The Leadership Podcast

Nicole Kalil is the Confidence Sherpa. She’s the author of “Validation is for Parking,” and a leadership strategist, respected coach, speaker, and host of the “This is Woman’s Work” podcast. Nicole sees that women and men approach confidence very differently. She discusses how appearing confident is very different from being confident. Real, authentic confidence produces executive presence, and is a catalyst for effective leadership. Listen in for new insights on confidence and how it affects team success, and professional fulfillment.   Key Takeaways   [1:25] Jan and Jim want to know if you have listened to every episode of The Leadership Podcast. If you have, please drop them a line. They may have something for you! [2:27] Nicole is a partner to her husband, a mom to her nine-year-old daughter, a hotel snob, a wine and cheese enthusiast, and a reluctant Peloton rider. [4:23] Nicole wrote Validation Is For Parking to discuss confidence through a feminine lens. At the time she wrote the book, 92% of business books were written by men. In her finance job, all her mentors were men. Nicole felt an imbalance. She wrote the book with women in mind. Her intention isn’t to be exclusionary. She hopes people who identify as any gender will read it and have good takeaways. [6:29] Nicole took the filters off and wrote what she felt and knew, having women in mind, and sharing stories she felt would be most relevant or help people feel less alone. She wrote it almost as a journal and then realized someone was going to read it! It felt important to her, in writing a book about confidence, to put it all out there and be authentic and true to herself. [8:22] In work environments, confidence is when you trust yourself firmly and boldly. When you walk into an environment where you’re “the other,” you may spend a lot of your energy trying to navigate how to fit into the culture and the environment, and in doing that, you tend to lose some of your authenticity; you tend to lose some of yourself. That impacts your confidence. [9:11] When negotiating for a salary increase or a promotion, women are coming to those conversations with less confidence than their male counterparts because the way they would do it authentically or naturally is different from the way that is being encouraged, supported, trained, or recognized in the culture and environment. Jan cites past guest Jeffrey Pfeffer on the seven rules of power. [10:24] How are we defining power? Nicole defines power as showing up with true and vulnerable emotions, not as inauthentically looking confident or powerful. [12:53] The boss is the keeper of the culture. If your being authentic doesn’t fit in the culture, this is the opportunity for the boss to say, “This is just not the right place for you.” [13:16] If you’re accentuating something about yourself so much that it’s repellent to others it may be worth questioning if you are actually showing up authentically at all. You’re probably doing that in reaction. Nicole shares an experience from when she was trying to fit in. Looking back, she sees that was not her authentic self. [15:34] There isn’t one right, definitive answer to just about anything. We come to every situation, conversation, or event with our beliefs, values, experiences, and interpretations, and we think that those experiences, interpretations, and values are right or true with a capital T. What one person believes is right and true may not be right and true for everybody. [16:31] Nicole is trying to practice being more empathetic, better listening, being more open, and communicating, “This is the way I see it and I’m open that there may be another way to see it,” and being curious about that. [16:49] Nicole sees all of those things as a practice in being and becoming a better leader. They make us better relationship-builders, and developers of others, and create safer, healthier, and more productive environments. [18:24] Leadership and allyship are very closely connected. Be curious, listen. When you ask a question, believe what people are telling you is their perception or interpretation, and try to have empathy around that. All of us have the opportunity to create more balance. [18:57] Understand that the masculine approach to success in business is alive and well. There is the opportunity to bring in, recognize, and reward the more feminine side, as well, within yourselves and your organization, and your culture. Be aware and pay attention. [19:26] It helps people to have someone they trust and have a good relationship with. Be a coach to others when they say something that they may have meant in one way, but that might have been interpreted in another way. Most people can be very forgiving if they know you’re coming from a good place. Knowing where you’re coming from makes all the difference in the world. [22:21] Nicole discusses executive presence. It’s external; what we show to the world. We have an impact on how people see us. Nicole distinguishes it from confidence. Confidence is about firm and bold trust in self. Confidence in others is trust in them. Confidence leads to executive presence and that leads to leadership. [24:02] If you bypass confidence and go for executive presence, you can look confident but at some point, if the internal component isn’t there, it’s going to become painful to you and obvious to others. Don’t be focused on how you look to others but on who you are and what you bring to the table; what it is you can, and choose to, trust in yourself. [25:24] Nicole discusses the gender component of confidence vs. competence. Women tend to over-rotate on competence. They believe they need to do it all, have it all, and look the part; get all the designations and check all the boxes. It’s very much about how it looks. But you cannot be competent at anything you’re doing for the first time. Competence takes time. [26:00] Confidence is a choice we can make any time we want. Confidence is on the road to competence. Competence will then circle back and increase your confidence as you go. But there’s always something more to learn and skills to develop before you are fully competent. Instead of “Fake it till you make it,” Nicole says, “Choose it until you become it.” Choose confidence continually. [26:55] Women, especially, feel they need to be 100% ready before taking big actions. But 100% ready is not available to any of us when it comes to doing something new. We do most meaningful things with a combination of excitement, fear, readiness, and doubt. [27:34] For a lot of women it’s letting go of the unachievable expectation that you’re going to be 100% anything. Trust that you’ll figure it out as you go. Trust that if you don’t do well, you’ll be OK; you’ll learn something to take to the next thing you do. Trust that you’ve done what got you here, and you can apply your unique talents, strengths, and abilities to this new thing and you will get there. Trust in yourself. [29:03] Nicole saw integrity as strong moral principles or being honest. Her background is in finance, where being honest is important, and doing what’s best for your clients. In terms of a strong moral standing, who decides what that is? Do personal things bleed into the definition? Nicole had a struggle with the word, which forced her to look at the definition. [30:08] Nicole loves the second definition of integrity: the state of being whole and undivided. That’s what we need to be talking about, is being so true and trusting in ourselves that we show up with all that we are, we own everything that we’re not, and we choose to embrace all of it. And that would lead us to bring our full and best selves to the leadership table, to our businesses. [30:52] Nicole sees power and magic in knowing who we are, owning who we are not, choosing to embrace all of it, and showing up as our full and best selves. That’s how we should be talking more about integrity. [31:46] We’ve over-rotated in society and we try to “save” people every time they express that they are not meant for something. We think everybody can be anything they want to be. That’s not an available option for any of us. And, unfortunately, we think that we should do and be everything. What we end up doing is watering down our unique abilities and unique talents by trying to be everything. [32:32] Nicole refers to Essentialism, by Greg McKeown (a previous guest). We don’t stay in our lane because we don’t spend any of our time figuring out what our lane is. In order to do that, we need to know what our lane isn’t. There is power in owning what and who you are not meant for; what and who may not be meant for you. Being able to discern that will put you on track for what you are meant for. [33:16] Purpose is not one thing but we all have a purpose. It’s confidence-boosting to sift out the things that are not meant for you. [34:42] The biggest “Aha” that Nicole would tell her younger self is how much her failures, missteps, mistakes, fears, and doubts built her confidence and contributed to her success and purpose, more than her achievements, successes, wins, and things that came easily. It doesn't hurt any less when she’s in it, but when she’s experiencing bad feelings, she tells herself all that’s missing is the benefit of hindsight. [35:26] Nicole reminds herself that she doesn’t yet know why the negative thing is happening, but she trusts that it is serving a purpose. It’s a gift, a lesson, a redirect, or an opportunity. There’s some other way to see the thing that’s happening that is going to work for her betterment. She trusts that in those moments. She wishes she would have failed more often and risked more, earlier on. [36:40] Letting your children or employees fall is a struggle, but they go through it for their growth. You want to protect. You want them to be happy. Nicole and her husband are clear that they want to protect their daughter as much as they can from things that fall under health and safety that are very difficult to recover from. On other things, it is better to just let it play out and get messy. [37:44] Nicole tells her daughter that she loves her all of the time. It’s constant and does not need to be earned. She doesn’t need to prove herself to get it. The love is constant even in the messiness, failure, and mistakes. She can figure all the rest of it out. She encourages her daughter to hold onto her own confidence when it gets challenged. [39:08] Nicole’s challenge to listeners: “Separate all the advice, advertisements, and things on social media that tell you that the way you gain confidence is by fixing how your confidence looks to others. If it’s external, it’s probably not confidence-building. Go back to ‘Confidence is when you trust yourself.’ … Ask yourself, ‘Is this going to help me trust myself more?’ If the answer is yes then go do it!” [40:25] Closing quote: Remember, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson   Quotable Quotes “So much of what we learn about what it is to be professional, what it is to be successful, what it is to be a leader, or what it is to be confident comes from the masculine lens. I worked in finance and almost exclusively, all of my mentors, trainers, and teachers were men.” “When you walk into an environment where you’re ‘the other,’ … a lot of people spend a lot of their energy trying to navigate how to fit into the culture and the environment, and in doing that, we tend to lose some of our authenticity; we tend to lose some of ourselves.” “We are often being taught how to look confident. Very rarely taught how to be or become confident.” “I have a fundamental belief that leaders are keepers of the culture and if somebody being their authentic self doesn’t fit in a culture, then it’s probably the opportunity to say, ‘You’re not bad, we’re not bad, this is just not the right place for you.’” “The older I get the more I realize that there isn’t one right, definitive answer to just about anything.” “We are all coming to every situation, conversation, or event with our own beliefs, values, experiences, and interpretations, and unfortunately, we are thinking that those experiences, interpretations, and values are right or true with a capital T.” “[Let] people know ‘I’m going into this uncomfortable place. I might say things wrong; I might do things wrong. But my intention is only ever, always to get better. I’m open to feedback. If I make mistakes [please] pull me aside and tell me about it.’” “Confidence is about trust; firm and bold trust in self. So when we talk about being confident, that’s what I think we are talking about.” “One hundred percent ready is not a thing that’s available to any of us when it comes to doing something new or that we haven’t done before.” “That’s what we need to be talking about, is being so true and so trusting in ourselves that we show up with all that we are, we own everything that we’re not, and we choose to embrace all of it. And that would lead us to bring our full and best selves to the leadership table.”   Resources Mentioned Sponsored by:

Ed O’Malley is the Founder of the Kansas Leadership Center, President and CEO of the Kansas Health Foundation, and the author of four books, including his latest, “When Everyone Leads.” Ed discusses how leadership differs from authority, and that authority is required to lead. He explores the disruptive aspects and the risks of leadership. Ed explains the type of problems authority solves and the challenges that require unleashing the leadership of the whole team to move forward. Listen in for how to move forward when faced with daunting challenges.   Key Takeaways [3:25] In Ed’s book, When Everyone Leads, the key is getting people to separate leadership from authority. In some situations, the reliance on authority gets in the way of progress. We need people to know that even if you’re not the captain of the team or boss, the toughest challenges require your leadership, also. The book is about how you unleash that in everybody. [4:45] Ed talks about over-reliance on authority. Authority is necessary, but it’s not sufficient for making progress on our biggest problems. Challenges between people need to be resolved by the people involved. [6:14] On our toughest challenges, none of us know exactly the way forward. Trust that the collective is stronger than one person’s idea. If we unleash the leadership of others, so they feel empowered to exercise that leadership, then we start making more progress. [6:49] If we assume that we have the answers and we know the best way forward, that conveys a lack of trust in the collective. The toughest challenges get solved by people working together. [8:46] The book is about the toughest challenges. A prerequisite for unleashing leadership in more people is to help people break apart the idea of leadership from the idea of authority. They are different things and people know this intuitively. Ed uses the example of Rosa Parks showing leadership by choosing her seat on the bus. [10:20] Ed wants people to be conscious of the differences between authority, leadership, people holding positions of authority, and people exercising leadership. Sometimes people in authority exercise leadership. Sometimes People not in authority exercise leadership. Sometimes nobody does. If people see it separately, it opens up a conversation about what the exercise of leadership looks like for them. [11:22] Jim cites Jim Detert, author of Choosing Courage, regarding the courage it takes to step up and face big problems. [12:08] Julia McBride, Ed’s co-author on the book, would say it’s all about clarity of purpose. Those who exercise effective leadership are clear in their deep purpose, and clear on the purpose for the meeting they’re walking into and the role they play in that meeting. They’re clear on the purpose of the project they’re a part of. [12:46] A lot of people’s purpose is to keep their boss happy. Our toughest challenges are usually about something a lot bigger than that. Leadership is motivating others to make progress on daunting challenges and it hardly ever happens. [14:24] Ed cites the work of authors Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky who pioneered the concept of the Zone of Productivity, where there is enough conflict that people are uncomfortable enough to change the status quo, but there is not enough conflict to shut people down. If you don’t have enough conflict, nothing is changing. If you have a lot of heat at work, consider if progress is being made in the work. [15:32] If the conflict or heat from the top is not leading to progress, then it’s time to ask questions and intervene in the lack of progress. [16:52] An executive team needs a common language to talk about the dynamics of productivity. [17:30] Leadership is always about disrupting things. Ed quotes Marty Linsky, “Leadership is disappointing your own people at a rate they can absorb.” When you’re intervening up, you can’t anger the boss too much; you might be out! But If you’re just keeping the boss 100% happy, you might not be doing anything that looks like leadership. [18:02] Jan recalls Jeffrey Pfeffer’s 7 Rules of Power. It’s evidence-based, controversial, and makes people very uncomfortable. Two of the rules are “Break the rules,” and “Show up in a powerful way.” These are hard to do. You’ve got to know how far you can push a boss before you’re damaging yourself. [18:36] Ed goes back to being clear about purpose. If your purpose is to get along, be secure, and not rock the boat, you will not get close to exercising leadership. If your purpose is “I want the best value for my clients,” or “I’m a sales leader and I’m taking the organization from this level to that level higher,” then you’ll be willing to disrupt the norms. Leadership is always disruptive and risky. [19:18] Ed says all of our research is showing if you get lots more people exercising leadership and intervening to create more progress it makes it more likely you’ll get the progress. It’s too tough for one or two people to do alone because it’s too disruptive. [20:01] A chapter in the book explores the clash of values. Our toughest challenges are often about value clashes. You may have a value of gaining market share and a clashing value of playing it safe and not developing new products because you have a legacy product that has been winning for so long. Leadership is always about helping a system elevate one value over another. There is loss in that. [21:31] Anyone can ask powerful questions. Ed explains that a powerful question comes from deep curiosity and it’s open-ended. A question that has an exact technical answer is not a powerful question, it’s a fact-based question. Powerful questions help everyone learn. “What’s our greatest aspiration for our organization?”, “What concerns us the most?”, “What makes progress so hard on those things?” [22:56] Big open-ended questions are powerful and are often game-changing. Powerful questions often make us uncomfortable. They should force us to slow down a little bit and reflect differently. [24:33] Ed interviewed a sage one time who told him, “Ed, that’s a great question! And it’s a great question because it doesn’t have any answers!” If there’s an easy answer, it might not be a good question. [25:01] If what you’re working on isn’t a daunting challenge; if it’s run-of-the-mill stuff; if you’ve got a deadline and the work is technical, and you’ve got to meet it, you’re going to drive everybody crazy if you’re walking around asking big, open-ended questions all the time! It’s when you’re trying to focus people on the things that matter most that these powerful questions are so needed. [26:10] Less senior people may be granted some grace in asking open-ended questions to reveal less knowledge of the organization’s purpose. More senior people may ask powerful questions that tend to shape expectations: “How will we respond to some inevitable failure in our attempts to do X?” This introduces the concept of being adaptive. [28:49] The book discusses technical problems vs. daunting adaptive challenges. If you have the authority, say, “We’re solving this technical problem this way.” But it is a mistake to treat a daunting adaptive challenge as if it were technical. Those types of challenges where the problem is poorly defined and the answer is unknown cannot be solved by your authority alone. You won’t get progress. [30:34] Jan tells about Bill Dean. They would be at a problem situation and Bill would say, “OK.” It meant he acknowledged, he understood, and they would step back and pause before trying to find out what the issue was. He said OK, and everybody knew it was going to be OK. Jan learned to step back when people are hitting the Panic button. Ed says, on the toughest challenges, help people to go slow. [33:32] Have the awareness to discern when you’re facing something adaptive where you don’t know the way forward. In that situation, progress is about creating a system that can be iterative, that can be experimental, that can take smart risks, learn from them, and take bigger risks. If the situation doesn’t call for that and we bring it, we’re just going to create more problems. [34:10] There are a lot of big ideas in the book. One is knowing the difference between the technical problems and the adaptive challenges. They require you to lead differently. Another idea is that your authority is a resource but it is not enough to solve adaptive challenges, so you unleash leadership for others in an iterative, learning environment where risk-taking is expected. [36:25] There are expectations on those in authority. Ed repeats that leadership is disappointing your people at a rate they can absorb. People have expectations of those in authority and history is full of examples of what happens to people in authority if they disrupt those expectations too much. Live within the expectations, but push against them, as well. [37:04] Ed explores how those in authority successfully used leadership during the pandemic to be firm and specific about the process they would use to solve the issue without going into what the outcome of the issue would be. They used authority to help people feel safe and that there is some order to things. They talked about the timeline for bringing the best people together to solve the problem. [38:16] Jim compares how Jessica Chen from the previous podcast episode described the same situation of describing the process you are going through to arrive at an answer when dealing with ambiguity. Jim recommends listening to that episode, as this is a big and important concept. Ed agrees, it is important, but it is hard to practice. Go back to knowing whether it is an adaptive challenge or a technical problem. [39:31] If it’s a technical problem and you are in authority, use your authority to solve the problem. For listeners who aren’t in authority, Ed reminds you to break apart authority and leadership. If you connect them, it lets everybody off the hook, and it’s the CEO’s job. That puts too much pressure on those in authority. They can’t deliver. The truth is, in the big tough challenges, we’ve all got a part in the mess. [40:25] Jack Welch said, “You can’t scale complexity.” Ed’s book leads toward simplifying our approach. Jan recommends listeners read Ed’s book. It’s easy to read and laid out in a way that’s very pragmatic. [42:06] Ed’s challenge to listeners: “I think we’ve got to get the bat off our shoulder and take some swings. … Learn how do you take those swings with confidence and skill so you can get a few more hits than you would otherwise.” [44:12] Closing quote: Remember, “Unity is strength…  When there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.” — Mattie Stepanek   Quotable Quotes “We need people to know that even if you’re not the captain of the team, the boss, the CEO of the company, or the mayor of the town, the toughest challenges require your leadership, also.” “I think we have an over-reliance on authority. Authority is useful; it’s necessary, but it’s insufficient for making progress on our biggest challenges.” “A prerequisite for unleashing leadership in more people is to help people break apart the idea of leadership from the idea of authority. We’ve got to get people to see them as two different things. They are totally separate. And I think that intuitively, people know this.” “Authority is a role; it’s a position, and leadership is an activity. And sometimes those in authority exercise it. But most of the time they don’t. And sometimes people not in authority exercise leadership. But a lot of times, they don’t.” “The book is counter-cultural, in that regard. We’re trying to create a new norm for what leadership even is.” “Leadership is always about disrupting things.” “Leadership is so rare because it’s risky; … it’s disruptive, which is why all of our research is showing if you get lots more people exercising leadership; intervening to create more progress, it’s … more likely you’ll get the progress. It’s too tough for one or two people.” “Big open-ended questions are powerful and they’re often game-changing.” “If what you’re working on isn’t a daunting challenge; if it’s run-of-the-mill stuff; if you’ve got a deadline and the work is technical, and you’ve got to meet it, you’re going to drive everybody crazy if you’re walking around asking big, open-ended questions all the time.” “It’s when you’re trying to focus people on the things that matter most that these curiosity-based, open-ended, powerful questions are so needed.”   Resources Mentioned Sponsored by:

Jessica Chen is an Emmy Award winner, keynote speaker, former journalist, and CEO of the global business communications agency Soulcast Media. She is a top LinkedIn Learning instructor with over two million learners on self-awareness, personal branding, and executive presence. In this conversation, Jessica shares her knowledge of the essential qualities linked to emotional intelligence. This episode contains counsel for leaders on communication, storytelling, and self-confidence.   Key Takeaways [2:50] Jessica recently became a new mom. Her little boy just turned one. Becoming a mother was a huge life transition for Jessica. She read parent books about it, but when the baby was born, Jessica learned you’ve just got to roll with the punches, taking care of a baby. [5:55] Jessica teaches executive presence as how you make other people feel. It depends on the situation and the people. It is learning the soft skills of emotional intelligence. Unconscious bias leads to differences in application between men and women leaders and young and old leaders. Having self-awareness, and speaking clearly and precisely can help you show up and be heard as you want. [8:38] Building credibility is learning how to talk about the things that you have done and owning that. That’s a part of showing up. [10:17] Do you deal with a difficult boss? It’s hard to do good work when you’re micromanaged. Jessica asks, how can you reduce this communications friction? Ask yourself, “What does my manager care about?” Speak their language, consider to whom they are accountable, make them look good, and anticipate what they need. Care about what your manager cares about. Then they will feel you get it. [12:19] If your boss is a bully, that is a terrible position to be in. If you have identified that your boss is completely treating you unfairly, that is not the right environment for you. Ask yourself what are your options. [14:27] If you have lots of substance but very little style, Jessica has some tips for you. Put some color in your speech. Growing up as a woman in a traditional Asian family, Jessica was not taught to put color in her conversation. She was taught to do the work without disturbing anybody. That way of working is not going to help you build the visibility you need in a workplace with charismatic people. [15:24] Style is what makes you memorable. We all have to do good work and perform in our job. It’s expected. What makes you memorable is your ability to add some color, meaning energy. The words that you choose to say and the energy and emotion you use can make you stand out with color and style. Finding your color and style makes you memorable. [16:55] Jessica talks about brand. Jessica calls it your career brand. All of us need to think about building a career brand. It’s not about social media, although she says LinkedIn is a fantastic place to build your career brand and thought leadership. Thought leadership is important in people seeing you as an expert. [17:47] For listeners not on LinkedIn, consider how you can build thought leadership within your team and organization. Seek opportunities to contribute to a workplace blog. Or simply be more visible by getting on board with some projects so people in other departments can see you. [19:33] A person at a company can make a story good by humanizing it. Who are the people that the numbers in your presentation represent? Behind every customer number is a person with experience and a journey. Humanize the metrics to share the difficult journey the customer went through. Don’t just report the issue, find somebody to report the issue through. [22:35] To influence your team to adopt a new process, tell the process through someone’s lived experience. Use a made-up name with a real event. [24:03] Jan and Jessica both acknowledge and thank Dean Karrel at LinkedIn Learning for connecting them. Dean is the ultimate connector, asking for nothing in return. [26:23] In the working world, you need to take a lot of information and condense it. The schools should teach conciseness and precision in our speaking. If you’re speaking too long, pause and ask yourself this question, “What’s the point I’m trying to make?” Then get back on track and get to the point. You can say it out loud: “What I’m trying to say here is, A, B, and C.” [29:13] Jessica shares an aphorism: “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” In communication, capturing people’s attention should be your priority. Think about what your audience wants to hear and what they care about. You may have 10 things to share, but what are the three things you want everyone to walk away with? It takes more work to winnow it down, but it is well worth it. [31:03] Good presenters connect their points seamlessly. They communicate the link between the points. It’s up to the presenter to talk about that. Use transition words, like “In addition,” or “this brings me now to this point.” Present the relationship between A, B, and C clearly. [33:02] Jessica prefers to prepare carefully rather than be thrust into a high-pressure situation where she has to think on her feet. But she had experience in her journalism days of being thrown into a breaking news situation and having to report the story as it unfolds. Sometimes on the scene, it is sufficient to report what you have already done. That may be what people want to know. [34:03] Communicating the process is a part of communicating and people appreciate it. [36:20] Jessica taught a LinkedIn Learning course on Speaking Up at Work. If she could go back and add one thing to that course, it would be along the lines of building an inclusive speaking environment. How can we all take a proactive approach to making others feel more comfortable speaking up? How can we pave the way for the more quiet person to raise their hand? The loudest person often gets the attention. [38:34] Western society values people who are able to speak up. Eastern culture doesn’t tend to put as much value in verbalizing thoughts but the people still have thoughts. Folks who are working with Asians or other minorities on their teams need to be open-minded about some of these assumptions. Being quiet doesn’t mean they don’t care or they’re not engaged. They still want to contribute. [40:00] It can be detrimental to generalize. There are so many different Asian ethnicities. In general, Asian men and women both tend to be humble and show respect and pursue harmony. Being quiet doesn’t mean they don’t have a lot of value to give. [41:28] Past guest, CEO Colleen Abdoulah had a rule at her company, “Hold your views lightly.” Jan and Jessica agree that having self-awareness and open-mindedness about the people in the room and not assuming certain things about them. There is a diversity in thinking and a diversity in processing. That can help us be more inclusive speakers. [43:19] Jessica sees people struggling with confidence in how they show up in the workplace. They don’t feel confident speaking up in a meeting and being perceived the way they want to be perceived. Jessica’s specialty is teaching the communication tool to show up and speak up better. She tells them she is happy they are acknowledging this friction and are taking steps to build their confidence. [44:29] The only way to become more confident is to put yourself in these positions and continuously practice while doing it consciously. [46:38] Jessica’s advice to senior workers who are reluctant to speak up: “These days, there’s always such a reaction to people saying things. … Trust your experience. … Clearly demonstrate your understanding of a thing you want to express. Qualify and quantify what you want to say and then package it in a way that shows your expertise. People will listen. … Own it and provide examples.” [49:21] Jessica’s challenge to listeners: “I truly think communication is one of the most important skills for workplace success, regardless of what level you are at. I would challenge the listeners to think about ‘How can I improve my communication skills this year at work?’ … Whatever it is, there’s always going to be great ROI if you invest in your communication skills.” [50:33] Closing quote: Remember, “Great is our admiration of the orator who speaks with fluency and discretion.” — arcus Tullius Cicero   Quotable Quotes “If I’m doing a presentation and I want to get my team excited … [I] can leverage some of the soft skills to get them to feel that way.” “All of us need to think about building a career brand. But it’s not in the way of social media, especially if you’re working in a typical office. … Though, I will say LinkedIn is a fantastic platform to build your career brand.” “Ask yourself, ‘What’s the point I’m trying to make here?’ … Clarify and get back on track. … Sometimes you’ve just got to remember to reign yourself back in.” “Every good presenter is able to connect their points seamlessly.” “How can we all take a proactive approach to making others feel more comfortable speaking up? How can we pave the way so that the more quiet person on your team feels comfortable raising their hand?” “The only way to become more confident is you just have to put yourself in these positions and continuously practice while doing it consciously, of course.” “Communication is one of the most important skills for workplace success, regardless of what level you are at. … There’s always going to be great ROI if you invest in your communication skills.”   Resources Mentioned Sponsored by:

Jamie Ryder is the founder of Stoic Athenaeum. He’s on a mission to make philosophy sexy and down to earth. He’s focused on breaking stigmas about mental health and leadership. He says that everyone has a philosophy they live by every day and the more they understand their philosophy, the more they will know how to communicate with others. Listen in for wisdom on stepping back for a wider view to move forward.   Key Takeaways [1:57] When Jamie was young, he wanted to be either a wrestler or a writer; two different types of storytelling. He always liked the larger-than-life characters of wrestling. When he was 16, he trained as a wrestler in Manchester. But while wrestling was fascinating, he had more aspirations to write stories. [4:32] Jamie believes philosophy needs to be lived. He has never been trained in philosophy academically. He describes the attraction Stoic philosophy holds for him, including the mental health aspect of it. Everybody has a philosophy or values they show up in the world with, that makes them who they are. It’s something that you live and breathe. [5:54] Jamie believes there are therapeutic mental health benefits to philosophy. [6:44] Philosophy permits you to be vulnerable with yourself. There is always an amount of uncertainty you will have to deal with. Stoicism helps Jamie identify the things he can or can’t control and navigate uncertain situations, such as the pandemic. [7:17] Jamie recommends two practical exercises: “The Premeditation of Adversity,” attributed to Seneca, and “The View from Above,” by Marcus Aurelius. The Premeditation of Adversity builds resilience. Imagine the worst-case scenario and prepare for it. It helps Jamie calm down any anxiety he has about upcoming events. The View from Above is to take a high-level perspective of a situation. [10:01] Give yourself permission to carve out time to practice The Premeditation of Adversity before events and The View from Above after events. [12:00] By studying philosophy, Jamie learned that values are intrinsic in us and we have the power to make experiences make sense to us. By looking at different philosophers and schools of thought, Jamie instilled their activities and lessons into his life. Philosophy is a lot of small acts you do again and again. It becomes accessible and habit-forming as you repeat the exercises. [13:43] Jamie would recommend that you start exploring philosophy with Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius. You don’t need to know philosophy or Stoicism to understand Meditations. Marcus Aurelius was journaling for himself, 2,000 years ago. You can see he was trying to be an honorable person. If he had a bad day, he tried something different. On the second reading, it took on new meaning for Jamie. [15:09] Jamie also recommends Letters from a Stoic, by Seneca. Seneca was writing to his friend, distilling lessons he’d learned over a lifetime. You can pick one letter to read a day, and you will find something that resonates with you today from 2,000 years ago. [15:36] Stoicism was Jamie’s gateway into philosophy. He has also studied Skepticism, Existentialism, and Epicureanism. Another book recommendation Jamie gives is The Essays, by Michel de Montaigne. What de Montaigne wrote about a few hundred years ago are the same issues people face day in and day out. [18:09] Jamie explains the symbiotic relationship between creativity and curiosity. [20:10] Stoic philosophy involves stepping back and slowing down, which is different from typical business goals. At its crux, it’s about trying to focus on what you can control and what you can’t control. It means taking a break from things. [21:45] Jamie shares tips for creative writing for business: have a tone-of-voice guide beforehand and then you can push the message across social media, emails, and wherever you need to be to communicate that message. Create it in a voice that makes sense to you and has a connection to the audience you are trying to build community with. [23:30] Michel de Montaigne created the genre of philosophical writings known as essays. He created boundaries around himself where he could be alone, take a moment to breathe, and be himself. [26:36] Writing tips: Start with writing a stream of consciousness. This goes back to de Montaigne. Create an environment where you feel comfortable, such as going for a walk or an activity that you are happy to do. Take a step back, then go back to it. Read as much as possible and pick out ideas you might not have thought about before. Distill it down into what you are trying to create on the page. [28:05] To learn storytelling, start with authenticity. “This is my story. I’ve been through this and it makes sense to me. It communicates to the audience, as well.” It needs to have substance and reflect your values and principles. If there is a cause you support, you need to have the substance behind it, as well. Use ethical rhetoric to support a cause that has substance. [29:13] Cicero used rhetoric to great effect. Aristotle introduced the three proofs: Logos, Pathos, and Ethos. [30:28] Leaders need to be concerned about their people; they need to learn to lead themselves so they can lead others. Logos is for persuasion. Ethos is your character. Pathos is connecting with people and empowering them to share their emotions or connect with their customers. Others have different views. [32:18] Jamie’s storytelling advice to leaders: Ask questions and learn from the stories of people around you but “You need your personal values that work into that to create your unique and authentic story, as well. … I would just always remember that it’s always a learning experience.” [34:49] Closing quote: Remember, “A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.” —   Quotable Quotes “When I was young, I either chose to be a wrestler or a writer; [they’re] different types of storytelling. … I chose to be a writer but I will always appreciate what [wrestling] taught me.” “There is a tendency to say that philosophy can seem quite high-minded or academic, … where it’s not, because it is something that you live and breathe.” “Prior to the pandemic, I felt quite burnt out about a few things, but then, while discovering the subject of philosophy, it clicked, in the sense that it’s something that you can control within the Stoic aspect. … From a mental health aspect, it made a lot of sense for me.” “I would always recommend Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, because that, to me, is a book that you don’t even need to know what philosophy is, or Stoicism is, to really get to it. In context, Marcus was literally just writing to himself 2,000 years ago.” “It’s about balance, as well. … Sometimes you do need to take that step back and just reassess.” “[To write effectively,] create an environment for yourself where you feel comfortable. … Read as much as possible, … picking ideas from things that are outside your comfort zone, … and then just distilling it down.” “It starts with authenticity. … Creating that sense that ‘This is my story,’ or “I’ve been through this.’”   Resources Mentioned Sponsored by:

Patrick Bryant is a serial entrepreneur, professional speaker, and co-founder and CEO of software product agency CODE/+/TRUST. After co-founding Go To Team, Patrick launched six multi-million-dollar companies, in media, and software. Patrick shares wisdom gained from his experience in start-ups, his origin as a journalist, what he accomplished in video, and the CODE/+/TRUST “BHAG” for powering startups around the U.S. He discusses culture, scaling, storytelling, and how the first thing for an entrepreneur to do is to start.   Key Takeaways [1:15] If you have listened to every episode of The Leadership Podcast, please contact Jan and Jim to let them know. They would love to hear it and there might be something in it for you! [2:27] Most people don’t know that Patrick owns a rolling paper company that he started after investing in a cigar company. Most people know him from software, media, and other things, like speaking. [3:40] Patrick’s always getting into unexpected situations. He just keeps showing up for work and looking for interesting things. He’s curious and asks questions. His original profession was journalism and he learned to study industries and areas of interest to him. Many times, it results in a business idea. When he sees an opportunity, he strikes it. [6:07] Patrick believes entrepreneurship is the number one change agent in the world. It is amazingly helpful to society to do something new and do it right. [7:19] There are businesses that are built to scale and others that are not. In a field, you may have grass, bushes, and a large oak tree. The large oak tree did not start as a blade of grass! It takes time to know the “species” of businesses. Patrick started the video company, Go To Team, 25 years ago. It has 16 offices around the U.S. It hit a $1 million valuation when it was 10 years old. That felt great to Patrick! [8:43] Another company that started the same week as Go To Team is Google. In 10 years, Google had been publicly traded and people were using its name as a verb! Patrick wondered what he was doing wrong. He started to study innovation scale — how to build companies and products that are built to move quickly in a big way and be sold around the world. That pushed Patrick toward software. [9:58] Scaling is different between software and service companies. A service company can go a long time with continued operation, but not a lot of growth. A software product requires investments and a certain level of sales. If the sales don’t come, it’s over. The money’s gone and the investors aren’t going to pour more money into the company. There is risk involved in software. [12:43] Journalism, television, and all media have changed greatly since the start of the internet. There is confusion and fragmentation. Patrick foresees us slowly getting back to moderation and looking for experts and gatekeepers we can trust to provide us with the content we want in the way we want it. We don’t yet have the new Walter Cronkite or Tom Brokaw. [15:39] Patrick’s company, CODE/+/TRUST, sells code and trust. They help people start software companies. Their “BHAG” is to power 500 software startups in every state in the U.S. and be an official software development firm for entrepreneurs. They want to connect with good ideas, spend a lot of time on them, grow them, feel good about what they produce, and help entrepreneurs make money. [18:41] First and foremost, get one thing right. You can have multiple ways to attack a problem but you can only have one mission. The mission and values cannot change. [19:15] Patrick is working on a TEDx speech for March on the schizophrenic nature of advice to entrepreneurs. For instance, Winston Churchill’s message of never giving up contrasts with the advice to fail fast. All leaders need to understand this: mission and values do not move. We are not giving up on our mission. Tactics and goals that don’t get us there need to be stopped. [21:51] Patrick’s big “Aha” moment is that not all advice is equal. Advice from your Grandma on how to live a good life might be great, but her advice on how to run your business might not be great. Where does the advice come from? How does it work with your core values? [23:14] Advice can be great for one individual that’s not great for the next one. Patrick is a value investor. He likes to buy stocks that are low, for the long term. That’s what he reads about. Blogs about day trade opportunities are not useful advice for him. Patrick says that if every CEO learned the right way to take advice, they would be the last 10% of “amazing.” It’s one of the hardest things. [25:34] Patrick separates User Experience from Customer Experience or navigating the software from working the sales funnel. Patrick focuses on providing customers with what they need, not what they want. Henry Ford said that if he asked his customers what they wanted, they would have said, “a faster horse.” We have to have the view that we know some things about where the customer wants to go. [27:05] Patrick’s business partner, CTO at CODE/+/TRUST, does software design. He’s opinionated and will stand his ground in a positive way with customers because he believes he knows where the customer is trying to go. Designers must come to the discussion with views on what they believe for the customer. Patrick shares the surprising results of a Lay’s Potato Chip survey and taste test. [28:59] The Lay’s experience illustrates the way that we have to come to the process, which is customer first, but educated on how to make it as simple and clean and smooth an experience for them as possible, almost regardless of what they think. [30:38] Event.gives is a company of Patrick’s in the non-profit space. Attendees fill out their profiles and can then move from event to event without re-entering their data. Nonprofits argued that it is their data, but Patrick points out that individuals own their data, and they are the ones with the right to release it to the non-profit. Always go back to the individual and what their rights and choices are. [33:20] Software and media for kids have the added responsibility of providing them with reasonable opportunities for learning. Patrick always tries to start at the core mission, protecting people’s privacy, and allowing them the right to control their data. [34:53] As a journalist, Patrick learned that it’s all about telling stories. Master storytellers influence in positive ways. The slogan for Go To Team for years was Passionate Storytellers. Storytelling is a helpful skill that allows you to communicate the data that you want and to emotionally connect with people. The goal is to be ordinarily extraordinary in your storytelling so people connect with your message. [36:29] Patrick explains how to use storytelling to make products socially contagious by connecting the brand to the customer’s lifestyle. [37:32] Do not put your story in an email! How you tell your story depends on who the audience is. Patrick has run a video company for 25 years. He recommends using video to tell your story. It connects to people in a much more important way than the written word. Engaging with people in person and telling your story on stage is incredibly emotional and powerful. Connect with people in person. [39:30] Making people laugh and tugging at their heartstrings brings them along with the story. Use emotion to motivate people, educate them, and make them get excited. [41:59] Patrick refers to himself as a made entrepreneur. He doesn’t have to go to work tomorrow and his basic life needs will be taken care of. Like many of his peers and friends, Patrick enjoys the fight. He enjoys being in the company. He enjoys starting new things. He enjoys the idea stage and helping others and finding connections with the product-market fit. He keeps coming back for that super joy. [42:55] When a company gets to have between 10 and 20 employees and people start asking Patrick about policies, that’s his sign to go and start a new company. He doesn’t want to write policies and procedures around when you get off of work and what days are holidays. He doesn’t think that way. Starting another company re-energizes him to go attack the next idea. [43:51] As Patrick grows a company, and adds people, he’s thrilled by it. He loves it. The mission still stands and the values are great. He can’t wait to see the team execute on the goal. But it’s no longer energizing for him. Starting the rollercoaster over is what he loves. [45:27] Patrick’s closing thoughts, to anyone in a transition stage, just get started. Look for something that you can develop expertise in. What one thing can you do to sell that expertise and move forward an idea in that particular industry, right now, today? “That’s my core advice, just get started.” [47:59] Closing quote: Remember, “Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.” — Steven Covey   Quotable Quotes “Well, I don’t know how you could follow my path. I had the interesting time of being on the Mall two years ago, here in Washington D.C., where I am today, for January 6. I think of myself as a little bit of a Forrest Gump. I don’t know how I get into some of these situations!” “I’m just curious. I ask people questions. As a journalist for many years of my life, … I just learned to study and get my head around industries and areas of interest of mine. And many times, that results in a business idea. And when I see opportunity, I strike it.” “Just start something, just talk to someone, just learn what someone needs. … I just don’t understand why entrepreneurs … can’t just take an opportunity and run with it. … So that’s my number one piece of advice … find something you’re interested in and get started.” “I believe entrepreneurship is the number one change agent in the world. I say it on stages around the United States. I just believe that as entrepreneurs, we are doing something profound and exciting when we are developing a new product … or bringing out a new process.” “The best way to make money is to make somebody else more money. That, to me, is where relationships come in and you’re helping someone move forward as an entrepreneur.” “If you show up to help other people and do the good, right thing, you will have business for as long as you can see it because people will acknowledge and trust you and want to work with you on what they need.” “You can have multiple goals; … multiple tactics; … multiple ways that you’re attacking a problem but you can only have one mission. You can have core values that support how you’re going to move forward with that mission. The mission and the values can’t change.” “Advice can be great for one individual that’s not great for the next one.” “The way that we have to come at the process … is, customer first, but educated on how to make it as simple and clean and smooth an experience for them as possible, almost regardless of what they think.” “With storytelling and laughter, camaraderie, and building a culture that people really want to be there; they really want to help move the mission forward, you can get people going 60, 70 miles per hour without a lot of effort.” “Every time I get to a place of success, I immediately start thinking, ‘Man, it would be cool to go back to the beginning. How can we do this again?’ It’s just so much fun to start the rollercoaster over!”   Resources Mentioned Sponsored by:

Jay Goldman is a New York Times best-selling author of “The Decoded Company.” He is also the CEO and Co-founder of Sensei Labs - focused on technology, design, and the art of leadership. The conversation in this episode covers decision-making, connections, the six values of Sensei culture, and putting customers first. Jay urges leaders to have regular conversations with employees and use data to understand them better. Jay considers empathy to be the most important trait of a leader and he elaborates on its importance.   Key Takeaways [2:34] Jay has a 13-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son. For Jay, parenting and leadership are very close; he uses some of the same principles with his children and in his one-on-one work discussions. [3:39] The book, The Decoded Company, was published in 2014. In the years since then, the world has changed a lot. Much of the book is still relevant, but in hindsight, Jay says they should have put more emphasis on culture. It should be a headline item. That has become more true as Jay continues to grow Sensei Labs, which was spun out of Klick to capitalize on the technology they talk about in the book. [5:34] Jay compares a company’s culture to a garden. The leader makes sure the garden gets enough sunlight, water, and nutrients, weeds the garden and protects it from pests. Leaders can’t directly make the garden grow. They can create all the right conditions for it to grow. If you want certain behaviors, create an environment that encourages those behaviors. It’s dangerous to try to fix people. [8:16] There are more small decisions than big decisions. Your physical space in an office has a big impact on culture. It’s hard to radically change your office space. Day-to-day moments can have just as big an impact. There are many times more of them than there are of the big decisions. Big decisions need to be followed up with lots of small decisions. [10:52] When COVID-19 hit, Sensei Labs was still within the offices of their parent company, Klick. Klick allowed them to stop paying rent, which was very helpful for a small business. In the summer of 2021, as COVID-19 was letting up, Sensei Labs discussed as a team if they needed to take an office. The Toronto group was missing the moments of connectivity, collaboration, and having lunch together. [12:13] After funding, Sensei Labs had almost doubled in size. International associates had never worked in an office together but they wanted the connection shared by the Toronto group. Sensei Group built an office with collaboration rooms but no private offices, desks for everyone there on a day, and multi-use spaces for large meetings and holiday parties. They are not mandating people back to the office. [15:04] Sensei Labs doesn’t say “remote” for people outside the office. Teams pick a day to come in together. They use Teams calls for those who cannot attend that day. They also use Teams calls on cross-team meetings or customer meetings. All meeting rooms are set up for Teams, with good microphones, audio, cameras, and video. Sensei Labs is all hybrid, rather than divided into tiers. [16:21] All “hoteling” desks have a proper monitor and Logitech webcam. There is an events space with a screen that rolls down from the ceiling, a webcam, a projector, and an audio system, so people not present can have the full experience of partaking in the event. There are multiple presenters, some in the building, and some participating by video. All these things help integrate the teams. [17:30] All of that said, you can’t replace the in-person experience, or going out for a coffee or lunch together. Jay loves to see a cross-functional group who have carried in lunch and are eating together. Those are collisions, as Steve Jobs called them, where you get an exchange of ideas and connections between different teams that wouldn’t otherwise form. Those are hard to recreate on Teams or Slack. [18:50] At Sensei Labs, there is a big emphasis on helping each other in a culture where that’s rewarded and recognized. The founders were intentional when they carved Sensei Labs out of Klick to build a culture that was unique to Sensei Labs, built around Enterprise SaaS, customers, and partners. [20:28] As they started, they came up with six values that represent Sensei culture: being Selfless, being Empathetic, being Nimble, being Skilled, being Entrepreneurial, and having Integrity. They built everything they do on the people side of the business around those Sensei values. They have a matrix of every role in the organization with the values, and observable behaviors expected from each role. [21:23] The matrix also shows how to get promoted in terms of what you should be thinking about in observable behaviors for each of the Sensei values for any role. When Sensei Labs does promotions, they evaluate on the Sensei values. The Sensei values are part of their open recognition channel in Teams. Everyone can post recognitions of others and tag them with Sensei values. It’s all intentional. [22:32] Over the last year, Sensei Labs has strongly emphasized CARE requests. Sensei President Benji Nadler came up with the acronym CARE, for Customers Are Really Everything, to reorient everyone’s thinking about customer requests to make them the highest priority. [24:08] An organization that does not give its people regular feedback about results is doing its people a disservice and will not get the results that it wants. In The Decoded Company, there is the Rule of Five Degrees. If you take a boat across a lake, and you’re five degrees off course at the start, it’s an easy correction then. But five degrees off course on the other side of the lake could be miles out of the way. [25:05] If an organization gives performance reviews annually, it’s already crossed the lake. Regular five-degree course corrections throughout the year could prevent an employee from being miles off course at the performance review. Regular feedback corrects behaviors and bridges the gap between behaviors. [26:18] As a privately-held company, Sensei Labs is free to make long-term decisions. Jay picks values even over performance because, in the end, that will have the biggest impact on the business. Staying true to those values will affect whom they hire. [28:14] Sensei Labs operates as a separate organization from Klick and the Sensei teams do not work on Klick’s projects. Sensei is proudly part of the Klick group of companies but there is no need for a tight alignment between the two. There is an overlap in how the two companies express and define their values. Klick has a pyramid of cultural values with the bottom level being their foundational values. [29:00] Jay describes how the layers of the Klick value pyramid match the key inflection points of career advancement. Sensei used the best parts of the Klick values in developing the Sensei Labs values acronym. Sensei looks at the key inflection points of the first time an individual contributor becomes a leader, and the first time a leader becomes a leader of leaders. Those points require different thinking. [30:54] Leadership has a science component. The science of leadership goes back to Taylorism measuring productivity with a stopwatch and optimizing the Ford assembly lines. There’s the possible Hawthorne effect of performance rising because it is measured. The science is how you use the data within an organization to optimize it for talent, centricity, and engagement, the premise of Decoded. [31:48] Jay explains how leadership is an art, requiring a high degree of empathy. You need to be able to understand the individual members of your team and what drives them. Jay values empathy as the most important trait of leadership. Empathy requires engagement, conversations, and knowing each other. It requires some vulnerable moments that establish psychological safety between you and your team. [34:30] People learned hard skills in school and had to figure out the soft skills for themselves. It dodges the responsibility for teaching the part of leadership that is probably more impactful. Jay explores the mistake technology companies often make in promoting engineers into managerial roles with no EQ or managerial skills. That mistake removes a skilled individual contributor and installs an ineffectual leader. [36:54] Instead, create a pathway that allows skilled engineers to remain in their craft but to become leaders, take on more responsibility, and make more money. Both Sensei Labs and Klick have parallel tracks for people leadership and craft leadership. As individuals advance, their time is leveraged so that an hour of their time creates more than an hour of value for the organization. [39:54] The use of Big Data has changed immensely since Decoded was published. The principle is the same, but if they wrote the book today, their take would be very different. Data is more prevalent in business today. [40:20] Most businesses today spend huge amounts on data to understand their customers. They do not use any of the same resources to understand their people. Jay argues that you will have a higher leverage effect by engaging in your team, creating a virtuous cycle of having the best talent on your teams, more customer happiness, more revenue, and hiring even more skilled team members. [42:03] There is a difference between ambient data and self-reported data. Self-reported data is always biased. Teams constantly use tools and that creates a digital body language about what they are working on and who they’re connected with and other factors. That data is available through analysis. Jay calls this data a sixth sense. Have guidelines about using the data, so it’s not uncomfortable. [43:35] There has been good research on 16 indicators that somebody may be thinking about quitting their job. If you could look across those 16 relative attributes of an employee, “Jim”, you could see changes that indicate that something has changed in ”Jim’s” life. Measuring a baseline and looking ad deviations can be telling. How do you react if you suspect “Jim” is thinking of leaving? [45:18] If “Jim,” is a valued member of your team, and you want to make sure that “Jim” is not a flight risk, this might be an indicator to have a conversation. “Just checking in and making sure that everything’s OK. How are you feeling? Can we talk about a career progression or a new project for you to take on?” If you are happy that “Jim” is thinking of leaving, you might start looking at replacements! [46:13] You’ve got five senses. If you can use data as a sixth sense, to augment those five with an extra set of analytic abilities to help you make better decisions faster, that leads to a better outcome. [47:40] Can this ambient data be hacked? Jay would hope people worked in an environment where they didn’t have to prompt the conversation by wearing an interview suit to work. Every organization is a collection of people. Anytime you have a collection of people, you end up with norms and values, whether by design or default. Sometimes you may find shortcuts to get to a desired conversation. [48:38] Mark Raheja taught Jay a management hack in the form of the question, “Is it safe to try?” In most organizations the default is safety. Proposing anything radical means a fight to get to the point of experimenting with it because you are triggering the organization’s autoimmune system. But ask people to come up with a reason it’s not safe to try it. If they cannot, then go ahead with the experiment. [51:19] After six months in his first job out of school at IBM, Jay asked about promotions. His manager told him everybody gets promoted on their first and second anniversary, and in the third year, promotions are earned by merit. Jay recalls, “I started looking for a job that day. And to me, that is the oldest-school thought pattern around what management looks like.” [55:19] Closing quote: Remember, “Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better.” — Bill Bradley   Quotable Quotes “Often in a parenting conversation with one of the kids, I’m repeating things that I might have recently said in a one-on-one to someone on my team, and probably more often, in one-on-ones, I find myself repeating things I’ve said in parenting moments.” “It starts to get difficult when you start to say, ‘I want behaviors that I don’t see and my options are either to replace people or fix people,’ and I think that’s a dangerous path.” “Your physical space in an office environment has a big impact on culture. … It’s harder to … radically change the configuration of it. … All those day-to-day moments can have just as big an impact and there are many times more of them than there are of the big decisions.” “In many ways, we are the trailblazers who are out ahead, thinking about culture, thinking about people, and thinking about leadership. And then, there are other places where we’re happy to take a back seat and one of those places is mandating people back to the office.”  “We have a matrix of every role in the organization and all of the values … that everyone has access to. So you can look up any role, and any value, and see what the observable behaviors are that we expect out of that role as well as where you might get promoted to.” “We have an open recognition channel in Teams. Everyone can post recognitions of each other. They tag them with some of the values. … At our Town Hall a couple of weeks ago, we celebrated the people who’ve had the most recognition posts for each of the values.” “Being selfless is about being there for each other and helping each other out and helping our customers and partners as well. These are both internal and external.” “We have the luxury of being able to make long-term decisions when we can and so I would pick values even over performance because, in the end, that is what is going to have the biggest impact on the business. Staying true to those values will affect who you hire.” “We have always looked at the key inflection points of the first time an individual contributor becomes a leader and then the first time they become a leader of leaders. Those are two points at which you have to think very differently about … your success.” “Your best engineers are at least 10 times as good as your worst engineers.” “Anytime you have a collection of people, you end up with norms in that group. You end up with cultural values, whether by design or default.” “In most organizations, the default energy is toward ‘No” and toward safety. … If you propose something radical and new, in almost every organization, you are going to have to fight a fight to get to the point where you can even experiment with this. … Ask ‘Is it safe to try?’” “I do think the tech industry has lots of problems, but it also has lots of great things about it.”    Resources Mentioned Sponsored by:

Jeremy Foster is the Chief Financial Officer of Austin-based Talroo.com, the data-driven job and hiring advertising platform that helps businesses reach the candidates they need to build their essential workforce. Jeremy shares insights into the key indicators of business valuation: 1) The necessity of leaders knowing the language of finance; and 2) The differences between startups, growth companies, and mature companies. He covers why alignment of the stakeholders is important for a company’s successful scaling, and when to use blitzscaling, if at all. He explains analytics and shares examples from his past and present work, in an educational overview of the interplay between finance, data and decision-making.     Key Takeaways [2:14] Jeremy started in marketing and then ended up leading operations and retail banking for a 15-branch community bank in New Mexico and West Texas. His background was not in accounting or finance. That changes how Jeremy tends to approach the numbers. [2:41] Jeremy explains how he evaluates a business by looking at three numbers: the lifetime value of the customers, the customer acquisition cost, and the total addressable market. Marketing is a key component of each of those numbers. [4:36] Jeremy has worked with startups and scaling businesses. He’s seen a broad spread of financial knowledge within company leadership. Sometimes an executive team has problems because of their different levels of understanding. Do you understand GAAP and income statements? What are revenue, gross profit, and EBITDA; the basic terminology. Some executive teams don’t know these terms. [5:33] The next big question is which financial statement is the most important to look at, the cash flow or the P&L statement? It depends on whether you are a startup or an established company. There’s a transition the executive team needs to make from a stage of perpetually raising capital to a stage of starting to generate capital and focus on unit economics, and understanding sound investments. [7:51] Super-mature businesses are balance-sheet-driven. These are companies like banks, oil, and gas, that have balance sheet sensitivities they need to pay attention to. [8:06] Get an executive team all on the same page with a basic background in finances and then focus that alignment in education first on whichever financial statement is the most important to the business, according to what stage your business is in. [9:27] There’s an element of leadership that’s getting people to follow you and there’s an element of knowing what the right direction to go is. The math of business is useful in helping you figure out what the right direction is. [9:45] The first step in identifying the right direction can be self-study. Sometimes it’s about understanding the terminology. Sometimes, it’s about looking at your business and thinking about what’s most important for your business. The easiest way to do that is to rely on the ability to identify a bottleneck. What’s the most immediate limitation on the business? Is it sales, product, or capital? [10:58] The first thing is to recognize the most immediate pain point in your business. Decompose it. Understand what the most important numbers are in that pain point. You don’t have to understand all the numbers in the business at once. You can learn over time. Start by figuring out what’s most important. [11:59] Jeremy explains scaling and growth. A scaling business differs from a startup in that as the business gets bigger, it juggles an increasing number of variables. Part of becoming a scaling business is looking in advance. If you want 100 new customers how much staff do you need to onboard new and maintain existing customers? Look for limitations and plan to remove them before you hit them. [14:06] Past guest Margaret Heffernan identified planning for limitations as adaptability. Jeremy notes that the amount of flexibility you have is contingent upon your availability of capital. Blitzscaling has its drawbacks. If you hire too much staff, then when the capital is drained, you will have massive layoffs and you may lay off the wrong people if you don’t know the metrics. That puts you in a death cycle. [15:44] Growth can be self-financed or it can come at the cost of additional capital. Blitzscaling is valid in winner-take-all markets. An example of this is Netflix. Their model is streaming video, so they had to grab as many customers as possible before others captured the market. They had to raise capital through growth and figure out how to make customers sticky. They enabled streaming through Xbox. [16:54] Often, blitzscaling is not the right approach, especially if you raise too much capital at too low of a valuation, which may hurt your investors. Prove profitability first and then raise capital at a higher multiple a little bit later. [18:56] Marketing analytics is used by companies like Facebook to choose what ad to show. Talroo uses analytics to identify the right job candidates for employers that are looking to hire essential workers. The analytics calculate the likelihoods that a job seeker will: apply for a job, be a good fit for the job, and be selected by the employer. With the right characteristics, you can start to reach the right people. [19:37] There’s a space for analytics in most businesses. With analytics, you will gain a level of additional insight into what your team needs, what your customers need, and what your shareholders need. Understanding where those numbers that matter to you are is where analytics starts. Jeremy gives an example of how his former employer, Kasasa, used analytics and rewards to drive consumer behavior. [22:45] Analytics work best if you know what factors drive your business. It can also help you figure out specifics of what drives your business. Jeremy cites the problems with having too many dashboards or too few dashboards and the benefits of having an appropriate number of dashboards. Analytics will tell you where to go next if you pay attention, but you have to be thoughtful about what you’re building. [26:28] When you talk about pricing, ask yourself if you are reaching the combination of the right targets that are willing and able to pay that price and if that is price sufficient for you to make money after you’ve acquired those customers. And are there enough of them to grow the business well? Jeremy shares some facts about the cost of acquiring customers, their lifetime value, and marketing cycles. [28:20] A business is considered investable or backable by private equity or venture capital if it is going to make three times as much as it cost to pick up that customer. … What sometimes VCs and PE groups don’t pay attention to is how fast that cycles. Having multiple cycles in a year multiplies the profit. [29:14] More about pricing: Sometimes getting extra traction on the sales front isn’t about charging less, sometimes you can deliver more value. Sometimes all you have to do is take risk away. Jeremy relates a Kasasa case study. When you de-risk a transaction, sales friction goes away. [33:16] As companies scale, they have to broaden their understanding of their stakeholders. What do the customers want? How do you deliver value? It is easier to work with private equity and venture capital if they’ve seen the metrics. To be a partner, they can’t operate blindly; they need transparency. If you skip wage increases, consider the customer churn that will follow as employees leave. [35:53] Jeremy shares some aspects of conversations that were held at Kasasa, post-acquisition. They were discussing how to balance their white-label segment against their branded segment. They needed to understand the concerns of customers moving from one to the other as they navigated early conversations with the private equity group. [37:00] The PE group was focused on long-term growth. They were the right partners. It’s important to have the right partners with the same objectives as the company leadership and previous owners who are investing. You want that alignment. If the idea is revenue growth at any cost, everybody better agree on that. If the alignment is to grow profitability x% year over year, everybody needs to be aligned. [39:01] Talroo sees a very high level of demand for essential workers. That’s a strong vertical for Talroo. Jeremy doesn’t foresee a full-fledged labor recession. There is softening in tech sectors in terms of need for workers, which Jeremy attributes to earlier overhiring of workers by a lot of large businesses. Most of the pressures in the labor economy are still present. There are a lot of people retiring or recently retired. [40:19] One of the biggest problems the U.S. faces over the next decade is a shortage of labor because we’ve been below our replacement rate. We don’t have enough workers. It’s important to retain your talent, or partner with Talroo to find new talent! One of the places where analytics gets overlooked a lot is in understanding who your best performers are. Which people is it most important that you retain? [41:41] It’s still going to be important to lead well the people that you have. [42:34] Jeremy has been a key part of three major restructurings in the last 13 years. It’s awful for everybody involved and it should be awful. If it’s not awful, something’s wrong with your culture. Restructuring should be a last resort. You can sometimes avoid them by staffing the right people in the right places. Sometimes you get it wrong. [43:45] Part of leading is looking at the metrics to know when to make those decisions. Part of leading is looking at people first when you’re making those decisions so that you’re making the right choices. Part of leading is knowing that your team members are vital, too. You have to do what you can to provide a soft landing for the people you have to lose. Provide as much transparency as you can upfront. [46:34] Jeremy’s last message for listeners: “People look at numbers and people as exclusive and they’re not. They should both provide you with insight into the other. So, when you talk about the hard side of leadership and the soft side of leadership, they’re both sides. There’s a lot to be said for figuring out how to use them to work together, to make you stronger on both sides of that equation.” [47:26] Closing quote: Remember, “Academic qualifications are important and so is financial education. They’re both important and schools are forgetting one of them.” — Robert Kiyosaki   Quotable Quotes “When you think about what drives the value of a business, … it boils down to three things: What’s the lifetime value of your customers? What’s your customer acquisition cost? … and … What’s the total addressable market? … [Pay attention to] those three numbers.”  “You want to figure out how you can build a business that’s going to continue to grow without perpetual capital-raising and the perpetual dilution that comes along with it. Sometimes it can take some time for the executive team to make that transition.”  “If you raise too much capital at too low of a valuation, you might have hurt your investors. You might have to get really big to get the same return for your investors that you would have if you’d proven profitability and then raised at a much higher multiple a little bit later.”  “When you talk about pricing, … are you reaching … the right targets that are willing and able to pay that price, and is that price sufficient for you to make money after you’ve acquired those customers? … Are there enough of them to grow the business well?”  “A business is considered investable or backable by private equity or venture capital if you’re going to make three times as much as it cost you to pick up that customer off of that business. … What sometimes VCs and PE groups don’t pay attention to is how fast that cycles.”  “It is way easier to work with private equity and venture capital if they’ve seen the metrics. … For the most part, venture capitalists and private equity managers are there to make money for their investors but they want to do it in partnership.” “One of the biggest problems that the U.S. faces over the next decade is a shortage of labor because we’ve been below our replacement rate. We don’t have enough workers. … It’s really important to retain your talent.”  “You do have to balance the needs of the company against the needs of the employee. But if you can do that, then a lot of times, just operating with compassion, and some transparency and some honesty, can go a long way.”    Resources Mentioned Sponsored by:

Mike Evans is the Founder of GrubHub, and the author of “Hangry: A Startup Journey.” Mike founded GrubHub in his spare bedroom and grew it into a multi-billion dollar food delivery business that’s a household name. After leaving GrubHub, he founded Fixer.com, an on-demand handyperson service focused on social impact, and providing full-time work for well-trained tradespeople. Mike shares what he learned from raising a startup to IPO, biking across America, and writing “Hangry.” He believes it is necessary to create a business not just to make a profit, but to be powerful levers for social change.     Key Takeaways [2:27] Mike loves cycling and getting around places by bike, but not quickly. After the GrubHub experience, he rode his bike across the country. Later, Mike and his wife rode across Austria. They hope to ride across another country soon with their daughter. Mike tells what he likes about electric bikes. [4:41] As GrubHub grew from a few employees to 2,500 employees over 12 years, there were two things that increased his anxiety and made it challenging to live. [5:14] The first challenge was the fact that there are a lot of competing interests: shareholders, employees, diners, and restaurants and it was hard to balance them all. There’s no scenario where everybody wins 100%. There are tradeoffs. It was a tightrope walk to do. Mike started seeing the company making different choices as it grew beyond him. That was challenging to see. [6:09] The second challenge was hiring. As a business leader, you either hire your friends, or the people you hire become your friends. Sometimes you have to make decisions that are not the best outcomes for your employee-friends. When you have to let people go that you like, you cannot recover those friendships. They’re gone. You can’t fire somebody and then go hang out with them. [6:37] It should be hard to fire someone. You can’t be good at firing people and be a good leader. It should never get easier. You should care a lot about the people you work with. The competing interests, and having to fire friends took a toll on Mike over the course of a decade. [7:53] Contentment is fleeting, especially for entrepreneurs who start from a place where “something is broken in the world and I’m really annoyed by it.” Mike doesn’t think contentment was ever in the cards for him. An entrepreneur has to see the world with an expectation that it could be better than it currently is, which is not a good recipe for contentment. [9:45] Mike believes it’s important to have a personal definition of success that other people or factors don’t define. Other people won’t necessarily agree with it. Mike tells how he defined success all the way up through GrubHub’s IPO. Other people told him the IPO was his success, but that wasn’t Mike’s definition. Your definition of success gives you a North Star for one aspect of your life, business. [11:11] You also need personal definitions of success for your relationships, family, faith community, and civic community. Then you need to do the hard step of making tradeoffs between them. Work/life balance is elusive because it’s impossible to achieve. You have to make tradeoffs. The best you can do is say “I have a clear-eyed picture of what I want from a family perspective,” and make choices explicitly. [12:03] If you don’t choose explicitly, things happen to you instead of you making choices. That’s what causes imbalance, frustration, anger, and disappointment. Your definitions of success change during your journey. As you approach your goals, the goalposts move. It’s a destination and a journey. It’s not one or the other. As we do hard things, we change, and therefore our goals change. [12:54] Sometimes we fail. If you’re not going to be able to accomplish a goal, continuing to have it as a goal is only an exercise in frustration. Be able to say “This isn’t working; I’m going to go try doing something else.” Whether you succeed or fail, your goals change. Success is a larger concept; it’s the accumulation of goals over decades. [13:54] Mike compares how he feels about goals today with what he might have felt at age 24. One of the themes in his book is Think Bigger. Don’t set your goals low. When Mike launched GrubHub, he just wanted to pay off his student debt. He missed the opportunity to embed the value of “Do right by restaurants, no matter what,” in the DNA of the company. At 24, he only wanted to make money. [14:37] If Mike had struggled at age 24 with the decision about doing right by the restaurants, there might have been a better outcome over the decades. [16:17] Starting GrubHub and taking it through the IPO involved thousands of decisions of Mike letting go. On Day 1, Mike owned 100% of GrubHub with 100% of the responsibility for it. On the day Mike kicked off on his bike ride across the country, he had 0% of the responsibility. He had a few shares in GrubHub for six more months. His hack was to give up first the thing he hated most — scanning menus! [18:14] Mike’s first hire, a graphic designer to scan menus, went on to create the brand which ended up in two Super Bowl ads. He started scanning menus but had an opportunity from being in a high-growth startup. He ended up having to delegate. Once you hire your first employee, you get your first investor. Lean in on that and enjoy it! [19:31] Accepting reality is a paradox for an entrepreneur. You have to have enough arrogance to say “The world is broken, it needs to be fixed, and I’m the only person who can do it,” and you have to have the humility to listen to your customers and employees about what you’re doing right and wrong, and how to adjust. Arrogance and humility do not “play nice” together. Mike doesn’t always get it right. [20:28] If you put a document in front of five people, they’re all going to start editing it. Don’t put a press release in front of anybody but the people who have the responsibility of doing the press release. One way to keep micromanagement from happening, to allow people to delegate, is don’t put the work product in front of them before it’s done. Don’t give people editing access. [20:54] Not micromanaging starts with not being in there to edit things. Trust people to do their work. Tactical things like that help you to let go of the small decisions. [21:33] Mike’s book has a humble tone, but the exclamation point at the end is, “I had a fricking IPO, folks!” Mike captures in the book the paradox of arrogance and humility needed to run a startup well. [23:18] Mike had done week-long backpacking trips and liked being out in nature. On one of those trips with his wife, he went to Grand Tetons National Park and camped. He saw people riding in on bikes and setting up tents. It was the TransAmerican Trail cross-country bike tour going through the park. Mike thought biking and carrying a pack on a rack was a way better idea than hiking with a backpack! [24:14] The bike tour sounded like a very accessible adventure. It was accessible because he did it in 90 fifty-mile bike rides, not one 4,500-mile bike ride. His first day was just 25 miles. One thing Mike learned is that it starts with the first mile. The best training for Week Two is Week One. The best training for Week One is to go slow. Don’t try to eat up the miles in your first week. [24:54] Anyone physically able can ride 10 miles on a bike. You can do that and you can take lunch and you can do that again. And that can be your whole first day. You build up until you’re riding 100 miles in a day. The decision for Mike was just following something he was interested in doing. He quit his job to ride his bike across the country. It was a very clear decision for his life. [26:18] Mike kept a journal of his bike ride, on MikeEvans.com. He used those notes in Hangry to write about his bike trip. The trip reinforced something for Mike: the idea that you don’t do it all at once. When he looks back, yes he did a 4,500-mile bike ride. Day to day, he woke up every morning and made the decision to start pedaling a mile. [26:51] Long-haul hikers say, “Don’t quit at the end of a long day. Wait till the morning, when you’re fresh.” A lot of people feel like quitting when they’re tired. When you wake up in the morning you see you can do another day. That was true for Mike in business, as well. He kept at it because he had a bigger mission he was trying to accomplish. [28:14] Mike’s purposes for his bike trip were to reflect on what he had accomplished, how he did it, and how he felt about it, and to consider what he was going to do next. That led to the creation of Fixer, the on-demand handyperson business. The handypersons are full-time employees, trained from scratch. He wanted to create a business with social benefits built-in: great employment with a path into the trades. [29:11] Mike’s first decision for the bike trip was to buy a recumbent bike because he wanted to look at the horizon instead of the ground. He already had a tent. He rented a van and drove it down to Virginia Beach. One thing that helped is that the Adventure Cycling Association publishes TransAmerica Trail bike route maps so he ordered a set of maps and joined their online community to talk about the ride. [31:51] Starting a business is ugly and hard. It’s filled with self-doubt and recriminations. To succeed, you have to make tough choices and a lot of people judge you for those choices. Mike also judges GrubHub and where it went after he left from the IPO and how it became a poster child for the gig economy and not great for restaurants. That is frustrating to Mike. [32:21] It felt to Mike that it was important to tell the whole story and how businesses are huge levers for social change, whether you want them to be or not. When Mike was intentional about that at GrubHub, it was beneficial for restaurants. When that intentionality left the business, it was not as good for restaurants. [32:40] Mike’s goal with Hangry is to show the idea of changing the world by creating a business. He wanted to make it accessible and he wanted to elevate the importance of being intentional about creating the change you want to see in the world through the business. It’s not a thing you can do after the business is done, through charity work. You have to create the business as a lever for social change. [33:21] Hangry is mostly about trying to take what Mike learned and letting other people learn from it and live their lives, whether as an entrepreneur, a business leader, or an executive in a company and do their work in such a way that the communities in which they operate benefit from what they’re doing. [34:11] The book is called Hangry, so Mike isn’t happy and pleasant the whole time. He’s snarky about exclusionism. Silicon Valley is great at drawing circles and saying “You can’t come in.” Cyclists do it, too! There are lots of groups that draw a circle and say, “You’re not allowed inside this circle.” Mike says that Silicon Valley is particularly good at excluding anybody who’s not a white male. There’s a better way. [34:52] Democratizing the startup culture, democratizing the process, and demystifying the hero narrative that people use sometimes, make it more accessible to people. There’s an urgency to making our world a better place for our children and grandchildren that sort of raises the bar for what success looks like at a business. It can’t just be making money anymore. [36:27] The catalyst for creating Fixer.com was trying to get a handyperson and having to use “the phone app” on his phone. He wondered who uses that anymore! He started looking into it. The work that tradespeople do in the economy right now is typically great. Scheduling, communication, and billing are not done well. They’re inaccessible. [37:23] It’s hard for people to enter the trades unless they have an uncle or father who shows them how to do things. It continues the bias against women entering the trades. Entry-level handyperson jobs are good-paying jobs. They’re also stepping stones to becoming an electrician, a plumber, a roofer, or a mason. It was the same problem he saw with food. You can’t order things online and it’s annoying. [37:54] He wanted to make handypersons more accessible, but he found there just aren’t enough tradespeople. So he figured that by training people from scratch, they would get quality and wrap it in modern packaging. You schedule online and ask for someone to be there at 11:00 a.m. and the handyperson shows up by 11:00 a.m. They’re highly trained, and they clean up after the job. [38:45] Mike uses the service himself, even though he’s pretty handy. [40:00] Fixer.com has hundreds of applicants for every job position that they open. They target people who are working in food service, grocery, and retail and invite them to have a career instead of a job. Fixer.com pays people while training them. It’s easy to get people on board. People in the service field don’t have the flexibility to set their hours and schedule, which is hard in this job climate. [40:48] The adoption of working from home as a norm is damaging to people who don’t have that flexibility and it creates a two-class society. Seventy-five percent of the people at Fixer.com are tradespeople, not office workers. At some point, they will have 10,000 tradespeople as full-time employees. Mike is concerned about issues of equity and expectations around time. [42:34] Mike explains why he picked a business model that’s hard and hard to copy. It is intentional and it makes his company the competition that everyone else worries about. He’s building a multi-billion dollar business that will be hard to compete with. [43:51] Mike’s listener challenge: “I would love it if everybody would buy the book. … If you want the summary line, it’s this idea that businesses affect the communities in which they work, and being intentional about what that impact is, is really, really important.” You’re going to be juggling competing priorities, but it’s still useful even if you're considering a socially beneficial impact for every decision. [45:19] Closing quote: Remember, “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work.” — Daniel Burnham   Quotable Quotes “I’m not like one of these fast people who are always racing along the Lake Path in Chicago. Seeing the country; getting places at 10 mph is great. … After the GrubHub experience, I rode my bike across the country.” — Mike “Electric bikes are great. They really create access for people who might not otherwise physically be able to do it. And so I think they sort of democratize our bike trails. I’m a big fan of electric bikes.” — Mike “It should be hard to fire people, anyway. … You can’t be good at firing people and be a good leader. I think those two things are totally mutually exclusive. It should always be hard. It should never get easier. You should care a lot about the people you work with.” — Mike “The difference between an entrepreneur and a miserable grump is that the entrepreneur actually does something about it. So, I’m not sure it was ever in the cards for me to be content.” — Mike “[An entrepreneur] has to see the world with an expectation that it could be better than it currently is, which is not a good recipe for contentment.” — Mike “I think it’s really important to have an internal, personal definition of success that’s not defined by some external factor.” — Mike “Sometimes we fail. If you’re not going to be able to accomplish a goal, continuing to have it as a goal is only an exercise in frustration and self-punishment. So being able to say, ‘This isn’t working, I’m going to go try something else,’ is also important.” — Mike “People often ask me ‘What’s the most strategic hire that you can do first?’ … Forget that! Hire somebody to do something that’s the most annoying thing to you. And then you start to get the benefit of ‘I don’t have to do every little thing.’” — Mike “Don’t put a press release in front of anybody but the people who have the responsibility of doing the press release. One way to keep micromanagement from happening, to allow people to delegate, is don’t put the work product in front of them before it’s done.” — Mike “The tone of the book is humble. I tried to be self-reflective in the book, but the exclamation point at the end is, ‘I had a fricking IPO, folks!’ which is not a humble thing. I’m kind of bragging.” — Mike “Anyone physically able can ride 10 miles on a bike. You can do that and then you take lunch and you can do that again. And that can be your whole first day. And then by the time you hit the Rockies, a 100-mile day is like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ve been doing this for weeks!’” — Mike “There’s an urgency to making our world a better place for our children and grandchildren that sort of raises the bar for what success looks like at a business. It’s not just making money anymore. It can’t just be that.” — Mike “Picking hard business models, that are necessarily hard, to create value for customers is a really good defense against competition. What we’re doing is hard and so it’s hard to copy. And that’s very intentional.” — Mike “The thing that really sucks about competition is it’s not in your control. But … you can choose to pick a business model where you have to have some grit and some hard work and some thoughtfulness and some talent to make it work. … And then you are the competition.” — Mike “Businesses affect the communities in which they work, and being intentional about what that impact is, is really, really important. … it’s still useful even if you can’t make every decision toward a socially beneficial impact if you’re considering it for every decision.” — Mike   Resources Mentioned Sponsored by:

Mano Watsa is the President and Owner of PGC Basketball, the largest educational basketball camp in the world. PGC Basketball has taught over 125,000 players and coaches how to be leaders on and off the court. Mano brings his sports and business experiences to the podcast with stories and advice on thinking like a coach, communicating, and making a difference in people’s lives. Listen to learn how to focus on the thing you can do best.    “Part of the beauty of the game is your individual contributions combined with working together as a team … where five players become like a fist, not five individual fingers … and they play together as one.”  - Mano Watsa     Key Takeaways [2:51] Mano’s journey has been a joy, but anytime you’re pursuing a vision, there are all sorts of challenges along the way, as well as opportunities. It’s often the challenges that don’t surface publicly. Mano has never seen a successful team or individual that has not had to overcome adversity, and he is no different. [4:20] PGC Basketball's founder, Dick DeVenzio, who played college basketball at Duke University and went on to play and teach the game across the world, created the Point Guard College with the point guard in mind. The point guard has to be the coach on the floor. They have to be able to run the show for their team and get their team to work together and play together. They have to “think the game.” [5:01] PGC teaches players to be the smartest player on the floor by equipping them with how to think like a coach, how to make good decisions that lead to winning basketball, and how to lead their team. Jan and Jim recall guest Sam Walker’s book, The Captain Class, on how the greatest sports teams in history have one thing in common, captains who were the coach on the floor. [6:13] Mano says PGC teaches players not only how to lead by example but to be effective communicators, inspire their teammates, hold teammates accountable, challenge them, and raise the standard for their teammates. Anyone leading a company, team, or family, is the point guard for that company, team, or family. [8:23] Jeremy Lin came to the NY Knicks and started the Linsanity era. Overnight Jeremy Lin was on the cover of nearly every magazine and was a household name as the first Asian-American in the NBA. Suddenly he’s scoring 38 points against Kobe Bryant at Madison Square Garden. He had a successful 10-year NBA career. [9:08] Toward the end of Jeremy Lin’s NBA career, Mano had the privilege and opportunity to support him in the realm of mindset and his approach. Mano has been inspired by Jeremy Lin’s story, his passion, and his commitment to the game, giving back to the game and making a difference in the world. Jeremy Lin is now playing professionally in China. [10:18] John Wooden won 10 national championships at UCLA and was named Coach of the Century. John Wooden epitomized what it means to be a coach and make a difference in the lives of young players. Mano and his business partner at the time, Dena Evans, had the privilege once of spending a remarkable morning with Coach Wooden. They immediately wrote down all they had learned from him. [12:30] Jason Sudeikis revealed that having John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success on the wall of Ted Lasso’s office is purposeful. [13:30] Five players that work together can be more effective than five talented individuals who don’t work together. Individual performers can significantly influence the outcome of the game, but they also depend on the performance of their teammates to determine the outcome of the game. It’s a beautiful thing to see players willing to pass up a good shot for themselves for a great shot for a teammate. [15:38] Michael Jordan was the best player in the world. His teammates said they found it difficult to play with him because his standards were so high. He had competitive greatness. He was at his best when it was needed the most. It’s helpful on a team to have a player that drives everyone toward winning. You need others who complement that person’s nature to make sure everyone gets along. [19:30] Mano helped the Mully Children’s Family organization in Kenya build a sports gymnasium. There are over 2,000 children under their care. Mano has been over there with them multiple times and loves their work. When he sees where these kids have come from and their optimism, even with what they lack, it gives Mano a perspective of gratitude and wanting to make a difference in the lives of others. [21:05] Denny Crum, former coach of the University of Louisville, was honored recently. One of his players stated that they never saw him get upset. He never yelled at his players. They called him Cool Hand Luke. He was always encouraging and supportive. He was a teacher to his team. [22:01] PGC founder Dick DeVenzio taught to use a six-to-one ratio of encouragement to constructive criticism. It’s a lofty standard. As a coach or leader, it’s so easy to see where others may be falling short but people thrive off encouragement. Connect with team members before correcting them. Always make deposits before you make withdrawals. As leaders and parents, think about the “bank account.” [24:15] Great coaches don’t try to make everything a priority. If you try to make everything a priority, nothing is a priority. You can’t be great at everything, on the court or in business. But you can be great and world-class in something. You have to let some things go and focus on others. [25:02] Great coaches don’t single players out unnecessarily. This goes for leaders and parents, too. Praise publicly and criticize privately. Good coaches and business leaders do a good job of not embarrassing and humiliating their people. They praise publicly and if they have to give criticism, they do so quietly and privately. [25:43] Great coaches don’t hold back when they’re wrong. They’re willing to admit mistakes. That takes humility and vulnerability, in practice and games. Get beyond your ego. Be willing to admit you don’t have it all together. [26:56] At PGC, they follow a commitment-based culture. Part of Mano’s commitment statement is that he’s a joyful work in progress. Accepting himself as a joyful work in progress allows Mano to admit mistakes and admit that he will always be a work in progress. [27:38] Past guest, Michael Bungay Stanier, told of a Legos bridge-building problem. Most people added pieces to solve the problem but the most expedient solution was to remove a piece. What’s on your plate? What are you going to take off your plate? Mano notes that when we say “yes” to something, we say “no” to every other alternative. That helps him to be discerning about what he says “Yes” to. [29:18] Mano decided recently that if it’s not a “Hell, yeah!” it’s a “No.” One of the mistakes Mano made in the early years of growing PGC was wanting to pursue every opportunity. In attempting to pursue every opportunity, they didn’t maximize any given opportunity. Mano learned as he grew as a leader to stop good things to focus on a great thing. [31:54] As coaches or business leaders, you can’t give all the encouragement that your players or staff need. To fill the gap, PGC introduced celebrations. Every staff meeting, no matter how many meetings are in a day, starts with 60 to 90 seconds of gratitude. It’s an opportunity for somebody to acknowledge a thing or project that the team or an individual has done well. People encourage each other. [34:50] Mano frequently tells his staff, “If you’re winning at work but losing at home, you’re losing.” Mano and PGC care about the staff as human beings and want them to win at home. If someone is not winning at home, their work will be compromised because everything bleeds over. When you’re at home, shut off work, slow down, and be present with family. [36:04] After reading In Praise of Slowness, Mano stopped college coaching to focus on PGC. He wanted to be present for his family. Another decision he made with his family was to limit the participation of their children in sports and activities. Their highest value was in spending dinner time together as a family and playing together. They prioritized family time over competitive sports. [39:02] Mano’s listener challenge: As business leaders, we must ensure that we’re doing everything possible to support our employees and teams. One of the ways we can do that is by helping to ensure that they’re able to bring their best possible selves to work each day. [39:24] For employees to bring the best version of themselves, they need to feel cared for, supported, and encouraged, and they need to be given space because if we’re just driving them hard all the time, we’re going to wear them down, especially in this world where many people just don’t feel settled. We can create a good environment while pursuing goals and lofty objectives and still helping our people. [41:21] Closing quote: Remember, “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” — John Wooden   Quotable Quotes “I’ve never come across a winning team, or anyone who’s been highly successful in anything,  that hasn’t had to overcome significant adversity. And I’m certainly no different than that, in terms of adversities.” — Mano “We like to think that a point guard isn’t just a position on a basketball court. Somebody leading a company is the point guard of their team. A quarterback is the point guard of their football team. … If you’re leading a family, you are the point guard of your family.” — Mano “The point guard has to be able to influence behavior in order to get desired outcomes. They have to be able to lead and communicate effectively.” — Mano “The beauty of the game [of basketball] is that five players who work together can be more effective and more successful than five talented individuals who don’t work together.” — Mano “In basketball, it’s a small enough team that you can significantly impact the outcome of the game by your individual performance but you can’t entirely impact the outcome because you have to be dependent on your teammates.” — Mano “Part of the beauty of the game is your individual contributions combined with working together as a team … where five players become like a fist, not five individual fingers … and they play together as one.” — Mano “There are so many life lessons that come out of the game when players are willing to put aside their individual agendas for the betterment of the team.” — Mano “You need a range of diverse personalities to really make a team as effective as it can be. But to have somebody that drives winning and drives outcomes is really, really valuable.” — Mano “People thrive off encouragement. No one has ever received too much appreciation or too much encouragement. And one of the principles that we teach to coaches … is connect before you correct.” — Mano “Every good leader … looks for opportunities to celebrate, to acknowledge, to praise, to encourage, and appreciate far more often than they do providing any constructive criticism.” — Mano “It actually builds trust when we’re willing to be vulnerable when we’re willing to demonstrate that level of humility. It’s hard because it requires getting beyond ourselves and it requires getting beyond our ego.” — Mano “One of the things I’ve realized, both in business and in my personal life: I just don’t have it all together.” — Mano “When we say ‘yes’ to something, we’re actually saying ‘no’ to every other possible alternative.” — Mano “If it’s not a ‘Hell, yeah!’ it’s a ‘no.’” — Mano “What gets scheduled gets done.” — Mano   Resources Mentioned Sponsored by:

Leigh Ann Rodgers is the CEO and Founder of Better Teams, and is driven to positively impact corporate culture and cultivate happy, high-performing teams. She is also the host of Leading Better Teams podcast. In this episode, Leigh Ann shares thoughts on accountability, bonding/connection, and why virtual teams require extra work to build connections. Listen in for how to build strong virtual connections!     Key Takeaways [1:58] Leigh Ann volunteers three days a week at a local animal sanctuary for farm animals. There are pigs, horses, donkeys, goats, and cats. It’s a beautiful little farm tucked into a forest. Leigh Ann feeds them and puts the hay out. It’s a peaceful place. Leigh Ann does the afternoon shift. The early morning shift scoops the poop, so Leigh Ann is happy to go in the afternoon. [4:06] If members of a team are not being accountable to each other, the first thing to find out is why they are not. Leigh Ann says most of the time there is fear. It’s a risky thing to hold a peer accountable. It may lead to them not liking you, retaliation, or conflict. [4:57] How do we create a culture and create trust where people want to hold each other accountable and want to be held accountable? It would be a culture where team members don’t see accountability as a threat but as a way of teaming together to help everyone be the best that they can be. [6:04] One person can influence a team to a degree, depending on their status within the team. [7:17] The leader establishes the culture. The leader can tell the team that it is expected for them to have difficult conversations with each other instead of coming to the leader. It starts with the leader setting the tone and the expectation for open, candid conversation, with good intention, to help each other be their best. That requires real feedback. The leader also needs to reward that behavior. [9:55] If team members are unwilling to hold each other accountable, Leigh Ann loves the ADKAR model for changing behavior. Leigh Ann focuses on the first three aspects: Is the person Aware of their behavior? Do they Desire to change? Do they Know how to change? That’s where Leigh Ann starts to figure out why a person is not willing to engage in difficult conversations. [11:50] One of the principles in Leigh Ann’s Better Teams training is Readiness. The first element of Readiness is having the right equipment, tools, and resources. If you don’t have those, advocate for yourself. The second element is competence and skill sets. Advocate for the competencies you need. It may involve getting a mentor. The third element is being adaptive, flexible, and agile. Can you pivot? [12:59] Leigh Ann relates being adaptive to stress levels. People are fairly adaptive but when stress levels get high, we begin to get less adaptive and flexible. When there’s a lot of uncertainty, we start to crave certainty, which makes any new change feel bigger than it even may be. Recognize when your stress levels are high and advocate for ways to increase certainty so you can be flexible. [14:18] Instead of advocating for the organization to provide something for you, it is better for you to provide the tools, training, skills, and more to better yourself for the job you have or future roles. Advocating for yourself may become a barrier to doing something for yourself that is well within your capability. [15:09] Leigh Ann clarifies the difference between you managing your self-improvement and advocating for yourself to have the company provide an important solution that will benefit the company while benefiting you. What you can do without guidance or leadership, do independently. [16:38] Jan notes that past guest Kim Cameron, spoke a lot about abundance versus scarcity. As we come out of a pandemic, we hear more from our guests about abundance than scarcity. Maybe people are more open-minded than they were. Jan invites you, the listener, to connect on social media about trends you are seeing. And Jan is proposing a prize if somebody listens to all past episodes of the show! [18:11] Jan cites an HBR 1998 article on trust in the virtual team. Trust in virtual teams has been a topic for a while. [18:34] Leigh Ann says some teams are getting human connection right, and some are not doing as well. People need to feel bonded to the people they are working with. Many people miss being in the office with other people. It takes so much more effort to build a meaningful connection on a group call. When you disconnect from the call, you disconnect from the people. [19:56] Before the podcast started recording, Jan, Jim, and Leigh Ann were connected, talking about themselves. They were connecting and building rapport before starting the podcast. When meeting virtually, ask about each other. [21:30] Some individuals and teams want deeper connections and some do not. It has to be managed case by case. Leigh Ann is reading about oxytocin in the book Habits of a Happy Brain. Oxytocin makes us feel connected and bonded. It is released when you come together and start to feel that you know who people are a little bit more and you feel safe with each other. [22:43] When teams get together and do some sort of meaningful team exercise where they’re really getting to know each other in a safe way and as they want to, it creates that sense of bonding that may not be there if you’re just coming together running down a spreadsheet. We need to create spaces for teams to actually share what they want to about themselves and create that sense of connection. [23:13] Leigh Ann suggests building, even virtually, times for teams to come together with a little structure for teams to share and learn about each other. A simple example is to ask team members to bring with them an object that symbolizes something that they value highly. [23:50] Leigh Ann remembers someone bringing in a medal from running in a triathlon, and how running was part of her health journey. Another person brought in something that symbolized a medical challenge they had and a conversation that helped people on the team understand the person better. The team suddenly saw each other in a new dimension which made them more human to each other. [24:51] Another exercise is a DiSC® communication workshop. What are the different ways in which we like to communicate? Are you direct? Do you like to ask questions? [25:19] Doing some really meaningful team exercises like this allows people to get to know each other. Not necessarily sharing all their deep, dark family secrets, but it’s a way to learn about each other and what makes people tick, and create that sense of bonding and closeness we don’t get from typical business meetings. [26:18] You can get people together for celebrations. We tend to celebrate success and meeting goals. We celebrate outcomes. Dr. Carol Dweck focuses on growth mindset. How do we celebrate the effort, even if we fall short of the goal? We should celebrate growth, effort, and learning in addition to outcomes. It’s also important to celebrate individual contributions and specialties each person brings. [29:04] On the farm where Leigh Ann volunteers, each of the 25 volunteers brings something unique. One volunteer loves to paint. She painted sayings all over the farm and created the farm calendar. One volunteer is meticulous with order and structure. It’s important to celebrate the unique contributions of each person on your team. That makes them feel special and increases their serotonin, by the way. [30:32] Leigh Ann tells how she beat the doldrums. Although she loves what she does, she noticed last year she was getting “the blahs.” She had to do some soul-searching to figure it out. She had stopped learning and growing and needed some new things to play into her strengths. She did a lot of learning and coaching with people, reading, and writing that helped her energize again. She got curious! [32:40] Jan and Jim noticed that at the beginning of the pandemic, leaders were energized by the crisis. After 18 months, the same leaders were fired. They couldn’t react anymore, they had to step back and think. They had to be proactive. We’re still in that stage, where people are planning and budgeting and projecting what will happen. Jan directs people to what they value. [33:33] Leigh Ann often asks people to ask themselves “What do you want?” and “What do you need?” That’s the beginning to find out how you get to that. [34:23] Leigh Ann’s listener challenge: Put pen to paper, think about, and first ask yourself, what do you want and what do you need? If you’re not sure, grab a coach to help you think that through. Do some self-reflection and figure it out. Second, ask how you get out of your way. Third, ask how you prioritize and plan to get there. Leigh Ann has sessions starting in January that can help you through this. [36:13] Closing quote: Remember, “Individual commitment to a group effort — that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.” — Vince Lombardi   Quotable Quotes “How do we create a culture and create trust where people want to hold each other accountable and want to be held accountable? And they don’t see it as a threat. They see it as a way of teaming together to help everyone be the best that they can be.” — Leigh Ann “In general, people are fairly adaptive but when stress levels get really high, we begin to get less adaptive and flexible. When there’s a lot of uncertainty, we start to crave certainty, which makes any new change feel bigger than it even may be.” — Leigh Ann “We’ve got to figure out ways to create spaces for teams to actually share what they want to about themselves and create that sense of connection and bonding and I think we’ve got to build that in, even more than just, ‘How are you doing?’” — Leigh Ann “Doing some really meaningful team exercises … allows people to get to know each other. And not necessarily for sharing all their deep, dark family secrets, but it’s a way to learn about each other and what makes people tick, and create that sense of bonding.” — Leigh Ann “Take time to put pen to paper and think about what you want and what you need. … And if you’re really not sure, grab a coach. A coach can help you think that through, as well, but do some self-reflection and figure that out.” — Leigh Ann   Resources Mentioned Sponsored by: