignoring, destroying, and attacking, which can significantly impact our leadership effectiveness. Gerardo calls this “destructive leadership” and has made it his life’s work to help people overcome fear and engage in “constructive leadership” instead! Meet Gerardo Segat, International Leadership Coach Gerardo Segat is an international leadership coach whose purpose and legacy are to humanize leadership. Following a wealth of experiences as an entrepreneur, chairman and CEO, Gerardo has used his leadership background to create Preludes–  a coaching program created to humanize leaders, organizations, and their stakeholders through creative and powerful original experiences such as decision-making debates, client interaction models, and emotions-focused team meetings. Gerardo is also the creator of Vebate, a format of decision-making debate, Leader in the Mirror, a format of interview, and Leaderness, a post-graduate training program. For the past decade, he has been a member of the YPO, or Young Presidents’ Organization (the world’s largest community of leaders and CEOs), of which he has been the founder and chair of three chapters in Italy, Switzerland, and globally. Currently, Gerardo is working on Out As Humans, a performing arts show designed to humanize authentic leaders. Out as Humans is an immersive performance for individuals and groups that creates a space for leaders to be open, trusting, empathetic, and feel a sense of belonging. Facing Your Fears as a Leader In the episode, Jenn and Gerardo discuss how fears and our fear responses are hardwired into human nature. As humans, we are programmed to feel fear in order to survive. However, in today’s world, we aren’t facing dangerous natural predators in nature, so our fear responses must evolve.  Jenn notes, “Sometimes we don’t realize that it’s almost primal to have fear. It’s a natural reaction to our surroundings. But sometimes, the fear actually doesn’t need to be there. And you don’t need it. I don’t want to say you’re manufacturing the fear, but it’s not as life-threatening as you might initially perceive it to be. You know, our relationship with fear is that sometimes we need to actually move it aside. We’re going to survive either way.” Gerardo agrees, “Yes. And it is mainly because we think we are our minds, but the reality is we have a mind. We’re not our minds. And therefore, you know, a mind is like an arm, a leg, you know, instead, we tend to think that we are our mind, and therefore we’re unable to detach ourselves from, you know, fears, feelings, et cetera.” The 4 Ultimate Fears  Later in the episode, Gerardo explains that there are 4 ultimate fears that can drive our behavior as humans and as leaders:  We fear a lack of meaning in our lives.  We fear loneliness.  We fear dependence on others.  We fear uncertainty. These hardwired fears can cloud our judgment, and without self-awareness, we might be leading with fear instead of intention. Confronting Your Fears to Become a Better Leader Jenn asks Gerardo, “How do we actually overcome these ultimate fears and find that treasure that’s on the other side? Where do you start? I know that you talked about, you know, really first examining, building that self-awareness. The why. Why do we act the way that we do, but where do we go from there?” Gerardo explains, “Well, on one side, you need to pursue them. Okay? So set an objective to find inner meaning. To find inner love, if you just stay still and say, okay, my objective is inner love, and you go out in the world, and you see that the decisions you make will be completely different, completely different. Set yourself inner objectives that create an opportunity to build, to start.   Start by building self-awareness and then actually accepting that and then analyzing what the consequences are. I have been remedying those consequences. Look at what solutions are there and change. Make the change and take a different path and different action. So the first one is really to set those objectives.” Then, Gerardo explains more about his work and how it allows leaders to be vulnerable and share their own fragility to overcome their fears and embrace authenticity.  Where to Find More From Gerardo Segat Be sure to listen to the full episode to get more strategies and insights from Gerardo Segat. Then, if you want more information about Gerardo and his work, you can connect with him:  Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/gerardosegat Visit his website: gerardosegat.com Thank you for listening to The Leadership Habit Podcast! We’d love to show you how Crestcom can help your managers develop the leadership skills they need! Request a free two-hour leadership skills workshop for your team today! The post Overcoming Common Fears as Leaders with Gerardo Segat appeared first on Crestcom International.

On this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, host Jenn DeWall welcomes leadership expert and author Ashley Goodall to discuss the problem with change! For decades, “disruption” and “change” have been regarded as crucial to business growth and success. In his latest book, The Problem with Change: And the Essential Nature of Human Performance, Ashley Goodall argues that what has become the accepted norm is actually quite harmful. Whether it’s a merger, new software or a new office layout, change has become the central goal for many leaders, who pursue it with abandon. Goodall believes that this constant churn of change leads to what he calls “life in the blender”—a perpetual cycle of upheaval, uncertainty, and unease. Goodall believes that this is not only bad for human performance, it’s bad for business!  Meet Ashley Goodall – Author, Leadership Expert, Executive Ashley Goodall is a leadership expert who has spent his career exploring large organizations from the inside, most recently as an executive at Cisco. He is the co-author of Nine Lies About Work, which was selected as the best management book of 2019 by Strategy + Business and as one of Amazon’s best business and leadership books of 2019. Prior to Cisco, he spent fourteen years at Deloitte as a consultant and as the Chief Learning Officer for Leadership and Professional development.  His new book, The Problem with Change, was released on May 7, 2024. In it, Goodall reveals how the ongoing turmoil of corporate life creates uncertainty, a lack of control, a sense of not belonging and a loss of meaning. He argues that the recent increases in employee activism and quiet quitting and the record-low levels of engagement at work are, in fact, symptoms of these problems with change. Goodall draws on extensive research into human psychology and decades of experience leading HR teams to encourage leaders to look beyond wellness and corporate cheerleading and instead focus on the environment they create at work every day. He argues that humans actually need stability to perform at their best. In his book, he explores how this can be found in how we lead, how we talk, and how we value teams, our rituals, and predictability. As Goodall says, “The ultimate job of leadership is not disruption, and it is not to create change; it is to create a platform for human contribution, to create the conditions in which people can do the best work of their lives.” The Difference Between Change and Improvement As the episode opens, Jenn asks Ashley how he would like to begin their discussion, and he says he would like to begin by asking one question:  “I think one really interesting way into the conversation is to say, is there a difference between change and improvement? Oh, and if, if listeners say, no, there’s no difference, then they should probably just stop listening right now because I’m about to argue there’s a big, big difference between change and improvement.  Change means different, improvement means better, and we can distinguish that. So then you go, well, where does improvement come from? Where does improvement come from in an organization?  And it’s hard to persuade yourself that if most of the people in an organization are struggling to understand what the mission is, or where they fit in, or what team they’re a part of, it’s hard to imagine that much improvement is actually gonna come from them.  Now, if our model of an organization is improvement, and that is something that’s thought up by senior leadership, and sort of cascades gloriously down through the organization. And everybody’s just waiting on a Monday morning to be told what great improvements they’ll make. Then okay, you’re in a slightly different world.  But, if you imagine that the limitation on how good a company is, is how well its people are able to do, which I think is not unreasonable. Then you finish up saying to yourself, well, the ability of the folks on the front line to do their best work every day is a ceiling on how good the company is.  And then you ask yourself, well, what might, what might get in the way of all of that? And you sort of wander into the psychological challenges that an environment of constant change and disruption visits on people.” The Power Paradox Later in the episode, Ashley Goodall explains that one of the problems with change is that leaders are unaware of what it is like on the front lines of their organizations on a daily basis. He explains:  “Some of the reasons for that is information really doesn’t travel up a power vacuum very happily. If you are the person who sends the email to the senior leader saying, Hey, this is actually not landing the way you imagined it would, then I think most of us would agree you can’t do that too many times before everybody thinks you’re crazy or looking for a different job.  I think it’s true that leaders certainly in organizations of any size live in a different world from their employees if you think about the amount of money that heads to the C-suite in compensation and stock grants and you think about the lifestyles that support. Whether that is sort of zooming around the world doing corporate stuff or just being in a different sort of tax bracket by a lot than anyone you know, than the more junior employees. And I think it takes a lot of empathy to reach across those sorts of gaps in sort of material circumstances.  And then, if we want to go even further, there’s some very interesting research that’s been done in terms of what happens to somebody psychologically when you put them in charge, and they become just as alarming, they become slightly more psychopathic. They become a little more evil to their fellow humans.  And this is not somebody going, oh, when we sat down to choose all the leaders, we actually chose the psychopaths. That’s not what happens. We chose good people who were good at their jobs. Anointing them as leaders turned them into people who, in the most famous experiment, helped themselves to more than their fair share of cookies on the plate and left crumbs all over the table for somebody else to clean up.  Dacher Keltner is the psychologist who did the experiment. And it’s a beautiful experiment because we can all imagine being in the conference room and there’s one cookie left on the plate, and everyone’s sitting there going, well, in human society, it would be rude to help myself to the cookie.  And while we’re all thinking that the leader grabs the cookie, has a bite, leaves crumbs everywhere because they’re the leader and they, they, their brain has been changed by a whole bunch of people saying, you are above us in some way.  So you add all of this up, and you go, well, listen, different financial world. It is very hard to tell a leader what’s going on. And that’s not a criticism of the leaders themselves; it’s just the way that information travels in organizations and the power paradox. And all of a sudden, you’ve got a bunch of leaders who really are not very much in touch with the results of the decisions they make. And so when they turn around and go, you know what, let’s do a reorg! Looks good. Consultants, by the way, think it’s great. And I love the consultants because they tell me how great I am, and they let me eat the last cookie.  So we’ll have the consultants come in. The consultants think that although we’d centralized last year, this year, we should decentralize because we’ll be more efficient that way. And goodness, that is why we centralized in the first place. So we’ll do the decentralization, and we’ll do a reorg and it’ll be lovely and innovation and change and disruption.  And then they are confused when the people on the front lines go, would you leave it alone? I’m just trying to do my job. And it’s impossible to do it when everything is in flux the whole time.” What Problem Are You Solving For?  Later, Jenn asks what leaders can do to overcome the Power Paradox and better understand what is happening on the front lines of their organizations. Ashley explains that the real irony of the situation is that leaders are driving change, driving disruption, but what is missing is an understanding of what problem they are actually trying to solve.  He explains that while leaders feel a sense of urgency to charge forward, the front-line employees are usually left confused about how they can help. The real problems go unexamined, but leaders start making changes just the same.  He advises getting more comfortable talking about problems throughout the organization. Leaders can ask: What are some of the challenges confronting us?  Can you help us get detailed on what exactly we could do differently?  Where are some of the root causes of all of these things? He advises, “If you are a leader and you share a problem, you are giving permission for other people to tell you what doesn’t work from their perspective, too. And you’ll get much, much smarter organizationally about what to aim at.” Remember the Human Element of Change At the heart of Ashley Goodall’s message is for leaders to remember that people are already dealing with unprecedented amounts of change. He explains:  “I interviewed a bunch of people for the book, and somebody said very poignantly, when people arrive at the office, they have already survived a lot of change that day because they’re living in a world which, you know, for the last four or five year– and then arguably for many years before that– is in tumult, wherever you look.  And you know, we have a little habit at work of saying, well, if we didn’t create change, the sum total of change in our people’s lives would be zero. And somebody said to me, it doesn’t work like that. What happens at work is the 99th change that they have to live through. If we instigate a change or the hundredth change or the hundred first change but people have a lot to deal with in their lives, it’s really hard. We should probably not arbitrarily and carelessly add to the pile.” Where to Find More From Ashley Goodall Be sure to listen to the full episode to get more insights and advice about successful change management strategies!  Then, to find more from Ashley Goodall: Buy his book: The Problem With Change  Connect on LinkedIn Does Your Team Need Help Managing Change?  If your team struggles with constant change and disruption, Crestcom can help! Contact us today to schedule a free 2-hour leadership workshop for your whole team! Visit crestcom.com/freeworkshop to find out more! The post The Problem with Change in the Workplace with Ashley Goodall appeared first on Crestcom International.

In this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit Podcast, Jenn DeWall talks to Projjal “JJ” Ghatak, founder and CEO, about performance management. It’s fair to say that most employees and managers dread performance reviews. Too many organizations rely heavily on the traditional annual review.  We’ve all been through it, right? Employees and supervisors fill out a generic form, have a stiff conversation about the form, and then don’t think about it again for another year.  Learning how to manage performance effectively is essential to achieving strategic goals and engaging employees. Don’t miss this episode exploring how to create a more effective performance management strategy that managers and employees can understand and benefit from! Meet Projjal “JJ” Ghatak, Founder and CEO of OnLoop Projjal Ghatak, the visionary founder and CEO of OnLoop, is at the forefront of revolutionizing team assessment and development. With an impressive background that includes leadership roles at Uber and Accenture, Projjal has established himself as a seasoned executive in strategy and operations. Armed with an MBA from Stanford, he has chosen Singapore as the base for his entrepreneurial endeavors. As the CEO of OnLoop, Projjal leads a diverse and global team, spearheading the transformation of the future of work through the company’s innovative approach. Projjal is reshaping the industry with cutting-edge technologies and empowering teams to reach their fullest potential. Under his guidance, OnLoop continues to disrupt traditional paradigms and deliver game-changing solutions in team assessment and development. Simplifying Performance Management Ghatak is not a fan of old-style performance management, which often involves boring, yearly reviews. He suggests a new approach called “collaborative team development,” which helps teams work better every day. “Performance management feels like a chore. And when something feels like a chore, nobody does it, and nobody enjoys it,” Ghatak explains. How Culture Drives Performance Management Different cultures manage performance differently. Ghatak points out that whether a culture is individualistic or group-oriented or whether it values hierarchy can affect how well performance management works. In the episode, Jenn and Projjal discuss how different cultures around the world view feedback and goals differently. Using Technology to Help Improve Performance Management Ghatak believes that technology, especially generative AI, can make performance management easier and more effective. He talks about using AI to automatically create useful feedback, which can change how managers and teams interact.  He explains, “I realized over time how much more valuable Gen AI could be to even help us think about day-to-day feedback. And what I say is that as human beings, we are good at making observations and we’re good at having conversations. Those two things are natural states of being.  So if I have a team member and I came out of a meeting, I probably have an observation around, eh, you know, Michael could have prepped a little bit more for that meeting. Maybe he didn’t really answer questions very well. His slides were beautiful. And next time I’d like you to do a little bit more research about the people who are attending the meeting.  That’s easy for someone to do, but that’s not an observation. It’s not feedback. And what we can do with technology now is split up that observation into specific pieces of either “celebrate” or “improve” feedback.” How AI Helps Leaders Get Performance Management Right Later, Ghatak explains how AI can help managers learn to deliver better feedback, saying, “Essentially, what we able to do in the (OnLoop) app is record a voice observation, right? And then we can analyze that voice observation to identify the pieces of feedback that exist in it.  So, usually, when someone has an observation, there might even be two, three, or four pieces of different feedback hidden in it. Then, you can extract that out and rewrite it in the right form. You might be familiar with Kim Scott’s work in Radical Candor. As she says, all good feedback is direct and kind.  AI can help you convert any observation to a written form that is direct and kind. You can extract behaviors, skills, or organizational values that are demonstrated or not demonstrated in that feedback. Before generative AI, we had to teach people how to give and receive feedback. Now we can use generative AI to do that for people. And that’s a far more effective way to do it than trying to train people. And so with every new wave of technology, we can solve HR problems in new ways, and feedback is very ripe for disruption with generative AI.”  A Clear Framework for Success In the episode, Ghatak shares that he uses a clear plan to help teams improve.  This plan includes: Engagement: Making sure team members care about their work. Productivity: Having clear goals so everyone knows what to do. Growth: Offering regular feedback to help people get better at their jobs. Where to Find More from Projjal Be sure to listen to the full episode to hear more of Projjal Ghatak’s insights about the need to change how we think about performance management. By using new tools and thinking about personal and cultural differences, companies can help employees do their best work and be more engaged.  To connect with Projjal “JJ’ Ghatak:  Find him on LinkedIn Visit His Website Do you want to learn more about Crestcom L.E.A.D.R., our interactive leadership development program and how it can help managers become better leaders? Visit our website to learn more about booking a free leadership skills workshop for your team! The post How to Get Performance Management Right with Projjal “JJ” Ghatak appeared first on Crestcom International.

In this week’s episode of the Leadership Habit Podcast, host Jenn DeWall, and professional coach Susan Ireland delve into the practical aspects of showing up as the leader you want to be. As leaders, we often have a vision of how everything should work, who we should be, and how to succeed. However, those visions rarely work out as planned!  When the going gets tough, sometimes we are our own biggest obstacle to success. With her wealth of experience, Susan shares practical insights on how to overcome these challenges and show up as the best version of yourself! Meet Susan Ireland, PCC, MSM, TILT 365 Susan Ireland is an ICF-certified professional coach, leader, dynamic speaker and podcast host who inspires enduring, transformative change. She works with leaders at all levels to enhance leadership and business acumen, encourage self-discovery, and turn challenges into positive results. As Co-Founder of Seasons Leadership, a professional coaching and consulting services business, she works with her partner, Debbie Collard, to make leadership excellence the worldwide standard. A self-proclaimed “accidental podcast host,” Susan also launched the Seasons Leadership Podcast with Debbie, which is now in its 5th season! Prior to her career as a coach, Susan built deep leadership experience during her 30-year career at Boeing.  Holding key business operations leadership roles such as the Director of Business Operations for the 787-9 and 787-10 Development Airplane Programs, Susan navigated the complexities of large global organizations. She played a key role on the original leadership team that built and established a new digital aviation business for Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Following her time with Boeing, Susan played a strategic role within a start-up company that developed, manufactured, and installed hydrogen systems on diesel engines.  Susan’s expertise in steering the design, implementation, and management of business processes gives her a unique understanding of the intricate workings of businesses, from large enterprises to small start-up organizations. Do You Know What Kind of Leader You Want to Be? As the episode opens, Jenn and Susan discuss the different stages of life and leadership and then discuss the obstacles people face on their leadership journey.   Susan shares, “First of all when you talk about the leader in your head, yeah, I think that it’s a really interesting thing because oftentimes people don’t even think about that. They’re just reacting or behaving like unconsciously. So it’s taking a moment first to think about who am I? What are my values? How do I want to leave? What lead, what’s important to me? And that having that self-reflection at first, I think is the foundation of everything. Because otherwise, you are groundless. Because life in the world is pretty chaotic. And so if you don’t have that foundation, you’re just flipping from one thing to another thing to another thing. And the people around you don’t know who you are or where what you stand for. So that’s the first thing.” If you think like, how do I show up as the leader I want to be? You need to define who that leader is, then you have a target, then you can assess yourself. Like, am I showing up the way I want to be? And if I’m not, where are those gaps, and where do I need to work? What’s Stopping You From Becoming The Leader You Want to Be? Later Susan and Jenn talk about one of the biggest obstacles showing up as the kind of leader you really want to be– fear.  Jenn asks Susan for her advice for someone who is being held back by fear.  Susan explains, “So if you’re clear about who you want to be and what you want to achieve–  so you’re clear about that, and then you make a plan, I wanna do this. But you don’t execute that plan for various reasons. Mostly because of fear. Maybe you can’t take that first step. Being aware that you are where you are gives you a choice. So then you have a conscious choice: I can do this, or I can not. It’s a choice. You’re fine either way, you know, you can say, I’m not gonna take steps toward my goal. I’m gonna stay here because I’m too afraid. But then you kinda have to live with yourself.” Making the Choice to Show Up as the Leader You Want to Be Later in the episode, Susan and Jenn delve into some strategies for showing up as the best version of yourself and achieving your potential as a leader. Susan shares her strategies, including:  Getting grounded in your values Connecting with others Finding a mentor or coach Being kind to yourself As the episode closes, Jenn and Susan talk about the importance of taking better care of yourself in order to become the best leader you can be. Susan explains that you can’t be your best self when you are not feeling physically and emotionally well.  Jenn agrees, saying, “I don’t know whether people realize that. You know, I think I don’t. I talk about about burnout and resilience a lot with organizations, and I hear it from everyone. They are experiencing burnout. Healthcare, for example,  is really being challenged with that right now. And all the way down to a group of conservationists who work on protecting our lands Every industry, every single industry I’m noticing, is experiencing burnout in some way. People are tired. People are not operating from their best, most rational capacities.” Susan adds, “Which kind of comes back to the showing up as the leader that you want to be, and how you envision this is part of it. You have to take care of yourself. Being a leader, I think I get a little bit like my emotional temperature goes up on this because leaders affect a lot of people around them just by how they show up. And it’s our responsibility to do the best we can. We can’t, we are not perfect people, but doing the best we can, taking care of ourselves and knowing our values and showing up positively have a huge impact on the world. And I don’t know why we don’t do it, but we don’t.”  Where to Find More from Susan Ireland Be sure to listen to the full episode to get more insights into growing as a leader and a person. If you want to find out more about Susan and her work with Seasons Leadership, you can connect with her here:  SeasonsLeadership.com Connect on LinkedIn Check out her Podcast Check out their Patreon Thanks for listening to The Leadership Habit Podcast! If you want to learn more about developing your leadership skills, or your team’s, contact a Crestcom training expert near you!   The post How to Become the Leader You Want to Be with Susan Ireland appeared first on Crestcom International.

On this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit Podcast, Jenn DeWall sits down with Dr. Caprice Hollins to learn how to have difficult conversations about race. Leaders at all levels are learning to lean into this topic because it impacts our lives, our workplaces, and the world around us. How can we, as leaders, learn to move through discomfort and have challenging conversations that lead to a more equitable world?  Meet Dr. Caprice Hollins, Co-founder of Cultures Connecting Caprice D. Hollins was born and raised in Seattle, WA. She received a doctorate in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis in Multicultural and Community Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology. Dr. Hollins has over 25 years of experience facilitating race-related workshops. She co-founded Cultures Connecting in 2008, and her second book, Inside Out: The Equity Leader’s Guide to Undoing Institutional Racism, was recently published. She’s a Seattle 2020 TEDx Speaker on What White People Can Do to Move Race Conversations Forward. When asked to introduce herself to The Leadership Habit Audience, Caprice said, “I am a licensed clinical psychologist. That’s what my doctorate is in. And I minored in what is now referred to as DEIB. It was multicultural and community psychology. I taught graduate school on issues around multicultural perspectives, focusing specifically on race. I just released a book,  Inside Out: The Equity Leaders Guide to Undoing Racism, which I’m really proud of. Did a TEDx talk.  Then my company is called Cultures Connecting. What we do is we help organizations have what you said, these very uncomfortable, difficult conversations about race, and provide them with strategies and tools and ways of thinking so that people can work together collectively in their organizations to not only dismantle racism but sexism, ableism, homophobia, Islam, Islamophobia, all of these isms, this othering that we do as we continue to marginalize people because of an identity that they hold.” What Inspired You to Pursue DEIB in Your Career?  Jenn asked Caprice what inspired her to pursue her work on multicultural and community psychology, or DEI. And Caprice explained, “Thank you for asking that, Jenn. So, I’m biracial. My mom’s white. My older brothers and sisters are white–  from her first marriage– with blonde hair and blue eyes. My mother divorced and got pregnant with me a number of years later. And you know, this is a time in our country when interracial marriages, let alone relationships, were illegal in some states. And so I grew up in this very diverse family. My brother is gay, and I always knew. He was Ms. Gay Seattle one year. Love bragging about that. My dad married a woman from Thailand.  When I went to grad school, all of our courses looked at the topic through an equity lens. This was long before we used language like equity or talked about things like privilege or bias. And I was blown away, Jenn. I was on an emotional re roller coaster around as I looked at how I had been socialized and things that I had said and done that colluded with racism essentially. And it became a very liberating experience for me to acknowledge, yeah, I do stereotype. And yes, I do have identities where I hold privilege, and I wanted other people to be able to have that same experience of deconstructing how they’ve been socialized so that they could reconstruct a new way of being in the world. It’s very freeing, too, instead of working really hard to say, I don’t notice, or I don’t want you to reveal a stereotype. Instead, be prepared that someone might say to you, Hey, I think you were biased in that moment. And say, tell me more about it because you know, it’s a possibility. Or to have someone check your privilege and be like, wow. Yep, there it is. You know, it just shows up in all different kinds of ways in my life. And it feels so much better not to run from it but to lean in it, look at where it’s coming from, and then see, Hey, what can I do differently? How can I show up differently?” Why is it Important to Have These Difficult Conversations at Work?  Later in the conversation, Jenn asks Caprice to explain why it is so important for leaders to be able to talk about race or have productive conversations about diversity. Caprice shared, “That awareness of ourselves and how we’ve been racialized or socialized and that knowledge of other people’s experiences who are different from ours. Learning about those things and continually growing in those areas will help us to get better at having hard conversations.  When we can get to the hard conversations, then collectively, we can look at things and ask different questions about things that we see happening in our organization. We can work together to think about what we can do to create change.  The conversation will help us get to the action, to the undoing or the addressing of the institutional “isms” in our organization. We can’t look at our hiring practices and how bias is embedded in those practices. Then how will we ever work collectively together to change our hiring process? So the conversation can inevitably lead to people working together to create that change.” Why is This Kind of Conversation so Difficult? Jenn agrees that these conversations are so important, saying, “Yes. Right. So if you’re a leader and you’re hearing this–  hiring, how we collaborate and work together, how we move change forward, how we adjust processes, how we create equity, there are so many reasons why this conversation is still important to have, even if you feel like you took that one class.  This is an ongoing conversation, but let’s get to the barrier. We’re talking about how to have these difficult conversations at work about race. Why is it hard? Why do you think, like from what you see, why is it hard for people to do it?” Caprice agrees and shares her perspective, “I think for people of color, it’s hard to engage white people because, in the process, white people will often become defensive. I’m not like that. I’m different from other white people. They will take that kind of calling in that kind of like trying to share with the white person you said or did something that was harmful.  They’ll take that and they’ll personalize it as if it means they’re a bad person. Rather than receive it as a gift. Here’s an opportunity for me to think more deeply about how I’ve been socialized. So people of color often don’t wanna take the risk because then, if you’re my boss or you’re my coworker, it might affect the relationship. If you’re my coworker, it might affect how you treat me. If you’re my boss, I might experience micro-invalidations in the process. For example, you’re being too sensitive. That’s not what I meant. Maybe they didn’t mean it that way. So, for self-preservation, I go to work and just kind of do what I need to do. I have all of these experiences. I go home, and I talk about the experiences that I had rather than that burden of trying to push, you know, and create change for white people. I think the conversation is hard because, again, I think they see it as a good and bad narrative versus you’ve been socialized.  I do believe there are some people that no matter what you say, no matter what you do, no matter what research you present to them, there is nothing that is going to make them curious. Even just a little bit about how someone’s experiences might be different from their own, they are too heavily invested in continuing to see things the way that they see them. Ultimately, I think to myself, what do white people have to give up in order to entertain that the reality for people of color is very different than the reality for them? And what they have to give up is their way of thinking, what they’ve spent a lifetime believing, the way they engage the work that they have to now do that’s different from what they’re comfortable with doing for many white people is too risky and, and they don’t wanna give up that comfort, right? It’s a lot of work. It’s hard work to look at how you’re socialized, and then you have to change how you behave, how you lead, and how you think. And so that investment, getting people to do that, is probably one of the bigger challenges.” Getting it Right Requires Vulnerability As leaders, having conversations about race can be scary. People feel afraid of being misunderstood or afraid they will be perceived as a bad person. Jenn explains her fear of making mistakes, saying, “I’m not sure if our audience can even tell, by the sensitive nature of this podcast, I feel like I’m a pretty unreserved person, but I am more tentative in how I am talking because I want to make sure I am being respectful and curious. And so I want to share that because I think part of me is like, I still have the fear of getting it wrong, and I know that there’s still work to do, and I’m not even aware of some of the ways that I might get it wrong. But could we talk a little bit more about the fear of making mistakes and the fear of getting it wrong?” Caprice replies, “First of all, thank you for that vulnerability, Jenn, right? Like, that’s the work, right? And so, yeah, I notice what I’m feeling in my body right now. I’m walking on eggshells or whatever it is, being very thoughtful or careful about my words for fear that I’m going to make a mistake.  And even as I teach people, for example, ask questions with genuine curiosity, Hey, just do it. I get it wrong. A lot of times. I just have this as a strategy so that I can either circle back around, try it again, or think, okay, the next time I have that opportunity, what are some of the questions that I could have asked? But I do think that naming your fears is an important part of this work because oftentimes if we don’t identify it, if we don’t surface it, our fears will keep us from engaging. And then no learning happens, right?  We’re actually controlled by our fears. And so I’m afraid too, I’m afraid of losing credibility. I’m afraid of, you know, making mistakes, getting it wrong. All of the things that you said, I tend to sweat, right? I would say it’s an I work hard for my money kind of moment because somebody has said something, and I’m having a reaction, and now I need to facilitate it or lean into it.  It’s not an easy thing to do. And this is why we tell people that your hope for what you want to have happen, the changes you want to see in yourself, your community, and your families, has to be greater than what your fears are. Otherwise, you won’t do it, right? You won’t, you won’t lean in. And so, you know, that’s very real.” Where to Find More from Dr. Caprice Hollins Be sure to listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast streaming service to get her advice and strategies for navigating these difficult conversations at work! You can also connect with her to learn more in several ways:  Connect on LinkedIn Visit CulturesConnecting.com Watch her TEDx Talk Buy her book, Inside Out: The Equity Leader’s Guide to Undoing Institutional Racism   The post How to Have Difficult Conversations about Race with Dr. Caprice Hollins appeared first on Crestcom International.

How Reading Fiction Can Make You A More Effective Leader On this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, we explore a unique perspective on leadership with Melanie Bell, the founder of Leaders Who Fiction. Melanie shares how reading fiction can make you a better leader, offering a compelling reason to pick up a good book. Don’t miss this episode if you’re ready to explore a new dimension of leadership development! Meet Melanie Bell, Co-Founder of Strategic Piece Melanie Bell earned a BA in international development from McGill University in Montreal and an MBA from Rice University in Houston. She is the co-founder of Strategic Piece, a company that helps B2B businesses generate revenue growth by bringing together their marketing, sales, and service teams around an information-driven customer experience. However, Melanie also founded Leaders Who Fiction, an online book club and community for people who want to improve their leadership skills by reading fiction.    Melanie wants to give leaders permission to read fiction again! Her mission is to help people develop leadership skills by reading fiction and participating in intellectual business-oriented conversations centered around a selected novel.  She explains her passion project, saying, “So, in essence, it’s a monthly online book club. We meet over Zoom once a month, and we’ve all read the same book. And so we all get on Zoom and, for an hour, discuss the book like a traditional book club would. We’ve all read the book, though with a slightly different perspective, which is being really intentional about picking out the leadership themes and lessons from what we’ve been reading.” Why Should Leaders Read More Fiction?  Melanie explains the benefits of reading, saying, “ I think a lot of people are reading business books or getting podcasts and having a lot of content downloaded that way. And I feel like there’s a time and a place for business books. I always feel bad when I sound like I’m knocking them and like, they’re not important, but do I think that there’s a purpose for them.  But what I really love about fiction is that when we read from a neuroscience perspective, our brains switch into simulation mode. And so, in a novel, we’re actually walking around in a protagonist’s shoes. So whoever that main character is, we’re really, our mind has gone into this very immersive environment and walking around in this totally other wor different world. So it’s really good from a mental health perspective to unplug and, and you know, put your, transport yourself into another time and place.  But the other great thing is you’re also fiction writers are really trying to explore the gray area and moral dilemmas and ethical dilemmas, whereas a lot of times in business books, cases, case studies that will, will get broken down and everything’s very black and white. So it tends to be pretty obvious what somebody should do in a given scenario. And so I just think that there are a lot of benefits in terms of that simulation in terms of building empathy.” The Hidden Benefits of Reading Fiction Later in the episode, Melanie and Jenn delve into some of the lesser-known benefits of reading, including:  Stress Management—A 2009 study from Mindlab International at the University of Sussex found that reading reduced stress levels by 68%. That made it more effective than other soothing activities like taking a walk or listening to music. Increased Attention Span – Blocking out time for undistracted reading will improve your ability to focus for longer periods of time.  Strengthens Empathy – Reading fiction allows you to put yourself in another person’s shoes, whether they are similar or different to your own experience. This develops empathy, a key leadership skill.  Improves Strategic Thinking – As readers navigate a book’s plot twists and turns, they engage intellectually with the story, imagining what they might do next or how they might solve this problem. This is similar to role-playing and gives leaders practice thinking strategically. Builds Communication Skills – Reading also strengthens communication skills by improving vocabulary, grammar and writing skills.   How to Make Reading a Leadership Habit Later in the episode, Jenn and Melanie discuss people’s struggles with finding time for reading or with their attention spans.  Melanie shares, “I mean, putting my marketing hat on right now, it’s like every piece of content people want is shorter and shorter. And we have shorter attention spans, and we kind of need to start countering that so that we can keep our focus and really engage in deep thought work, for example. Reading novels definitely helps. So, you can sit down and read for six minutes, and that’s okay, but at the same time, maybe you sit down and read for a longer stint and work on your focus skills too.” Jenn agrees, “I think that’s true. My partner talked about how he loves TikTok, and in the same token, he also said that he thinks that TikTok is making his attention span worse, but yet he keeps picking up TikTok <laugh>, and I keep telling him to read a book <laugh>.  So know that, of course, technology is going to affect our brains. So, maybe you do need to get back into the habit of reading, and maybe it starts with two minutes, and then you get to six minutes. But at least you’re starting to build the habit.” Where to Find More From Melanie Bell Be sure to listen to the full episode to get Melanie’s reading recommendations, and learn more about what’s happening next with Leaders Who Fiction! To find out more about Melanie Bell: Connect on LinkedIn  Visit Leaders Who Fiction   The post How Reading Fiction Makes You a Better Leader with Melanie Bell appeared first on Crestcom International.

Workplace conflict expert Carol Bowser discusses the importance of leaders addressing conflict, effective communication strategies, avoiding solution jumping, understanding power dynamics, constructive criticism, meeting structures, conflict resolution tips, and fostering a conflict-friendly workplace culture

On this week’s episode of the Leadership Habit Podcast, Jenn has a conversation with Dominic George about overcoming your fears to build a growth mindset. Dominic will share four common fears that hold us back and share five strategies for overcoming them to find success.  Meet Dominic George, Leadership Coach and Founder of Vision Leadership for Life Dominic George is a seasoned leadership coach with a Master’s from Columbia University. His coaching style blends mentorship and empowerment, focusing on equipping his clients with the tools and insights they need to navigate challenges and emerge as influential leaders.  Dominic is the founder of Vision Leadership for Life, a business focused on creating a supportive space where black men who are mid-level professionals to senior leadership roles can harness their strengths, navigate obstacles and achieve senior leadership roles.  What is a Growth Mindset?  As the episode opens, Jenn asks Dominic to explain what a growth mindset is to the audience, in case it is a new concept to some.  Dominic explains, “Yeah, so I’m going to break it down in some simple terms. Especially for the people who are not familiar with a growth mindset.  So there are two different distinctions that I like to play on. There’s the fixed mindset where often you’ll hear this in people who are of more mature age. Where you’re like, oh, they’re just stuck in their ways. They only do things a certain way. And how you level set that is they have a fixed mindset of how things need to be based on their experiences. So they always sort of show up in the same way all the time because that’s how they see the world. So I find that as a fixed mindset, you’re just consistently doing the same thing over and over again, and you only see things from one perspective.  A growth mindset is the ability to look at life, look at your environment, and see things differently from multiple different angles. So it’s pulling in information from education spaces, professional spaces, your own experiences, your cultural background, all the things that help you understand the world differently. You’re pulling in that information to see things differently.  Specifically, when I think about a growth mindset, I think about thinking about the impossible in order to make it possible. That’s how I categorize a growth mindset.” The Four Common Fears Holding You Back Later, Jenn and Dominic discuss the importance of developing a growth mindset so you can see challenges and failures as opportunities to learn and grow. Dominic explains that in his work with clients, he sees four common fears that keep people stuck in a fixed mindset and hold them back from success:  Fear of Rejection: As humans, we all want to belong, to be seen and heard–  or hired. However, rejection is part of our personal and professional experience. Whether it is negative feedback or not getting a promotion, we have to find the courage to embrace it as a learning experience.  Fear of Success: When people are on the brink of achieving a goal, they can start to question themselves or suffer from imposter syndrome. Sometimes it is a fear of failure, but it can also be a fixed mindset holding them back from the next level in their careers.  Fear of Being Wrong: This fear can cause people not to speak up in meetings or not share their knowledge or expertise out of fear of being wrong or making mistakes.  Fear of the Unknown: This fear is deeply embedded in human psychology. Our deepest instincts tell us to avoid the unknown in order to stay safe. However, in the modern world, in our careers, there is a lot of uncertainty we have to overcome to succeed.  Growth Mindset Strategy # 1: Don’t Call It a Setback Dominic’s first strategy for overcoming your fears to build a growth mindset is to embrace challenges as an opportunity.  He explains, “When I think about challenges as an opportunity, it’s about really facing your fears, like that starting point of just how I ended, where if you name what the actual challenges you name, what the fear is that’s associated with that challenge, then you could see it as an opportunity versus a setback. Most people, when they see the challenge, they’re often think about what is, or they’re often thinking about what is the end result of that solution. And you don’t need the end result to start off with. You just need the starting point to actually get moving. And most people get by the endpoint because everybody wants to be at the end first. And I just say, slow down, figure out what the challenge is so that you can embrace it and lean into the opportunity around it.” Growth Mindset Strategy #2: Learn from Failures Dominic’s next strategy is a core part of embracing a growth mindset. He explains, “The next strategy that I really coach people around is learning from your set, your setbacks and failures because that is the true possibility to move forward as well. We’re always learning, we’re always growing as individuals. And we often fear, like I said, the fear of success, but we get stuck in those places of failure. And so I coach people to really sit down and reflect and be an observer of what happened at every point of that moment where you either had a setback or a failure because that is the moment where you get to really shift your mindset. Again, what’s impossible right now gets to be possible later.” Growth Mindset Strategy # 3: Become a Lifelong Learner Dominic also encourages leaders to embrace lifelong learning. He says, “So number three is to really seek continuous learning opportunities. It’s so important that we’re continuously learning and growing because where you are today is not where you’re gonna be long term. In order to really embody that growth mindset, you have to pull in knowledge from different areas, whether that’s podcasts, listening to Jenn, or that’s listening to different leaders at different conferences or going to a workshop reading books. There are so many different ways that we get to learn!” Growth Mindset Strategy #4: Develop a Positive Attitude Next, Dominic explains the importance of an open mind and a good attitude, saying, “I coach people to develop a positive and open attitude. If you are one of those people who are just closed off to life, you’re closed off to what’s possible, you usually fit into that big mindset that I spoke about earlier. But it’s so important to be open to it.  When you’re open and you have a positive mindset, you develop a positive attitude towards what’s around you. You’ll find that people are going to gravitate towards you. They’re going to want to be around you. And because you’re open to the conversation, you’re going to just automatically learn from those individuals who are choosing to be in your presence, choosing to be led by you, choosing to be in community with you.”  Growth Mindset Strategy #5: Encourage Growth in Others Part of great leadership is helping others grow and learn! Dominic explains, “The fifth strategy is to really encourage growth in others. When we’re teaching others how to fix their mindset, we’re automatically reinforcing how we need to set our own mindset around the possibilities. And so I really encourage anyone, whether you’re a leader in your family, you’re a leader of yourself, you’re a leader of organizations, of businesses. Wherever you’re leading, you have the opportunity to really encourage growth in others and be a community and conversation with other people around you.” Where to Find More from Dominic George Don’t forget to listen to the full episode for all of Dominic and Jenn’s advice and insight. Opportunities for growth are all around you!  To connect with Dominic:  Follow him on LinkedIn Email him at: dominic@visionleadershipforlife.com Thanks for listening to The Leadership Habit Podcast!    The post How to Overcome Fears to Build a Growth Mindset with Dominic George appeared first on Crestcom International.

Building Resilience with Coach, Facilitator and Speaker, Russell Harvey In this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, Jenn DeWall talks to Russell Harvey about building resilience. A study by The Resilience Institute found that intentionally building resilience can increase vitality by 43%, focus by 38%, and optimism by 38%, and reduce symptoms of anxiety and distress by 39%. According to research by the World Health Organization, cultivating resilience through training at work can have an ROI of $4 for each dollar invested!  Don’t miss this episode featuring the expertise of coach and speaker Russell Harvey and Leadership Strategist Jenn DeWall as they discuss practical ways to build resilience in yourself and your team.  Meet Russell Harvey, Resilience Coach, Facilitator, and Public Speaker  Russell Harvey has over 20 years of experience in learning, leadership and organizational development and is influenced by positive psychology and a strengths-based approach to coaching. His purpose is to positively affect 100,000 people by the year 2025.  Russell focuses on resilience because he truly believes that building it is an opportunity for people to live and lead better lives.    What is Resilience?  As the episode opens, Jenn asks Russel to define resilience for the audience. Russel explains:  “So yeah, everyone, listen now. I’d like you to remember resilience in this way. Resilience is about springing forward with learning. I do hear, obviously, the words “bounce back” are used a great deal in relation to the word resilience. And just personally, I often think there’s a bit of a risk to that.  So, we face a challenging life event, then we sometimes say, oh, I’ve gotta bounce back. Now we sort of give a bit of a subconscious instruction to ourselves to go back to how we were. And in the nicest possible sense, we can’t.  And clever people, an eye that stood the brain goes, yeah, your brain can’t go back.  So what you need to do from all of life’s experiences is get into the habit–  whether it’s good experiences or not-so-good experiences– get into the habit of pausing and reflecting and re-energizing yourself.  In your reflections, you get your learning and making some options and choices about the things that you’re gonna keep doing because they work really well for you and some things that you are gonna stop doing because they haven’t worked well for you in recent times.  So when you do really great resilient reflection, then you actually understand the things that are and aren’t working for you and really find ways to play to your strengths as much as possible. So springing forward with learning is how I would love all your listeners to remember what the definition of resilience is.” The Power of Reflection Next, Jenn asks Russell about the importance of reflection in developing resilience. Russell shares his insights, saying:  “So I think it’s good to note that reflection is going on all the time. You know, apparently, we have about 50,000 thoughts a day, and over half of them are negative. So a thought is a reflection, and actually, 90% of my thoughts are from the previous day. And lo and behold, over half of those are negative.  So it’s understanding that any thought and feeling that you’re having is okay. Self-compassion: It’s all right to have the thoughts and feelings that you’re having. And how well do you notice the thoughts that you are having? You know, how much are you being kind to yourself, congratulating yourself, beating yourself up? You know, how self-aware are you that you are doing that? So we are reflecting all of the time because we are thinking all of the time. And then it would be useful if you sort of consciously make the choice. If you’re not great at reflection, start making it a habit. So all habit-forming exercises, you’ve gotta do what works. So for some people that is daily, some people that’s weekly, some people that’s more consciously fortnightly with a friend, you know, but it’s actually do something a conscious around actually the reflection is what I would suggest to you.  You’ve gotta do what works, and you also have to understand you’ve gotta do it a few times. You’ve gotta repeat it to make sure that you understand what works well about it. So you’re gonna just do what works for you, but do something.” Are you Coping, Surviving or Thriving?  Later in the episode, Jenn and Russell discuss how to build awareness about your current situation. Russell tells Jenn that the goal of building resilience is to be able to thrive, and Jenn asks how we can define what thriving looks like.  Russell recommends increasing your self-awareness by thinking about how you are really doing. He explains:  “It is about understanding how you are then going to shift from the coping, surviving into the thriving space by tapping into your strengths far more. And thinking about this question about how are you that we just talked about? You know, how you answer that question will be different about whether you’re thriving or surviving or coping. So it’ll give you some clues. So people even here now, you know, just get a blank piece of paper and do three columns. Coping, surviving and thriving.  And actually, just write down on these three columns. How do I know when I’m coping, surviving or thriving? Thriving? What am I like, and what do I say? How do I behave? How do people describe me in these different instances? And then, you could immediately give yourself some clues about where you might be.” Then, they discuss how this tool is helpful for building more self-awareness and learning to recognize when you may be in a bad place and might need to take action to manage stress or reflect on what is going on. Jenn reminds the audience that everyone has ups and downs, so resilience isn’t about toxic positivity; it is about learning what works for you to move out of survival or coping mode in order to thrive.   The Resilience Wheel Later, Russell shares another helpful tool for building resilience– The Resilience Wheel. Listeners can find the wheel on his website, or just draw it on a piece of paper. The idea is to score yourself in seven key areas:  Image borrowed from Russell Harvey, theresiliencecoach.co.uk: Russell explains:  “Yeah, so we’ll talk about all seven, and I’ll just try and give a very brief little there example in each, some of it we’ve talked about already. It’s a bit of a self-assessment tool, just score yourself out of 10 or like put a color to it or a smiley face or, you know, different emoji.  #1 Resilience (Attitude) So rate yourself in these different areas. So the heart of resiliency is our attitude. So right at the center of the wheel is our attitude.  And the thing that always fascinates me about that bit,  is that our attitude includes our beliefs. I’d like people to remember that a belief is something that we behold to be true without basis in fact. So you’ve gotta challenge your beliefs a lot of the time with your attitude. #2 Purpose Then the next one is purpose. So it’s being curious about whether you actually have a purpose. And the purpose is a little bit more overarching than your goals. Goals help you achieve your purpose. So, my purpose is that by the year 2025, I want to positively affect 100,000 people. And right now, I’m up to 44,212, essentially.  I appreciate that there is some smart goal stuff in there, but the world likes to hear numbers and statistics, you know, so I put that in, and that drives me. It gets me outta bed. It helps me understand how well I need to be able to achieve that and what type of human I want to be. So that’s my purpose.  #3 Confidence Then we’ve got confidence. Playing to your strengths builds natural confidence and resilience. So confidence is our balance of positive and negative thoughts. #4 Adaptability Then we’ve got the lovely word of adaptability. So that gets thrown around a huge amount of the time. So remember, the definition of adaptability is openness to change. And I’d like people who are listening now to remember that it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re gonna do the change, that you’re open to it. Okay, so agile. So there’s a difference between adaptability and agile.  Agile means you can make the change quickly. You can make the decision to make the change quickly. So when you work on your openness, curiosity, and openness to new ways of doing things, it also helps you be more agile.  #5 Support We then have our support network, which we’ve referenced a lot. Just make sure that you’ve got all the people in your life, a good balance of people that energize you and support you and tell your own truths. And we will have to spend time in our lives with people that we don’t enjoy spending time with. Sometimes it’s family <laugh>. So it’s just about what’s your balance around that and get it into a good place.  #6 Meaning Then there’s meaning, which we’ve talked an awful lot about today, about how do you answer that question about how are you, what’s your self-talk? So the stories we tell ourselves, because every time we answer the question “how are you”, we’re imprinting a muscle memory inside ourselves about if we’ve had a good experience or a bad experience, or I’m an okay person or I’m a terrible person. So the meaning that we attach to events.  #7 Energy And finally, energy, which is going back to playing to your strengths. When I work with leaders, that is also the space where we are also thinking about wellbeing and diet and exercise that goes into the energy space. I’m not an expert on the diet and exercise piece, you know, but energy when I work with clients is far more about their strengths profile.  And so those seven aspects, and they’re all interconnected every time you engage with one of them and make it slightly better, it has positive knock on effects on all of the others. So I support clients on their resilience wheel.”  Where to Find More From Russell Harvey Be sure to listen to the full episode to get more of Russell’s tips about how to build resilience. Jenn and Russell go on to discuss the connections between each part of the resilience, and learning to get comfortable with being uncomfortable! If you want to learn more about Russell and his work, you can connect with him at the resources below:  theresiliencecoach.co.uk  linkedin.com/in/russelltheresiliencecoach/ The Leadership Habit Podcast The post How to Build Resilience with Russell Harvey appeared first on Crestcom International.

Everyday Mentorship with Leadership Strategist Ted Ma On this week’s episode of the Leadership Habit Podcast, Jenn DeWall welcomes Mentorship Mindset expert Ted Ma to discuss how to be an everyday mentor. Mentorship is the key to creating a better, more empowered, confident and effective workforce. Tune in to find out how to make mentorship a routine part of your work day! Meet Ted Ma, Leadership Strategist, Author and International Keynote Speaker Ted Ma has been coaching leaders for over 20 years. In his previous career, he built and led a sales team of over 6,000 independent agents. His work has been featured in publications, including USA Today, Kiplinger, and Inc. He is also a Crestcom L.E.A.D.R. subject matter expert featured in two modules dealing with emotional intelligence, mental agility, and resilience.  What is an Everday Mentor?  As the episode opens, Jenn introduces Ted and welcomes him to the podcast. Then, Jenn dives right into the topic, asking Ted to explain what an everyday mentor is.  Ted explains, “ Excellent question. What I love about everyday mentorship is that all of us, so not only the listeners here but people that you are teaching and coaching, whether they’re business owners or budding entrepreneurs or maybe even people that work within a company, is the premise is anybody can become a mentor regardless of their position.  So becoming an everyday mentor is using our daily interactions to guide and support other people. Regardless of what our title is, there are a few key actions that we see everyday mentors take. And there are some key traits that are really important because, as we all know, it’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it. It’s not always just what you do but the way that you do it. So how you show up as a mentor, a professional, an entrepreneur, or a leader is so important that if you do the actions without embracing and embodying the characteristics of great mentors, then the actions will fall flat.” Jenn agrees and shares that it is unfortunate that many organizations fail to organize a formal mentorship program, and asks Ted to explain why building these relationships is so important in today’s workplace.  Why is the Mentoring Experience So Important in Today’s Workplace?  Ted replies, “I’m gonna give you two answers to that question. The first one is the numbers speak for themselves. And not only the numbers we’re probably familiar with about the value of mentoring in general but what I did back in 2021 is I hired a national research company, and we actually did a deep dive and surveyed over a thousand working professionals here in the US, and we asked them some very poignant questions about the impact of mentorship in their careers.  Here are some high-level findings that we found: Number one, 71% of people said that their performance improved as a result of a mentoring relationship at work. So seven out of 10, over two-thirds of people said they were more engaged at work as a result of a mentoring relationship.  For all the organizations that are really struggling with retention in today’s world and are looking to develop this devoted, talented workforce, the number one outcome of a mentoring relationship, according to employees, was an increase in loyalty to their company. So it’s a huge business case in terms of the metrics there.  But the other piece that’s important for all of us to understand is that mentoring isn’t always this traditional relationship where you have to be in a formal structured program where the person has to be a senior to a junior person. That’s the traditional arrangement we think of. But we found through our research that informal mentoring is just as powerful or, in some cases, even more powerful than a formal structured mentoring program.” The Mentor-Mentee Relationship Vs. Manager-Employee Relationship Later, Jenn asks Ted about the difference between a mentoring relationship and having a coach or just a normal manager-to-employee relationship.  Ted shares his view, saying, “Coaching is a great tool in the tool belt that mentors and managers can use because coaching helps people learn a specific skill or practice. Mentorship differentiates from coaching or even from management in that it’s more holistic.  So a manager may focus on tasks that need to be achieved or objectives that have to be accomplished, whereas a mentor focuses on the overall development of the person. A manager is typically going to provide answers to questions that come up, but a mentor will ask questions of the mentee that help to inspire self-reflection.  So are we just providing solutions, or are we challenging people to get better? And there’s nothing wrong with management. Sometimes management gets a bad rap, but managers and leaders have very distinct characteristics that differentiate them from mentors because of their focus. Mentors, when they focus on deepening the relationship with the individual and the growth and development of the whole person, provide a different lens that lends itself to different behaviors.” Learning from the Anti-Mentor As Jenn and Ted begin to discuss the traits of a successful mentor, Ted explains that even if you never had your own mentor, you probably have had an anti-mentor who taught you what not to do.  “Some of our listeners are thinking to themselves, well, this all sounds great, Ted and Jenn, I love what you all are talking about, but I’ve never had a great mentor in my life. So how can I step into that role? I wanna talk to that person for a minute because one of the types of mentorship that I didn’t mention earlier is the anti-mentor.  So if you’ve ever worked for somebody that’s the opposite of what you envision a mentor being, we would classify that person as an anti-mentor. There are key lessons that you can learn from that individual because I work for managers and leaders, as many of us have, where I said, I will never do what this person is doing to me right now to someone on my team, or I will never make the people that I lead feel the way that this individual is making me feel right now.” 6 Traits of an Everyday Mentor Then, Ted Ma shares explains that an everyday mentor is:   A Role Model Trustworthy Lifelong Learner Active Listener Empathetic Patient For anyone wanting to improve their mentorship skills, he suggests rating yourself on those six characteristics to discover which traits you need to work more on.  Where to Find More from Ted Ma To learn why these six traits are so important and how you can strengthen them in yourself and your team, be sure to listen to the full episode! Meanwhile, if you want to learn more about Ted Ma, you can connect with him here:  Follow Ted Ma on LinkedIn Visit his Website: realtedma.com Check out his latest research, speaking programs, books and more! And if you want to learn more about Crestcom L.E.A.D.R., our comprehensive 24-module leadership development program, you can find a trainer in your area here: Get Started The post How to be an Everyday Mentor with Ted Ma appeared first on Crestcom International.