The LeaderShifter Show

I’m joined in today’s entertaining conversation by life and business partners, Joan McArthur-Blair and Jeanie Cockell. Co-authors of two books, Building Resilience with Appreciative Inquiry and Appreciative Inquiry in Higher Education, this dynamic duo brings two decades of experience using this powerful approach to human system change to everything they do. Appreciative Inquiry seeks to increase in value what already exists and enquires into what more might be created for individuals and organizations. In short, it is all about stoking curiosity, connection, and belonging. We apply their A.L.I.V.E. framework (Appreciate, Love, Inquiry, Venture, Evolve) as a tool to help people cope during challenging times. For example, “How am I embracing what’s happening in the world right now – even the smallest thing?” So key to conversations happening all over the world right now, we explore how to use it to interrupt racism and promote allyship. Ask questions of ourselves, our teams, and others such as, “How do I/we intersect with privilege and difference in my/our own life?,” “How might we invite people to actively participate in these conversations?” and “How do we want to express our vision for inclusion?” Such questions serve to begin conversations that otherwise seem too daunting to start and welcome people to share stories and ideas in service of creating better futures.

TRANSCRIPT

Episode 60 Authentically A.L.I.V.E. in tough times with Joan McArthur-Blair and Jeanie Cockell

Shani Magosky: Is your team not performing well? Is morale low and turnover high? Are you falling further behind the competition? I’m here to help.

I’m your host, Shani, and this is The Leadershift Show where business strategy and culture finally meet and we make the long-awaited shift from rhetoric to results. I promise, I’m not your typical boring leadership consultant and I will help you get your shift together. Let’s do this.

[music]

Hello, Leadershifters and welcome back to another episode of The Leadershift Show with Shani. It is now 2021 and we are so thrilled to be back after a little bit of a hiatus. We had to move from Boulder back to Fort Lauderdale to take care of some family health business and we are raring to go.

Boy, do I have a treat for you today, not one, but two brilliant women who are here to talk about appreciative inquiry. Hold on to that if you don’t know what that is. We will obviously explain and take a deep dive.

Welcome to the show Joan McArthur-Blair and Jeanie Cockell. They are appreciative inquiry consultants and the authors of two books on the subject. One is called Building Resilience with Appreciative Inquiry and I cannot wait to dive into that one, just given the fact that we’re coming up on a year of COVID, hibernation, and the like. Their other book is called Appreciative Inquiry in Higher Education, which for those of you who know me, higher education, all education is a real side passion of mine.

Actually, Jeanie and I were talking before the show that both of our mothers were English teachers. We share that passion for grammar and love that they’re bringing this into the classroom. Welcome to the show, ladies.

Joan McArthur-Blair: Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Jeanie Cockell: Thank you, Shani. Joan has a degree in English, [chuckles] just to carry on that story, so people would care about English here. [chuckles]

Shani: What’s funny, folks, is they are joining us from Victoria, British Columbia, where it is cold, gray, and rainy. Of course, I am back in sunny beautiful Fort Lauderdale. I just love the contrast and the fact that we can get on a Zoom call and do this regardless of weather conditions. [chuckles]

Joan: Just to lead off that for a second. This is the thing in leadership. I’ve been in formal leadership for a lot of my life and it is that undertaking in contrast where one moment it’s dark [chuckles] and rainy and the next day, there’s a sunshine that allows you to do something that wasn’t there the day before. It is an amazing undertaking.

Shani: Yes. Well, let’s start with the basics. Appreciative inquiry, a concept known to folks who are in leadership development, learning, and development, but maybe not everyone is as familiar with it. Go ahead and do a little a little bit of teaching for the listeners here. What is appreciative inquiry?

Jeanie: Oh, let me start with that one. Appreciative inquiry is something that’s absolutely true to my heart. When I discovered it, just through other consultants and the facilitators at a conference, somebody said, “Have you heard about appreciative inquiry?” This is years ago. “No.” We’re still finding out that people haven’t heard about it. It’s basically those two words, “appreciative inquiry,” and the appreciative comes from valuing and looking at what you value, inquiring into inquiries, questioning, exploring, and researching.

Together is what do you appreciate? What do you value? Because by looking at it, you will get more of it. In other words, the notion of appreciate as a house appreciates some value. Well, what you’re looking at, if you’re looking at your strengths and what’s working well in your organization, that will increase. As you do it through research, examination, questions, conversations, and stories, that there’s a third one that Joan and I have actually added onto the notion of appreciate and that’s the notion of you also have to be fully aware.

To appreciate means to be fully aware. We’re finding that especially in the world now where we want to look at the issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and so on. Sometimes, you have to actually start with what isn’t actually perfectly working in order to explore through an appreciative lens, through appreciative inquiry, but to acknowledge first the importance of advocating for change in our world where things are issues still. Then, look at how is it we explore what is working within that issue. How is it people are making changes?

That’s the appreciative inquiry part is to ask those question, look for the stories, get those stories spread around the organization or the team or the community, or the world. It’s a worldwide exploration through processes and ways of being in the world by continually doing that curiosity and appreciation.

Shani: Absolutely. I love that and because one of the things that I do is a lot of executive and leadership coaching. I’ll introduce this concept of appreciative inquiry as a lens from which to ask more questions because I’ll get this question all the time, “What’s the one thing I can do as a leader to be better? Don’t you have a hack? [chuckles] You work with tons of leaders. Isn’t there a secret sauce or a hack to being a better leader?” I’m like, “Well, okay. First of all, not really, but if I had to recommend [chuckles] one thing, it would be to talk less and listen more.” When we are talking, instead of just coming out spouting our knowledge, it’s asking more questions when we are opening that mouth of ours.

For a lot of people have to clarify we’re not asking questions as a way to put people on the defensive. They’re not questions designed to trick people or lead people to your own conclusion. They have to be open-ended non-leading questions and that’s when I’ll bring in this idea of coming from a place of just being purely curious and appreciating what you might hear and appreciating what you already know as opposed to jumping to conclusions, which is what most people do. [chuckles]

Joan: Well, I think it’s so powerful where you just touched on the idea that appreciative inquiry can be used in the smallest of ways, to ask a simple generative question as a leader to others, to think through the ways in which you open the possibility for somebody else to share their strength in the situation, the kinds of questions you ask, or it can be used for whole system change where you’re looking at big organizational and cultural change.

We’re talking for a minute before we started today. The idea of culture to be asked as somebody who works in an organization, what my ideas are, where we might go, what I’m hoping for is such a powerful generator of positive culture. In some ways, I would say a simple thing, but it’s not. It’s actually a practice of asking generative questions that create positive responses for people.

Shani: Yes. Let’s actually build on that and give some examples. Those were great examples of questions that you might ask an individual. How would this apply to greater organizational change? Either if you have an overview of the process that you use, incorporating appreciative inquiry, or even an example.

Joan: Jeanie and I do a lot of big strategic planning processes and that’s one of the classic places that large organizations can use this. For an example, we did a big project in the States with a university where they asked the entire internal university community, students and everybody who worked inside the university, and the community to come and tell stories of the university.

Then, out of those stories, they created theme ideas, and each of those themes was then parsed for ways the organization might design the future. It’s so powerful in that whole system change where everybody gets involved and so what happens in that process is it’s not about the strategic plan being written eight months later. As soon as people are asked about what are their ideas and what might we do as an organization. They’re already making those changes. So, there’s this incredible momentum and personal agency that takes place when you use it for big strategic planning projects like that. We do a lot of those with colleges and universities, mostly, but not-for-profits, and all kinds of organizations.

Shani: Oh, go ahead, Jeanie. [crosstalk]

Jeanie: I was just going to say we talked also about the notion of shift because this is leadership shift that we’re talking about, but it’s amazing in the room. I would like to work also with teams that are in trouble. [chuckles] They come because they need to change. They need to shift.

Joan: I know that none of your leaders are there have working with teams that won’t talk to each other, but this is Jeanie’s specialty.

Shani: And beyond. One of the things about using appreciative inquiry that I absolutely love is the shift that I see as people start to deeply listen to each other’s stories because one of the techniques that we use is we start with whatever the topic is. What is it you want? So, the team is often just being a highly effective team. You tell stories no matter how small of when you’ve had an experience in the team that has been, what was wonderful, and made it effective, and share that with another person, then share it with a small group.

You start to see people say, “Wow.” They see each other because they’ll see each other through the story and they then have to start to shift and say, “Well, wait a minute. They’re passionate about being this team just like I am and I thought they were just an annoying person,” [laughs] because they had different styles or whatever.

Through that storytelling and the inquiry of listening to each other deeply, it shifts that nature of belonging together and really come together and actually share the leadership. I mean that’s what a team is, it’s a group that works together. Then, she sees how they could because they can see each other.

Jeanie: It’s so funny that you just added that because I onboarded a new executive coaching client just this morning. One of the questions that I asked was to tell me about a peak experience where it doesn’t– and it never has to be professional. It can be personal, too, but in this case, it was a professional story, and it was earlier on in her career where– I can’t be too detailed because of confidentiality, but let’s just say she went above and beyond serving a client and the client’s family in a very difficult situation, did that because– that she viewed that as her job. That was her purpose. It wasn’t just to do the job but to serve the clients.

A couple of days later, the family came in with two dozen roses to thank her for what she had done. She was completely touched because, of course, she didn’t do it expecting to get roses or even thanks, because a lot of times, it’s somebody anonymous from the other side. She said, “Well, what’s the second dozen roses for?” Because the first one was for her.

The client said, “For your mother because she obviously raised a wonderful human being.” Hearing that story from her, well, of course, it made me appreciate who she is as a person and as a professional. Again, just got me thinking like these are the kinds of stories that we need to perpetuate and tell our coworkers and not be either too modest or think that they’re inappropriate. This is what connects us to each other.

Joan: This is something that I think is the core of David Cooperrider and others work when they started appreciative inquiry, is the connection to each other, that appreciative inquiry connects us in powerful ways, uplifts our strengths, connects us to the work that we want to do in the world, and give us the ability to carry that work forward.

The sense of connection in appreciative inquiry is so profound. Jeannie and I have this experience, too, where people tell incredibly powerful stories when asked that simple question, “Tell me a story of a time.” People tell these incredible stories of their lives and work.

Jeanie: One of the principles of appreciative inquiry is the wholeness principle. It’s not about a top-down, “Here’s the leader going to do this to the organization.” It’s about gathering the whole, or at least the representation of the whole, who then work together creating their future. It’s future-focused.

They start with the stories of what they already know that’s working well in the organization. They move towards actually dreaming, visioning, and creating images together. Everything’s done together collaboratively, so it’s very much of an inclusive belonging in this organization, “This is us,” to the design phase, which is a very typical phase of any strategic planning or future creation, visioning, whatever you want to call it.

In appreciative inquiry, that strap plan doesn’t just get written up by a few people and stick on a shelf or passed out maybe, [chuckles] It is actually something that has within it, some commitments of everybody who’s participated to be part of it and to carry it on. There’s an ongoing process of looking back and doing an appreciative inquiry as, “Where are we at? What’s worked with this plan? How could we tweak it now?”

It’s very alive. It’s very active in terms of how people engage with it. That, I think, is very powerful as to keep– Then, of course, it affects the institution in many ways, that people realize it’s not just about doing what they committed to, but it can be a way of just being in their department with each other and holding meetings together by starting with, “Well, let’s just share a brief story about what’s happened since the last time we met last month. Let’s go around the table.” It doesn’t take long and share a little story about the successes that have happened.

Joan: Right. I want to pause one second to address the listeners and challenge you. Do you have these elements in your strategic planning process? Because I see a lot of strategic plans that are built like this. “Well, let’s take last year’s strategic plan and update it.” [laughs] Well, that is probably not the most thorough approach that you could take. Are you involving other constituencies or are you just up there in the ivory tower, in the C-suite, creating the strategic plan without reaching out to people all across the organization to hear their voices and hear their stories, to build a future that is resonant for the entire organization, and not just for those at the top.

I just want to call that to your attention. It’s not too late. Every day is a new day to do a strategic plan. We’re a month in to 2021. If you’ve built a strategic plan, revisit it with the appreciative inquiry approach in mind.

Joan: One of the things I–

Shani: We’ve been alluding a little bit and I want to go there directly to the applications for appreciative inquiry in diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, such a big topic that, fingers crossed, may finally be having its day where more people are taking it seriously than just the groups advocating for it. [chuckles] Talk to us a little bit about why this is such an important element for DEI.

Joan: Well, I think that there’s so much intrinsically in appreciative inquiry that speaks to the notion of belonging, to be simply asked to be part of something is integral to change at the scale of the whole as [crosstalk] is. I think there’s particular things that appreciative inquiry brings to this work.

David Cooperrider and Ron Fry recently wrote an article based on a piece that David wrote for the preface to our book about Appreciative Inquiry in a Broken World. They, too, are really thinking about this idea of how in situations where there is huge hurt and huge harm and systemically built-in systems do we begin to unpack them. I think appreciative inquiry really brings itself to that work. The ways in which you sit down and begin to discuss topics like, “How might we, as a team, be inclusive of each other?” It’s a simple question.

Recognizing, at the same time, that there are moments within every team, within every organization where that has not existed. Every organization brings the systemic nature of the society in which they function inside their organization. This is the being fully aware part of appreciative in the appreciative inquiry, the recognition that the solution isn’t going to happen by four o’clock this afternoon, that this is the beginning of a conversation around huge and systemic kinds of issues. You’re dying to add something I can tell.

Jeanie: No. No. I’m just enjoying what you’re saying, Joan. It’s great. [laughs]

Joan: I think it has a special place because it’s built out of telling stories, “Tell a story of a time in your organization where you felt like you belonged.” Even more complex, given that there’s huge systemic issues at play inside and outside our organization, “Tell a story of a time where you felt like you belonged.”

You recognize that being fully aware of what it is and the systemic nature, and you seek to find places that can be different. It’s delicate and powerful work in appreciative inquiry, and I think there’s much to be gained by the simple telling and asking of stories and then beginning to create change.

Shani: I think this is a really good conversation for folks who want to be allies, for lack of a better word. They don’t think that they’re overtly, let’s say, racist or sexist or any other ist-ism. They’re not necessarily even aware of some of their own unconscious biases or an unconscious ism’s that might be in their behavior. They want to learn. They want to do better, but they don’t know how to approach the topic with people of color or women or whatever the other is.

I think this is a really– certainly not easy, [chuckles] but it’s a simple way for them to start practicing to have those conversations, to get the information, to be more informed and sensitive. “Tell me about a time when, so that they can start to educate themselves,” because that’s really what it’s going to take is people understanding what it feels like to live in the other person’s shoes by hearing those powerful examples.

Joan: Well, as you say, I think there’s an incredible moment for allyship. It’s such a fragile thing because it’s easy to take allyship to– yet a new version of oppression. It’s a really complicated territory. Yet, I think for leaders to step into that territory and both say powerfully to their organization, “Not on my watch.” This place I expect that everybody experiences respect. Now, tell me stories of how we’re already doing that and how we can enable more of it? Say, a simple question, it begins– It is, I think, a powerful place for leaders who seek to be allies to reside.

Shani: Yes. Let’s go over that again, just to make sure people got it. You know it is Black History Month. Certainly, a great time to continue to advocate for people of color and allyship, so let’s give people verbatim questions [chuckles] because sometimes, they need that in order to get started. Then, they feel more comfortable, because a lot of times it is opening their mouth and saying those first few words of the first sentence that’s hard for people.

Joan: I think to– like this thing about an executive, for example, to say to their team, “How might I express to the organization my expectation of inclusion? How might we begin to set simple kinds of expectations around belonging? How might we invite people to the conversation without asking the employees who self-identify as people of color or gay and lesbian to suddenly speak for everybody in the organization? How do we do this in a way that’s powerful?” Two really beginning questions.

I think the other thing that I often say this as I’m coaching is a journaling exercise. This is not a share exercise. This is a writing down, “Where is it that I intersect with these issues in powerful ways?” I use a simple powerful example of myself. Jeanie and I are life partners, business partners, co-authors. We live in a country of peace and privilege where we can be married in our country and not universally, but for the most part, not discriminated against for that.

Jeanie and I get to sit down the burden, if you want to call it that, bad word, sit down the notion of being a lesbian at times. We can appear in public and people go, “Oh, they’re interesting people.” My friends of color can never do that. I think to journal about this idea of how we intersect with privilege and difference for ourselves, and then begin to ask the questions, “How might I communicate to the organization, my desire to create a culture of belonging? How might we begin the conversation? Are there places inside the organization where teams, very diverse teams are flourishing? What is enabling those teams to flourish?” Then, take those enablers and say, “Okay. How can we take those enablers to other divisions in our organization?” What do you want to add?

Jeanie: Well, I just want to add that the more that people are seen to belong, the kinds of questions like– even just, “Tell the stories of your lives in the last month.” It doesn’t have to be something that– “Is there something that you need to share with us?” Because we all belong here. We all appreciate each other for our strengths. “What is it that is affecting you?” Even just those kinds of questions to get to the heart of people, to hear their stories from their lives. Ask them about that.

The more that focus on the people and appreciating through the curiosity of the stories of their lives, the more likely those stories will be shared when people will start to learn from each other in terms of that, not everybody has the same life. You mean, the amount of privilege we have just because of the color of our white skin is just incredible. Many people who are white have never even thought of that.

Sometimes, just getting into, “What does that look like?” Well, I can walk into a bank and nobody’s going to think of I’m there to rob it or something. You know what I mean? All sorts of things that assumptions that can be made because if you don’t have a white skin.

To me, that’s one of the most important privileges and Joan is saying the intersectionality of privilege because we have oppression in other ways and so on. Everybody can look at that, but to have those kinds of conversations of what it does mean in terms of worrying about your children. If you have– you’re Black and your children are off to school, are you worried that they’ll make it there safely? Just because of the color of their skin.

We know those stories exist. They’re becoming more and more prevalent, which is good because it’s bringing an awareness to the world that, “Wait a minute now.” Not everybody has the same safety we have to live in the world fully, as fully as possible. I think those kinds of tough questions are just, again, through the notion of story and how it impacts them. When they come into this teamwork, what has impacted them that might affect it differently because they look different.

Joan: Right. The Leadershifters like all work. It starts here inside of you. [chuckles] I love that Joan and Jeanie are suggesting before you even, go out publicly and have this conversation with your team or with your org, too, whether it’s journaling or discussing it with a coach, or a trusted partner, or an advisor, or just meditating on it. Love the question. I’m going to have to read it, “How do you intersect with privilege and difference yourself and be honest about that,” because it’s in sharing honestly and with vulnerability with your teams and your organizations that people are going to be willing– are going to be invited into the conversation because they’ll see you’re for real, as opposed to full of shit, and just trying to check a box because it’s the flavor of the day or because your board of directors is demanding it. No. This needs to come from a place of humanity within you. We all intersect with this in obvious places and not so obvious places. [laughs]

Joan: I’ll tell a really quick story related to this. This is not a new story. It goes back several years. I was sitting in a circle of colleagues and I actually write about this in a book, sitting in a circle of colleagues and we’re all introducing ourselves. The woman sitting next to me, who I’ve never met, a woman of color, gets to be her turn. She talks about where she grew up, city in Canada, and so on. Somebody across the room says, “Where are you from?” She says, “Montreal.” They said, “No. No. No. Where are you really from?”

One of the things I challenged leaders to do is to practice allyship in the moment. In this moment, I got it right, in lots of times, I’ve gotten it wrong, but in this moment, I got it right. I was sitting next to her and I think, “Okay. I can just let this go on by or I can do something.” I said, “You know what? You’ve got to ask a really powerful question. Let’s begin again and talk about where we’re from. I’ll start while other people think about this.”

I talked about my heritage, my Celtic heritage, how my family got to Canada, how many generations we’ve been in Canada. I said, “Let’s go back to the beginning of the circle and start again. Where are you really from?” I’ve stayed in contact with that woman for 20 years off and on, almost every time she tells that story of how powerful it was of somebody simply interrupting racism, not trying to make it right by saying to the other person, “Don’t ask that question,” but actually interrupting it.

I think there’s something powerful in our allyship and moments where we can appreciatively interrupt exclusion. You don’t tell somebody else they’re wrong. You think, “What can be made right here?” Well, let’s tell the stories of where we’re really from. Let’s begin again. Where are we really from? It just changed that whole feeling because I wasn’t the only person in the room going, “Okay. What do I do now?”

Shani: Right. People like wanting to crawl under the seagoing, “Oh, shit. This is happening.” [chuckles] Right. Oh, well, that’s a very powerful example of how to put this to use in allyship in the moment. I like that you call it that. That’s what’s going to make the differences, catching people in the moment. Oh, it’s so good. Okay. Let’s switch gears a little bit. It’s all obviously related, but to be authentically alive.

Jeanie: Well, that is actually an acronym. We’re using the word ALIVE as an acronym.

Shani: Yes. I love acronyms. Bring it on. [chuckles]

Jeanie: Well, it was while we were writing a chapter in the book on Appreciative Inquiry in Higher Ed first, and then, it has continued on into our Building Resilience because it was such a model that worked and people really loved it. A.L.I.V.E. actually stands for a model to be able to work with when things are really challenging.

The A.L.I.V.E. actually stands for the A, is appreciate, of course, for writing about the appreciative inquiry. [chuckles] Then, the L is actually– Well, I don’t know. I think my favorite part of the A.L.I.V.E. model, which is the Love. Who are you supporting? Who supports you in this challenging time? Where is the love around you? Then, of course, the I, A-L-I is Inquiry because you do all of this, seem to be appreciating, loving, and inquiry by being curious about what’s going on in this challenging time.

If you focus on those three and we say, then, the rest of alive is the V and the E. The V and the E are really supported by appreciating, loving, and inquiring in order to venture and take that step forward into the next stage as you evolve in your life. The story I want to tell, this is–

Shani: Right. So, what’s the V and E?

Jeanie: V is the venture. You step forward into a venture. Yes. Sorry. A-L-I-V is the Venture and that’s the stepping forward into your future through this challenging time. Then E is the Evolve because you’re never the same. All of us are always evolving, but never the same. How are you evolving?

Shani: Got it. [chuckles]

Jeanie: The actual acronym came when we were writing the book after I almost died in a very serious car accident, not even knowing I’d been in it, woke up several days after the accident, after a titanium nail was put in my femur, my ribs were crushed, my hips were crushed, my femur was– I almost lost my leg. Joan had to decide whether or not they would retake my leg or try operate and so on.

I woke up and it was– last memory I had was facilitating a fabulous appreciative inquiry training session, [laughs] that I’ve driven home from, but I didn’t make it home. Somebody drove right into me, pushed me into oncoming traffic. I was schmucked into a very tiny space. Luckily, I survived. I woke up thinking, “What’s going on?” I’m intubated because my lungs has been crushed and punctured.

Joan is beside me. My sister, Joan, who lived on the other side of the country was there at the end of the bed. Why would she be here? Then, all the medical people. I thought, “Wow. I don’t know but I am alive. I’m alive.” I felt really–

Shani: That’s something to appreciate.

Jeanie: Yes. I was really happy. I’ve gotten love around me and people taking care of me. I don’t know what this is, but I was curious and I realized the embedding nature of my world is appreciative inquiry. I just was there happy to be alive. That became our acronym because it has the things. I appreciated–

As I healed, I appreciated what I could do rather than what I couldn’t do. There was so many things I couldn’t do, but any tiny little step forward, literally, for me, learning to walk again, each of those moments I appreciated and I thought, “Well, what can I do next?” I had love around me in the hospital. I was in the hospital for six weeks and many months of physio, et cetera afterwards, but I continue to venture. I tend to take that step, whatever the next step I could do in order to evolve.

I guess I still have a titanium nail in my leg. I walk perfectly well, but I don’t have much rotation on that leg. After walking for quite a long time, I’ll get tired because it’s being stressed. This is how many years later? Ten? Eleven years later now.

Those are the challenges is that appreciative inquiry mindset and really focusing on what is the love around us that we take those steps, that we make and falls through COVID and stuff. This A.L.I.V.E. model has been brilliant because we’ve all had to venture different ways. Our business is all virtual now, instead of going [crosstalk] places and everything is evolving. We’re having to learn all sorts of new things, which is not a bad thing because our accessibility is huge now. People worldwide are easily getting in to hear us and work with us. It’s quite wonderful-

Joan: One of the things–

Jeanie: [crosstalk] -in it’s in its horribleness [laughs] because we want to hug people, too.

Joan: One of the things we write about in the A.L.I.V.E. model about venture and evolve is we write about the fact that when we face a challenging time as a leader, it can be small, or it can be enormous, that kind of challenge that brings us to our knees as a leader. We are forever and irrevocably changed.

As we venture and evolve, we are becoming new leaders. We’re venturing into new ways of being human in our work. We write a lot about venturing and evolving, “Isn’t it about everything turning out okay?” It’s about evolving into what is next in our leadership lives. It’s not an easy place to practice appreciative inquiry, but just to last those generative questions, “What did I get to do today? What have I ventured? How am I evolving?”

Shani: Right. Of course, that ties as we’ve already alluded to so nicely to the last year of all of our lives. It’s not the new normal. It’s the next normal because things keep changing. I love the A.L.I.V.E. model, even just for COVID. A connection that I just made I want to ask you about is–

All right. People have been now, in most cases, in close quarters with their family or their quarantine buddies or whatever it is, because I certainly wouldn’t want to exclude single people. I knew a lot of single people have a few friends that are– they’re their core team, family. You two, as you said, your life partners, your business partners, you’ve lived together, you worked together, you were spending a lot more time together before COVID than most people are spending together with COVID. How do you use appreciative inquiry to keep all of those pieces of your life thriving when it would be so easy for you guys to get sick and tired of each other? [laughs]

Jeanie: Yes. It’s a good question. [laughs]

Joan: I think one of the simple things that we do is we have a gratitude practice. We start every morning with that we’re grateful for. What it does is lift up those things, even though we can’t fly around the world, we can’t work face to face with our clients, all those things that we’ve done as a business for years. What are we grateful for in this environment? Jokingly, if one of us runs an errand without the other, we’re really excited because we’ve had an experience without the other person. There is that–

Jeanie: Then, we get to talk about when we come back. [laughs]

Joan: We get to talk about like, “How was the traffic?” There is those jokes also, those appreciative jokes within this very closed system. I think, as you said, Jeanie and I, I think, in COVID are lucky because we have worked together, written together, lived together for a long time. We’re used to that relationship of being close. One of the things I think is powerful about appreciative inquiry in COVID is to seek the answer to the question, “How am I profoundly embracing what is happening to me right now? How am I making it mine?” Right? Because I think there’s a sense sometimes in COVID you want to push it away, but it’s not going anywhere.

We talk about this when we write about despair. COVID’s an example of [chuckles] large-scale despair. We can’t have what it is we want. That impacts how we feel and our mental health. We write about what is your tiniest strength in this time? How might you fan the flame of that strength ever so slightly?

For Jeanie and I, one of our tiny strengths is that joke about one of us running an errand without the other. It’s a joke between us as well as an actual thing. What are the tiny flames that we can fan in this time of huge difference?

Jeanie: We like to be together. We love to go walking. If somebody is really busy, then the other one will go walking. That’s really a lovely thing to do to have separation. Most of the times we go walking together and just getting out of the house and being in a beautiful environment. We live right by the ocean. We then are with each other in a different way than when we’re in the house. Even togetherness can create variety if you get out into the open.

Shani: Absolutely. I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask the question, the devil’s advocate question, which is for those people who tend towards being Negative Nellies or whatever you want to call it who would say, “Ah, that’s all good and well, but that’s just living in la-la-land to always try and be positive and blah-blah-blah. You’re just not being realistic. You’re trying to blow smoke up people’s–” You know the people. [chuckles] I’m quite certain that there’s an appreciative inquiry way that you would respond to that. [chuckles]

Jeanie: Oh, I would respond by saying, “Oh, tell me more.” If somebody is really feeling down and low, unworthy, you don’t ignore any of that. It goes back to that whole notion of the diversity, equity, and inclusion. Appreciation, you need to appreciate what it is, either in yourself or in others, don’t say I’m not going to focus on that because it’s not positive. That’s not appreciative inquiry. Appreciative inquiry isn’t about the positive ruling the world. It is about if you focus more on what’s working, what people’s strengths are, seeing people for who they are, all that is going to make you feel better. Also, it’s going to make them feel better.

So, it’s not about saying, “Oh, I’m going to be positive, so I’ll say, ‘Oh, I love your red shirt, Shani.'” Well, that’s not appreciative inquiry. People don’t actually [crosstalk]

Shani: Those are empty compliments. Right?

Jeanie: You describe like that, they have no understanding of what we’re talking about, [laughs] which is to really appreciate the world as it is and everybody as they are, and to value, value what needs to be the deep listening. We’re talking about Leadershift. I think deep listening more than anything and asking really generative questions, which could be simply, “Tell me more about that.” If it’s something that’s coming at you like this, just appreciating that they need to be talking about things that aren’t so good.

It’s not about changing them into a positive person. That’s not what we’re talking about. Yes. There’s all sorts of different moods that we have every single day. Where we get in our book about building resilience, we get into the notion of forgiveness, forgiveness of self, forgiveness of others, and how important that piece is as we live in despair. Our hope is to be back in hope and hope not to get what you want, but that it’ll be as it should be.

As with my accident, I’m alive and well, but I didn’t know that when I first– I had to hope that whatever this is, it’s meant to be, and how can I be in it? What can I do now? What’s working now? It’s that whole appreciative stance of looking at the world curiously of what can be.

Joan: Sometimes, I ask people who want to talk about everything that’s wrong, as Jeanie says deeply listen, but then to ask them, “What is it you’re really yearning for?” And define–

Shani: What’s the dream beneath the complaint?

Joan: Define the yearning beneath the complaint because every complaint has a yearning. That yearning is the territory of appreciative inquiry. What is it you’re really wanting as a leader? What are you trying to understand? What are you seeking to do? Then, suddenly, they’re beginning to reframe that negativity into yearning. In doing so, a path forward opens because when we’re standing looking down at our feet talking about what’s wrong, we’re stuck in that place. It feels powerful when we’re doing it, but we’re stuck in that place, but if we can transform it into a yearning, suddenly, there’s a path forward.

Shani: I love that. Speaking of path forward, I would love to invite you to read a short poem from your book. I know you said it was full of poetry. I would love to close out on that note.

Joan: This poem was from the Building Resilience with Appreciative Inquiry book.

Jeanie: Hold up the book.

Joan: It’s a poem about hope.

Jeanie: Wow. Let’s come back to hope.

Joan: Jeanie gave a wonderful definition of hope. It’s not about thinking that something is going to happen just because we want it to happen. It’s about deeply understanding that the path we’re on there’s something powerful here to be had.

“My beautiful friend hope,

you point me toward the sun,

you shelter me in the rain,

you trumpet my successes

and hold me in my sorrow

ever whispering, “Rise up. Rise up.”

Shani: Thank you. Ladies, if folks would like to know more or engage your services or get a copy of the book, what’s the best way to reach you?

Joan: Best way to find us is on our website, cockellmcarthur-blair.com. All of our books, of course, are available on any electronic bookseller these days, or if you’re brave going into a regular bookseller, our books are available in any bookseller. Probably the best way to connect with us is through our website. You’re welcome to put up our contact information at the end of this. That would be delightful.

We not just in terms of people coming to us as clients, but we’re part of appreciative inquiry community around the world. If people want to explore appreciative inquiry and just want to have a coffee chat about, “I’ve been thinking about this appreciative inquiry thing and I don’t even know where to start,” we’re always up for that as well.

Shani: Great. Thank you for that. Thank you for coming on the show. I will absolutely post the website link in the show notes and so forth. Leadershifters, I hope that you enjoyed today’s show as much as I did. It always amazes me that I can have folks on the show talking about a concept with which I’m already pretty familiar and it blows my mind how much I still learn and take away. Some of the questions that you, ladies, shared that I wrote down, I will use, I will recommend, use for myself and recommend to others.

“How do you intersect with privilege and difference yourself? How can we be allies in the moment?” I’m trying to read my own writing. “How might we set expectations about belonging in this team, group, organization, soccer team, whatever it is? How might we invite more people to the conversation about diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging?”

Then, of course, the A.L.I.V.E. acronym for helping us get through tough times, the current COVID period included in that A.L.I.V.E., Appreciate, Love, Inquiry, getting curious in those difficult times. Then, taking one small step to venture into the future as we evolve.

Thank you for evolving with me on The Leadershift Show. You know how to reach me on the various social media outlets or [email protected]. Until next time.

Joan: Thank you very much.

Jeanie: Thanks, Shani.

Shani: Thanks so much.

The post 60: Authentically “A.L.I.V.E.” in tough times with Joan McArthur-Blair and Jeanie Cockell appeared first on The LeaderShift Project.

I am joined on today’s episode by serial entrepreneur and fellow business coach, David Taylor- Klaus, to talk about his newly released book, Mindset Mondays with DTK: 52 Ways to REWIRE Your Thinking and Transform Your Life. He shares the inspiration behind the book, which was a Facebook Live series based on randomly selecting and riffing on one of the inspiring quotes — by authors, artists, coaches, and other visionaries — that were printed on the back of his business cards. At first, he resisted if not dreaded doing the weekly live videos, but soon Mindset Mondays became so popular that it spawned a Facebook group for people to connect and share in between. I absolutely love this lesson in taking an uncomfortable risk that ends up being a game changer! At the end of every chapter, David included an interactive section called REWIRE, with provocative questions, thought experiments, and prompts designed to make readers’ learning stick. As an acronym queen myself, I appreciate that REWIRE stands for Reflect, Experiment, Write, Investigate, Revise, and Expand, a structured yet playful approach that stimulates cognitive flexibility and creates meaningful, lasting change. Why is cognitive flexibility important? Because we see the world as we are and based on our unique set of experiences…and we react accordingly. It takes intentionality and agility to respond in a more creative and open-minded way and, thus, produce the impact we desire as leaders. David and I played with applying these concepts to helping leaders and their teams shift their mindsets about the outcome of the U.S. Presidential election and other factors that are distracting people at work and at home these days. Don’t miss this highly engaging and practical discussion!

TRANSCRIPT

Episode 59: Mindset Mondays with David Taylor-Klaus

Shani Magosky: Is your team not performing well? Is morale low and turnover high? Are you falling further behind the competition? I’m here to help. I’m your host Shani and this is The Leadershift Show where business strategy and culture finally meet and we make the long-awaited shift from rhetoric to results. I promise I’m not your typical boring leadership consultant and I will help you get your shift together. Let’s do this.

Hello Leadershifters and welcome to another episode of The Leadershift Show with yours truly, Shani. Today, I am joined by David Taylor-Klaus. He’s dialing in from Hotlanta, Georgia today. David is a fellow coach and leadership guru. As I was getting to know him in advance of having him on the podcast today, we’re not quite identical twins but we have a lot of the same training and theories. You might think to yourself, “Why would you have him on your podcast then?”

Well, because I’m so interested in his take on the world and I’m so interested in learning how other people apply some of the same teaching that we were part of through Co-Active Training Institute and Co-Active Leadership and some of the programs that we have in common and that’s what makes the world go round, right? Is that everybody has their own ideas and their own applications. That is a nice segue to yet another real reason that I wanted to have David on the show which was to educate all of you about his exciting new book which is called Mindset Mondays.

What I just did was demonstrate a mindset shift that maybe you didn’t think about which is “Well, why would you have someone so similar to you on the show?” Well, you could see my mindset is, we might be similar enough but we’re still two different people and lots to learn from each other and for you the leadershift listener. David, welcome to the show.

David Taylor-Klaus: Thank you, Shani. I’m excited for this one. I can’t wait to see where we go.

Shani: I know, round and round and round we go, where we stop, nobody knows. First of all, tell us about Mindset Mondays starting with what gave you the idea for the book and the path to publishing since it maybe wasn’t exact– Nothing in life is a straight line, is it?

David: Ever. Here’s the secret, I didn’t start off to write a book. When I started this whole Mindset Mondays with DTK project, it was I wanted to get more fascicles speaking about any topic through the lens and doing it off the cuff. I hated the idea of doing video. I had all kinds of made-up crap in my head about didn’t want to do videos, it was going to be terrible. I saw so much other video out there that was terrible. I’ve been working with this same marketing person for over 20 years. Jodi knows me really well.

One of the things that I do on the back of all my business cards, they’re like 50 different backs to my cards and each one has a different quote on it. Jodi said– at this point, Facebook was really promoting their Facebook live and over prioritizing it. She said, “Look, pick up one of your cards with a quote on the back, flip on the camera and riff on what comes up for 10-15 minutes.” We said, “Yes, on a Monday morning it’s a great thing to play with mindset.” That’s how that started. Now, Jodi had this whole plan that she was talking about and it could turn into a book, and talks, and events. I just heard blah, blah, blah, because I didn’t want to do the videos.

Shani: Because you were stuck on, “Oh, shit, I don’t know how to do these video things. If I don’t do it perfect, what does that say about me?”

David: Exactly. All the saboteurs were screaming in my head so she kept talking and I’m like, “Yes, whatever.” I flip on the camera and I put it out to the world that I’m going to do this. I flip it on the first day, all the software crashes, it doesn’t work and I’m like, “Now, this is a terrible idea.” The next week, it’s Groundhog Day. I’m like, “Okay, fine. It’s got to go better than the last one.”

Anyway, I finally get it working. Then over the first several weeks, people start showing up. Then people start interacting and they start interacting and chatting back and forth and commenting in between. It starts a small Facebook group which has been growing. This coming Monday will be episode 141 of this weekly series.

Shani: Nice.

David: I’ve enjoyed the hell out of it. I started learning a ton about mindset and a lot about taking learning and making it real in the world and how we shift our lens and how that shifts our experience. I started learning a lot from the community as they were going through this. I’m in part of a mastermind and everybody’s talking about the book they’re writing and I was like, “Damn it, now I have to pay attention.” It really surfaced the book.

I was in the middle of reading a colleague’s book and the chapters were like 50, 60 pages and it felt like I was slogging through it. It had nothing to do with the content, it’s just I felt like I wasn’t making progress. It was one of these– Then I heard Sam Horn who’s an author and she does a lot of work with folks about getting their book out. She said, “You want to make the chapter short so that people can get a sense of accomplishment as they roll through the book.” I’m like, “I get that.” I was feeling it.

Another CTI coach, Laurie Shiers, helped me get this book out of my bloody head and onto paper. What we did was these chapters are all short, easily digestible and immediately actionable learning. They’re based on the first 52 episodes in the broadcast series. It got really exciting as it started to come together. As we were talking about in the pre-show, I read something that got my stomach to turn over. The Pew Trust in 2015 did some research and said that 41% of people who buy a book, read past chapter one.

Shani: That is so demoralizing for a fellow author.

David: It was crushing. Now, I get it because two of the books that are right here, not to mention how many are over there, I’ve not read yet. I do have some shelfware and I know lots of other people do but I wasn’t going to pour life and heart and energy and money and time into this project for it to be shelfware. I was like, “Okay, just because there’s cool stuff in there, doesn’t mean people are going to do anything with it.”

Laurie and I created the rewire framework which is a mechanism. It’s a six-step process to take the learning from each chapter and actually take it out into their world and use it. Then I started to get really excited about this. Talk about it not being a straight line. Shani, this book was supposed to come out in February, right before– we were going to launch it on Groundhog Day so it would have been a month before lockdown started in the US. Nobody would ever have noticed.

Shani: What’s ironic about that it’s every day has felt like Groundhog’s Day since COVID.

David: Yes, it has.

[laughter]

Shani: That’s what we say, we say it’s Blursday.

David: Right. I’s said Blursday, the 32nd of awful. I have no idea what day it is anymore. Well, other than I do a broadcast on Monday morning so I always know when it’s Monday.

Shani: That’s right.

David: The publisher was not making the process easier. I separated from the publisher, retooled and did this thing self-published. It’s come out in September right when people are at that, “Oh, we’re seeing daylight.” No, we’re not, second wave. It’s been a really wild time. People are really using this book to shift the experience they’re having in the world right now.

Shani: Let’s talk about that. In fact, I was going to do it the opposite way. I was going to say, let’s use a business example, maybe even something from the book and then let’s go real-world COVID but since we’re on real-world COVID now, let’s do that first and then we can move on to some common business examples. How would you recommend to clients or readers to apply the concepts in Mindset Mondays to, oh, I don’t know, let’s just say the biggest election in the history of any of our generations if we’re living and breathing in the United States today?

David: This is a really good time to be reminded that we have control over the experience we have in the world. Nothing’s going to change what’s going to happen over the next week. There will be an election and there will be some sort of political upheaval over the several days it’s going to take to know who actually won or how it’s going to play out. There’s nothing that we can do to change that. However, what I love about this book, there’s a quote that Carl Jung gets credit for, but it’s really from the Talmud. It’s “We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are” The power in that is that when we change our lens, the lens through which we see the world, we change the way we experience it.

We are completely at choice and in control of how we experience these next several days or weeks. Regardless of who wins between election night and inauguration day, there’s going to be some crazy shit going on.

Shani: Absolutely.

David: How do you want to be in relation to that? Where are you being choiceful about how you frame it? So much of the conversation up until now has been “I hate the other guy.” It doesn’t matter which guy you like, it’s “I hate the other guy.” Even when there were 300 Democrats running for the nomination it was “I hate the other ones. I hate all, but this one.”

What you put your attention on expands. How do you want to frame the conversation? I don’t hear a lot of folk talking about what it is they want to see created, how they want things to be. They talk about how they don’t want it and what they don’t like and that energy is crazy.

Shani: Exactly and what country they’re going to run off to if the wrong person gets elected, “wrong person”.

David: As if any country were taking our passports right now.

Shani: Exactly.

David: This is about what is it you want to see created? I started my practice in ‘08 and ‘09 right in the middle of the fiscal readjustment we had. The companies, the leaders that freaked out and went into trench mode, very few of those companies made it. The ones who looked at– I’m not saying they didn’t go into trench mode, but the ones who from that position looked at how do we reinvent, re-engineer, re-imagine ourselves out of this? They’re the ones whose mindset allowed them to see things differently, experience it differently and create more shift. Those are the leaders who understood the shift comes from within.

We don’t have to go back to 1918 to figure out how to deal with this craziness. I mean that’s helpful. We can go back 12 years and look at who are the companies that created shift instead of waiting for the economy to shift? That’s our job right now.

Shani: Absolutely. When people ask me why I named my business The Leadershift Project, it’s pretty much for exactly that reason because we live in a world that is anything but static and a leader who isn’t constantly shifting whether it’s a strategy or a mindset, then they’re going to get lost. Shift feels a lot more intentional than change which feels chaotic and like out of your control. We can be choiceful about how we shift in response to change.

David: We have a choice. We can react to the changing world around us or we can respond.

Shani: That’s right.

David: Reacting is not conscious, it’s not rational, it’s not intentional or choiceful. It’s effectively animalistic response. I mean it’s an animalistic action.

Shani: Right because it’s coming from our amygdala which is the reptile brain.

David: The reptile brain doesn’t have a lot of nuance.

Shani: That’s right. [chuckles]

David: I had a friend who from the 12-step program learned that we’re not responsible for our first thought, but we are responsible for our second. Even when we react initially, we are at choice on how we respond after that. That’s where mindset comes in. It’s being intentional and choiceful about how we choose to respond. Boy are we going to need that in the coming weeks.

Shani: Absolutely. Let’s take it even further. On a personal level, leadershifters, you may or may not be disappointed if not on November 2nd on the 3rd, 4th, 5th, whatever the day all the mail and ballets finally get counted and the various States whose deadlines have been extended, it’s all noise because eventually, we will have an answer as to who’s going to be in the White House come inauguration for another four years.

Your first thought that you’re not responsible for necessarily is the “Oh shit” moment and all of the reactive things that we think and feel when we’re disappointed or we feel threatened or pissed off or whatever, but what is the second thought you want to have about that on a personal level?

Get your shit together on that because if you don’t, what’s the impact you’re going to have on your teams when you show up on the next Zoom call because most of us aren’t going into any physical office right now because undoubtedly, and I’ve actually been having this conversation and, David, maybe you have been too with leaders in organizations who are anticipating chaos this week with people, their employees being like apoplectic, potentially and how they’re going to deal with that.

Leaders, we absolutely need to get more mindful and intentional about our own reaction as well as how we want to show up and influence the folks in our sphere of everyday work to make sure that we’re not getting stuck. It’s like, okay, let’s process what happened and now, let’s choose how we’re going to respond to what happened.

David: Also making space for it. The last election was– The last campaign season and election season was toxic. I’m not saying that this one isn’t. During the last one, many leaders said, we don’t talk about politics here. We don’t have that luxury, that privilege anymore. The energy from the campaign and the election results and whatever happens in between, is already leaking into the workspace, especially now that we’re working from home and it’s staining conversations.

If we pretend it’s not there and we pretend over the next several days that people aren’t distracted, upset, celebrating, whoever they are, if we don’t attend to that and create space for that, then we’re treating our people as less than the human beings they are. People need room to be with what happens, celebration or mourning, irritation or excitement. If we don’t give space for it, it will fester until it reaches the surface.

Shani: Yes. Like giving space to individuals to process depending on which camp they’re in and also setting a tone of inclusion and that like just because you don’t agree with the other camp, doesn’t mean we can’t still work together effectively. Let’s look at it as we would any other difference where the energy in the collective has been for more diversity, more inclusion, more equity, not making people wrong, leaving room for diverse opinions, even on politics, folks.

David: We used to be able to disagree without being disagreeable.

Shani: That’s right.

David: Now is the time to bring that mindset back, how do we be civil with each other, especially when we don’t agree? In order to have the conversations that we need to be having around diversity, around equity, around inclusion, around belongingness, we can’t do that from a mindset of, “I’m right, you’re wrong, only when you agree with me, will you be okay, until then, you’re just an idiot.” That kind of approach doesn’t work.

The cool things is one of the things we got to learn through the leadership program was that idea of alignment versus agreement. That is a mindset shift that’s core when we start with agreement. Have you shared this with the Leadershifters yet?

Shani: I teach this concept. I’m not sure I’ve actually talked about it on a podcast yet. Go for it.

David: Awesomesauce. No, because I think this is a cool one for leaders because so often, leaders are looking to try to get everybody to agree. When you’re trying to get everybody to agree, the tone of the conversation tends to lean towards convincing. It’s really coming from that place of, once you agree with me, you’ll be right too. Until then, you’re dumb.

It’s terrible. The example I used to use was, Pelosi and Boehner when they were leading, everything was about convincing, everything was seeking agreement, nothing got done. Whether you like Ron Reagan and Tip O’Neill, way back, they didn’t like each other. They didn’t agree on a lot, but they started with alignment. They aligned around what was important. They were aligned about what they thought was important for the country, what they wanted for.

They were able to come to an understanding. They could understand the differences in their approaches, their background and the desired outcomes and they could have the conversation there. Then, they were able to get to agreement on what was to be done, but by starting with alignment, they could get to agreement. When you start with agreement, there is no understanding, there is no alignment, there’s no movement, there’s no progress. We have the same shitty situation we have right now.

Shani: Yes. For sure because you’re right, agreement has the energy of there’s a right and there’s a wrong, versus alignment has we’re going in the same general direction. That feels much better than like this push and pull of negotiating and trying to force agreement. What came up for me as I was hearing you explain the topic, because I just love– It’s a nuance and people will be like “Aren’t they synonyms.” Not really because I think it’s easy to illustrate with a metaphor or an analogy.

I can never remember which one’s which, but I’m a rock climber and a mountaineer. Some of these big peaks like Fourteeners in Colorado, mountains that are over 14,000 feet tall are big hairy audacious goals for hiking. If I’m with a group of people who all want to hike this mountain and I’m trying to get everyone to agree to start at the same time, end at the same time, take the exact same path with the exact same backpack and the exact same amount of water and the exact same snacks, because my snacks are right and your snacks are wrong, we’re never going to hike this mountain and achieve this goal.

If we just say, “Listen we’re all aligning that our goal is to top out this Fourteener.” We’re all responsible adults to bring the approach that works for us to move towards goal, and that’s oversimplifying a little bit. I think it helps people realize sometimes the stupidity or the insignificance of the things that they’re trying to agree on anyway like snacks.

David: Yet the arguments can become pretty fierce.

Shani: Yes.

David: Right, because it takes the judging and the voting out of it. Not political voting. It takes that right wrong judgment out of it and it becomes what is it that’s important, how are each of us going to get there in a way that works? That’s a very different mindset particularly when we’re back to how are these folk going to work together in the coming days, weeks and months as all of this hullabaloo sifts out? If we go from the mindset of whether it’s you didn’t vote or you did vote, and then if you did vote how you voted, and it gets into judging and voting, forget agreement. People are just haranguing each other. That’s not going to help working together, but what is it that we’re aligned around?

That’s the goal of the leader anyway. One of the first responsibilities of the leader is to set and communicate the vision across the entire organization. That’s not the– Martin Luther King speech was not the I have a plan speech. The leader’s job is to get people aligned around what the goal is. There are people serving that organization below the leader that are creating the plans so that her goal is reached, so that vision is manifested. That image has to be created. That vision has to be created and communicated and that’s around that feeds into the alignment, not agreement.

Shani: Yes. I love it, and so is there a chapter in the book that we can take as example number two in terms of contextually using a mindset shift to get from A to B.

David: Many, many, many.

Shani: Thank you for asking. [laughs]

David: Thank you. There’s one that I love. It’s chapter is called Rise Up. It’s based off the quote– each of the chapters has a quote that was used for the broadcast and it’s all riffed off of. This one is Suzanne Wien. It’s, “Your life is an occasion, rise to it”. One of the concepts that comes up from that is done beats perfect. That’s a huge shift for organizations. I’ll give you a great example. In my last company, we did a lot of overthinking and over perfecting and spent a ludicrous amount of money building a content management platform.

It was a web development company, internet strategy. We faffed about trying to get it just perfect and really mistimed the market. Instead of getting it done to a point we could put it in front of the market and let the market respond and let us shift accordingly, we tried to make it perfect before we released it. Several major competitors hit before we did. It was a viable product and it worked and it gave us great runway for several years, but it was a tenth of the impact it could have had, because we were so effing focused on perfect, we didn’t get it done.

Shani: It’s a minimum viable product to write the term monology in the text space not a minimally or a maximally perfect product to put out here to test.

David: Yes. Because you can do that– you can massage it to try to make it perfect for so long that it never gets out there.

Shani: Exactly, and then the other thing is perfect for whom? Nothing can be perfect for a 100% of the people. [laughs]

David: that’s the piece. I talked about this book. I tried to focus on what it was that I wanted for the reader. There are folks– so this also goes to my practice as well. The idea that if all your goals are around how do I get better at doing what I do? There’s a functional limit to your personal and professional success because it’s all focused on the doing aspect of it. We all reach a point– let’s just say you can bludgeon your way through corporate only so far constantly getting better at doing what you do, there’s a level of professional success that requires the next leap, is you getting better at being who you be, who you are at your core.

What excites me about the book is really tailoring it for people who begin to understand that my next leap is coming from getting better at being me. The doing aspect is a natural cascade of getting better at being who you are, being who you be, you do get better at doing what you do because it’s more natural expression of who you are authentically. That’s who this book is really for. The folks who understand that by getting better at being who I am, clearing away the clutter of what’s not true in me is where my growth is coming from.

Shani: Yes. I love that as well as I don’t even know if you’ve noticed your own play on words that you were tailoring the experience too.

David: [laughs] Yes. I totally missed that. [laughter]

Shani: If you joined late, folks, we are talking with David Taylor-Klaus. The first part of his hyphen last name, Taylor, and that’s what I love about homonyms.

David: I love it.

Shani: I pick up on them all the time and I love plays on words.

David: When my wife and I got married, I grew up as a Klaus, and she grew up as a Taylor. Lumping them together, it’s amazing. I’m sure that she’s run across that before. I totally missed that until now. Thank you.

Shani: Good stuff. I also wanted to chat with you about the philosophy that you have in terms of how you work or how you even select clients to work with. Because I think that it’s a powerful– it’s also a mindset, it’s also something that I think leadershifters can think about in their own worlds. You don’t have to be a coach for the cascade effect to be relevant. If you could explain to us what is the cascade effect? How do you apply it, and then let’s banter about how others might apply it.

David: Sweet. I have no illusions about the impact footprint that I can have and I realize that there are only so many hours in the day and only so many months or years that I’ll be doing this and so much time that I have here on this planet. It doesn’t matter how driven I am by what I want to get done, I have to look for ways to make that impact footprint bigger if I want to get done what I’m here to do.

One of them is I love the one-to-one coaching and I love coaching the teams that those leaders lead. There’s only so much I can do. I’m super selective about working with people who where the impact that I have on them or the impact they create through the coaching, they’re going to bring to the folks that they lead, an organization they lead, a country they lead, it doesn’t matter that I’m always choosing to work with folk who have a cascade impact so that my impact can cascade.

When I design whether it’s this book, whether it’s a presentation, whether it’s a workshop, it’s always designed not just to be compelling for the people that are in the room in the space or holding the book, but so that they can take what they learn and bring it out to their world and pass that along.

Shani: Right.

David: That cascade is a huge value of mine.

Shani: I love that and the other thing it says to me is abundance. The things that you and your clients talk about in a coaching conversation, there’s no like, “Oh, no you can’t use that on your people, that’s mine, that’s our conversation.” It’s like, “No, please take this question that you found so powerful and caused you so much reflection and to reach an aha moment and please copy it and use it with your people.” Whatever it is that they’re paying forward in.

David: Absolutely and I work with leaders, it’s opening up the questions about– it’s not the– I get that the word legacy is thrown about all the time but I don’t think people really consider what their legacy is. We live in a country where the first nations had a concept of seventh generation consideration where you are considering the impact of every action and every decision on the seventh generation ahead of you or the seventh generation into the future. The average tenure of a CEO in the US right now is between three and five years.

We have developed this myopic quarter over quarter performance basis view and it’s terrible and it’s not about the environment. This is about leadership writ large that we’re not considering our impact cascade. We barely consider our impact wake and that’s an important thing, that’s a huge shift that’s available for leaders, is to begin to be clear about and work to get clear about what the shift is you’re here to create.

As a human on this planet in this time, what’s the shift you’re here to create. Every company, every entrepreneur, every individual has a shift they’re here to create and the reason that it’s critical for leaders to understand the shift they’re here to create– there are several, here’s the most important one, that especially with what’s coming up over the next several days, weeks, months, when you know what the shift is you’re here to create, then it’s easier to be responsive to upheaval that happens. If we play it out in the language of say Simon Sinek start with why. When your why is big enough and clear enough, you can overcome any how that comes up.

We’re about to have some serious shift required energetically, emotionally in terms of business, in terms of the economy, in terms of how we interact and interrelate with people on our team. When you’re clear on what the shift is you’re here to create, you can better lead those that you lead. You can better serve those that you lead and you can better architect the shift that needs to be done on a day to day basis.

Shani: Right and even the day to day decisions are made in alignment –to go back to one of our previous conversations– with the longer term. It may not be seven generations but it’s certainly going to be more than just the next Wall Street earnings report.

David: Marker.

Shani: Which believe me it’s one of the many reasons I left Wall Street because that’s the industry I called home for the first half of my career and–

David: I shouldn’t say, “trigger warning” before I went there

[laughter]

Shani: It’s not a good way to run the business with quarterly hoops to jump through in terms of– and some of the CEO’s who haven’t bought into that mindset like the former CEO of Costco comes to mind. I remember.

David: Absolutely great [crosstalk]

Shani: He used to piss off wall street analysts to no end. If he negotiated savings with a supplier of one of their products, he would pass that savings along to the customer, not to the shareholder and investors were pissed off and he’s like, “No, in the long run, I want to create raving loyal, fans, shoppers who are going to shop here for the rest of their lives.”

David: He did.

Shani: He did and they’ve been successful.

David: They don’t spend money on advertising, they put all that money into caring for their employees and it makes a huge difference, right? There’s a mindset there and he’s so clear that when you take care of your team, your team takes care of the customers. He held that from the beginning till his last day. He was aware of the cascade effect, whether it was consciously or not, that’s a brilliant example of it. I think when we get too focused on the short-term harpies on the sidelines screaming about what they want, we lose track of the bigger goal and that’s the wrong kind of shift.

Shani: I don’t know if this quote has been in any of your Mindset Monday recordings or is in the book but the one that I may not get it exactly right but it’s, if you try to please everyone, you’ll please no one and so figuring out who are you trying to please and over what time period are you trying to please them? What’s the key measure for success because you’re not going to nail all of them.

David: Well and that’s chapter 24. It talks about the point of view and it’s having a point of view is critical because if you don’t and yours morphs with every influence that comes up, we see companies that you try to chart their direction and they move on a different direction with every CEO, they move on a different different direction with every filing, every earnings report and it’s exhausting. I’m not saying it’s easy when you hold a vision and nothing will change, but not knowing your point of view leaves you at the whim of the economic winds.

Shani: Having a conviction about what you as a leader are here to accomplish and what the mission and vision of the organization are over the long term, not just for each product or every service or in this quarterly period.

The last thing I want to ask you about David, is to get a little more specific about your rewire framework as part of the book. You’ve got the mindset shifts and then as I understand it, at the end of every chapter, it’s like okay well our mindsets have been wired first for decades many of us and so how do you unwire that or rewire that? You’ve got some steps to help people really retrain.

David: Rewire is actually an acronym because I’m a a word nerd. It’s an acronym for reflect, experiment, write, investigate, revise and expand. The concept is, if we want to embed the learning, there are certain tools that we use to do that, excuse me. The first one is, to bloody sit still. Each chapter, the first step, the first prompt is reflect and we have different prompts that will help you go through giving yourself the time and the space to breathe and reflect on the experience of reading that chapter, and being with that mindset, right?

Then to experiment with it, to play with a new idea or a new concept and notice what’s resonating, what’s dissonant, where are you indifferent, where are you leaning in, where are you freaking out and then try to apply that in your world. Well the next step is, Brene Brown says, it’s different when you’re writing by hand. I think the way she said is, the experience goes from head to heart to hand to paper and writing is different than typing.

I was raised by a physician. My handwriting’s atrocious. I sometimes have trouble reading my own handwriting and there’s something different when I capture it by hand as I process it and let it out. The writing piece is, ditch the computer, I’ve put a journaling page at the end of each chapter-

Shani: Nice.

David: -so that people will actually be more likely to use it. I can’t give you a pen get your own, but there’s a space for you to actually use it in the book, to capture everything. We use prompt– the right prompt is in there with some specific ways for them to play with each chapter. Then investigate, really go deep, look at what’s come up and what you’ve written and really go deeper and explore what worked and what didn’t. A sober assessment without the judgment and look at what you want to do more of and less of and differently in the future.

Then revise your experiment and take it back out into the world. Again, play with it and see where the differences are, see what works, see what didn’t. Then expanding it is where it gets really real because it’s now expanding past this area that you’re playing with it and experiment with it in other areas of your life. Take that learning that you applied here and take it into other arenas of your life.

When I was in school, for instance in math, you used to do three chapters before you had a test, but then the test was on chapter one. Then you do another chapter and the test then was on two because you were then using what you learned as you did the next chapters so that you were applying it before you were tested on it. It wasn’t about rote memory. It wasn’t that memorizing crap. It was about using it and applying it, so the questions were tied to your learning of it through application. This is the same way. It’s letting you do something with it so that it sticks or is more likely to stick. [chuckles]

Shani: For sure, and of course people have to have the right mindset to go through those things because if they’re just going through the rewire checklist as a to-do list item rather than truly as a learner, reflector, et cetera, then, garbage in garbage out, right?

David: Yes. I’ve been the box checker before. I’m doing it because it’s performative and this is one where you’ll actually sit still and play with it. You maybe frustrated and it’s awesome.

Shani: It strikes me as a great way to embed any kind of learning, not just learning about mindset shift. It could be learning new skills also, like what you said, you can do all of these steps for anything that’s truly new and different and not completely final. A process or a new product, et cetera, because that’s daily anymore. Now I feel like the term VUCA is overused.

David: We underestimated what VUCA looked like.

Shani: For sure. It’s almost like VUCA isn’t VUCA anymore. It’s the normal. [laughs]

David: Yes, we’re in the new abnormal.

Shani: There’s never going to be a how-to book or a 101 books about leadership in this day and age and so it is more about getting comfortable being uncomfortable and experimenting in little steps. This is almost taking us back to a recap because some of the notes I took earlier on were around things being short and easily digestible and taking big projects and breaking them down into smaller steps and this is yet another contextual way to do that.

David: Back to something else we talked about pre-show. Look, everybody in our house is ADHD, so we’ve learned a lot about systems and structures that help keep you accountable to something to which you want to be held accountable. By the way, that’s the key. You have to have motivation attached to it because it doesn’t matter what system or structure you use, if you’re not motivated or can’t find a motivation to attach to it, good luck. That’s a lot of the work of parenting kids with ADHD is helping them learn to find the motivation.

Guess what? If you’re choosing to spend time doing these exercises and doing these prompts and going through this book, clearly there’s some motivation to create a shift. Let’s assume that’s there, I created the Mindset Mondays Accelerator so that it’s an online system that helps keep you prompted and fueled as you go through this. It gives you links to the original videos and it gives you some additional content, and a playground in a private Facebook group to communicate with the other folks that are going through it along with you. The Mindset Mondays Accelerator is an online experience that helps you keep going with the book.

Shani: I love it.

David: Because the world gets busy. I need reminders.

Shani: We get busy and it’s just too comfortable to slip back into old habits so we do need the accelerators and the reminders and the accountability partners and all the things.

David: It’s because key movement is very powerful. We used to joke about it. We would send our team out for this brilliant three-day off-site and everybody was excited and everything was going to be totally different and everybody was pumped. Then Monday morning everybody goes back into the office, the emails start, the phone starts, you forget everything. You go back to the day-to-day because that’s what was familiar.

Shani: Absolutely.

David: Give yourself the structures so that you can create the conditions for success. All right, wrap away.

Shani: I love it. I was just going to say, so for those of you who are feeling really compelled by the book and mindset shifts and how you can make anything new stick with the rewire framework and so forth, how can they reach you, David?

David: The easiest way is Mindset Mondays with DTK. That URL, it’ll give you information about the book. You can download the rewire framework. There are links in the top to find out more about me and what I do, and once you’ve got the book, there are also links in there to the Mindset Mondays Accelerator, so try to keep it super simple.

Shani: Excellent. I love it. Leadershifters, you know what a fan I am of shifting mindsets so Mindset Mondays sounds like a great tool for you to explore and check out and experiment with as part of your personal journeys to shifting whatever it is in your life that you’re looking to shift. Whether it’s your team, whether it’s in your family or even in your own life purpose. Of course, work with many of you who are looking to reinvent themselves and even completely shift, makeover what you’re doing in the world.

This time has caused a lot of contemplation about what the hell am I doing when we actually have that opportunity to pause. I really thank you for joining us on the show today, David. I think the conversation we had is going to be useful to a lot of listeners and watchers so thank you so much.

David: Beautiful. So enjoyed it. Thanks for letting me play with you.

Shani: My pleasure. Leadershifters, thanks again for joining us. Until next time.

The post 59:Mindset Mondays with David Taylor-Klaus appeared first on The LeaderShift Project.

Don’t be fooled by the title of this episode…it’s not about lawyers or litigation! Rather, it’s a lively dialogue about how to apply the concepts from the award-winning book by Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time. Join me and Luis Gonzales, Communication and Culture expert and Master Facilitator from Fierce, Inc. Of course, I couldn’t resist asking Luis to explain the difference between fierce, crucial, radically candid, and difficult conversations, and his sagacious response was that it doesn’t really matter what you call it, they are all bold and courageous conversations that need to take place yet don’t happen often enough. How does one get past the fear or discomfort that deters us? Well, start with getting curious, beginning with “interrogating your own reality.” That means gaining more awareness of your unique personal filters and real reasons behind wanting to engage in a fierce conversation. We discussed applications ranging from coping with the stressors of #covid on your team to making real strides with #DEI in your organization. Also interesting is hearing how Fierce pivoted from nearly 100% in-person trainings to 100% virtual ones, with a combination of live online, asynchronous microlearning modules, 3D simulations, and a soon-to-be-released app (#thefutureisnow!).

TRANSCRIPT

Episode 58: Fierce Conversations and Interrogating Reality with Luis Gonzales

Shani Magosky: Is your team not performing well? Is morale low and turnover high? Are you falling further behind the competition? I’m here to help. I’m your host, Shani, and this is The LeaderShift Show where business strategy and culture finally meet and we make the long-awaited shift from rhetoric to results. I promise I’m not your typical born leadership consultant, and I will help you get your shift together. Let’s do this.

Hello, Leadershifters, and welcome to another episode of The LeaderShift Show with yours truly Shani. It has been a while, hashtag 2020. There have been a few things going on that have prevented me from recording some podcast episodes. Funny enough today’s guest Luis Gonzales, who is a culture and conversation expert and a master facilitator with Fierce Conversation, this is our third attempt to try and record the podcast because first, he had a work fire drill, and then I had a strange thing happened where the water went off in my apartment and I literally couldn’t take a shower and I’m too vain to get on the podcast with a baseball hat. Had to postpone again, so, third time is the charm, folks, and welcome Luis to The LeaderShift Show. Thanks for joining us today.

Luis Gonzales: Shani, thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

Shani: One of the first things I want to ask since you are a very senior-level person with Fierce Conversations and I think a lot of our listeners and watchers are familiar with Kim’s sorry Susan Scott’s book Fierce Conversations. It’s been on the business bestseller list multiple years and on a lot of executives’ bookshelves as I’ve wandered into people’s offices. Question is, what is the difference between a Fierce Conversation or a candid conversation or a radically candid conversation, a crucial conversation, a difficult conversation, et cetera? [chuckles]

Luis: Great question. I’m glad you asked that question. I think they’re all getting at the same thing. How to say what you know needs to be said, what you really feel, what you really want to say, what’s really inside of you that you want to get out there but oftentimes, we human beings hold back. Usually, there’s some fear holding us back. Fear of being wrong, fear of ruining a relationship, or what have you. I think we’re all trying to get at the same thing.

With Fierce Conversation, fierce is a strong word, fierce is bold, it’s assertive, it’s courageous, all those things. Those are the conversations that we’re talking about when we say fierce conversations. You can say it in so many other ways as you already did, but it’s meaning the same thing. Get out what you need to say, what should be said, and how do you do that in a way that enriches relationships.

Shani: Got it, and just quickly, without giving away the milk with the cow because I know people pay you a lot of money to come in and to teach them about fierce conversations, but what is the framework from an overall standpoint?

Luis: From an overall standpoint, let me just start with the starting point. How we look at it is this is a foundational belief that we have and it made perfect sense to me the first time I heard it, first time I read it in Fierce Conversations in Susan Scott’s book. Our careers, our companies our relationships, our lives, they either succeed or fail and it happens gradually, then suddenly, one conversation at a time.

For me, that really landed like, am I being intentional in all of my conversations in terms of where I want to go, what my results are, what results do I want to get, what kind of relationships do I want to have? Because it’s either a success or a failure and it doesn’t happen usually overnight, it’s gradual. Suddenly it’ll happen, whether it’s a success story that you’re going to celebrate or you missed the mark and you’re going to cry about it.

That’s where we start and then that leads us to the next idea that came to my mind anyway is that means there’s missing conversations. There’s conversations that were not happening that are not happening we’re not having, or in my case, I’ll speak for myself, unreal conversations. You know what I mean, the surface ones.

Shani: Yes. “Oh, no. Everything’s fine.”

Luis: Exactly.

Shani: Most people are conflict avoidant and fierce conversations are usually the constructive conversations. The feedback that you’re afraid to give a co-worker or a direct report or even up. I view managing up as a potentially fierce conversation as I’m sure you all do as well but the funny thing is, if you can get past the fear and show up to the conversation with the right mindset, it’s actually the biggest gift that you can give the person or the team or with the client or whomever is on the receiving end, right?

Luis: I would agree. How I pose it if you don’t mind my jumping in, how I pose it to people that I’m training and facilitating this with and having this conversation with is I just weigh it out. I avoid the conversation or I keep it surface. What’s the result of that going to be, what does that look like, am I going to be happy with that? What does that look like say six months down the road? Or, what if I do, master up the courage to have the conversation, there’s a 50% chance it’ll go well. It could go well or not. 50% chance could go well. What does that look like if it goes well, what do I stand to gain from that? Then I just wait it out.

Is it worth going through this little moment of pain the challenge of starting the conversation to get that result or am I okay with just keeping my mouth shut, keeping it surface, and having the other result? That’s how I look at it most of the time will go for it’s worth a little bit of a pain to risk on that 50% chance of it going well.

Shani: No pain no gain. Not just true in the gym, people.

Luis: I like that. It’s a muscle that we got to learn, we’re all still learning it you get better at it.

Shani: Absolutely. One of the things, folks, that Luis and I were talking about off-camera before we started was how to apply these skills in the day and age we’re living in where we think, we hope, we pray, we’re finally looking to make some breakthroughs around diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, et cetera. A lot of times, people don’t feel like they belong, not for overt reasons but for covert reasons like not speaking up in the face of something that is offensive to someone who isn’t in the in-group, whatever that is.

Luis: That’s right.

Shani: What advice do you have for listeners to help propel that forward and make some progress? Because in the past it’s like, “Oh, yes, we want more of this.” Then nothing happens. Companies maybe send a message to recruiting that they need to source some more diverse candidates and maybe the needle moves a little bit but ultimately because there’s no accountability and there’s no cultural infrastructure to it, it doesn’t succeed. It’s really these conversations where the rubber meets the road on making progress. I’m so curious to hear what you’re advising clients right now.

Luis: Sure. First of all, I’m advising clients number one, the conversations need to happen, so let’s go way back and start there. Everyone and I hate to use what do you call those words painting the wide brush.

Shani: Generalizations.

Luis: Generalizations or absolute terms. Everyone anecdotally speaking from my experience lately, this is a challenge for everyone from all sides. It’s difficult for me as perhaps the member of a group who has been marginalized, it’s difficult for me to open up about it, to just talk about it with my colleagues. Why should we do that, well, because we want good relationships, that’s another discussion about the value of having good relationships with the people you work with. Then there’s also the fear of speaking up that the corporate-speak, the corporate line is diversity and inclusion and let’s make and all of that.

I’ve just seen, five people get hired, and five people were hired after me have been promoted and they’re not very diverse looking what’s going on here? There’s hesitation on that side of it as well to even have that conversation. What to speak of just talking about the issues that are bubbling up in the surface of conversations in the public arena. We have that, then we have people who maybe come from other groups, let’s say group X that’s not so marginalized or more the majority or whatever, they’re not experiencing those pain points that some of the other people are.

They’re feeling some empathy, and they want to talk about it, and they want to say that I feel your pain or whatever. They somehow or other want to show some empathy and make the connection, but they’re afraid to say the wrong thing, they’re afraid to put their foot in their mouth. They’re afraid to maybe say the wrong thing and be labeled something, so there’s all this hesitation, and yet, turn on the news right now and it won’t take you but a few seconds to see that this is a topic of conversation in the public arena in the US, and now even globally in some places.

Shani: Absolutely.

Luis: The conversation needs to happen. The second recommendation I have is– That wasn’t even a recommendation, that was just an observation. The recommendation I have is to start the conversation, is start by getting curious. Don’t go into a conversation ready to share your point of view or show how you see it or share your experiences. It has been my experience, and we firmly believe this at Fierce, is to go in with curiosity first, interrogate reality. First of all, interrogate your own reality on your own.

Shani: I love that.

Luis: You know what I mean? Why do I want to have this conversation? What’s the goal here? Is it to make myself look good, get an ego stroke, get some spotlight on me, or is it really to develop some empathy and to really listen. Go in, this is my recommendation, Go into the conversation with curiosity first and really with the intention of really listening. Really listening, and then when they give you some information and you could start, a simple way to start that is, “Wow, tell me about that. Tell me more about that. What do you feel about that? Am I hearing you right? You’re saying this, this and this?” Show, some empathy.

“That, that sounds painful. Tell me more about that,” and then the trust starts to build a little bit perhaps, or maybe there are two people that already know each other, the trust is already there, but the ice is broken. Then eventually they may ask you, how do you see it, and the conversation begins. I’ll pause there, otherwise, we’ll go down a major– [crosstak]

Shani: I agree. I love, I wrote the phrase down, interrogate your own reality because I mean, honestly, that’s really what it’s going to take to have widespread change here is everyone’s got to take responsibility for being more self-aware of what their own reality is. It doesn’t make anyone’s reality bad, it just makes it unique to them.

Luis: That’s right.

Shani: Because I think part of it is, I mean, sure, there’s so much blame and shame to go around, but the average person like you were talking about who is just sort of learning and trying to do the right thing, that’s a great place for them to start is like, “Hey, what are my own filters based on my own experiences,” and realizing that that is what it is. It’s a filter, it’s not the truth, and it’s certainly not anybody else’ truth. You know what? It’s getting curious from that place that is good. The other thing that was percolating in my mind as you said to really listen, is how bad most people are at listening because so many people are listening to respond, not listening to understand.

Luis: Yes. That’s why I have to follow up with that because I can say go in with the intent of being curious and asking questions. What’ll happen is if I don’t follow up with and really listen, people will go in with the questions and as they’re getting the answers or responses to those questions, they’ll already be formulating the next question or the response to that answer, right?

Shani: Exactly.

Luis: Go in and just soak it up, be a good listener. If I can just comment really quickly before we move on, on you were talking about a filter, I think is how you described it. We call it the context filter. We all have one. They’re not right, they’re not wrong, it’s just how we interpret things. My reality probably might be quite different from yours. Even if we were to look out the same window, we’d have a different perspective on things, right?

Shani: Yes.

Luis: That interrogating reality, and I said, starting with your own reality first, let’s say, for example, I decided I want to give Shani feedback. I’ve observed her doing something that might be a little off and so I’m going to give her feedback. Okay. Stop for a moment and interrogate reality, starting with your own. Why do I want to give Shani feedback? Is it to look good? How do I know she wants the feedback?

Shani: Right. Is the feedback more about me or you?

Luis: Yes, what about you? Do I have assumptions about Shani that she can’t do your job well based on a previous experience I had? All of that is interrogating your own reality, right. I wanted to point that out.

Shani: I love that. I was going to say, you can model giving me some feedback about my really bad Kenny Rogers impersonation on a prior episode that you said you saw because I know that I have a lot of strengths and singing isn’t one of them.

Luis: Yes, but you kept it real and that’s what we’re all about, man, keeping it real. You know what? You like Kenny Rogers and you liked that song and you just went with it.

Shani: I love Kenny Rodgers.

Luis: That was your context or your filter, that I don’t have a bad voice, or whatever, for me, that was about 20 minutes into the podcast. That was the clincher for me that went, I can’t wait to be a guest on this podcast, so there you have it.

Shani: That’s right. Because you never know when I’m going to pause for a karaoke moment.

[laughter]

That’s good stuff. I’m glad you have a good sense of humor about it. Let’s shift to the other big thing that’s happening in the world, which is obviously, the sustained impact of COVID-19 which is soon going to have to be called COVID-19 and 20 and 21. [chuckles]

Luis: Apparently.

Shani: There’s a few different branches off of that tree that I wanted to explore with you. The first one is a more general one that relates to, I think, what you and Fierce do in general, which is about examining one’s victim mindset. Because it’s easy to be like, “Oh, everything sucks because of COVID,” and “I don’t have any privacy anymore because the kids are home and my spouse and I are both working at home,” and, “Oh, I couldn’t buy toilet paper,” whatever. That’s not going to get you through the pandemic, is it? [chuckles]

Luis: No, and guess what? Here’s the funny part. If you really think about it, you’re absolutely right. It sucks. Wallow in it for a day. Wallow in your Netflix cave for a day, but then, you know what–

Shani: Right, or two, depending on how long you’re binge-watching a show, yes.

Luis: Okay. It’s a weekend. All right, I’ll give you two days, but you know what, at some point, as you said, I’ll say it in a different way, it’s not going to get you the results you probably really want to get. Should I go with that? Should I continue because how I looked at it is t’s a mindset and you’re absolutely right. I’ll use me for a perfect example. I was traveling 100% of the time with Fierce prior to March. Every week I was somewhere. I was home probably less than I was in hotels and I loved that lifestyle. That came to a screeching halt on March 13th, I remember the day, and for three months, maybe two, it’s sucked, I hope I can say that.

Shani: Oh my God, you can say any four-letter word on my show.

Luis: Thank you.

Shani: I roll out the red carpet for four-letter words.

Luis: In the spirit of keeping it real. Yes, it sucked. You know what, I have jackhammers going on outside. I live next to a train. I’m in an apartment building. I got music, screaming people, and I can imagine other people too have their oh, woe is me about all of this stuff. How we look at it at Fierce as this way. Okay, you’re absolutely right it sucks, but given the current sucky situation you find yourself in, what can you do even however small, what can you do to move it in a different direction? Because it is what it is. I hate to overuse that term, it’s so cliche, but it is what it is.

Hey, you in your Netflix cave for more than two days is not going to make the situation any better. It’s not going to make you feel any better about it, and it’s probably not going to improve your results.

Shani: That’s right.

Luis: Given the current situation that yes, it’s not pleasant, what can you do to get a different result even if it’s that one thing. If you latch onto that one thing and you do that, you’ll find your mentality starts to shift. The way I look at it is, first of all, and I’m going to ship this to working with teams and remote teams. If you’re leading a team and now they’re remote, and you guys and girls used to be in the office, now everybody’s remote and you’re a leader of the team and you got people complaining. “Woe is me,” and, “My husband’s asleep on the couch and the kids are trying to do work,” and whatever–

Shani: I have a headache from too many Zoom calls.

Luis: To be able to have the conversation with that person, to help them shift from a victim mindset to an accountable mindset, we have to be able to do that for ourselves first to be able to model it. Because it’s my firm belief, it’s a belief at Fierce as well, accountability cannot be trained, cannot be mandated, people cannot be held accountable, it’s a choice. It’s a personal choice. It’s an outlook that I decide to have. It sounds like what I just said a minute ago, given the current sucky situation I find myself in, what can I do to move this in a different direction and get a different result?

Shani: Absolutely. I say the same thing you’re preaching to, not just a choir, but an orchestra.

Luis: [laughs] You get it.

Shani: I say the same thing and it is it’s true. It’s fine. We have to process the emotion, or else it’s going to get stuck, and then we’re going to have more neck aches and lower back pain and whatever. Once we do that, we do. The way to get unstuck and to do something different is to think something different first.

Luis: Yes.

Shani: It absolutely is a mindset. People can say, oh, it’s Pollyanna to always look at the silver lining, but if you choose differently, how’s that working for you?

Luis: I get how you call it a silver lining, but I’m going to just downgrade it. I’m not even calling it a silver lining, it’s a choice.

Shani: Right.

Luis: I can sit here in my Netflix cave for days and do whatever it is I do.

Shani: Like eat bonbons. [laughs]

Luis: Eat bonbons or whatever, or I can do something else. I’ll probably feel different, I’ll probably have a different result. Will it change everything? No, but it will change my current reality. It’ll change my experience of my current reality, it’ll change the way I feel about it, my emotions will change.

Shani: Let’s stay on that because that was really one of the other two branches I want to talk about was as a leader, the variety of fierce conversations that you may have to have during this time is maybe even greater than in regular times because people are under even more stress and strain and so forth. There’s the fierce conversation around performance and accountability and so forth, and then, there’s other fierce, touchy conversations around mental health. I say it’s fierce because I think a lot of leaders, they don’t want to poke that bear, but people are struggling and suffering. Are you hearing that as well from your clients?

Luis: Yes, especially now, you’ve heard probably buzzword going around Zoom fatigue, I happen to be doing webinars now all the time. What I’ve been hearing from leaders that I work with, and what I’ve been hearing from my colleagues who are also working with leaders is that, now that there’s this emotional need to connect, people are thirsty for the connection and we’re not getting it, and we’re not going to get it anytime soon in terms of, used to have, how we used to connect. The onus is on us, especially the leaders, we’re all leaders, but you know what I mean.

Shani: Yes.

Luis: The onus is on us to really initiate those conversations, number one, and figure out ways to make those connections, to address the emotional needs of our– At the end of the day, we’re all human beings. We’re emotionally hardwired, we’re built this way, we crave connection. Even now that we’re remote, again, it’s on us to make sure that we’re reaching out. The other thing I’ll say, that just came to my mind that I’ve been thinking about and reading about as well is, not the business as usual calls all the time. Check in with your people, even your colleagues.

When I say your people, I mean up, down, and across, it doesn’t matter. Check in with them without an agenda. Turn around the camera, let them see you smile, a genuine smile because we humans can perceive when a smile is genuine or not.

Shani: [laughs]

Luis: Those are just small ways and yes, that’s the main thing I’ve been hearing is, we got, number one Zoom fatigue, but I don’t know what to say about that [chuckles] because it’s going to be a reality for a while.

Shani: Right. I think people just have to get creative about it. I agree, it’s much better to connect over Zoom or some other platform than to do things over the phone, but also giving people the opportunity to say, “I do have a headache. I’m going to participate by phone today,” or “I’m going to take a walk while I participate today,” or just something to mix it up, because people have to move their bodies and get out of these damn seats. [chuckles]

Luis: Again, talking about the fear or the hesitation of speaking up, that could be an example of an unreal or a surface conversation. What do you really need to say? I really need to say I’m getting a migraine, and I need to turn off for two hours. People will not necessarily, not everyone will readily say that and offer that and volunteer that. For leaders in particular, again, it’s up to us to check in and to ask to go in with curiosity, “Given everything you have on your plate right now, what can I do to support you? How can I support you better? Is there anything you need that we haven’t talked about?”

Maybe they won’t divulge it on the first conversation but as you continue those conversations without an agenda, just checking in genuinely, then people will open up and say, “You know what, boss, I need a two-hour break. I’m getting a migraine.” “Please do.”

Shani: Let’s move to, and this is something that not only the rest of the world is experiencing, we as consultants and facilitators who used to be on the road all the time, are having our own challenges here. I’m curious what your experience has been with Fierce because I know that training companies, by and large, like Fierce and many of the other top ones, mostly deliver in person. What tactics have you all employed to keep the lights on?

Luis: It’s been a journey and we’re still on the journey, I will say. I’m pretty proud of that, I don’t know how to explain it. In the moment, I’m going back to March of 2020, March, April, when everything just suddenly got locked down and all of my travel was canceled. There was a month of shock, it was probably two months of shock. Two months of, I remember not doing a whole lot of work and thinking, I’m getting paid for this. Then suddenly, the fire got lit up under our butts and we’re like, we got a pivot now. This is not going away and we’re losing, we’re getting cancellations, and nobody’s booking. We got to pivot.

We quickly pivoted to completely online. That led to more branching, improving our website, and going now, really putting a lot of our focus and energy on asynchronous learning, on 3D, web-based, virtual reality little micro-learning sessions where people can practice-

Shani: Oh, nice.

Luis: -[crosstalk] conversations. Now, again, this is a journey for me, I’m learning as I go along. There are so many ways and so many modalities where learning can happen online and it’s not just always on Zoom. Asynchronous, go read this when you have time and watch that video when you have time when the kids are asleep, then we’ll get on a webinar in the morning for two hours. A little bit of Zoom overload all right, but it’s only two hours, and then go practice the conversation in a virtual reality scenario with bots [laughs] that are going to have the conversation with you.

It’s really exciting stuff, we’re barely on the cusp of the possibilities to come. Unfortunately, as you and I were talking about, it doesn’t sound like COVID is going away anytime soon. I am heads down on this on how we can continue to make this effective and engaging. Not only that, that’s important, effective and engaging, but that the learning actually translates into change behavior and action, remotely now.

Shani: Sure. On that topic, it’s funny. I love how things in life start to intersect. LeaderShift Project is one of a handful of sponsors for the ATD virtual conference right now. I was listening to one of the presentations yesterday by an instructional designer/consultant. She and her business partner have, and they’ve been working on this since before COVID, they’ve got a new approach to learning that they’re calling Learning Cluster Design, LCD.

[laughter]

What I love about it is it takes the different ways people learn in the modern world and encourages L&D professionals to target all three of them. Because it’s like the live in-person was so pervasive for so long, and sure, a lot of companies have started to do some Asynchronous things and online things, but still, it’s all been focused in this in-person experience. She’s saying, which I totally agree with, that people are also learning on their own, through apps and in their own time, and they’re learning on the job, which has always been like the hardest nut to crack.

She was just giving examples of all the different ways that you can insert learning and really powerful content into all three of those modes. I’m glad that you guys have figured that out.

Luis: I wanted to mention that too, you brought up something we just were talking about it this week. I don’t know if I should actually say it or not, but I will. We will have an app released. It’s not released yet, so everybody, stay tuned.

Shani: [screams].

Luis: I know I can say that.

Shani: You heard it here first. [chuckles]

Luis: This is the beauty of it because when we were 100% in-classroom training, or 98%, 95%, in-classroom training, we were doing a few webinars, it tended to be, we would leave a workshop after a day or after two days, and maybe I’d stay in contact with them and give them any support they needed a few weeks after that, but eventually, you don’t hear from them anymore and people eventually go back to the old way that they were doing things, a lot of the time. Now, with all of these different methods that you just mentioned, including the app, man, everybody’s got a cell phone and they’re sitting on a bus or they’ve got free time, they’re like, “I need to have that confrontation conversation with Shani and I’m nervous about it. I’m going to her house right now. Let me get a refresher right here on the app.”

Now in a moment at any time, 24 hours a day, from anything that’s connected to the internet, you can get this information at your fingertips and practice it and get ready for the conversation. To me, that translates into what I was saying a minute ago, the behavior change.

Shani: I love that. It sounds like at the end of the day, which is also a cliché. “At the end of the day” falls under those way too frequently used business clichés. Sorry, I hate those.

Luis: I know, me too.

Shani: It sounds like that Fierce, that this has been a good thing because it’s going to position you to make a bigger impact through the different modalities that you’ve developed as a result of having no alternative.

Luis: Absolutely. We’ve always said we wanted to make an impact on the world and bring fierce conversations, it’s so needed out there, but I will say, this whole turn of events in this year 2020 has really, again, to use that cliché, put the fire up under our butts. We would have been comfortable before all that happened. Sailing along and we’re making sales and we’re profitable and we’re humming along comfortably. Now it’s like, “Whoa, we got to be on the cutting edge, we got to think in ways we have never thought before.” It’s exciting.

Shani: Good. There’s one other thing I had made a note of that I wanted to ask you about just mainly because I like the term and I want to understand what it means for myself and for other people too. Decision vacuum. What is a decision vacuum? I’m assuming it’s something that you don’t want to get sucked into. How do we get out?

Luis: Decision vacuum is making decisions in a silo, mostly leaders. The higher up you go the more siloed you get in a way. You have bigger visions, yes, but you’re only seeing certain things, so you make decisions in this vacuum without hearing different perspectives, without hearing the devil’s advocates, without having anyone really look at whatever it is you’re planning, proposing, deciding and going, “Wait a minute. Whoa, there’s an error here. If you roll this out it’s going to affect our clients this way and they won’t like that.” That’s a decision vacuum.

How do you break out of that? Not every decision needs to be made this way, but many of them can. Whenever you’re about to roll out a new plan, roll out a new project, make a big decision that’s going to affect other stakeholders, any of those things, or sometimes you just think you have a bright idea, but you want to make sure it actually is a bright idea, get a think tank. Get people, not five, six, seven, other people around you from different departments, different roles, different perspectives than your own. I encourage people to grab those, not literally but recruit those people who you probably don’t want to hear their perspective.

Get them, and then share with them, “Here’s what I’m planning to do, here’s what I’m planning to roll out.” Whatever it is, “Here’s what I’ve looked at, here’s what I think the pros and the cons are. What would you do if you were me right now and you had to make this decision?” It’s a little bit bigger than that. You start off by telling what the issue is, et cetera. Then you basically pose it to them, “What would you do?” You get their perspectives and you still make your decision, but now you can make a better decision because you’ve had people poke holes in your ideas, find the weak spots, you’re able to strengthen it, you’re able to avoid disaster with a client perhaps that you didn’t see. Now you can tweak your plan so that doesn’t happen.

Shani: That’s fabulous because most people when they’re looking for feedback on an idea or a decision, go to people from whom they think they’re going to get agreement, and all that is just confirmation bias. When people tell you what they think you want to hear, that’s not actually helpful. I really appreciate the suggestion to go out and recruit people who have different ideas and have what might be a fierce conversational debate from a devil’s advocate, but at least then you’ve explored the edges and not just stayed in your own little world.

Luis: You know who does this as an example and who does this really well, they’re known for this? Robert Redford does this. He runs his own organization.

Shani: I had no idea.

Luis: Yes, Robert Redford and Oprah Winfrey.

Shani: That doesn’t surprise me.

Luis: They typically open their meetings by saying something like, don’t quote me, “Here’s my idea, here’s what I think we should do, here’s what I think I’m going to do, whatever it is, now I want you to please tell me where I’ve missed the mark, where I might be wrong, what you see that I’m not seeing.”

Shani: Great. That’s a politically nice thing to say. I would probably go in and be like, “Here’s my idea, I want you to shit all over it.” Not in a mean way, but just to hear other points of view.

Luis: You’ll know how to make it stronger, you’ll see things you haven’t thought of in that way. Again, I’m going to repeat this, but it works really well. We can use this in so many different contexts, but especially in an organization with a bunch of stakeholders on different teams. Let’s say, if I’m in operations, for example, I’m going to make a big decision, it’s going to affect sales and it’s going to affect who knows who else. I will invite the leaders of those teams to my 30-minute meeting and share it with them.

The interesting thing is a lot of times at first if people are not used to this sort of communication, they’ll say, “You’re in operations, what could I possibly offer in support? I’m not really sure, but I’ll go to your meeting.” Then after the meeting is over, everybody has learned something about the other people who are invited to that meeting, about how they see things, how that decision is going to affect their department. “Aha,” moments about everything that that department has on their plate, that they didn’t even realize, all of this happens and the leader who assembled this group of three, four, five, six people, maybe for 30 minutes now knows, “Okay, I feel good about this decision I’m going to make, or I’m going to go tweak it and then roll it out.”

The last thing I’m going to say on this, the best part is when the leader or whoever it is rolls out this whatever it is, the project or does whatever they’re going to do, and let’s say it’s an awesome success, and three quarters later or sometime later, accolades come for that person having made that decision that was so beneficial and we gained so much money, they then get to enrich relationships further by shining some spotlight on the team that collaborated with them. “Hey, I could not have made that awesome decision without the collaboration of John, Joe, Susie, Jane, and whoever else was on the team.” Everybody gets some love and it’s beautiful. [chuckles]

Shani: It just really takes us full circle to breaking down silos in that way helps us actually need to have fewer fierce conversations, cross-functionally at least.

Luis: Yes, or at least make it easier, because I don’t think there’s ever a time when we don’t need to have fierce conversations. Life would have to end.

Shani: Oh, for sure. I just mean when decisions get made in a vacuum and sales doesn’t communicate with operations and so they’re overpromising something that can never be delivered, if more constituents internally involved in those decisions, there’s always going to be other fierce conversations, but at least the, “Why the hell didn’t you consult me about this conversation?” maybe doesn’t have to happen.

Luis: Those fierce conversations won’t have to happen, yes. “You made this whole plan, you roll up this new process and procedure and you didn’t even check in with us and now we got to apologize to our clients because it’s affecting the way–?” Yes.

Shani: Exactly. Thank you so much for joining me today, Luis. If folks have questions or want to reach you, what’s the best way?

Luis: Best way is to go to our website, first of all, go to www.fierceinc.com. Go to podcasts first of all. I want to direct everyone to the podcast page. That’s where this podcast will be hosted whenever it’s released. From there you can also see the resources tab. We have tons of free resources. It’s fierceinc.com/podcasts and from there, jump around. Connect with me on LinkedIn. Love to connect and network with people that are into this stuff. I’m on LinkedIn. Luis Gonzales. It’s linkedin.com/in/luisgonzales, you’ll see how my name is spelled in your notes.

Shani: Yes, absolutely.

Luis: Real pleasure, loved being on the show.

Shani: Yes, thank you and thank you, Leadershifters, for listening. I hope you come away today with some additional skills and motivation to have some fierce conversations of your own, whether they’re with colleagues, friends, family, neighbors, who knows. In the spirit of helping everybody get through this difficult time and making some progress in diversity, equity, and inclusion, and whatever it takes.

I’m going to go back to it because it’s one of my favorite things that we talked about today was interrogating your reality. It’s really two-fold, as the concept unfolded was, one, what are the filters or the lenses that you’re looking at any given situation through, and interrogating the reality of why you want to have a fierce conversation. Is it about you? Are you projecting or are you really trying to help the other person? Interrogating your motives as you enter into these fierce conversations which have to be had, period, full-stop. Thanks for joining us today. See you next time. [blows kiss]

The post 58: Fierce Conversations and Interrogating Reality with Luis Gonzales appeared first on The LeaderShift Project.

I am joined today by fellow self-espoused ‘culture geek’ and Internal communications expert, Carolyn Hudson, who brings her vast experience both in-house and as a senior consultant at Fortune 500 companies. It’s the moment of truth for internal comms because there has never been a more opportune time to prove your worth and grab a seat at the table. She explains that internal communications has (thankfully!) evolved from top-down, one-size-fits-all, lengthy corporate-speak pushed to the masses to messaging tied to core values, customized by audience and that inspires trust in leadership and confidence in the brand. Internal comms is now employee-centric (gasp!), which translates to customer-centric – because when we take care of our employees, they take care of our customers! Speaking of employees, we encourage ditching annual engagement surveys in favor of taking far more frequent pulses at all levels of the organization. There are AI-assisted platforms to help leaders identify themes to address…including in your internal comms. We also have a fun discussion about breathing new life into outdated, staid corporate values (BIG YAWN?) so that they actually serve as beacons for vision, motivation, and innovation (in fact, I had just revised the values for The LeaderShift Project to include what I think is an awesome new value of “Embrace abundance”). When updating your values, involve your employees and customers in the conversation and brainstorming, so they will truly represent what you stand for and how you want to treat customers.

TRANSCRIPT

Episode 57: The Moment of Truth for Internal Comms with Carolyn Hudson

Shani Magosky: Is your team not performing well? Is morale low and turnover high? Are you falling further behind the competition? I’m here to help. I’m your host, Shani, and this is The LeaderShift Show, where business strategy and culture finally meet and we make the long-awaited shift from rhetoric to results. I promise I’m not your typical boring leadership consultant and I will help you get your shift together. Let’s do this.

Hello, Leadershifters and welcome to another episode of The Leadership Show with yours truly, Shani. It is my pleasure today to introduce you to our guest, Carolyn Hudson. Say a quick hello and then I’m going to absolutely deluge you with accolades.

Carolyn Hudson: Thank you so much. Shani, this is great. Thank you. I am a long-time listener of your podcasts and watcher of your video series and just there’s so many synergies between what you do and what I do and so this is really a true pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Shani: It’s my pleasure. Leadershifters, Carolyn and I actually go way back to my New York 1.0 days in the ’90s and we’re both Florida girls and initially, we’re both raised in Florida and somehow ended up in the big bad city. More importantly and relevant for the podcast, we have a pretty similar background in transforming corporate cultures. We’ve come at it from different places but we really a lot of times end up working on the same types of engagements.

Just to give you a little bit of Carolyn’s CV, she was a senior leader in the global Change Management practice at Accenture Consulting for a long time. In general, she’s worked with, you name the Fortune 500 company, it’s a who’s who, let me just consult my list here, Exxon Mobil, Coca-Cola, Levi’s, Anheuser-Busch, J&J, UPS Delta, et cetera. working on culture transformation projects, M&A. When you’re combining companies into a single culture, there’s lots of work to be done. Her specialty in all these engagements is communication.

Today we’re going to focus specifically on internal communication and that’s for a couple of reasons. One, it’s obviously an area of expertise but also it’s very relevant today in the era of COVID. It feels like a lot of organizations are paying attention to their external communications. We support Black Lives Matter, we’re changing our hiring practices, et cetera, and telling the world about what they’re doing, and yet they’re ignoring some of the important things that they need to be doing internally, both around COVID and racial injustice and every other topic that is important for internal customers i.e., your employees.

With that background, folks, let’s get right into the questions because Carolyn and I have a lot of things that we want to discuss for your benefit today.

Carolyn: Great. Thank you, Shani, that’s awesome. Great intro, appreciate it.

Shani: Well, you’re the one who’s accomplished all those things. Carolyn is joining us from her apartment in Manhattan where she has recently finally come off of quarantine because New York is opening back up.

Carolyn: Coming back, yes coming back.

Shani: I am coming to you from my temporary living situation in Boulder, Colorado. Maybe you can see my little climbing wall behind us. The first question I want to ask you Carolyn is you’ve said something a few times and I want to drill down into it and have you explain what it means for communication experts, or even novices quite frankly, who are leaders and their communication is important. It’s the moment of truth for internal communications. Why do you say that?

Carolyn: Yes absolutely. I think it really is. I think internal communications is really having its day and I’m forever employee-centric, so everything I talk about today is going to be focused on employees. I think the best way to answer this is maybe thinking about communications then versus now and I think that even a few years ago, communications was seen as just another function. It was just another function in the company such as IT or HR.

I had a client actually say to me at one point, I was doing a team optimization session with she and her communications team and she said, “I just feel like a vendor,” and I thought wow, that’s not what internal communication should be. I really think it’s having its day. I think that internal communications should be and is and will be a strategic partner to the business. That’s one thing, have a seat at the table.

The other thing I think is so important right now during this crisis is that HR works closely with IT. IT works closely with public affairs. Public Affairs works closely with internal communications. I think that they need to work seamlessly and I think in the past, there might have been sort of a Hatfields & McCoys situation. [crosstalk]

Shani: Right. Hello, mixed messages.

Carolyn: Yes exactly and it’s like hard to get sort of that calendar or that road map of what our message is going to be and then getting everybody marching to the same beat. That’s why I think it’s having its day and I also think I’ve been so impressed with companies and CEOs sending out heartfelt messages to their employees. You look at somebody like Gary Burnison who’s the CEO of Korn Ferry, who’s writing a series of blogs that are extremely personal to his employees and his customers.

Then you’ve got somebody like Brian Chesky from Airbnb who is truly writing from the heart, and I think that that’s where we are right now, and transparency and authenticity with regard to communications is table stakes. That’s like a given whereas in the past, there was corporate speak coming down from leadership. Never was there– rarely was there a what’s in it for me for employees, or what do I need to do with this information. I think that we’re seeing that a lot more and more. It’s getting it’s just due I guess I would say.

Shani: What you’re saying is it’s okay to be personal and vulnerable, which is the antithesis of what they used to teach in “being a good leader school” as you know you need to keep your distance and don’t let anybody know anything about you personally. It’s not like we’re now encouraging leaders to share their deepest darkest most intimate secrets, but we are saying show your humanity.

This is a time where we’re all feeling exposed, there is so much change and uncertainty and that brings out fear and people want to feel like there’s a community including their leaders, not except for their leaders.

Carolyn: Absolutely. I think that you know leaders, they’re not necessarily born orators, they’re not necessarily journalism majors. That that that keeps me in a job, by the way so that’s that. I do think that um another thing that I’ve seen which is fantastic is that in the past, there have been communications written by leaders that are sort of gobbly googly about business plans, and da, da, da, and it just drones on and it’s just lengthy and nobody reads that. I think now it’s about simplicity of message and I think now it’s about you know getting the–

It’s like just the facts right away. What do I as an employee, what’s in it for me, what are you asking of me, and then further, how do I provide feedback to you? That’s a whole other component you’ve got to give especially now employees to have an outlet to give feedback about how they’re thinking and feeling these days.

Shani: Absolutely. You’ve got there so many things that I want to say the things you just said but let me see if I can start with one of them and remember the other. I just learned about an app that I’m super excited about that uses artificial intelligence to be constantly soliciting feedback from employees. It’s anonymous and the artificial intelligence takes all of the data that it gets from asking a few simple questions to employees regularly across the organization and takes the themes and presents them to management so that they can respond to them or pivot from them or clear up any misconceptions.

It also helps identify top performers who are at risk of leaving so that that organization can be proactive about retaining them instead of making last-ditch efforts after they’ve already accepted another job offer. That’s one thing just of interest.

Carolyn: Just one thing, I just want to respond to that rel quick. I think that the technology that you’re talking about I think is super important right now. I think that in the past, it’s been all about that employee satisfaction survey. It’s that annual employee satisfaction survey, we got to get those results. I think that now, what we’re pivoting to as you were saying is posting more often, getting better feedback. Then the thing about it is though with feedback it’s only as good as if you act upon it. If you’re asking employees questions about how they’re thinking and feeling and you’re condensing and codifying that information, you need to let them know what you’re doing with it or about it. That’s the key.

Shani: Absolutely. The piece about pulsing it more regularly is so key because when we when companies do engagement surveys once a year, that’s a moment in time, and if someone’s just come off a bad day or a negative interaction, that can color their results, and then it gives a picture of an entire year that is inaccurate. You get enough people who are off their game the day they answer the engagement survey and the results are frankly bullshit. I love the idea of taking the pulse literally because your pulse today is going to be different than your pulse tomorrow after you’ve just run 10k. [chuckles]

Carolyn: Exactly. I think that also to build on that is pulsing every level of the organization. From that hourly worker on the manufacturing line all the way up to corporate, to leaders, to managers, you’ve got to get a full picture. Anyway, I’m a huge believer in looking at all audiences and segmenting them.

Shani: Absolutely. Another thing that, actually I’m sort of backing up a little bit but it relates to what we’re just talking about, one of the first things you said is you’re employee-centric all the way. I can imagine that some people listening might say, “Oh, why are you employee-centric, we should be customer-centric.” I’m sure you have an answer to that and I would love to hear it because obviously, I have a point of view on that as well, but go ahead.

Carolyn: Yes, absolutely. I think, for me, employees are your greatest asset. These days employees are all, they all have megaphones, they can all either make or break your company. It’s about building that brand and building that advocacy and making fans out of employees. If employees are not happy or they’re not feeling communicated to or they’re not bought into the core values of the company or the brand, then I don’t feel like they can serve customers efficiently and extraordinarily. That’s why I say that I’m employee-centric because I really think it starts there.

I will say, it’s interesting. I worked on a number of mergers and acquisitions over the past few years, and when companies are sitting down at the table and talking about merging, they’re talking a lot about risk management, they’re talking a lot about the numbers.

Shani: Oh, yes. The synergies and where can we cut, where can we combine supply chain strains, blah, blah.

Carolyn: Exactly, you got it. It’s like the bankers sitting at the table talking about it, but now I think what I’m seeing with my clients and what we’ll see more of is assessing employees as an asset, as a non-financial asset. That’s just going to become part of that conversation.

Shani: Folks, just to wrap that up in a bow with a simple statement, if you take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers.

Carolyn: Perfect. Beautiful.

Shani: Change management is part and parcel not just of M&A as you were just talking about, but really everything in this frequently evolving fast-paced world that we live in. Just give us a quick sense of what you see companies doing well or where they’re making mistakes with their communication strategy within the context of change management.

Carolyn: Two things. One is change management really means managing change. It seems evident but really it’s about managing change.

Shani: Instead of letting change manage you.

Carolyn: There you go. I think that any company going through a transformation, whether that’s a change in leadership, whether that’s rolling out a new process or products, whether that’s creating new initiatives they need to roll out to the organization, I really think that these days if you look at a communications team, an internal comms team, you’ve got to have that change management experience as well.

I really think that gone are the days of just communications teams looking for great writers or a great digital strategist. I think now you’ve got to have that change management because that’s when communications really comes into its own and that’s where the glory is, is communication steps up and helps with those transformations.

I’ve gotten– it’s been interesting just in the past like literally the past I would say maybe two or three years, the buyer for change management services has historically been a chief communications officer or a chief HR officer, that’s who hires for a consultant services. Now it’s a CEO.

Shani: That’s great.

Carolyn: It’s great. The CEOs are now understanding that you actually have to manage change and I don’t want to– I do want to say that internal communications is not the panacea. It’s not going to solve all the ills of the world. It takes the communication team working in tandem seamlessly with the other functions of the organization and working as a team on transforming that company. Who owns transformation? Who owns change management? Everybody does.

Shani: Right. To your point, the c-suite can’t come up with a new strategy or a new go-to-market tactic that isn’t good and expect communications to put lipstick on the pig, right.

Carolyn: Yes, but that’s what they do. That’s the thing, they do. I think that sometimes and again it’s kind of that then and now. I think that they throw a strategy over the wall or an initiative over the wall and say, “Here it is. Build it they will come, hope they read about this.” It can’t be that way anymore. It has to be a situation where again like that CCO or that internal communications team has a seat at the table that they have an editorial calendar or a calendar of events for that company.

They have a narrative, they have key messages that they need to– In other words, it’s getting much more strategic, it’s not just throwing it over the wall and like, hey, send out a couple of emails about this. That’s not where we are.

Shani: Let’s follow that road back a little bit in terms of strategy and foundational and making sure that the communications team has good subject matter and thoughtful strategy to work with in the first place. You and I, we’re sort of like culture geeks and I guess we shouldn’t be afraid to admit that. We’ve sat many a night on one of our couches with a glass of wine talking about corporate values.

Carolyn: Yes we have, indeed yes.

Shani: Let’s share some of our thinking on that. Let’s just take an example situation where a company has had the same values for 80 years or 40 years or whatever the time frame is, and they’re either out of date, they no longer resonate, they’re phrased in a way that isn’t accessible and doesn’t really mean anything. If you were in an ideal world to be invited into, you as in comms folks, invited into the whiteboard space where you guys are going to revamp and recreate some new values, what process might you lead them through? What questions might you ask them?

Carolyn: I love this and yes, we are geeks about culture and core values and we have talked about this. I mean listen, creating core values for a company or a value proposition or a purpose statement is hard. That’s hard stuff. It’s not often created in a vacuum. It needs to be, in my opinion, very inclusive, so you’re including employees you’re doing focus groups, you’re coming up with who are we as a company, why did you join us, those are some great questions, who do we stand for, how do we want to interact with our customers.

I think that you know in the past few years, I’ve worked with many clients on developing core values. This is something where it can tend to get diluted in the process with regard to creating core values because it starts out with the employees, goes up the chain, gets to leadership, and they hem and haw about and that word’s not quite right. Things tend to get diluted. Such things as like collaboration, innovation, passion, care for our customers, customer-centric–

Shani: [yawns] Wake me up when you’re done.

Carolyn: Exactly, like customers-

Shani: [chuckles]

Carolyn: -service and all that. Then they spend all this money, launching these beautiful core values and creating all the swag and all the big launch, but it really doesn’t define what the company, who they are, and what they do.

I had a client recently who I just went through this with them was creating their core values. I was so proud of the client that one of their core values was courage. That was new for me, that the collaboration but courage, and then you have to think about how does that show up every day? What are the behaviors associated with courage? What does that look like? I was so thrilled that they thought of that.

Then, to your point, these days, I would sit down with a client, and I would really ask them, “Are your core values working for you? How do you know? Are you attracting the right talent? Is your narrative tethered to your core values? Is this an opportunity during this time of crisis, that we really take a hard look at ourselves and think about things such as diversity, inclusion, sustainability? If companies aren’t talking about that, or including that in their core values, they’re going to be left behind, they’re going to be like dinosaurs, they have to.”

Shani: Right. It’s funny that we’re talking about this because I just updated my values, and my favorite newest value is embraced abundance.

Carolyn: Yes, I love that.

Shani: As I fleshed it out, it started to just grow and grow and mean so many things. It means abundance in relationships, abundance in financial matters, abundance in the competitive landscape, there’s enough to go around, abundance in creativity and not settling for a mediocre idea, there’s more abundant ideas out there. As I started to make some notes about what embrace abundance means to me, is the leader of the LeaderShift Project, I had so much fun with it. I feel like as I onboard somebody new, I’m in the process of hiring somebody, I’m so excited to introduce the organization with that new value. [chuckles]

Carolyn: Yes, exactly. Shani, just you as a person, you embrace that as a person. That’s part of who you are, part of your life. I think that automatically, that will transfer to your company. You truly believe it, it’s your brand. They’re just words etched in stone, that’s who you are, that’s your brand. It’s inspirational and aspirational, which I think is beautiful. I love it.

Shani: Yes. Thank you. [chuckles]

Carolyn: It’s great. I would add something that I saw recently, a company, I looked at their core values and one of their values was, “Don’t be a jerk.” [chuckles]

Shani: I love that.

Carolyn: I was like, “Brilliant. Yes. That’s great.” They’re a little edgy and what have you, but I think that ilk I think needs to be really looked at.

Shani: Yes, it’s okay to be edgy. Just because you’re a Fortune 500 company doesn’t mean you have to be staid and boring. I get that there are certain standards to uphold but it doesn’t mean you have to be boring. Let’s imagine, there’s some CCOs listening to this, and they’re finding that the values that are have been landed on after this great effort to engage multiple constituencies and get all these ideas, are coming back to something bland and staid. What can the CCOs say or ask to make another effort to breathe some life into the values? [chuckles]

Carolyn: I love that, breathe some life into the values, that’s brilliant. That’s exactly what needs to happen. I guess the first question would be, how did you develop them? How did you create them? Was it an inclusive process? Did it come down from on high from leadership? How were they created? Are they working for you? Then you would look at a number of factors as far as everything from recruitment to retention to satisfaction.

Are they working for you and how do you know? Then I would say, are they aspirational, inspirational, or where you are right now? That’s a question that really companies need to– I would argue the point of being inspirational and aspirational for your core values. The other thing that I would talk about is that core values are only as good as the behaviors that are associated with them, right?

Shani: Yes.

Carolyn: You can have the core values written on a poster, on hats, or what have you. It’s the behavior that core value elicits. Then you get into performance management and that’s how employees are looked at from a merit standpoint, are you living the core values? I’d have that hard conversation and I think that what I might get back is, “Carolyn, we work so hard on these, we’ve worked so hard on these,” that would be one, or, “We’ve had these for 10 years. We’ve had these for 10 years, they’re working for us that we have these for 10 years.”

I think it’s a conversation to be had but it’s not just internal communications at the table. Human resources, IT, public relations, public affairs, they all need a seat at that table to talk about are the core values working and leadership, executive leadership. Does that make sense?

Shani: Absolutely, yes. Then I think it can become a discussion where then the CCO or the comms person who may be started to lead the conversation doesn’t have to, just have the spotlight on them, you’re questioning the results. Everyone can weigh in. I love the collaborative approach. [chuckles]

Carolyn: Yes, absolutely. I think that we’re core values often fail is, if it’s seen as being owned by HR. “Human resources owns the core values, they created it.” No, that it can’t be viewed that way. Core values are developed by everybody and they’re embraced by everyone. They’re performed on a daily basis by everyone so that’s where I’m coming from.

Shani: It’s easier and easier to see the behaviors or lack thereof?

Carolyn: Yes.

Shani: As you said, with the virtual megaphone that anyone in the company can have now given the internet and social media.

Carolyn: That’s right.

Shani: Speaking of which, in terms of right now, we’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about how internal comms has shifted a little bit during the era of COVID. How have the channels shifted? How has the tone shifted, et cetera?

Carolyn: Yes, I think definitely, as you will know, it’s all about remote working right now. There are companies that are coming back, there are companies that are talking about bringing– I think I just read something about Netflix but the Netflix CEO said, “We’re all going to go back to the office.” That’s great, that’s happening. Then there’s the remote workforce, and how do you continue to encourage commitment to your company when you’re not walking the halls every day?

I think there’s pros and cons. The pros to remote working into something like this, we’re doing with Zoom, is that I do feel like people speak up more than they would if they were at a table in a scary boardroom on the 32nd floor, where I do feel like it’s almost a great democratizer in a way because everybody can share their thoughts, everyone gets a seat at the table.

I think also, there’s something to be said for walking the halls. Those hallway conversations that used to take place six months ago, that’s when a lot of problems get solved, clients get solutioning that’s talked about. To your point, though, just to put a finer point on it is that, it’s not going away, virtual work, this is where we are. I think that being pithy, being simple, there’s a great quote by Einstein, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough,” I think it’s enough of the gobbledygook, use the time wisely that you have for a team meeting. Really agenda it out ahead of time.

Then I would say also shake it up. There is such a thing as Zoom fatigue. You know that right? Shake it up. Maybe a conference call then you’ve got a Zoom call, then you got another conference call. It’s the future, it’s the wave of the future buit you’ve got to get simple and you’ve got to be inclusive. You’ve got to make sure everybody’s voice is heard, and again, you can’t hide. You’re not in the boardroom at the end of the table, leaning back where people can’t see you. You’re right there. It gives you an opportunity but also an accountability.

Shani: Right. Okay. Then in terms of channel, pretty obvious, there’s more virtual channels going on, whether it’s Zoom or the other internal collaboration channels that leaders need to pay attention to, and then the tone you’re saying simple, on point so we’re not wasting people’s time. It’s sad that it takes a pandemic to get people to think about that because honestly, those should be best practices even if we’re in the office. [chuckles] We should simplify and we should be clear on our agendas and we shouldn’t be wasting people’s time.

Carolyn: Yes, no, I totally agree. In a strange way, it’s come down to the basics. It’s like now we’re in a place of, what are the fundamentals? What do we need to get across? There’s a finer point being put on things. Are you seeing that? Whereas before there was just messages and channels and formats coming in from all different and now it’s a little more, we need more focus.

Shani: Yes, I’m definitely finding people are taking the opportunity in working from home to figure out the productivity puzzle because they have a little more control over their own time and they’re noticing how they’re spending their time, whether they’re spending it on lower-value administration stuff or high-value strategic stuff or something in between. Because since they’re not in the office anymore, people still have lots of calls and Zoom meetings, but it feels like for most people there aren’t quite as many running from conference room to conference room, to meeting to meeting. and sitting on the highway going to Midtown or whatever.

In my experience with some of my coaching clients and as I socialize with people, there’s a real drive to do more with their time, to do more meaningful things with their time.

Carolyn: Yes. Meaningful I think is an important word. I think employees are really- what we’re hearing is don’t waste my time. Don’t waste my time. Meetings, there’s no meeting that has to be an hour by the way.

Shani: Right.

Carolyn: You know what I’m saying? Honestly, there’s no meeting that has to be an hour. Anyway, again, I’m back to like pithy. Just in time. Clear, concise.

Shani: Straight forward.

Carolyn: You know what I mean? Yes, exactly.

Shani: Absolutely. We started off the call and you gave us a couple of examples of CEOs who are doing some good things right now in terms of their messaging. Do you have any other examples? Because what I love about examples is they’re so tangible and then people are like, “Oh, I really liked that leader.” They can go look up the articles after they finish the podcast. Do you have any other examples to share about leaders who are kicking ass right now on the internal comms side?

Carolyn: Yes, absolutely. Well, one springs to mind and he’s on my mind every day because I am in New York City and I am a New Yorker, but regardless of your politics I won’t get into that, but watching Cuomo through this for the past few months has been like watching a masterclass in communication. If he doesn’t know the answer, he says, I don’t know the answer but I’ll find out. He says it like it is, he tells it like it is, he says the hard things. He also shares his heart. He’s also shared about his own personal experience with this and his children’s experience with this with COVID. I would just hold him up and in fact, I wrote him a fan letter-

[laughter]

Shani: You’re a Cuomo groupie.

Carolyn: I wrote him a fan letter and I just said as a communications professional I’ve been so impressed with not just– He does a briefing every day on TV, but also with what he’s writing. I would hold that up as a very poignant of the moment example.

Shani: Okay. Terrific. Thank you. Any last words of wisdom you would leave Leadershifters with in this day and age around internal comms?

Carolyn: I would just say, listen, now is your time. I would say for any of my communication expert colleagues now is your time. Now is your time to step up your game. Now is your time to really have a seat at the table. Now is your time to work seamlessly with other functions within the company. Now is your time to speak your truth to the C-suite, and this is an opportunity. With every challenge, every crisis, this is a real opportunity. I think communications, it’s going to change the game for communications for maybe forever, for a long time to come for sure.

Shani: Yes, let’s hope so. Last question. How do people reach you if they’re interested in chatting more or engaging you in a culture or values recreation process, for example?

Carolyn: I would love that. LinkedIn is probably the best way. I’m in there. I’m Carolyn Hudson on LinkedIn.

[phone ringing]

Shani: Hold on one moment.

Carolyn: What was that? [laughs] Is that your sweet kitten?

Shani: I have a timer that goes off on my phone every day at two o’clock just to remind me to meditate for five minutes and I didn’t have my phone here next to where I’m podcasting to quickly shut it off.

Carolyn: Oh, I love it.

Shani: Hey, that is part of being authentic.

Carolyn: That is part of being authentic and just, I know again, for yourself as a leader and just that you meditate. Listen, I would join your team any day, any day.

[laughter]

Shani: Thanks, hun.

Carolyn: Anytime.

Shani: All right, Carolyn, thank you for joining us, and Leadershifters thanks for tuning in, and just to quickly highlight some of the most important things that we talked about today by way of recap, employee-centric is customer-centric. Put that in your bonnet and, and meditate on that. Another thing I think is really critical that we touched upon is let’s scrap these annual engagement surveys. They’re shit.

They’re a moment in time, they’re not representative of trends. We need to be taking the pulse of our employees and all of our employees from the most entry-level, individual contributor, all the way up to the CEO on a very regular basis, if not real-time basis to figure out what’s happening so we can address those things in the moment.

Make sure your values are still relevant and on point and that they’re inspiring and aspiring. That they’re inspirational and aspirational. Please, let’s get rid of the dull, boring, staid values. They don’t engage people and they don’t get people committed to excellence and innovation and so forth. If your values aren’t innovative, what makes you think your employees are going to innovate for you?

Last, but not least in all of your internal communications, regardless of the channels, the newer ones included, and globally, it’s more important than ever to embrace the KISS principle. Keep it simple, straightforward. Don’t waste people’s time. Let’s remember that people need their work-life balance, and just because they’re working from home doesn’t mean we can abuse the privilege of forever productivity.

Carolyn: Love it.

Shani: You folks knew how to reach me, [email protected] and you can find me on all of the social media platforms, and until next time, have a great day, have a great week.

Carolyn: Thanks so much, Shani.

Shani: Thank you, Carolyn.

The post 57: The Moment of Truth for Internal Comms with Carolyn Hudson appeared first on The LeaderShift Project.

Today’s superstar guest is Ginny Clarke (as I like to say, it’s Clark + E for Extraordinary!), Director of Leadership Staffing at Google, former Partner at elite executive recruitment firm Spencer Stuart, host of podcast Fifth Dimensional Leadership, and author of Career Mapping. Ginny is a known expert in diversity recruiting and talent management – NOT because she is a black woman but for her profound understanding of how global talent must be assessed, deployed, and developed in varying contexts for maximum success. It’s not about checking boxes; rather, it’s about fixing the entire talent system! Not only are POC and women underrepresented in most workplaces, but also attrition is highest among those groups as well. We discuss many concrete solutions, including:

TRANSCRIPT

Episode 56: No BS Chat on Talent Management DEI w. Googles Director of Leadership Staffing, Ginny Clarke

Shani Magosky: Excellent. Let’s just get right into it. What does it mean to be a specialist, in particular, in diversity recruiting?

Ginny Clarke: Let me explain something, because I think a lot of people don’t understand this. They think maybe because I’m Black, I know a lot of other Black people and other underrepresented individuals, and [crosstalk].

Shani Magosky: Like many things, that would be a naive way to look at it.

Ginny Clarke: It’s very naive. I spent a number of years working in service after I went to business school. I had been a college recruiter coming out of undergrad at University of California, Davis. Then I hit this critical point in my career where my father died, and I wanted to really figure out what I wanted to do because I wasn’t loving being in the commercial real estate industry at the time.

I thought back, “Left breadcrumbs for myself.” as I say in the book, I always loved recruiting, I always loved going on campus, and I had done that for all the companies I ever worked for, even though that wasn’t my job. I love assessing people, I love understanding business issues, and that’s really what executive-level recruiting is. I networked my way into one of the world’s largest executive search firms, as you mentioned, Spencer Stuart. Before–

Shani Magosky: Creme de la creme, baby.

Ginny Clarke: Yes. Before I did anything as it related to diversity, I learned how to do executive-level recruiting. There’s an art and a science, there’s a very clear methodology, people tend to think, “Well, you just go in your Rolodex, you see who you know, you build a network, and you throw them at your clients.” It couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s quite a thoughtful, methodical approach.

Before, I’ve had to remind people this, because they look at me, again, as a Black woman and go, “Oh, diversity. Yes, cool. You.” and I’m like, “Actually, no, I could run circles around you, around, in terms of just executive recruiting. I understand.”

That was a foundation for me to really understand how does this work, what are the nuances, what are the impediments, why is it that more search firms aren’t tapping and placing underrepresented individuals? We can get into why that is. What is the diversity piece? It’s the fact that I understood process, and I know how to identify individuals in the market better than other folks. I’m more resourceful, I’m better networked in many ways. Let’s get clear. It’s executive-level recruiting, first, understanding all the impediments, the nuances, and then you can start going into the market once you understand what the objectives are.

Shani Magosky: Absolutely. Also, let’s be clear that diversity isn’t just people of color, right?

Ginny Clarke: No, no.

Shani Magosky: It’s gender, sexual preference, religion, birthplace of origin.

Ginny Clarke: People with disability, veterans.

Shani Magosky: Probably one of the most important pieces is mindset and filter, how we think, how we make decisions. That is what makes you– To me, that’s what I was thinking when I asked what does it mean to be a diversity recruiter. Meaning, because you see the full picture of a person, not just what their resume says in terms of where they-

Ginny Clarke: That’s right.

Shani Magosky: -worked, “Oh, great, that’s a brand name firm. Oh, it’s a woman, heck. Oh, it’s a Brown person, heck.” All that is superficial.

Ginny Clarke: Thank you. At the core of what I have always been espousing, is competencies. Competencies, to me, they are those things that are portable, they’re those things that allowed me to transition across industries five different times, and across roles and functions six or seven different times. What I was able to do instinctively, was to build a narrative for people and help them connect the dots to say, “Okay, I don’t necessarily have experience doing this thing, but I do have a set of competencies that I have developed by virtue of some of the experiences, and some of which are innate for me.”

Those are the things that I’m looking for in people, those are the things that I talked about in my book, relevant to an individual really needing to understand those things if they’re looking for a job, and as they’re managing their career. To me, that is the most integral ingredient for assessing talent. It’s got to be that, it can’t be just based on where you’ve worked and who you know, and what schools you went to. I’ve met some brilliant people who went to San Jose State, and I met some serious duds who went to Harvard, so we can’t use that as a predictor of success.

Shani Magosky: Absolutely. I just want to share a quick story with you along those lines. When I was a junior person at Goldman Sachs, I’d come in as an analyst, it’s mostly Ivy League, and many, whatever, the East Coast Liberal Arts Schools that are considered Ivy League ask, that’s where they do the preponderance of their recruiting. Then there was me from the University of Miami, and there were a few other people from state schools. There was a guy I worked with from University of Illinois, and what have you, and they had such high expectations of the folks from Harvard, and Stanford, and Duke, and, whatever.

Not to say that all those people weren’t successful, a lot of them were, but making the assumption that they were going to be more successful than people who came from a private, but not Ivy League school, like Miami, or a public state school, couldn’t been further from the truth. It’s like us, those of us– we had to work harder almost to prove ourselves, and once we did, the mindsets of some of the people who were actively recruiting, even in the HR function, were changed. I felt really good about helping them change that mindset, because they were like, “You know what, you work your ass off, and we need to hire more people like you who are scrappy.” What’s the word today that they use in– There’s even a book, grit, we had grit.

Ginny Clarke: Oh, grit, yes.

Shani Magosky: That’s a thing today. We had grit before we knew grit was a thing.

Ginny Clarke: That’s right.

Shani Magosky: That’s what made us successful, because we had competencies, tenacity, and not being entitled that other people didn’t have.

Ginny Clarke: Thank you. That’s right. Thank you. That’s so true. Now, just a pivot, and you might not be ready to go here, but I’ll take us there for just a second. You’re talking about some of these underdogs, right?

Shani Magosky: Yes.

Ginny Clarke: That Goldman Sachs, example. Layer in being African-American, or Latino, or, some other difference. I’m bringing up Black in particular, because of the historical, discriminatory behavior that’s been exhibited in this country. In my case, yes, I’m a fair-skinned Black woman. People even have said things like, “Oh, you have green eyes, you’re not really black.” I’m just like, “Wow, that’s downright ignorant.”

Shani Magosky: I get that you don’t look Jewish thing all the time, so I get it, but yes.

Ginny Clarke: Right. At the end of the day, people would see me, and I no wonder if I wasn’t where I was by virtue of some special program. I show I’m six-feet tall, I unnerve people with my height sometimes, so I spent a lot of my life trying to make other people comfortable, but still, I need to show up as evermore competent. There is this, as George Bush once said, and the only time I quote him, “Soft bigotry of low expectations.” Where people look at you and go, “Oh, you’re here. That’s great, but actually, we don’t expect as much from you.” There’s all kinds of micro and macro aggressions that still exist in the workplace for folks.

Shani Magosky: I’m going to go out on a limb and ask you a provocative question. What’s the worst micro or macro aggression you’ve ever faced in your career?

Ginny Clarke: There have been a few, quite a few if I– You know what? I’ve stuffed a lot of them down, but something that came to my memory more recently was, and I’ll say where I was at the time, and it’s not an indictment against this firm, but I was at Spencer Stewart, I was a partner. I was having a meeting with a more junior recruiter who happened to be Latino, and a researcher who was Filipina. We were talking about financial services, we were all in the financial services practice, and we were in a huddle room and that’s what we were talking about.

One of my colleagues walked by and stuck his head in and said, “Hey, what is this? A conspiracy?”

Shani Magosky: He thought he was being funny?

Ginny Clarke: He thought he was being funny. I was so stunned. I frankly don’t even remember what I said in the moment, but I did go to my office manager when we were at an offsite a few days later, and I told him about the incident, and I said I didn’t want to name the individual. I was really trying to point out to him that this is evident in the culture, and we need to be aware of this. He pressed me to get the name of the person, and I finally gave it up and he goes, “Oh.”

Shani Magosky: Like we all know about him already. We haven’t done shit about it but we know about him already.

Ginny Clarke: Yes, but it told me what I needed to know in terms of dealing with him or not and setting my expectations for how I would be treated, even though I was peer to him in the organizational structure. He somehow felt superior. In his own mind said that but it was clearly and completely inappropriate.

Shani Magosky: Absolutely. Of course, she didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable. The reason I’m asking is because people– I want people who are listening and watching to understand what it looks like. I think the more examples that unwitting– In that case, he may not have been on unwitting. I think a lot of people are unwitting, and they say things. I think it’s important for us to point them out, whether it’s the person who felt the offense, who gives the feedback, or someone who witnessed it. I think anybody can step up and give the person feedback and be like, “Hey, I know you probably didn’t mean this, here’s the impact of your words on me just so you know for future reference.”

People don’t know what they don’t know, and part of it is programming.

Ginny Clarke: I recall that I did approach the guy after I composed myself, later on, that day I did go on and say something directly to him. I got the usual oh, I was just trying to be funny. I knew better.

Shani Magosky: That’s the thing. The guy like that, if he doesn’t understand that it wasn’t funny after you told him it wasn’t fucking funny, then he’s got work to do. I think a lot of people would be mortified to hear that they unwittingly committed an aggression like that.

Ginny Clarke: He didn’t seem that upset, actually. He told me everything.

Shani Magosky: He gets the Heisman now.

Ginny Clarke: [laughs] The stiff arm, that’s right.

[laughter]

Shani Magosky: I have football on my mind because I am doing day one of a three-part virtual leadership retreat later this afternoon. One of our icebreakers for today was I asked everyone to show up in a t-shirt or a jersey from their favorite sports team, and of course, mine’s going to be University of Miami football, I have football on the brain.

Ginny Clarke: Nice, I love that.

Shani Magosky: [laughs] All right. Let’s talk about these competencies, because that is the key to identifying great talent of any shape size et cetera.

Ginny Clarke: That’s right.

Shani Magosky: What’s the best way that you would advise a leader to suss that out.

Ginny Clarke: At Google and at Spencer Stewart and every place I’ve ever worked in my book, I really tried to articulate and come up with a list. Google, we have a list of I think there are as many as 19 different competencies. We don’t expect people to have every single one, but we want, for example, the hiring manager, the leader to be able to say there are four or five that are non-negotiable, that are four or five that are table stakes, that anybody I bring in my organization is going to have, but then there are another four or five that are unique to this role where I need this individual to be able to offer me proof points.

The competencies are about behaviors. People tend to think it’s interchangeable with skills, and skills, yes, that’s fine, but I think skills are a little bit more discreet. You can have a skill as a welder, that’s your skill. Arguably, there’s a competency, but I’m looking for things that are a little less tangible here so that we can really think of them as deconstructed elements of things that you have done. For example, one of the leadership competencies that we talk about is operating in ambiguity, aspects of problem-solving. We want to know how people think. What would you do in this situation. There are hypothetical scenarios that we would offer during an interview, or give me an example of a time when you had to confront X Y Z, not just, “Did you do it.”

Shani Magosky: Absolutely.

Ginny Clarke: Those are just a couple of things that we’re real intentional about, and even to the point of arming the other panel interviewers because someone comes in at the senior level, they’re going to meet with four, five, six however many people over time, and we give the interviewers questions, these competency-based questions so that everybody is getting feedback that is as objective as possible to be able to make the most objective decision.

Shani Magosky: What it sounds like you’re saying is behavioral-based interviewing with targeting specific competencies and getting them to tell you– Getting people to tell you about their experiences or what they would do so that it shows you how they think is so much more important than are you a team player? Well, of course, everyone’s going to say yes, not no, tell me about a time you ran a team that had conflict? How did you handle it, or whatever.

Ginny Clarke: Yes, competency, you just said the keyword, it’s a small word. I don’t know if you realize that you said it, it’s how. How? That’s why I want tom know. When I’m on that, I also lead and created an internal mobility program for Google senior leaders. When I started I was brought in to lead diversity and then they said, “Would you create this internal mobility program?” which means I’m helping certain senior leaders find other roles within Google.

As part of that, my team and I will essentially coach them on, let’s look at your relationships, let’s look at before we’re putting them with other recruiters and other leaders to explore particular opportunities.

We want to make sure that their narrative is tight because a lot of them might have been here for a while, and they don’t really know how to talk about themselves in a way that is constructive. It’s like oh, well, they know me. It’s like no, you’re actually competing with external talent. You might want to allow us to work with you and it’s been so gratifying to see so many of them go oh, it’s the how, that’s what you’re wanting me to tell you, not just that I did it.

Shani Magosky: Setting them up for success with the people so that the people in their new world don’t go oh, gosh, he’s from whatever functional area, he’s from X he can never work out here in the real world.

Ginny Clarke: Or conversely, oh, I know him, and I think he’s a good guy. Let’s bring him on over. It doesn’t work because he actually doesn’t have the real competencies to do the role, especially in the senior ranks.

Shani Magosky: For sure.

Ginny Clarke: We tend to think people are a little bit more fungible, if somebody’s a general manager, and that can work really well. Certain people have those capabilities. At Google, for example, we tend to be a lot more siloed. We tend to like specialists and domain experts who are narrow and deep. It can be hard to convince somebody that you have the range to go across a couple of different domain areas. These competencies can help bridge that gap. I think the onus is on the individual to convince the hiring manager that they have those competencies.

Shani Magosky: Yes. I want to take a little detour off of something you just said and then get back on track, which is narrow and deep versus broad. I just love your opinion on that, because that’s actually something I talk to clients about a lot, especially those who are considering or in the process of changing careers.

There was an article, I want to say in The New York Times late last year, are you a tiger or roger. Meaning Roger Federer or Tiger Woods, and it was Tiger Woods grew from the time like before he could walk, he had a golf club in his hand, and that’s all he ever did. Narrow and deep golf versus Roger Federer was a broader-based athlete before he decided to pursue tennis. I’ve used that are you, Roger or Tiger. Just in your role, is one better than another, or does it depend?

Ginny Clarke: Organizations need both, but each organization should be deliberate about when they’re structuring it, what are they looking for, particularly the higher up you go, to me, the broader you need to be. A lot of companies suffer from having domain experts become leaders, because they’re domain experts, but they’ve neglected a big chunk of the capability set or competency set, which is leadership. It’s almost assumed, well, you’ve achieved, you’re such a deep subject matter expert, you’re so smart, surely you can figure this leadership thing out. That is just ridiculous.

Shani Magosky: Yes, it is.

Ginny Clarke: It’s risky. You’re setting yourself up for difficulty by not having super strong leadership. The breadth that I’m talking about is really around those leadership capabilities, in addition to subject matter expertise. Now, to the extent that you’re going for even broader general management capabilities, again, I think that there’s plenty of room for that.

My concern, I’m going to flip it a little bit, because I want to make sure that an organization is optimizing the people that it has. I would think you’re leaving money on the table, quite literally, to the extent that companies haven’t done thorough enough talent reviews, to know that an individual, and again, I’m talking at the senior level. The numbers aren’t huge, but at Google, there’s 4,000 senior leaders out of 120,000 people. That sounds like a big number, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s a very small elite group. We should know, we should be doing succession planning, we should be doing talent reviews for all of those folks, to be able to say this one needs development to get greater breadth to be more of service to the company, and importantly, to address that individual’s goals and objectives.

Maybe they don’t want to be too much of a generalist. They want to stay narrow. You’ve got a lot of engineers and technical folks who love that narrowness. Keep them doing that. Are they ready to be real broad leaders in that narrow band? Fine, if not make them an individual contributor, but understand what the capabilities are and the expectations as they align with the needs of the organization.

Shani Magosky: Absolutely, gosh, it needs to be a Venn diagram of what the company needs, what the individual is good at, and what they want to develop. The sweet spot is in the middle. Too many companies just say, “Oh, well, we need to move a chess piece here, and this person gets pretty good reviews, we’re just going to move them to Tokyo, or”.

Ginny Clarke: Yes, and it’s not done deliberately. We use, I’ll name a name, we use Korn Ferry as one of our partners in doing assessment work. We have someone who used to work there on our staff at Google, who is an IO psychologist, who really understands and can dig in on what are the organizational needs, and how are we assessing these individuals in a really, really rigorous way?

Shani Magosky: Yes. Actually, I was going to ask that question. Good. Now we’re getting back on track with the assessment thing. Thank you. What would you recommend to– Big companies like Google can afford to hire the Korn Ferries of the world. Small, medium-sized businesses, not necessarily. Are there any assessments that you really like in your experience that you think those companies can use in their talent management process?

Ginny Clarke: I’ll just I’ll throw it out because I use this in my book for individuals. Its strengths finders. There are a bunch of them out there. Find one that seems to resonate with the nature of your business, and use it. Strengths finders has a library of 35 different strengths. They’re along with competencies. They’re synonymous, in this case.

Shani Magosky: Absolutely.

Ginny Clarke: I don’t know that there is granular for particular functions as you want them to be. They’re more psychometric. I’m not a psychologist either. I would ask around and see what you’re looking for, but the main thing is, there are plenty of, I’m forgetting the institute. Center for Learning. There are lots of corporate resources out there for small to medium-sized businesses to be able to get their hands on this stuff. Literally, you could Google it, and you would be able to find– I know, it’s such a burden.

Shani Magosky: Its so cool to work at Google and tell people to Google it.

Ginny Clarke: You get my little home device over here didn’t just say, “Can I help you?”

Shani Magosky: I know, it’s so true. Hey, Google. Hey, Alexa. Hey, Siri. I know, anytime you meet someone with those names?

Ginny Clarke: Oh, see? Yes.

Shani Magosky: So funny. Now, let’s bookend this process we’ve been talking about of recruiting and talent management and so forth. On the one hand, we got to look before that at where does diversity, again, not just people of color, but diversity of thought, diversity of everything, where does that fall in the fabric of the culture? Is it in the C-suite, or is it like a low-level HR, mid-level HR function? I [crosstalk] we’re going to have a juicy conversation. I guess maybe let’s put it in the context of, where does a chief diversity officer really belong in an organization, and how can that help companies really take this more seriously than they have in the past?

Ginny Clarke: Yes, I’ve done a lot of Chief Diversity Officer searches, and I know a lot of people who serve in that role. I know and admire and very close to Google’s chief diversity officer. I’m going to be a little provocative here. Regardless of the individual, please hear me, this is not an indictment against any one person or the role itself. My concern is that in many organizations, the C-suite uses that function, that role, that office or Center of Excellence, as a crutch, and arguably with HR, because a lot of those Chief Diversity Officer roles report in through human resources. Sometimes there’s a direct report and relationship into the CEO or the COO, and all those things are fine. You can argue that, “Oh, well, I have access to the CEO and it’s embedded.”

The structure doesn’t matter, unless leadership is walking the walk. I fear that people are falling back on this term of culture, and it becomes this disembodied entity that no one is actually responsible for. I just want to make sure, regardless of where that chief diversity officer is sitting, that they understand what the true levers are, meaning, who are the most important individuals in an organization, what are their behaviors, and they’re able to influence some of their behaviors. That’s what a culture is. It’s an amalgam of the behaviors of the leaders of the organization.

You can walk around and say, “We have this wonderful culture, where everybody is respectful and loves each other,” but if you’ve got people in your organization who are doing not so cool things, not so cool things to people, then you’re kidding yourself. You’re in denial about this culture, because the culture is you.

Shani Magosky: Yes, and all it takes is one employee. All it takes was one barista at a Starbucks to deny the bathroom to a Black patron, and it exposed an attire culture, and then they are still actually paying for that, if you will, and trying to right the wrong and all that stuff. It just takes one person.

Ginny Clarke: That act is symbolic of what is actually at the core of the culture. That’s what we, “Oh.” People clutch their pearls, like, “Oh, my God, that happened here?” It’s like, I see it, hear it, observe it, I don’t want to say daily, but frequently enough to know that yes, there is this insidious culture,” and it’s comments like that former colleague from years ago, made that you just have to stop, you’ve got to call it out, and you can’t allow it at some point. You don’t tolerate it. They can’t be in your organization. You say, No, you get rid, you excise the cancer. You get rid of that toxicity.

Shani Magosky: Yes, absolutely. That’s another definition of culture that I like, is what leaders tolerated themselves and others.

Ginny Clarke: That’s right.

Shani Magosky: Companies that the CEO gets caught doing something, and the companies that are like, “No, out.” They’re making a statement, they’re like, “We’re not going to tolerate this at the CEO level, and so we’re not going to tolerate it at the IC level anywhere.

Ginny Clarke: Isn’t it a little amusing to you now that we’re seeing a rash of those kinds of actions by companies? They’re getting rid of this person or that person that does something wrong. They’ve been here for 20 years, and all of a sudden, they’ve been behaving this way, and now you’re getting called out on your own blasts, so you’re going to act. Okay. All right. Cool.

Shani Magosky: That’s kind of the difference between some people and others, is that some people got caught, and others didn’t, or just the mindsets, I want to say finally shifting. Let’s hope it’s shifting, like I said at the very beginning, more long-term rather than this is another flavor of the month type of anti-racism wave.

Ginny Clarke: It’s early to tell, but the conversations are different, and I’m relentless within Google of saying, “Look systemically. Don’t make this a knee-jerk reaction.” Let me explain why this has been happening. You need to understand why before you start trying to throw a solution at it. Understand the history. Understand the root causes of why this has been tolerated for so long, and why you were complicit in it. This isn’t about shame, but this is about, if we’re all smart people trying to fix a problem, then let’s start by analyzing it for all that it is, no matter how uncomfortable that might make you.

Shani Magosky: Yes. Absolutely. Speaking of analyzing, that’s a good segue to whether it’s run out of the chief diversity officer’s office or somebody else. How about a needs analysis first before we say, “We need a better diversity strategy.”

Ginny Clarke: No, no. I’m writing something for my own podcast right now. It’s kind of interrupting the regular programming because I’m so compelled to talk more about this stuff. One of the things I’m really calling out is, listen, this needs to be embedded, you know? You can rely on the chief diversity officer to hold people accountable, but the actual individual needs to be, that everyone should be accountable to is to the CEO and to shareholders, and to whoever the rest of the stakeholders are for that particular organization.

You can’t just dismiss this. You can’t shove it at somebody else and say, “This is your problem, go fix it.” This is not an isolation. This cuts very deep, and each individual needs to be confronting themselves on the most profound levels. This is personal, this is emotional. This is not a fix it, throw money at it, and it will be done next quarter or even in two years or five years. This is, “I’m going to behave differently because I have a different understanding about myself in the world and other people in the world.”

Shani Magosky: It takes practice, it takes commitment. I liken it to health. If you suddenly find out you have type 2 diabetes, well, you need to change your diet, you need to change your exercise, you need to probably take some supplements. Until you get it under control, you’re going to have to needle-stick yourself every day and get your sugar levels.

Those changes don’t happen overnight. You don’t suddenly get diagnosed and say, “Okay, I’m suddenly going to do the Paleo Diet, even though I used to eat Captain Crunch for breakfast, a big subway for lunch, and steak for dinner.” I want people to take the scariness away from it and look at it like any other change they need to make. Recognize where they’re off track. “I recognize I was eating like shit.” I recognize that I was committing micro and/or macro aggressions. I recognize I that I don’t know what it’s like to walk around with an identifying skin color that makes me different. I recognize that.

Stop taking the shame out of it, or the embarrassment, or the difficult conversations out of it, and look at it like another change.

Ginny Clarke: Well, it’s funny because I think there’s this sort of deflection where it’s like, “Oh, oh, you’re making me feel so terrible.” It’s like, “Wait a minute, this isn’t about you.” Let’s bring it back to me, and I’m not– Do I have anger and resentment? I’m not going to lie, I do, and it came up for me as in the wake of protest in a way that I didn’t even foresee. I literally was watching a video one morning shortly after George Floyd was killed, and all of a sudden something came up from, like, the depths of my root shocker area, for those of you who know that kind of energetic space, and I just burst into tears.

There was just all this pain and rage from decades of having observed this. My great-grandfather was a slave. My mother worked and grew up in Tuskegee, Alabama. My grandfather walked from Georgia to Mississippi to learn under Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver. This is in my lineage. I’ve been to segregated places as a kid.

People tend to think, “We’re here, or you, Ginny, you’ve achieved so much, and you have a nice lifestyle and you’re educated, and you have a great job, and you’re an influencer.” Yes, and this is where I come from, and this is what I have had to put up with to get here. I’m not trying to shame you again, but I want you to understand, and understand, and not out of guilt. Don’t just whipsaw and say, “Then let me hire you.” You know? Just to assuage your guilt. That’s not useful to me, that’s not what I’m looking for. What I really want is for people to begin to appreciate, for example, and this is where I heard myself connecting some of these dots, so if we all agree that there has been systemic, institutionalized racism and discrimination against Black people in this country, and we now acknowledge that, for some, some people are acknowledge this, there is a subset, a minority, I’m hoping, that don’t believe Black people are equal, but most rational people understand that Black people are indeed equal in the eyes of God, biologically, intellectually. There’s nothing inferior about our constitution. In fact, if you think about what we’ve been through, you might argue that we’re pretty damn resilient.

All those things being said, now you look into a corporate construct, and you look at the Black individuals who are in those organizations, might it stand to reason that we haven’t gotten as far because of there inequities that are so systemic, and that we might deserve to be looked at. I’m not saying be promoted rapidly against everybody else, I’m never going to purport and suggest reverse discrimination, but what I am saying, look at us through a different lens. Now that you’re acknowledging it on a social level, bring that same acknowledgement into your organization, and say, “Wow, you know, maybe I’ve been holding you to a white norm, a white standard.”

Look at me for all of who I am, and I’m not like you necessarily, but I’m as good as you, or even better, arguably in some way.

Shani Magosky: That’s right. That’s the other end of the bookend, or whatever. Culture starts with the CEO, chief diversity officer can’t be just window dressing. That’s like, first. We’ve got recruiting by assessment, not just checking boxes, right? Okay. Then we’ve got the rest of the talent management process, which is, yes. What kind of development does somebody need, because of what has happened historically, to help them offset that? Is it presentation skills? Is it networking skills? What is it, right?

Ginny Clarke: Post a different manager. This same talent assessment that I’m talking about, you should be doing that for everybody, and identifying the low-performing leaders, because if you’re only assessing your leaders on the basis of what they’ve contributed to the bottom line, you are putting a lot of people at risk. Not all leaders are good managers, not all managers are good leaders, so make the distinction between who’s really leading well, and managing their team well. What kinds of attrition rates are certain leaders seeing? Is there parity? Are people who are of a majority leaving at the same rate as people who are underrepresented? I can tell you, in a lot of companies, there is not parity. You’re seeing more people of color and women leaving at higher rates. Why is that?

Shani Magosky: Because we’re not getting promoted and paid as much as White man.

Ginny Clarke: Well, and who’s making that call at the compensation situations? It is those who’s making that determination. This comes down to a person. Again, we talk in terms of what’s systemic, but we’re not rooting out some of those individual firestarters and those people who are part of that toxicity and that malignant elements that are making this not work for everybody. Do top grading. I’ve talked about this before. For the bottom performing, and it doesn’t have to be subjective. These companies do surveys. They are performance ratings that everybody gets from their peers 360. You have information that’s going to allow you organizations to rate your people. To the extent that you’ve got some chronic bad performers when it comes to people management, get rid of them.

Shani Magosky: 100%.

Ginny Clarke: You can put them through training, but how long is that going to take? To the extent that they don’t meet the expectations, are you going to dock their compensation? You should. If they don’t have any diversity among their team, that’s a problem. Look into that. Again, some of these things need to be tied to compensation.

Shani Magosky: Yes, I agree. Because that’s where the rubber meets the road. You hit people on their wallet, and they’re much more likely to make the change. I hope I’m just writing that down so I don’t forget it in the summary. Then let’s take it even further. Let’s take it into interfacing with customers and supply chain. Do we have diversity in our supply chain? Do we have diversity in our sales force? Do we have diversity in our customer service arm?

Ginny Clarke: It should be everywhere.

Shani Magosky: I wrote about this the other day on social media, I’m like, diversity doesn’t just live in a charge. There needs to be attention paid in every functional area.

Ginny Clarke: I jokingly said, maybe we should just defund HR. What I mean by that is, just get rid of them for a minute and see what happens, because I think a lot of leaders want to make that HR punt. You’re up. Diversity, fix it. You guys fix it, and call me when it’s fixed. No, this is a leadership issue.

Shani Magosky: Well, that’s a typical example of giving someone the responsibility, but not the authority.

Ginny Clarke: That’s right.

Shani Magosky: That’s part of why companies set HR up to fail when they give them big initiatives like this because they don’t have the authority to create the buy-in, or to adjust compensation to penalize or reward or whatever the case may be.

Ginny Clarke: That’s right. It’s not about the numbers. I want to reiterate that too, because I’m getting a lot of, “Well, what should we be measuring? I want to see two Black people and four of this, and let’s count in.” You have to count. I’m not saying you can’t. You have to measure your progress, but it shouldn’t be about, “Oh, I got another one,” because frankly, to me, that feels like now I got a bounty on my head. That’s reminiscent of being chattel again, being on the auction block. That doesn’t feel so good. If I know that that’s why you want to hire me, that’s downright offensive.

Companies need to walk a bit of a fine line right now. It means that they need to really get a lot of people like some of these chief diversity officers, and some of their strongest leaders. By strong leaders, I mean, those leaders who get it, who understand people. At the end of the day, that’s all I’m looking for. I want leaders who are broad, who are self-aware enough, who are non-ego-based, to be able to tap in and get people, all people. Those are the best leaders I’ve ever known.

I don’t care where you’re coming from, what your nationality is, what your race is, what your ethnicity, those things don’t have to matter, necessarily, for you to have empathy, for you to be curious, for you to want to get to know who I am at my core. Those are the best leaders, and those are the ones that are going to have the most diverse teams, and are going to be the most productive and the most effective. It’s been proven time and time again. We know this. It’s been for 25, 30 years McKinsey and others have been writing about how having diversity increases its financial performance, and yet, that’s not enough of an incentive. Now we’ve got all this social pressure, and everybody’s clamoring to get it right. You’ve had quite a few decades to get it wrong, and so you’re not going to turn on a dime, and you need to start listening to different people.

Shani Magosky: Then along with the diversity, goes the psychological safety, which Google re-popularized that term, five or so years ago, with Project oxygen. The best performing teams, what they all had in common was the presence of psychological safety, which means a lot of things. To me, the headline of what it means is that people feel free to be themselves in all of their range, and, even diversity within someone who isn’t diverse. You can fly your freak flag at work and not feel like, you’re going to be penalized or taken off a project, or that sort of thing.

Ginny Clarke: Maybe I’m a little old school, and I get it because I do think that that can be taken too far, that people will take liberties in what they’ll say without regard for someone else. That’s why I use that word empathy, because you can fly your freak flag and say what you want to say, that’s fine, but you are in a broader context. You’re part of an ecosystem where you need to respect and honor other people’s boundaries. I think sometimes–

Shani Magosky: Freak flag within a professional context. Too many people show up at work and feel like they have to act within a box of expectations, and maybe they’ve got this super creative side that they’re afraid to come out, or they’re just afraid to voice an opinion that differs from their leaders because they have a unique experience and that sort of thing. I don’t mean freak flag in the sense of like–

Ginny Clarke: I wasn’t taking it there. I know what you– [laughs] I just want– because I think there are generational differences, too. I’m well over 50. I come from a different generation where the corporate environment it was more rigid, let’s face it. Coming to Google was wonderful. And seeing this open environment, at the same time, I see a lot of millennials who don’t necessarily understand some of what I consider to be just common sense boundaries, but it’s not common. Again, it’s not to them and then so it is generational. There’re just certain things that you don’t bring up. The notion of bringing your whole self to work, there are limits to that.

Shani Magosky: For sure. Again, this reminds me of a story. Everything it reminds me of a story or song. This is mid-90s, again, Goldman, a lot of women in the analyst program that I was in junior level. Even back in the ’90s, it was skirts and dresses, which meant pantyhose.

Ginny Clarke: That’s right, yes.

Shani Magosky: I remember that what the first woman who went out on a limb and took a risk and wore a pantsuit. By the way, sharp, sharp pantsuit, pinstripe, whatever, got berated by a senior woman. I never want to see you wear pants in this office again. It wasn’t that long ago. Just thinking about the generational differences and how far we’ve come did like-

Ginny Clarke: Yoga pants and flip flops.

Shani Magosky: -if we couldn’t wear a pantsuit and now people are wearing hoodies and yoga clothes to work. [laughs]

Ginny Clarke: Not my thing. I have a huge wardrobe that I’d love to resuscitate, but not here, especially not working from home.

Shani Magosky: All right. I think that we have covered a lot of ground today. Is there anything else, is there anything I neglected to ask you that is important to share with the audience of Leadershifters today?

Ginny Clarke: I think I just want everybody to take a breath and just exhale, and let’s get grounded. I get up and meditate every morning. That’s the first thing I’ve done for myself, this morning and every morning. I want people to just focus in on what can you be doing? What can you do? What can you say to someone to express and extend grace, to ask for another level of understanding, to just appreciate and walk in their shoes for just a moment, someone who’s not like you? That to me is where we need to start and get back to some of just a sense of humanity and kindness and goodness and grace. I know that that sounds very airy-fairy, but know that I’m a hard-charging executive from way back. I am a fierce warrior, but at the same time, I understand that this really comes from a deeply personal space. I actually think that’s why we’re encountering this whole COVID situation. Now if I look at it on a meta-level, I believe that the universe is forcing us to go within and to really check ourselves and to get comfortable. I would use this as an opportunity to do that for yourself for the benefit of the organizations that you’re associated with for the benefit of the rest of society and for your families.

Shani Magosky: Yes, it’s like be the change you want to see. Right?

Ginny Clarke: Yes. Be that.

Shani Magosky: You’re so right. It’s like having empathy and treating people with humanity is not weak. It’s actually the ultimate form of strength-

Ginny Clarke: Isn’t it?

**Shani Magosky: -**right? To be able to suspend your own judgments and assumptions and stories, and have empathy for someone you don’t know or don’t know what their experiences have been. It’s a strength.

Ginny Clarke: Yes. There’s so much power in that, and that’s where I derive my power, frankly, and it’s that power over anyone. It’s power and confidence and calm and peace in myself.

Shani Magosky: Yes.

Ginny Clarke: The strength to go on and to say what I say to do what I do for the benefit of my son, for the benefit of others that I care about in my life, and I care about our civilization, I actually do. I know it sounds real– but I think we’re at a critical time where we’ve got to get it right. We need to wake up and understand why this is happening? Go to root cause in yourself and on a meta-level and say I need to be part of this change because it’s going to matter for all of us.

Shani Magosky: Yes, absolutely, thank you for adding that note to the end because that really is the most important thing. A company can do all the things we talked about today and have improved the infrastructure to have more diversity and more acceptance of opinions and all that sort of stuff. We could still have individuals who haven’t done that inner work, and they could spoil the whole soup in the experience, for everybody else. It is critical, leadershifters, and I know if you’re watching this, you do do your own work because so much of what we talk about is getting your own shit together first [laughs]-

Ginny Clarke: I loved it. That’s right.

**Ginny Clarke: -**before you do the rest of it. Well, Ginny, this was such a privilege to have you on the show. Thank you so much for all of your insights. If people want to reach you or get your book, what’s the best way to do that?

Ginny Clarke: ginnyclarke.com. G-I-N-N-Y-C-L-A-R-K-E.com. Book is on Amazon. Podcasts, they are available on all the different platforms, and you can find the listing for them on my site as well.

Shani Magosky: Excellent, Ginny Clarke with an E on the end for extraordinaire.

Ginny Clarke: Ah, you’re so wonderful, Shani, thank you.

Shani Magosky: Thank you, and leadershifters, thank you for joining us today. I hope this was helpful. I know we didn’t exactly go in a linear order but that’s sort of how I roll. I think you’ve got all the nuts and bolts of why this has to start at the senior-most level of the organization, and why it’s not just about window dressing and checking boxes that you have to really do your work. Do the needs analysis within your organization. Change the way you recruit. Get better at assessing competencies and hiring and promoting and developing people based on that and based on where they want to go. Bring it into all the other parts of the organization, and we promise you not just the research out there. We promise you that financial results will improve when you have more diversity of human beings and thoughts and opinions and people are kinder and more empathetic with each other.

With that, thank you for joining us. Until next time.

The post 56: No BS Chat about Talent Management and DEI with Google’s Director of Leadership Staffing, Ginny Clarke appeared first on The LeaderShift Project.

Today’s episode packs a double punch, starting with discussions about attracting more customers with effective digital marketing and culminating with tips for scaling your startup as it grows. Founder of Toronto-based Local SEO Search, John Vuong reminds us that no amount of website SEO and online advertising will matter if you forget about the fundamentals of running a business, knowing and serving your ideal customers well, and identifying and leveraging your unique selling proposition. Only then can he and his team effectively support your business with compelling websites, custom SEO campaigns, social media marketing, and written and video content outreach strategies. We also debate the merits of traditional vs digital advertising and the ultimate differentiating benefit of the latter – the ability to test a variety of messaging options and then pivot more quickly and inexpensively. With over 200 factors that go into website rankings, this is no task for amateurs. Your job as a business owner and expert is to “let people in” – i.e. speak to your target audience authentically via the channels they frequent.

TRANSCRIPT

Episode 55: The Power of Digital Marketing with SEO company Owner John Vuong

Hello Leadershifters and welcome to another episode of the Leadershift Show with Shani. Today we welcome John Vuong, who is the founder of Local SEO Search based in Toronto, Canada. Say a quick hello and then I’ll say a little bit more about you.

John Vuong: Hi Shani. Thanks a lot for having me. I’m excited to be on your show and share some information with your audience members.

Shani: Excellent. Very happy to have you. If you’re tuning in, stay where you are if you’re interested in learning more about SEO and why it’s super important and critical to any marketing plan in this day and age, and becoming increasingly more so as every day rolls by. Or if you’re at the point where you want to get some tips about scaling your business because one of the interesting things about Local SEO Search is that John has grown it from just a few people when he started it up to 30 plus people now. While that may not sound like a lot of people, it’s like apples and oranges to run an organization with just a couple or few people and then scale it to a point where it’s 30 or more people.

You’ve to get that phase of transition right, culturally, operationally and everything in terms of leadership or else if you get even bigger than that, it’s going to be harder to go back and clean up. All right. Let’s get into it. Welcome from Toronto, our neighbor to the North. Tell us a little bit about your background because I know that you shifted from more traditional advertising into the digital space. When was that and why did you decide to do it? That’d be the first two questions.

John: Yes, definitely. I started this agency back in 2013. It’s been seven plus years, but prior to that, I studied in college. I finished my business finance degree. I didn’t want to study that and continue and pursue my career in that. I took any job when I finished school and it was really the sales roles that I got involved in. The first job and opportunity I had was in the advertising sales space. I did dabble in traditional media, as well as digital media from affiliate online to email marketing to where I stayed for five years, which was at Yellow Pages Group where I was selling ad space to business owners.

What I really enjoyed was the face to face real life business owners and the connection I had with these business owners that really made a big impact in the local community. That’s where I wanted to gravitate and focus the rest of my career in. At the end of my tenure at Yellow Pages, as you know, it was the phone directory where people would spend a lot of money in print media to dominate their local niche in the category.

Shani: It doesn’t get any more old school than the Yellow Pages and naming yourself like Quadruple A or whatever so that you alphabetize up at the top of your category.

John: Yes. Those were easy and cheap ways to get onto the top, but there’s the paid advertising portion, which is allowing you to promote yourself. Always take responsible for upselling, retaining my customers, people that were spending a lot of money, I was more the sales rep, right? Account manager. While I was there, there was a shift that was happening. Google was slowly taking off and more and more people were consuming and finding business owners no longer in a traditional medium. They were gravitating towards more digital, which is Google websites.

Business owners were wondering what was going on because they were spending more than ever, but they were getting less and less leads. They were getting less phone calls, less quality customers and they knew there were still people out there buying and consuming, but where were they going? That’s where I found out Google was it. I was spending more time in front of a computer doing research and it was a lot quicker. It was a lot easier. Those people moved and shifted quickly were able to dominate that presence online.

Even on Google, there were a lot of people that didn’t understand how Google operated. I really wanted to understand those differences, there’s paid ads, there’s social media advertising, there’s different types of mediums such as blogging, which is written, there’s audio such as podcasts, there’s video such as YouTube and then, of course, there’s images where you can find Instagram, Pinterest, et cetera.

Various forms of advertising but what’s the difference between advertising and traditional media versus Yellow Pages, which was more directive advertising and Yellow Pages being directive and SEO being Google directive, there’s a very good synergy as opposed to advertising which is traditionally flyers, newspaper, billboards, radio, television. These are all different forms of ad networks and mediums, but then digitally, it’s the same thing. There’s banner ads, there’s email marketing, there’s social media advertising, there’s YouTube ads, Google ads, there was this search, very similar.

What I tried to uncover was figure out what was Yellow Pages doing and now Google was doing the same thing. It was a really easy tie-in for me to transition and figure it out on how to pivot and run a business because there was a need and demand, I just had to fit that mode in which business owners wanted to pivot and shift their dollars. I didn’t know anything about SEO, but I had to figure it out. I knew there was a customer need and demand. I knew there was an opportunity there.

Shani: Yes. Great. Some of what you already described has answered one of the questions I was going to ask when you call yourself Local SEO Search, that actually is a pretty big umbrella of a lot of different services and you’ve already named a lot of them. SEO obviously stands for Search Engine Optimization and that’s obviously important so that you get found whether it’s organically or you go the paid route. Why is it important for any size business right now from a solo entrepreneur to a fortune 500 company to have their online social search strategies dialed in?

John: It’s more important than ever because more and more people are consuming information digitally on their smart phones, on their tablets, on their desktop, laptop. Internet speed is so quick now. Affordability of internet, as well as smartphones being more powerful than ever. Right now, technology has leapfrogged, expanded so quickly in the last five years. When I first started, we were still in P3 Pentium computers right now. There’s the Apples there are the Intels.

Blackberries were very popular. Now it’s all iPhones. Phones, the cameras were not that great back then, but now it’s like 10 ADP. It’s going to be 5G networks. Technology has really amplified and picked up. It’s more important than ever to not just have your digital presence taking care of– if you haven’t looked at building a really good website first off, you’re missing out on a huge potential of potential buyers that are now spending more time than ever navigating and searching and seeking business owners out.

Shani: What do you say to someone who says, I have a website up and it’s fine. It’s got some pictures, it’s got a contact form and I don’t really want to spend any money. I don’t want to hire someone to think about key words. What would you say to someone like that?

John: I’m going to take a step back. Before Google existed, how did these business owners survive for five, 10, 20 years even generations without internet, without computers? They took care of their customers. Reputation. They knew the value proposition. They knew the services, unique selling proposition. They really took care of their customers. Understanding their needs, desires and their wants.

Shani: Right.

John: Putting that together to provide them a service or a product that people want to pay, exchange money for. Traditionally, if you take care of your customers and understand that– it took years, maybe it took generations for business owners to really understand how to run an effective business. Which is the straightforward take care of your customers, generate some revenue, take care of your family, et cetera.

Today, with the speed of internet, speed of technology, everything is now amplified. People think it’s easier than ever but they forget about the foundation of what brought people to become a business owner in the first place. They forget that these people have been working for five, 10, 30 years even, generationally to get their reputation, the brand, their established vendors or suppliers to understand the process.

Today’s world with podcasting, YouTube, social media, everyone wants immediate. They see an ad saying, I can make $10,000 in a day. They click on it and they’re going to be sold something that is never going to be realistic. They’re selling a dream. It’s the same thing in terms of all these business owners, bricks and mortars, traditional business owners. It took years, decades, generations to really understand, refine and understand how to run an effective business. Now, you look at digital website design, building a really good solid brand. Do you think it’s going to take weeks, months or will it take five, 10, 20, 30 years? You got to give it time. It’s not as easy as everyone thinks.

Shani: Your point is that yes, you need to be online, you need to be optimized, you need to be thinking about what social platforms your audiences are visiting so that you can reach them, but don’t forget the basics. Product, price, place, promotion, the four Ps of marketing and just because you could spend all the money in the world to get on page one for your industry of a Google search, but if your product sucks or has a gazillion one-star reviews, like who cares?

John: It will not fix your business. I only work with people that understand how to run a business. Your campaign will not replace a business owner that doesn’t know how to run a good business. I only want to help people that want to digitalize and really amplify their message if they already understand how to run a good business, right? People forget about that. They think it’s the be all end all once they’re dominating search engines. Google understands it as well. They want to really only help people that actually know how to run a good business, which is amplify your message, become a thought leader, an expert or authoritative figure in your industry, in your domain.

Once you become that, because you took care of your customers, you understand your service value, unique selling proposition, all that other stuff, that’s where you get rewarded. Sound foundationally. Take care of your customers, understand that so that then digitally, you either do it yourself or you understand the content piece because there’s different forms of content, different mediums but really focus on quality, well researched depth, position yourself as an expert as opposed to just putting out information just because you think people need it. Focus more on really positioning yourself as an expert.

Shani: What would you say are the top ways, at least currently, because their algorithms change and there’s different things that they place importance on over time but currently, what are the top two or three ways for someone who either doesn’t have a limited time or a limited budget to do everything that will help get people bump them up in the search engine so that they’re if not on page one at least in the first few pages?

John: I’ll be honest with you. There’s not one or two because there’s only over 200 factors. I understand that people want hacks. They want to be known. They want to be ranking right away. Well, that’s not reality. That’s never going to be reality because running a business, if it was that easy, everyone would be running a business successfully. I will always say, take care of your customers, understand who your customers are, understand your product and service level and really tone down on who those ideal customers are of yours.

If you already have some paying customers, narrowed down to 10, 15, 20 of those, understand what they want, really speak to them and then really build a website based on who your ideal customers are and focus on creating content, values, speaking directly to them as opposed to speaking to yourself. Then you can then focus on refining your strategy in terms of SEO or digital footprint to really just focus on your ideal tribe.

Shani: I like what you said, speak to them and there’s two different points I want to discuss there. One is authenticity, right? That’s part of what appeals in social and digital is not just doing a video or writing an article that makes you sound like you have a stick stuck up your ass or content that is really not value added or authentic. That’s piece number one, is the authenticity. The other piece is actually the words speak. Do you think at this point video trumps written advertising strategies?

John: Speaking to them means how is your ideal customer consuming content? Don’t focus on hitting every single medium out there in every single social page and every channel and medium out there because you only have a limited budget especially if you’re a small, medium sized business owner. Where are you going to invest your time, hard earned dollar to produce the maximum return?

Are you good at writing? If not, hire someone to do it. Are you good at producing video? Is that how your customers are consuming content? If so, then produce really good high quality video. Is it audio, then speak to them. Understand who they are, understand what content and medium they’re using and then put that out there to hit more of your ideal tribe, especially if that’s how they consume content.

You’ve got to understand that and it’s very difficult to understand that if you’re just starting off. If you’re just starting off, you probably don’t understand how to run a good business yet. Therefore, you need to put in the time and fail quite a few times or lose some money or spend some money, and you’ll feel it. Once you start spending and not getting returns, you’ll really appreciate how much time and effort that hard earned money is worth. Until you put money in or put more time in it, it’s hard. People can say a lot of things but they’re not serious.

Shani: What would you say to a client who, let’s say you’re supporting and they’re providing you with some content that you’re going to run your magic on. The content isn’t that good and you don’t feel like they’re speaking authentically? What advice would you give them to shift the way they’re doing their messaging?

John: A lot of business owners don’t understand how to write good content and that’s no offense to them because they were not trained as going to school or they’ve been doing five, 10 years of professional writing, that’s a different trait altogether or producing good content an audio or video format. There’s experts, videographers, photographers and all that stuff. What I always tell people is personalize it as much as possible, let people in on more of your journey, let people in on what really matters to you and what really matters to the customer. People can see through you if you’re not being authentic and genuine.

It’s okay to be vulnerable. It’s okay to let people in on, I don’t know what I don’t know and that’s okay. Just be true to that. Own up to it. Don’t fake it. People can see through if you’re faking it. That’s why I would say, people who give me content, great. I would say, just focus heavily on personalization, being honest about it, everything else is about– we have a full team of experts that will just change some of the content writing styles to mode into what Google wants or their ideal customers want because they’re not trained for it.

That’s the whole key, whatever SEO team in-house or you hire, they have to be on the same page at the same level as yourself. They understand what your whole outcome is. What’s your core values? What your goals are and your mission. You have to be in alignment as much as they want to hire you, we vet them as much as they vet us.

Shani: That’s right. It’s funny when you said let them in. It reminds me, I was a guest on a fairly well-known person’s Facebook live. It was actually Facebook and Instagram live going at the same time off of two different devices. She was doing it out of her home office, of course, #COVID. While we were chatting having really intimate deep conversations about a few things, she’s got a couple of kids and they’re coming and going and they’re leaning into her live video, kissing her goodbye on the cheek. It was like you felt like you were in her living room with her. It was very cool.

John: It’s okay because people understand reality is you have children and it’s COVID and no one’s allowed out and schools close and it’s okay, right?

Shani: I get the sense that even after COVID, I think people just love that. They’re like oh, she’s not getting all uptight because her kids are in the frame and they’re interrupting her. She’s incorporating it into what she’s doing. To me, that’s a really great example of authenticity and let them in to use your words.

John: [crosstalk]. Big brands have a lot of budget to really make it professionally looking. Today, the average business owner or consumer has a phone that is really high on [crosstalk] or a Zoom account. As much as you want to make it look professional, it’s genuine. It’s yourself, it’s [crosstalk] and it’s okay.

Shani: Totally okay. I love it. Here’s my next question. You had mentioned earlier that there were at least 200 factors that go into your ranking. Does that mean that this is not ever going to be a Do It Yourself if you’re an industrious entrepreneur and you want to do your own SEO, because that sounds awfully convoluted.

John: You can definitely do it yourself. Everything’s self-taught even on my end. I didn’t know technical background but then, I started hiring people that were really good at what they were good at. From social strategists to SEO managers, to the doers, from link builders to social content, reputation managers to videographers to technical SEO. There’s so many other components that are very critical.

If you want to do it yourself, you have to be good at a lot of different aspects. You’re going to invest hundreds and hundreds of hours of trying to understand and learn to do everything. Just like a business owner. You can do everything from operations to hiring to accounting to sales and marketing to bookkeeping, you name it, everything, but are you going to be great at everything? Will there be other people doing it better than you and you can pay them a lot less than what you’re worth?

Shani: Absolutely. That question was almost a set up because I knew the answer but I wanted people to hear it because I think it’s really important, folks who are watching and listening, to value your time at its highest and best use and sure you could spend tens of dozens of hours figuring this out, but there are people who do it. This is exactly the thing that you should be outsourcing if you want to have it done effectively because there are folks like John who can help you, have done research and are trained and have helped other clients succeed. Don’t be a hero. Don’t feel like you have to do everything yourself.

I help the company that manages all of my online things, I help them with the content. The content is authentic because it’s mine. I speak to them regularly and I’m telling them stories and giving them my ideas and rants and whatever. They turn that into content and they do all the wonderful things behind the scene to make sure that it gets seen, not just by the people who are following me, but by other people who are my target market. I couldn’t even pretend to know how to do that or want to do that. Basically, giving you a little clog.

John: Yes, because SEO was challenging. Don’t get me wrong–

Shani: It’s so challenging. I think it’s very complicated. You never know. People are like, I just want to do something that’s going to go viral. Well, if that’s your intention, you probably won’t go viral because it’s always the thing that nobody expects to go viral– Actually, push back on me if you disagree. Is it almost impossible to plan to be viral or can you help someone with that?

John: Yes. Viral is more amplified. Shares and likes and comments and more and more people are on that feed.

Shani: Right, but how is the content put so provocative or different or unusual or kitten cuter than the other seven million kitten videos online that makes one thing go viral over another?

John: One thing I would say is, people don’t understand the amplification part and the PR push and how much money is being behind any viral media out there. Any piece of content that does go viral, there’s thousands upon thousands of dollars put in that either production or marketing piece of that piece of content. People just see it being viral but they don’t see how much time and money it goes in behind it.

Shani: Okay. Is traditional media dead? Should clients be mixed use? Should businesses be allocating their marketing dollars not only to the things that we’re talking about today, but should they still be doing TV, radio, Super Bowl ads, if you’re a big company, billboards, Yellow Pages? What’s your current opinion on, let’s call them marketing mix?

John: I always tell my clients, if it works, continue doing it, track everything, make sure there’s a solid return on investment, but dabble into it because it’s a different type of people consuming different forms of content. If it is radio or television, there’s still an audience because there’s still people watching TV and listening radio when they’re driving or commuting or whatever it may be, but more and more people are spending time on podcasts.

Shani: The people who are watching and listening are fast-forwarding through the commercials.

John: Yes. You have to test it, right? The big advantage of technology and with Google being so prevalent is users are becoming more and more savvy and they understand that it’s real time data where you can actually start and stop a campaign mid cycle a couple of days, a couple of weeks, a couple months, target your audience, refine that message midway and really track the effectiveness of the campaign as opposed to traditional media where you have to pay for a designated time slot, produce a ton of money on a production on a trade show or putting it in a flyer, right?

All that takes a lot of time and effort and money and then you got to pay up front and then you have to wait to see the results while digitally, you can actually start and change it, the messaging, tweak it real time.

Shani: That’s right. You can AB test different messages. That’s on of the things I love about it. Bottom line is, folks who have businesses and you’re still doing some traditional media and you’re seeing a return on that investment, sure, keep doing it because if your customers are going there, keep speaking to them in that channel and you can’t afford not to be doing some social online marketing.

John: Yes. Even with social, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, really understand what impact it has on your audience member. It’s great if you have a product and you have an offer or a sale, but how about service level? If you are a dentist or lawyer, do people go to social to look for a dentist? Look at who your ideal customer is. What’s their journey like? Do they actually look for business owners like yourself on Facebook or Instagram? Or do they go to Google or do they go to YouTube? Really figure out which medium is best for your ideal tribe and then figure that out, produce good content and really focus on that medium of choice.

Shani: Right. If I were to be cynical, which I’m going to be, these things are listening to us. I’m not conspiracy theorist, but everyone I know has experienced the following. Your phone’s just sitting around the table while you’re having a conversation and you’re saying to your friend, can you recommend a good dentist locally? I really need to get some dental work done. I think I need to replace a crown or have a root canal. You’re saying these words and next thing you know, you’re on Facebook scrolling and you’re getting served ads for dentists locally. Explain that phenomenon if you can.

John: Google is tracking and sniffing on every behavior that you have not just voice recognition, but usually search recognition. They know your history on search, Google. Whatever you type in say, “root canal services”, then you go to a different browser, go on Facebook, login, it’s that cookie that tracks and there’s ads, people are paying to follow based on these keywords or these categories that you’ve put yourself in and it’s either related to or within that realm? Then there’s targeted ads being pushed at you and this is where Google, Facebook, Instagram all these social media channels, YouTube makes them billions of dollars.

You’re like, wow, what’s going on? How did they know that I was looking, right? Well, because you’ve already done that search without even realizing you did or you spoke to someone as in you’re asking someone on Facebook, your friend or whatever, but people still want to be in control. Google is great because you can actually check them out on the review section, you’re going to check out their social channels and you want to be in control and you don’t want to be pushed ads at you. Typically, people want to be in control just like Yellow Pages. Understand the difference between natural listings versus paid advertising.

Shani: Yes. I want to shift because I’m really impressed at how you’ve been able to scale your company. I want to hear about that. As we were talking before we started recording, your team is highly distributed, meaning they’re throughout North America and in other continents and so forth. Your staff have been working from home before COVID. Number one, I want to hear, what did you learn from scaling the business, both things that were successes and things that if you could do a do over, you might have done differently? Let’s start there.

John: Back seven years ago, I was fortunate to have already been working home-based. At Yellow Pages, I’ve already transitioned to five years working at home. That allowed me to be comfortable in the home environment of really committing myself to working work hours. It was a really easy transition for me and it’s not for everyone. If people want to work in the office, have that social interaction and atmosphere and going for coffee with friends and family, that’s different. I was very committed to really just working at home.

Right off the bat, I started my company because being home-based, web-based, I didn’t really need a bricks and mortar storefront operation. I already knew there was a demand. I reached out to them, I got my first clients and they signed up. In terms of me scaling, I knew what I was not good at, which was anything to do with SEO really. I was sales and marketing. My background has always been in sales. I hired people and I made tons of mistake, not vetting them properly, hiring the wrong people, not doing enough due diligence and trusting them too early. I had to like hire and fire a lot of people early days.

Then I got comfortable enough to really hire an operations manager, SEO manager, someone that actually had been through the ropes, worked a lot of years, a lot of experience. Then I met them. I got to know them more on a personal level, make sure that the value prop is very similar in alignment to myself and the company. That’s more important. Personality wise, and understanding where they are in terms of their career aspirations where you want them to be. Are they an ideal fit for you and your company or are they a short-term fit? Is that what you want?

Do you want to mold them, spend a lot of time training them or are they just doing this for a side hustle or do it on a couple hours here and there versus committed? There’s a difference.

Shani: Absolutely. I’m hearing you say some of the biggest mistakes you made were on the people side of things and that you eventually learned to hire people whose values and work ethic were aligned with yours.

John: Yes. In terms of like experience, I think anyone can learn things but there are intangible things. Are they honest? Are they credible? Are they authentic? Are they willing to try something and own up to it? Take risks. Stuff that I feel being an owner, I’m very open about that stuff. If they are as well versus hiding and being shy and sheltered or whatever, like I’d rather people be vocal and it’s not for everyone, honestly. People are very introverts as well and you have to understand their personality traits and what works for them.

Understanding people is one of the– I think I have a real good asset in that standpoint because of sales. I’m lucky enough to have worked with thousands of business owners to really ask the right questions, really listen to them and then see and just position myself in a way that it doesn’t have any negative impact in our conversations.

Shani: Got it. In terms of the virtual aspect of it, since it’s not a choice for the past four or five months for most people, like you could say, Oh, this particular business didn’t have to be brick and mortar, well, come COVID, everything had to go away from building where everybody was showing up, doing the commuting thing and now everybody’s working at home. Do you have any unique advice or things that you’ve learned over the seven years that you’ve been running a virtual business for the people, for whom it feels like it’s been seven minutes and they’re still struggling to figure out the formula?

John: Yes. It’s definitely a challenge for a lot of people because their comfort zone is driving to the office, going get coffee and then meeting people in person. Dealing with real customers in person especially these service-based companies. The challenge is, now more and more people than ever are consuming content at their leisure in front of a computer. If you already don’t have a website, you’re behind the curve. Now that you have a website, how are you letting your customers know what’s going on? How are you changing, pivoting? How are you taking care of your customers, updating them?

This is where having either a strategy in place or something in terms of like front facing digitally is important more than ever like not just expecting things to happen. You got to be proactive and pivot. What are you doing to let your customers know what’s going on? Are you updating your website with messages like pop-ups or social media feeds? Are you building a database of your active clients and dripping them on a newsletter? Constant communication with them because it’s more important than ever to stay on top of what’s going on. Like constant updates.

What are you doing differently? Can you now provide a video of a tour or what is your process like now, which is a lot different than they are used to, right? What precautions are you taking? What are some of the measures that you’re taking that will make the customers feel safe? All these things are very interesting and a lot of business owners just– obviously, it’s a big shift. It’s a lot for them because their revenue have dropped a lot. Their most important concern is are they going to be around? Can they pay rent? Can they even keep their staff? I get it.

Their mindset is not there in terms of like making sure their customer base is even aware, but they still need to understand how important it is to continue engaging with your ideal customers because there’s still a lot of potential customers and your active customers that need some handholding to let them know and feel assured that you’re still there for them when things get normal again. That may take months, years, you don’t know. You just have to be equipped to pivot and transition accordingly.

Shani: Good. If someone wants more information from you or wants to hire you to help them with SEO, digital, social, what’s the best way to find you and your company?

John: Yes. You can reach our website at www.localseosearch.ca. We’re based in Toronto, Canada, but we service clients across North America. If you do want to contact me on LinkedIn, feel free to reach me on my team page in localseosearch.ca and find me on LinkedIn.

Shani: Terrific. Thank you so much for being on the show today. This was very informative and interesting.

John: Thanks a lot for having me, Shani. I had a lot of fun.

Shani: My pleasure, and folks, just to do my usual wrap-up of some of the key highlights of our conversation with John today, this is all super important, but not if you don’t have the foundation of a great product or service, a value proposition, that you know your customer– That you know what’s unique about your product, your service versus your competitor and that you are managing a good reputation.

Don’t forget the basic blocking and tackling that go into operating and marketing a business has to be the foundation below building a digital and an online presence. Don’t forget also, that while you could certainly try to do this yourself, it’s always evolving, it’s very complex and as John shared with us, there’s over 200 variables that go into where you rank on a page and all the other things in terms of what’s going to serve you an ad.

When you are providing content either to someone like John and his team or if you’re posting things yourself, be authentic, be yourself, let them in. That’s one of my favorite things that you said today, “Let them in,” into your life, be authentic, speak to the customer. Don’t try to speak to everyone on the planet. Then your message is going to be watered down, and really, not very resonant for anybody.

Remember you’re speaking to your customers where they want to be spoken to, so the selection of the right channels is very important as well and folks like John can help you figure out where your customers are spending their time online. Then, of course, from the perspective of scaling a business, it seems like your top two takeaways are, “Focus on hiring the right people,” and, “Knowledge isn’t everything.” You got to make sure they have the right values and some of the other intangible things that make someone a good employee, versus not, and knowing what you’re good at as a leader.

You knew your strength was sales and marketing. You didn’t try to do everything. You started hiring the people with the expertise and, gosh, I wish every leader I worked with knew that about themselves, because so many of them were like, “Oh, well, I run this business so I should know all the different things.” It’s like no, you just need understand how the business operates and makes money and make sure you got the right people in the right seats on the right bus.

John: Exactly.

Shani: So again, John, thank you so much for joining us. Leadershifters, thanks for tuning in today. You know how to reach me, [email protected], and all the various social media platforms on the website. Until next time.

The post 55: The Power of Digital Marketing with SEO company Owner John Vuong appeared first on The LeaderShift Project.

Founder of Excellius Leadership Development, leadership and team coach, and host of the Be Brave @Work podcast, Ed Evarts is a go-to resource for anyone who wants to elevate their career and professional relationships. He is the author of Raise Your Visibility & Value: Uncover the Lost Art of Connecting on the Job, written for business leaders, folks in job transition, and independent consultants, as well as a forthcoming book, Drive Your Career: 9 High Impact Ways to Take Responsibility for Your Own Success. We discuss the nuances of communicating to your boss versus peers and direct reports to ensure your message lands as intended with each target audience. And you’ll even get to hear me sing some off- tune lyrics to Kenny Rodgers’ hit song, “The Gambler,” as we play with the analogy of how work is like a poker hand – deciding when to fold, bluff, or take action.

TRANSCRIPT

Episode 54: Playing Your Best Hand at Work with Leadership and Career Coach, Ed Evarts

Shani Magosky: Is your team not performing well? Is morale low and turnover high? Are you falling further behind the competition? I’m here to help. I’m your host Shani and this is The LeaderShift Show, where business strategy and culture finally meet and we make the long-awaited shift from rhetoric to results. I promise, I’m not your typical boring leadership consultant and I will help you get your shift together. Let’s do this.

Hello Leadershifters, and welcome to another episode of The LeaderShift Show with yours truly, Shani. My guest today is Ed Evarts, who is a, like I am, leadership development professional, team coach, and all-around specialist in trying to make the workplace work a little bit better. Some of you may be surprised that I have invited someone from Boston to be on my podcast, [chuckles] seeing as how I have a little bit of a predilection away from anything New England Patriots related, but I feel so strongly about all the otherwise great things that Ed’s going to have to share with us today, that I am overlooking the Patriots fandom. [laughs]

Ed Evarts: I’ve taken down all my Patriots paraphernalia just for you, Shani.

Shani: Thank you. Folks, Ed is also an author. He has a book already out called Raise Your Visibility & Value and is working on his second book which is called Drive Your Career. He’s also a podcast host, Be Brave at Work. I can’t wait to talk to Ed today and compare experiences and hope that you take away some important information from Ed’s work about how you and your team can shift in general and, of course, during this continued pandemic oddness. Welcome to the show, Ed.

Ed: Thank you, Shani. It’s great to be here.

Shani: Wonderful. Tell us a little bit about how you got into our field.

Ed: Sure. Well, I was a lifelong corporate employee and I spent a number of years in retailing, and then a number of years in a business services company called Iron Mountain, which is based in Boston.

Shani: I know Iron Mountain well. Actually, when I was at Goldman, we did numerous high-yield bond deals for Iron Mountain.

Ed: Oh, there you go. I was there through 2008, and then due to a new footprint in the marketplace as they like to call it, a lot of jobs got rearranged and my position was eliminated. I left Iron Mountain as part of a layoff in 2008. I knew I did not want to get back into Corporate America because I felt I had saturated my experience and love for working for large organizations, and decided to do something on my own. There are worse times to be laid off than June 1st of any year so I took the summer to think about what I wanted to do next.

My wife’s a teacher so we took nice, little three-day weekends and through conversations and networking, which I had not done much of at all, I came to a quick conclusion that I wanted to not be a generalist anymore but a specialist, and the area that I wanted to be a specialist in was leadership development and coaching. I started my practice really from scratch. I do consider myself to be a classic case study of going from corporate to consulting. I started from scratch and got training and it’s a much longer story but have been working for the last 12 years to build a practice as an independent consultant in the marketplace.

Shani: Fantastic. You are an honorary leadershifter if for no other reason then you shifted out of one arena into another one successfully. It’s actually I think a topic on a lot of people’s minds right now, either because they were furloughed or permanently laid off because of COVID, or even if they haven’t yet, people have anxiety depending on what industry they’re in that things are going to take a long time to return to normal and it’s just a matter of time before their job might hit the chopping block, not to mention the fact that I think a lot of people are a bit self-reflective during this time.

“What’s important to me? What fulfills me?” You know what, maybe this 12-hour, 14-hour day job I’ve been slogging at for decades ain’t it, and even voluntarily looking to shift. As a coach what advice would you give those people right now who are looking to shift and as someone who’s done it?

Ed: Well, as to reflect to that observation on my experience, when I did shift from a corporate employee to consulting, there were two huge negatives impacting me. One, 2008 was the last year of an economic collapse-

Shani: Yes. [laughs]

Ed: -and so companies were not hiring business professionals like myself, nor were they hiring consultants. Doors were slammed in all directions. That alone was a very, very hard time to do it. Secondly, I had never planned to start my own practice, so when I lost my job at Iron Mountain, I was shocked. I still remember the day my boss called me in and my performance review was due and she said, “Ed, I just want to let you know I haven’t completed your performance appraisal and I’m here to tell you today that your position has been eliminated.”

I had no preparation, no clients, no business model, no website, nothing to start with and that’s why I took that summer to do it. For those out there that are either in that position or thinking about it, it’s definitely possible if you have the commitment and patience to make it work. A lot of people think that success comes overnight, and certainly for some people it might, but they’re really– On the bell curve of life, that little part on the right side where they invented post-it notes and suddenly became a triple billionaire–

Shani: Exactly, we call that the long tail on Wall Street.

Ed: Yes. Most people are in the middle or to the end and some people don’t make it and they may have to go back to work because they can’t make it as an independent. If you have patience, you can make it work. My advice to folks would be, certainly have a very good understanding of your financial status. One of the reasons I was able to make it work is because I got a severance package from Iron Mountain. I did declare unemployment so I collected unemployment for a short while, first time ever but I figured I’ve been paying into it all these years, I might as well get something out of it.

Shani: Absolutely.

Ed: I had a great spouse who said, “Ed, if you are confident that this will work, I’m willing to enjoy the ride with you but I just reserve the right to tell you at some point that it’s not working.” She was great in being patient. It took us several years to make the turn. Shani, I would just tell you that I think of income in three levels. Level one is just any money to show that you can earn a living, two is break-even, where your expenses and your revenue mirror, and three is savings, where you make enough money you can finally save. It took me several years to get to that third level but again, with patience and persistence, we were able to get there.

Shani: Absolutely. I think that’s great advice like, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” as the old cliché goes. You’re right, very few people are instant success stories. In fact, some of the biggest success stories in history actually are people who failed repeatedly before becoming a huge success or have had multiple obstacles or stumbling along the way.

Ed: We’ve seen-

Shani: I’d be remiss if I didn’t comment on the little detail you shared about coming in to get your performance review and being told that your job had been eliminated. Bad form, you should still get a performance review, I mean for Christ’s sake. [laughs]

Ed: [laughs] That’s a whole another long story and it was late as well. It wasn’t even on time and I had asked a couple of times, “Hey, am I going to be getting my performance review?” “I’m working on it, I’ll schedule some time.” I think, in reality, the time was being spent on assessing what my role would be at the organization more than my performance review. This is a classic example, this is where you and I do a lot of work at organizations because I’ve got a number of clients who either have never gotten or once, three years ago got a performance review.

The company talks about the importance of people and career development and feedback and yet that’s what they say, but then what they do doesn’t mirror it. This arena of providing feedback, whether it’s conversational or numerical based, whatever it might be, it doesn’t exist in the world to the degree that experts like you and I might want people to believe.

Shani: Absolutely, feedback is a hill I will die on. I preach about it all the time because I think it’s such a fundamentally important type of communication in the workplace that doesn’t get executed well, if at all, and always errs– Oh wait. I tell people don’t use absolutes and I just use the word always.

Ed: [laughs] Most times.

Shani: It regularly errs on the constructive side as opposed to the positive side, and of course positive feedback is just as important if not more important so that people know what they’re doing well and continue doing it, et cetera, than the constructive feedback, so I share your passion for that and sorry to hear that that’s the situation you were in, but onward and upward, right?

Ed: Onward and upward, but I would tell you and I tell people this today that on the day it happened, it was the worst day of my professional career. When I tell you I was surprised, I was completely surprised that that happened. Twelve years later, I look back on it and it was the best day of my professional career and I mean that sincerely because sometimes I worry that if I hadn’t been kicked out, I’d still be there.

Shani: [laughs]

Ed: The past 12 years as an independent, helping different people with different situations and different challenges, and working through all of that, has been fantastic. I regret that they didn’t kick me out sooner versus when they did.

Shani: Right. Folks, what you just heard is a mindset shift by the way. [laughs]

Ed: It is. It’s significant.

Shani: The worst day of my professional career to the best day of my professional career, and all it took was a little hindsight, right?

Ed: Yes.

Shani: Cool. I am wanting to delve in on behalf of Leadershifters to a few of the topics that you specialize in when you give keynotes or other trainings or what have you, and I know some of these are also chapters in either the existing book or the forthcoming book. The first one I want to ask you about is, work is like a poker hand so you need to play it well. If you would, before you talk about the nuggets of wisdom in that, share with the viewers and listeners what you shared with me pre-show about why poker was prominent in your mind to frame the discussion.

Ed: Sure, and I think prominent is a really good word because I have been participating in and every other week, so twice a month poker game with six friends for 23 years.

Shani: That’s so good.

Ed: If you had told me in 1998 that I’d still be playing poker in 2020, I would have laughed and said no, nothing ever lasts that long. That’s not possible, but the same seven people including myself have been playing in this poker game for 23 years. It’s just been a phenomenal experience.

Shani: So great.

Ed: Like a lot of ideas, I was experiencing something with my clients, and then I was sitting there one night playing poker and the two came together and the thing I was experiencing with my clients was this lack of recognition on their part about what they were experiencing in the workplace. They were always trying to churn it and make it work or figure it out and what I share with clients today is that first, you have to recognize what kind of hand you’ve been dealt. Some people in a poker game get dealt a really good hand, some people get dealt a really poor hand, but regardless of the hand you’re dealt all of us have three options.

Option number one is to fold, and in a poker hand, you just put your cards down and bailout. In work, it might be recognizing the choice you’ve made for a company or a role is not right and you need to move on, and that’s where the drive in your career come from. That you have to not be a passenger, but move on if it’s not a good fit. You can bluff, and I do not encourage anyone to ever bluff anything more than a couple of days, because at some point your hand’s going to get called, and you’re not going to have anything and nobody wants to be in that situation but the vast majority of my clients are bluffing.

They’re pretending that things are better than they are, and they just write it off to well that’s the way work is, or that’s how things are, and they continue to bluff and that erodes their confidence and abilities to the point where at some point things just crumble.

Shani: Not just erodes the confidence, gosh, it erodes our morale and our sense of well-being and purpose and erodes relationships. It’s toxic. Yes, I agree, and I see a lot of my clients as well bluffing, just trying to get through day-to-day, week to week. [laughs]

Ed: Yes, and they say things like– I’ve had clients who don’t get along with their boss, and they’ll talk and tell me stories about how they avoid their boss, and I’m like, if you’re in a situation where you’re avoiding your boss, that’s something that you need to take a look at because that’s not a good situation to be in. So folding, bluffing, and then the last act a person could take is action, which is, turning in some cards and getting some more cards with an effort to make things better. That’s where I spend time with people and that’s where I encourage people who read the book to think about am I bluffing, should I fold, or should I take some action in order to try to make things better.

Now, you might try and it may not work, and then you go back to whether I bluff and fold, but at least you tried. A lot of people will feel better if they look back a few years from now and say, I found myself in a situation that wasn’t great but here’s what I tried to do about it and it didn’t work so I moved on, or here’s what I tried to do about it and it worked. That’s a better story to tell than well I bluffed and pretended things were better than they were until I decided it was time to move on.

Shani: Yes, exactly. It’s like because there’s something about staying in the game versus bluffing which is cheating your way through the game. You’re cheating yourself and your colleagues and your clients potentially, and of course folding is just, well it’s giving up if you haven’t tried other things first and sometimes it is the right way to play the game is to say you know what, this game isn’t for me anymore.

Ed: Right, and for some people, that’s a good decision. Trust me, there are times where poker players need to fold. They can’t turn a bad hand into a winning hand. It’s just not going to happen so I’m going to sit this one out and I’ll be back, but I’m not going to be in this particular hand, and that’s sometimes, not always, but sometimes what people need to do professionally is to recognize that whatever they are doing is not a good fit.

Shani: Yes. I will say I think one of the reasons I was so drawn to that particular topic out of the litany of things in your wheelhouse was, I have always been a big Kenny Rogers fan, may he rest in peace because he passed away this year.

Ed: He did.

Shani: The Gambler, far and away my favorite Kenny Rogers song. Legit, I know every single word to that song.

Ed: What’s the phrase from that song that everybody knows? You’ve got to know?

Shani: [singing] You’ve got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, know when to run. You never count your own money, while you’re sitting at the table. Okay, I know singing not my specialty, but love that song.

Ed: Well, musical interlude on your podcast. What’s better than that? That’s the statement everybody knows from that song. If you were to say hey, repeat as a phrase from the Kenny Rogers, The Gambler, most people would say you got to know when to hold, and know when to fold, and that’s true for business professionals, that you have to know when you’ve got something good, and that’s a whole career development experience. Or, you know what, this place just isn’t a good fit, or I don’t like the culture, or things aren’t what people told me it would be like and I’ve got to either change it or move on, but I’m not going to sit here year after year as a passenger and have a bad experience.

Shani: Absolutely. Let’s shift to talking about working with teams, which is another area that you and I align on and both enjoy. I’m curious what shifts you’re seeing among the teams with whom you work either coaching or consulting as a result of either COVID or the George Floyd situation that is just in the atmosphere of the entire country right now, and anything else that you might be seeing that is causing shifts in the way your teams are showing up and what they need from you.

Ed: Most teams are going through significant changes that they could never have anticipated ever in their lifetimes. In my mind, the big three of the coronavirus, the racism, George Floyd type situation, and the economy, the layoff number, those three things. People are either worried about can I go back to work or will I have a work to go back to, is significant. Most people have shifted I think fairly organically to a Zoom-based world, and I know there’s multiple platforms but everybody likes the Z word, so Zoom-type platform, and work that I’ve been doing with clients is how to facilitate conversations both technically.

Zoom has little features you can use. Microsoft Team has features you can use. Google chat, I think it’s called [unintelligible 00:19:20]. They all have little features you can use because you want to ensure that if you’re hosting a meeting, that you’re not delayed due to technical disruptions, because that can lower energy and people get distracted, et cetera. How can you facilitate the meeting in a way that’s technically excellent? Then also how can you ensure that the topics you’re talking about fit and that you are ensuring more than ever that you’re listening to people.

This is one of the challenges many leaders have because if I said to a leader six months ago, I think it’s important that you listen to people more. Let’s come up with a strategy on how you can walk the floor, and let’s say you talk with two people a day, et cetera. Now it’s, “Ed, how do I do that? I don’t even know everybody’s phone number. We’re attempting to figure out how they can stay connected, but more importantly, is how they can listen to people more because people have a lot to say right now probably more than ever about what either they are experiencing or what their perceptions are of what’s going on. I think and I know you think that, even though we haven’t worked together before, that listening is a huge leadership trait. Now you have to listen more than ever.

Shani: Absolutely. I always say listening is a full-body experience. It’s not just the ears. We’re listening with our eyes, we’re listening with our hearts, we’re listening with our guts, we’re listening with our brains and I think not a lot of people listen that holistically. They hear maybe, [laughs] but they’re not listening, and which is why it is so important to do some of these meetings over Zoom. I get Zoom fatigue and all that. Of course, I encourage people to do walk and talks and so forth to get outside and all that. People have to be able to pick up on the nonverbals, the body language and the other cues in the environment to really be listening because not everybody is a verbal communicator.

Ed: Yes, some people don’t like this new environment because now when we look at Zoom, if I had 25 people on the screen who are part of my team, I can see them all. If we were sitting at a big table, I might not see people on the far right corner because I have to turn and look at them, but now I can see everyone and what they’re doing. You can even see their eyes if their eyes are looking or going down, those types of things.

Shani: Right. The Brady Bunch style.

Ed: Yes, yes. It creates discomfort for a lot of people who don’t want to be in the spotlight. The other thing I just want to add about listening, and especially as it pertains to Zoom and working virtually, is brevity. I encourage people all the time to say, especially when you’re talking with people via electronics, you have to be briefer because we all, and this is true I think for me, it’s true for people I know, once you start talking, your interest level starts to diminish.

Unless you’re telling me something that I’ve asked you about and I’m right, but if I say, “Hey, can I talk to you about something?” I’ll say, “Sure,” but as soon as you start talking, I am getting less and less interested in what you’re saying. You have to be brief and pause, ask for feedback, ask for steps or action items, et cetera, but you want to make sure that you’re moving it along in a very brief but effective way.

Shani: Absolutely. The perfect topic to dovetail with that is, I know a chapter in your old book is called the three conversation styles for your workplace. You had shared with me before the show that you’re actually either reworking that chapter or doing an addendum or a whole nother chapter on how that translates to virtual. Tell us, what are the three conversation styles, what’s important for each one, and what your initial thinking is, at least on how to adapt it for Zoom land?

Ed: Right. For Zoom mania. My first book is called Raise Your Visibility & Value. I think as I had mentioned to you earlier that a colleague of mine had suggested that I go and do a second edition where I add a chapter called virtual, visibility and value, really overused the Vs, but virtual, visibility and value, that’s not something I ever even thought of when I was first writing the book. You talked earlier about a mind shift change, I think back and I’m like, “How did I miss that? How did I even not think that all visibility and all value is in person?” But even then, a few years ago, people were using Zoom and it’s not like it was just created yesterday.

Looking at virtual, visibility, and value and in that book, I’ve identified seven visibility indicators. The chapter is going to be how do you take those visibility indicators and transition them to a virtual type world. In the book also, I talk a little bit about the three conversations and essentially, that’s just a reminder to folks that anytime that you have news you need to share, updates about the organization, some type of announcement, some type of request, or favor, et cetera that the way you structure your conversation to your boss, to peers, and to subordinates needs to be different.

That the way that you’d share with your boss an update that impacts the business may be different than how you share it with peers and may be different than how you share it with subordinates. Too often, people think of one message and they tell everyone. Of course, it doesn’t sit correctly with all of them because they needed to hear it a little bit different, their priorities and needs are different.

For example, I have a client company that does insurance for towns and it’s a privately held company, the company is owned by one man. Well, I can guarantee you the conversations I have with him are significantly different than the conversations that I have with subordinates that report to him. Now, I’m not suggesting you lie and or not be honest and transparent about stuff, but how you frame it, how you enter it, how you share it just needs to be thought through effectively and done just a little bit differently.

Shani: Absolutely. Really, it’s no different than a marketing strategy because you’re sharing a message to influence even if what you’re trying to influence is awareness. Someone who’s running the business and has his or her eye on bottom-line profitability let’s say, or sales metrics or whatever, has a different come from than the peers versus team members who report to you. I think that’s really important and I agree a lot of people miss that. It can just be a shift in nuance, with the messaging, but taking the time to do it is very well worth it, I agree.

In terms of the virtuality of those three messages, we talked just a minute ago about gravity being important, what else are you simmering with as you write the new chapter?

Ed: [laughs] I like that word simmering because I am in the middle of writing it so I haven’t fully thought through candidly all of the aspects as it relates to the seven visibility accelerators, although, I will tell you and some of it is very, very simple, which is if you have a message that you need to share with all those audiences, share it with each audience but separately. Like you and I– Hey there, a guest on our show.

Shani: Yes, this is Teejay, he likes to be a guest on the show from time to time. He doesn’t realize that we’re recording and he just climbs up. [laughs]

Ed: Why do cats love computers? Every time someone has a cat, it crawls across the screen right in front of everyone.

Shani: Totally, because it’s like they want to be the center of attention when you’re ignoring them, that’s why.

Ed: Right.

Shani: Then when you’re looking to play, they’re like, “Speak to the paw, lady.” [laughs]

Ed: Got to love it, got to love it. Going back to just the simplicity of it, one-on-one with your boss, not with others there. With peers it’s either one-on-one or the group of them altogether because also, a common message is critical, you don’t want to have a message you need to share with people, but you inadvertently change it every time you talk a peer. Then two peers are talking and they’re like, “Well, that’s not what I heard.” You want to ensure that your message is very common and then, of course, with subordinates, typically, all at the same time because those folks need to hear it, unless, and this is a general statement.

There may be announcements or things that need to happen that you need to talk to subordinates individually, but the vast majority of conversations in organizations probably would be heard by everyone at the same time. It’s using the technology, not much different than probably how you would use it in person. It requires a little bit more administrative work, but having the conversation either one-on-one, one to many, or one to the whole group.

Shani: Right. Got it. Tell us about the new book, which I believe is called Drive Your Career. What was the impetus and what are you most excited about?

Ed: It is called Drive Your Career and the impetus was really my 12 years as a leadership and team coach working in the market. I began to notice, as I’m sure you do, that there are messages or topics that come up again and again and again. I had one of those shower moments where I’m like, “Why do these same things keep coming up and I’m not bringing them up?” I’m not saying oh my God, there’s things that I want to say to everybody that I talk to, but just based on their situation and what they’re experiencing, one of them or two of them or three of them would always pop up.

I decided to write them down and then once I wrote them down, I said, you know what, I need to get the word out and share with others these nine things that people need to do to really take responsibility for their own success, and that’s where drive in your career comes from. You may have a driver but most people don’t have a driver. Most people drive themselves and if you’re not thinking about what you want to do, where you want to go, what your next steps are, and how you get there, the likelihood is that you’ll be a passenger and someday, you’re going to just end someplace that you never intended, doing something you never wanted or doing it for too long, and it may be too late to do something about it.

Essentially, the impetus was nine topics, ideas, suggestions that I’ve shared with clients over the last 12 years, one of which, of course, is that your workplace is a lot like a poker hand, to help them take more ownership for their success.

Shani: Good. What’s your other favorite of the nine tips in the book?

Ed: My number one, the chapters are not in any order of precedence or importance. They’re just nine ideas. You could read the ninth one and have the same experience as somebody who’s read the first eight. However, the first one I think resonates with most of my clients because while I’m not a statistician, I would say 85% of my clients wish they had a better relationship with their boss than they have. The first chapter is that you have to have a positive relationship with your boss.

If you have a positive relationship with your boss, anything is possible. If you don’t have a positive relationship with your boss there’s always that third thing in the room, you, your boss, and this thing that’s between you that complicates progress because your boss is always feeling like something’s missing or something’s not right. This thing is getting in the way.

Ensuring that you have a positive relationship with your boss and for folks who don’t or wish it was better, the book includes some tips and ideas on how to manage the future. You can’t change the past, but if you say, “You know what? I could have a better relationship with my boss and I need to do something about it.” Here are some things, here are some ways to make progress.

Shani: Absolutely. What do you say to a client who says to you my boss is just an asshole and there’s no way to have a good relationship with him or her?

[laughter]

Ed: I can’t imagine that anyone ever saying that.

Shani: I told you I curse in my show.

Ed: Oh no. It’s not that. I just can’t believe anyone would ever say that. No, I mean that’s what a lot of my client– Not a lot, but many of my clients would say about their experience. The first thing we would talk about is well, what have you done to manage that relationship. Oftentimes, both parties are guilty to some degree. People tend to set themselves up as the one that does everything right and their boss is the evil cruel person who never does anything right and I think the two can be a little bit mixed.

What have you done, make sure there’s a clear understanding about that. Most of my clients would say they’ve done little. Then, what can you do? This goes back to the three choices you have because your workplace is a lot like a poker hand. It’s not bluffing that you like your boss and don’t, it’s not leaving because you have a good employment experience, it’s taking steps in order to make good progress. One of the things I tell clients they should always do is– There’s our sponsor, is to ask their boss what I call the million-dollar question which is what’s one or two things I could do differently to be more effective.

Shani: Love that. What’s one or two things I can do differently to be more effective. Yes, I love that because I think a lot of times if people don’t get off on the right foot, it just declines from there. Then, people are making up stories about each other and assumptions. I think Brené Brown says it really well in one of her books. I don’t know if it’s a chapter title or just a phrase that always stands out in my mind, “Lean in. It’s hard to hate people close up.”

Ed: [chuckles]

Shani: Get to know them. Unless a boss- and I have had one of these- is a textbook narcissist. They’re in a different book.

Ed: Yes. That’s where you have to decide if you’re at the right company because if the organization’s going to hire somebody who is a textbook narcissist, then that might tell you something about the organization and it may no longer be a good fit for you. I think most people could improve the relationship if they found time to say to their boss. “I don’t think our relationship is as good as it could be. I’d love to work on it. Are you willing to work on it as well?”

If that boss says, “Absolutely, let’s work on it,” then, I think anything is possible.

Shani: Absolutely. It’s funny. It sounds so simple, yet, for some people, that’s a hard conversation to have. To the extent someone gives pushback on that, it’s sort of like, “Well, try it. What do you have to lose?” Because if someone who reports to you said that to you, wouldn’t you say, “Oh, of course.”

Ed: Yes. Yes, I would. If they say, “No, I’m not interested,” then, again, that tells you something about your organization. Now, you have information that you didn’t have before, which was you are bold and brave enough to say something very polite. You weren’t disrespectful, but just saying, “Look, I think our relationship could be a little bit better. I think it’s good but it could be great. Are you open to working on it with me?”

If that person says no or I’m not interested or I don’t have time for that, then, I think that tells you a lot about what step you should take in order to make progress. That’s where Drive Your Career comes in, to encourage people to get greater clarity on the road they’re on, so they can ensure that they’re “taking the right exits”.

Shani: That’s right. Good. When is the book coming out?

Ed: Thanks, the book is coming out September of 2020, this coming September.

Shani: Okay, September 2020. Is there a way people can get notified when it’s available? I’m assuming some sort of opt-in for you. How can people follow you, reach you, and become aware when your book has been published?

Ed: Great. You could go to www.excellius.com, E-X-C-E-L-L-I-U-S. There are a couple of links for Drive Your Career. One is a one-pager that just talks about the book. The other is a Facebook group that we’ve created where we put postings on a regular basis of snippets from the book. You could join that as well. Trust me there will be plenty of advertisements as to when the book is available.

Shani: Nice, okay. You’re going to get a sneak preview on the Facebook page of some of the content.

Ed: You got it.

Shani: That’s terrific. Great, Ed, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been a really fun conversation. I always enjoy when people use metaphor and sports and games because there are metaphors for lots of things in life. This was a lot of fun. Of course, I got to demonstrate my excellent singing skills.

Ed: [laughs] They were excellent, Shani. Thank you for allowing me to be on your show with you today. I really enjoyed it.

Shani: My pleasure. Leadershifters, thank you for joining us today. As always, hope you took away some learning from this conversation with Ed.

All the points about driving your career and the different ways you can play your poker hand, depending on what’s happening for you at this stage in your career, some of the tips around communicating differently whether depending on whether you’re communicating to your boss, to your colleagues and peers or to the folks who report to you and some of the shifts that you need to make for doing it all online. I think it was a nice well-rounded conversation today. Thanks for joining us. You know how to reach me, [email protected] and all the various and sundry social media. Until next time.

The post 54: Playing Your Best Hand at Work with Leadership and Career Coach, Ed Evarts appeared first on The LeaderShift Project.

Our guest today is one hell of a dynamic woman – Laura Gates, founder of The Gates Group, executive and team coach, and culture/organization change consultant. We kick off with a juicy conversation about the changing face of work in response to the current trifecta of global pandemic, anti-racism, and economic uncertainty and agree this is not a time for leaders to cling to the shore! If nothing else, this time has taught us to reevaluate what’s possible and rewire how we think about our teams, families, and personal lives. One of Laura’s superpowers is helping teams resolve conflict (or “cleanup corrosive interpersonal dynamics,” as First Round Review wrote), and she even patented her highly impactful Purpose Initiative® methodology for harnessing creativity and innovation on teams. The process is simple, BUT not easy: (1) make the unconsciousàconscious, (2) disruptive experimentation, and (3) stoke the genius individually and collectively. Changing the tenor of conversation on your team is more important now than ever before.

The post 53: SHIFTing from Conflict to Creativity with Executive and Team Coach Extraordinaire, Laura Gates appeared first on The LeaderShift Project.

Jamie and Jim Sheils, co-founders of 18 Summers, are bringing family back! Long before #covid-19 quarantines forced a change in family dynamics, this passionate duo has been dedicated to fixing the epidemic of busy entrepreneurs and business leaders not spending enough quality time with their families. The good news is that the principles and best practices they advocate will sound very familiar to ones you’re already deploying at work: establishing the values, vision, and culture of your family and then continuing to set tone, boundaries, and expectations in the house; tech distancing strategies (staying informed vs infected!); and iterative revision of individual and shared calendars based on ever-shifting circumstances. Another practice I LOVE is outlined in Jim’s book, The Family Board Meeting, in which he explains how to make each child in your family feel important and unique. Every quarter, he schedules a half day of dedicated 1:1 time with each child, and the child chooses the activity. It’s been described as “the glue that seals the bond between you and your child for life.” Their experiences are offered via private mentoring, team consulting, online courses, and in-person retreats, so tune in to learn how to reconnect with your spouse and children, and most importantly, how hold that connection forever.

TRANSCRIPT

Episode 52: Using LeaderShift Skills to Succeed at Home with 18 Summers’ Jamie and Jim Sheils

Shani: Is your team not performing well? Is morale low in turnover high? Are you falling further behind the competition? I’m here to help. I’m your host Shani and this is the LeaderShift show where business strategy and culture finally meet and we make the long-awaited shift from rhetoric to results. I promise, I’m not your typical boring leadership consultant and I will help you get your shift together. Let’s do this.

Hello Leadershifters and welcome to another episode of the LeaderShift Show with Shani. It is my privilege and pleasure today to welcome to the show Jim and Jamie Shiels of 18 Summers, which is a brand and a book and so many other things and it’s all about bringing family back, cue the Justin Timberlake song am bring in sexy back and change the word to we’re bringing family back. [laughs].

Jim: I wrote a whole version of that. A whole speech.

Jamie: He actually has a song on it. Believe it or not.

Shani: I do believe it because you know who’s become my favorite YouTube sensation? The Holderness Family.

Jim: Oh yes?

Shani: Are you familiar with them?

Jim: Not really.

Jamie: No.

Shani: They’re this fantastic family. They’ve been making not really “Weird Al” Yankovic type versions but they’ve been taking pop songs for years and putting their own words to it for pop culture but they’ve been on overdrive since COVID and they’ve done dozens of COVID-related funny songs and it’s the husband the wife, the kids all in these videos. It’s funny, I had no intention of bringing them up right now but they’re actually a nice role model to think about when it comes to our topic today which is, how do busy parents, whether they’re quarantined or not, make more time to connect with their kids?

Jim: Yes.

Shani: That’s a lot of what we’re going to talk about today, especially in light of the shift that has been taking place over the past four or five months towards quarantining, shelter in place, homeschooling. The family dynamic has probably never been more challenging for some of your clients I would imagine

Jim: Yes. No one was ready for COVID, not at the level we experienced anyway. Everything was brought home; family, business, school, it’s all happening from home and that put a whole new pressure on things and it really unveiled that we really have been, I don’t want to say neglecting family life, but almost sidelining it to a point where this brought things back into full focus.

I think it’s showing the importance of family life how it can actually help tie everything together so that, truth be told, we really enjoyed lockdown. It wasn’t easy from the beginning but there were certain principles that we had in place and been teaching for years that really helped. I’m sure we’ll go into those today.

Shani: Yes.

Jamie: We all knew, when you come into something like that like you said, you weren’t really prepared and you didn’t know what you were facing. Many of us came to realize that we were wounded, right? There was already an issue. COVID didn’t cause the issue that was happening at home, in your marriage, in your family. COVID didn’t cause that. COVID exasperated it, though. It put us in this boiling pot and whatever was happening in the home was just now intensified and so we find ourselves in these situations where it’s this big “aha” big crack over the head and it’s like, “Okay, we no longer can wait for this to clear. It’s not just a pandemic for a virus but we’re also now facing another emergency within our unit.”

Shani: So, this is my COVID kitty, TJ. “Hi, baby.” He still loves to climb on my laptop especially when I’m doing things like recording podcasts.

Jim: Of course?

Shani: He’s my family at the moment. So, let’s actually back up to before COVID, because you guys have been encouraging busy entrepreneurs and other professionals to be more intentional about carving out time for their family and making it a priority. So talk to us about what 18 Summers is and why you both left careers in education to form this company?

Jim: Yes. Well, we just saw a need. Also, Jamie was in education. I had a real estate investment company for over 20 years, I still have it. What I saw was, there were a lot of leaders executives they were doing really well on the balance sheet but when I got backstage and had conversations, family life was lacking.

Shani: Yes.

Jim: There’s lots of ways out there to help improve our marketing to you know to get better financials, to pull certain levers but there wasn’t really a lot out there to support the executives and the professionals with simplifying and strengthening family life. So, for my own need, I started to try to uncover principles and simple strategies that would help with that, and overall we found that the encouraging news is we think you can have success in business and success at home. Normally, you’re only a few principles away from getting 80% the way there.

Jamie: For me, working with families and students so intimately directing schools, I saw oftentimes many of the same problems. Either the parents were facing problems as adults that we don’t want our children to have to face-

Shani: Right.

Jamie: -or we were seeing the children kind of hit up against the same issues. Families were having a hard time rhythmizing the day or the children were chaotic or they’re getting diagnosed with ADHD and somehow it’s much too late in life to even be diagnosed. It’s just one of those things in which noticing the patterns in their life and their rhythms and helping them really establish their core values and pull in some of these rhythms and consistencies so that they can have the greatest chance of what they’re looking for in a family life. So, I think we melded the two together and really just used our own family as a testing ground. [laughs]

Shani: I was going to ask if your family was a little learning lab sandbox for the things you end up teaching.

Jim: They’ve always been a lab and-

Shani: [laughs].

Jim: -when we’ve done retreats for almost a decade and when you get families together for two days three days. It is like a giant experiment for and you just learn so much by letting all ends talk and there were always some reoccurring themes, some reoccurring issues, some reoccurring solutions that kept rising to the top.

Shani: Yes.

Jim: That was really interesting to see which knowing what you teach with LeaderShift. There are some key principles that you go back to that when people try to overstep them or sidestep them, they’re cheating themselves and that’s where we’ve tried to simplify to say, “Well, let’s get to the core of things and try to make these work before we try to go to fringe stuff,” if that makes sense.

Shani: Right, absolutely. I want to park the issue of retreats for a minute because I want to come back and get some color about what that experience is like so that anybody listening, who’s interested in it can get a real sense for whether they would want to do that with their family. What I want to dig a little deeper on, you said there’s just a few principles that are that people are away from getting 80% of it right. What are some of those principles? Some things that folks can– whether they’re best practices, rules of thumb. What are they?

Jim: I think to start with an overall, is the importance of realizing that you set the leadership tone at your house.

Shani: Yes.

Jim: This is absolutely huge and let me tell– in 2008, I came that close to bankruptcy with real estate in both Florida and California.

Shani: Yes.

Jim: Very stressful time and I was scared, agitated, just a range of bad emotions and I don’t think I handled it the best. I made a promise that if that ever came around again, I was going to handle things differently. I remember the second day of the lockdown, I had taken a text chain from someone who was trying to help out. It was a really tough business spot quick from COVID and I got off this text chain and swearing under my breath and I’m like they’re getting taken advantage of.

My five-year-old’s standing right in front of me and she goes, “Daddy, why are you so mad at me?” and it was, “Ah.” I said, “You know what, everything’s being brought home. I’m setting the tone. I’m either going to be here with my family or I’m going to be in a part of the house completely separate. I’m not going to be puking in my living room. Any work stuff, I’m going to keep them separate.” So, we really set that leadership tone. I took that pretty seriously. We’re probably about five weeks in and one of my teenagers said, “Dad’s been so happy through this, it’s annoying.”

Jamie: Annoying.

Jim: Yes, I was really annoying. So, I was actually really proud to get that-

Shani: That’s a high compliment.

Jim: -high complement. I was seeing that and then I knew that we set that tone.

Jamie: Yes and just like in your business, no matter what’s happening outside. So recently, we keep referencing, COVID, the government, everything that’s occurring outside of your home. It doesn’t have to occur inside of your home, it doesn’t have to occur inside of you. You can choose the emotion, the tone that you’re setting inside of your space, what you’re bringing into your home. If you’re a frantic in your home, if you’re constantly puking about how bad it sucks, how life is over, how this random, politicians or whatever happens that you’re vomiting about work or about world, your children are like, “Oh gosh, I need an out from that badness.”

Then they’re going to continue that same energy, or if you’re irritated from work and you’re not setting clear boundaries and expectations, then you’re taking a phone call when you’re supposed to be playing a game or reading a book. There’s just some things as we get into some of the other principles, boundaries and expectations are huge, so that you’re having work in a workspace and having play in a play space or having romance the romance space, whether it’s with a spouse or playing with your children, but that everybody knows when you are with them versus when you’re with your work or with the rest of the world.

We just try to really mindful of building that type of a schedule so that everyone knows what to expect and you know what to expect for yourself. Okay, I’m going to allow myself to consume media for 30 minutes at this time of day. I’m not going to consume it all day long and it’d be gluttonous, but for this amount of time, I’ll get informed, and then I’ll go be with my family.

Jim: Yes, which leads us into the second principle we talk about, which might seem obvious, but it’s so overlooked and that’s, we all got used to social distancing like we were talking about before we started the interview, but we really need to look heavily at tech distancing. It’s a term that we came up with. We had always talked about doing tech fast as a family, times when we’re on, times when we’re off. Like intermittent fasting is a great health weights for maintaining weight or your vitalization, it doesn’t mean you don’t eat, but you’re choosing it.

We call it tech fasting or tech distancing. Like Jamie said, fine, people, there’s lots going on, if you want to read the newspaper or watch news for up to a half-hour a day, that’s great, but we have the saying, if you watch it for half-hour a day, you’re informed, if you go to two-plus hours a day, you’re infected.

Shani: [laughs]

Jim: We encourage people to do some tech distancing on that, and also have a period of time where you’re completely and totally unavailable. Give yourself that gift every day. We call it the dinnertime challenge. We were actually on the–

Jamie: Unavailable to work at that time.

Jim: Unavailable to work.

Jim: For home. You’re unavailable to all your work, to any news or anything, and we called it the dinner time challenge, where for an hour a day, you guys pick the time, an hour, go back to the old school dinner, where from 5:30 to 6:30 or 6:00 to 7:00, no one is on any technology. You can’t be on that one annoying Facebook thread or update that bothers you or text that takes you into a mind fury. You’re giving focus to your home life again without the chance of distraction. There was a study that 60 years ago, the average dinner time was about 90 minutes, 60 years ago. Do you want to know what it is today, what they said the average dinner time is today?

Shani: Oh, it’s probably less than 10 minutes if I had to guess.

Jim: Well, it’s 12 minutes. It just shows people were rushing off to other things, and if we’re always doing that, just as leaders of a company, if you’re not really listening to your executive team, taking that time to focus and always rushing out, are you going to connect? Probably not. The principle of tech distancing is something we try to practice, instill, set the example for our kids so that we can reground and really be there and present for each other.

Shani: Absolutely, I love it. Your terminology informed versus infected, I’m going to use that, I will give full credit to you, but I love that, it’s such a great way to describe it.

Jim: Yes, thank you.

Shani: Okay. Is there a principle number three?

Jim: There is. Do you want to go over the third principle?

Jamie: Scheduling, and boundaries and expectations?

Jim: Yes. Well, revising, revising, revising.

Jamie: Yes, that’s right. In my head, revising is at the end.

[laughter]

Revising a schedule. Once you create– once you know when your tech distancing times are, and once you set the tone in your home and you have these boundaries and expectations, things that– how you want it to be set up. For us, it looked like a schedule. We have four children, two companies, we took in two foster children over the pandemic as well, so, we had a lot of moving parts. We took, what did the teens need to accomplish? What do the toddlers need to accomplish? What do we need to accomplish individually? We had to take all these pieces and we created a schedule that had times of availability, times of unavailability to work, to each other.

We still had a date night, even though date night looked more like a huddle in a corne, but just making sure that the things that mattered to us happened, that dinner time happened at the same time each day, and setting some of that up. What we found was the first week or two, we were like, “Oh, we’re so proud of ourselves,” we thought we nailed it.

We had this giant space of availability time to just have family play, and then real estate went insane on week two and a half, three, and all of his free time, family time got sucked up into work. Instead of constantly everyday fighting that chunk of time and him feeling guilty that he couldn’t do the family time or guilty when he’s doing family time knowing that work needs him, we revised the schedule. Because we know that revision is part of learning and part of scheduling–

Shani: There goes the cat.

Jamie: We just took into mind, we were like, “You know what? It’s never perfect the first time, it maybe not even be perfect the fifth time, so, revise, revise, revise.” We made a revision. Okay, so, dad’s not available three-hour chunks of time, and then for us, when the foster children came about halfway through the pandemic, we had to adjust my available hours because it got to where I was needed to be pulled a little more into the home and not as available for work, and so that had to adjust.

We just found ourselves navigating or we’d find a restaurant and we would suddenly change one of our meal days to a takeout day instead of a mom cooking pasta day or whatever it happened to be.

Shani: It sounds like it’s being flexible.

Jamie: Yes, but just knowing that instead of feeling guilty or fighting against it, just know that you can revise it, look at what you’re doing and change it to where it works. I think we’re on revision four or five now, but we really found a place where we’re like, “Okay, this is where it sticks,” but don’t throw out all the good stuff. Okay, all of these things work, but the rest of this doesn’t. Okay, s,o then just change what doesn’t work.

Shani: Right. You know what it reminds me of? Are you guys familiar with getting things done? It’s a productivity Bible for a lot of businesspeople, David Allen, the GTD method. One of the things that he advises people to do every week, hence the name, is a weekly review, which is look at your calendar for the week that just passed, what did you– what had you scheduled that didn’t end up getting done, look at your calendar and your task lists. What still needs to get done? What can be emphasized? Looking ahead, what do you have planned for the coming week, what’s priority, what’s not? Are you missing some things and being intentional about using the time wisely, consciously for priorities, et cetera.

The reason it’s weekly is because you can’t really plan much further out than that, because life throws you too many curve balls. It sounds to me like the revising is the family version of the weekly review in some ways, and frankly, they can be done together because I agree wholeheartedly with something you said at the introduction, which is, people who are happier at home are happier at work and vice versa, and it creates interdependence because they both contribute to being your best self.

Jim: Yes, absolutely.

Jamie: Absolutely.

Jim: As you said, planning out for the week and then put it into motion is easier than trying to do by each morning, each afternoon, it gives more of a visibility like the old Stephen Covey, and I’ve used that for almost 30 years now in my life, and it does give a broader spectrum. Again, I think it’s so important that her and I always talk about, okay, what do we have coming this week?

Together, we have that time in the beginning of the week, and whether– Jamie and I run the education company together, I take care of the real estate business, and then, she runs the household for the most part. There’s overlap, and the more that we’re staying in touch on that, things are more cohesive, they run better. If you’re not taking a little bit of that time to actually, even take 10 minutes and say, what are the big rocks we got on the table this week?

It can simplify things so much where there’s that big misunderstanding or that big oops, or it can be avoided just with that let’s look at the highlights of the week coming ahead and what were some things that happened last week. It’s a very simple process, but it goes a long way.

Jamie: You can be doing it for yourself, doing it with your spouse, and then if you have a family, we usually do Sunday meetings because what was happening is he would be taking a trip and the kids would go, “Well, I didn’t know dad was leaving,” and we thought, “Oh gosh, we didn’t tell you–”

Jim: We did, but they were running around in the front yard laughing, they said, “What are you talking about?” They weren’t focused.

Jamie: We sit down and we say, here’s what we have on the week, what do you have on the week? How can we support you, here’s where we need support. It’s just a good way of setting your own weekly and then setting it with your spouse. Even, you and I had a slip up today, because we had a calendar thing I thought something was for real estate, it happened to be for 18 Summers. It happens, but the more you’re in communication, and getting clear on those things, the better.

Shani: For sure, let me ask you those Sunday meetings is that the genesis of the book that you authored, Jim, The Family Board Meeting, or-

Jim: No.

Shani: -that’s a bit different?

Jim: I’ll get into that in a minute that’s something executives will really resonate with, because it’s actually a strategy where I’m taking what’s made most businesses successful, and brought it into the relationship with my wife and kids, mainly for Jamie and I to use with our children. Actually, we can go into it now, it’s just basically for everyone’s used to a board meeting. A board meeting happens quarterly normally in companies and from what I see it has two purposes, reflecting the last 90 days, reunite the team and look ahead to the next 90 days.

Shani: Yes.

Jim: I started to do that years and years ago with our boys, because I wanted to see them shine, I wanted to keep my relationship running a busy business that came out of 2008, almost going bankrupt, so I said, I’m going to have a board meeting with each of my children every quarter. I started to spend half day at a minimum with each of them. There are only three guiding principles that have to be one-on-one, so none of their friends could come, none of their siblings could come, it wasn’t me and Jamie, it was just me and my son, or Jamie and that.

Second principle was without electronics, which I just hit on, we’re big on. My phone is off, their phone is off, they didn’t have phones at the time because they were younger. Then the third thing is they plan the day, it’s a fun activity of their choice, and time of the day to talk. I go into deeper stories about problems our family overcame, because we’re a blended family and adopted in biological children and those meetings were absolutely pinnacle.

I started to share them very cautiously, or almost like, “Oh, this is such a simple thing, it’s not even worth talking about.” Well, funny, that’s when I started to get invited to bigger business events to speak on, “Hey, what’s this thing you’re doing with your kids?” The next thing it turned into a book, to interviews to a whole series of family support. That one thing of I do a board meeting every quarter with each one of my children, one-on-one without my phone, they plan the day, I follow it and we spend time at the end of the day talking.

That simple formula has deepened and strengthened our relationship beyond measure. Most people that we worked with, and it’d be thousands of families now say that one technique, that one, has taken them to a different level with anywhere from divorced dads who are separated from their kids a lot to busy executives who were just too dang busy. They said when you schedule it, and they put it on their schedule, like it’s their most important shareholder or whatever, and it gets done, the relationship just nurtures and strengthens.

Shani: I absolutely love that idea for the kids absolutely and for people’s direct reports. It’s like everything you guys are talking about doing in the family are things that people should be doing with their most important relationships at work also. It’s like a lot of people know they should be doing those things in both places, and they don’t do them in either place. [laughs] The common denominator is relationships, whether they’re immediate family, extended family, work relationships, we’re all just people and it’s how do you cement those relationships of trust, and commitment, and loyalty. You can only do that by spending some quality time together in the way that you described with the family board meeting quarterly for half a day is one brilliant way to do that.

Jim: Yes, I think–

Shani: Leadershifters, I want to hear some reports back from you, that you’re doing family one-on-one board meetings with each of your kids.

Jim: Absolutely.

Jamie: It’s a lot of fun, you’d be surprised at some of the conversations that will come out or the comfortability or just the laughs.

Jim: Just to understand everyone says, “I want to support my kids, I want to understand their passions and talents more,” you let them plan the day and you do that for years, things will float to the surface.

Jamie: Start to see them adjust to that.

Shani: Do they have a budget of things to plan for that.

Jim: You know what? People say, oh, they’re going to pick something expensive, it’s been very, very rare, some of them will be free going to the beach. [crosstalk] Surf boarding is free, other ones would be more expensive but

Jamie: Like our oldest.

Jim: -we limit that.

Jamie: Yes, our oldest is really into fishing so a couple of times, he wanted to rent a boat to go fishing, but now, Olden, buys cheap boats off of people and repairs them and resells them. His love for that bit was really incubated in board meetings, because dad would rent the boat and they would get to have the full experience. He now has such a love to rebuild boats himself and take himself fishing.

Shani: Wow.

Jamie: It’s just really a thing, yes.

Shani: Interesting to see that play out I’m sure for you guys.

Jim: Very interesting

Jamie: Very amazing.

Jim: You can’t put a price limit on it. Some people have had to, a lot of the times it’s not that expensive and then our fourth quarter one is always something of services. It’s not in many ways. The fourth quarter is, we’re going to send care packages to the troops, were going to sneak into the grocery store and pay for someone’s groceries on the side, we’re going to buy all the homeless people pizzas and pass them out, so it’s very service oriented.

Shani: Yes.

Jim: It’s not going directly to them, it might cost money, but it’s some sort of service and contribution.

Shani: Right, again, something beautiful to pass on to your kids, the spirit of service.

Jim Yes. Well, most executives and professionals that we talk to, I say, “What’s your biggest concern with your kid?” it was scary, I’m talking 99% said, “I want my kids to appreciate what they have.” Because a lot of us, we work hard, we may be starting to produce a good income, some net worth and we didn’t come from that, we’re saying we don’t want our kids not appreciate it, how do we make sure they appreciate not jade it.

Jamie: But don’t have that struggle.

Shani: Or entitled.

Jim: Yes, entitled. Active service and contribution, has been the number one way for workshops, retreats, consultant we’ve done, it’s like a hack. You want your kids to appreciate what they have, be involved in some meaningful service and contribution together, you will see– you will get those results that you’re looking for. Writing a check is great, that’s important to do that, they don’t feel that. Now when they’re actively in it, it’s a shift of, as you say, it’s a leader shift.

Shani: That’s right.

Jamie: Right, you’re really you’re putting those boots to the ground. Again, to use our oldest as an example, he has such a love of animals and we went to, we walk dogs, so every Friday, he would walk dogs at the local shelter. Yes, he would get attached or yes, he would get nasty cleaning out cages. There were certain things that would happen but he loved the– it was just he was doing what he could. He wasn’t making a bunch of money to then be able to write a check but he knew he could contribute by once a week he could bring dog treats and walks the dogs. Again, allowing them to do service within their interests as well is so powerful.

Shani: What would it look like to work with a family on a consulting basis? What types of things do you teach them? Is it just the parents or do you work with the entire family, what does that look like?

Jim: It’s mainly the parents and then the children get in. I think one of the– Again, we’d really like to go back to core. You were talking about fitness before and yoga, once you strengthen the core everything else will be strengthened around it. With Jamie’s background in Waldorf Montessori, which is just so key for– I think it’s one of the most business-minded education there is. You go back to some core things we start saying, “Okay, well as a family the same way you were with the business, have you identified your core values? You can make value-based decision making, what are your values, what are your core values?”

Jamie: It’s nothing else so you’d have that lined up until the whole family really buys into and creates those together, because what’s your culture otherwise, right? Same thing with the business if you don’t know what you’re there for, if you don’t know what you’re working towards, if you don’t know what you’re passionate about within your family, then you’re really you’re just existing, same thing with a company you’re not really going to continue a progression.

Jim: Well, usually, I’d say there’s a three point starting. What are your values? What are your rhythms? Where are you wanting to go? What are you wanting to do as a family? What do you want it to look like for family life and everyone gets to contribute.

Shani: It’s like the vision for the family?

Jim: No, almost like a vision, a 20-year vision of where you want things to go. What things do you want to be doing? Do you want more or less? Do you want to live cold or hot? Everyone can have an opinion. Are all going to agree? No. Same with the company, but a collaborative effort can bring together. You’d be shocked, I’m sure with what you do with companies, they don’t have identified their core values–

Shani: No. If they have, they’re bullshit.

Jim: They’re words on there with no meaning, no ownership.

Shani: No resonance, yes.

Jim: No resonance, yes. Then, there’s no rhythms set, no cadences in place of real rhythms to beat that drum and to work towards those core values and keep you on track, and there’s really no objective, there’s nothing that you’re looking towards, there’s no aim. We try to do that with families, and by going into those three things, we can naturally remove a lot of obstacles that are breaking up the connection, the communication, the understanding.

Jamie: A lot of times people come to us on that third step, they’re like, “Oh, but we wanted to do X, Y, and Z.” There’s some tight bottleneck and everybody’s in a pinch and it’s– and we say, “Okay, well, do you have your [unintelligible 00:31:23]?” “No.” “Well, do you know how you got here?” “No.” What often happens is that maybe dad had a vision for the family and he’s been busting his ass for it and everyone else thinks he’s a big jerk because he’s just always busting his ass and busting our ass.

You end up getting into this pattern where you end up in a place that’s really uncomfortable as a family or in a relationship and you think, “Well, how did we arrive here?” A lot of times what Jim and I do is we– it sounds over-simplistic to dial it back to core values, but if we were living in a hot environment and Jim loved the mountains and skiing, that would be a huge disconnect, but what if he never told me that he loved that.

Shani: Sure. There’ll be silent resentment brewing.

Jim: Yes, and that same thing happens with kids. This gives them a chance to be heard because although we work with parents and sometimes the kids come on if it’s a– Now, a lot of stuff’s virtual, as you know, they’re brought in by the parents, we would ask questions. Have you ever stopped to ask your children this, have you ever spent an hour with identifying core values or words of core values that really resonate? The answer is normally no. Again–

Jamie: Sometimes it’s difficult to get these big entrepreneur, CEOs to realize that their children have a lot to contribute and that– oh my gosh, you have another.

Shani: I know, this is TJ’s sister, Elaine. [laughs]

Jim: Wow. Hey there. It’s beautiful.

Shani: Yes, the cats are very much interested in 18 Summers. [laughs].

Jim: I merged the 18 Summers.

Shani: That’s right, exactly, that math works, doesn’t it, baby? I’m just laughing because everything you say, our conversations is just like I’m having in office buildings or in Zoom meetings with my clients. It’s like when people get stuck and they don’t know where they went wrong or what decision to make, that’s where I always take them is back to the North Star of values and to the vision.

I just asked an executive recently who was struggling with a big decision, I said, five years from now, what story do you want to tell your daughter about this episode? It immediately– and I wasn’t even trying to actually combine the work and the family thing, but I just know how much his daughter means to him, and so that was a way for me to direct him to his values, and he had the answer right away on something that he had been plagued with for weeks.

Jamie: That’s sweet.

Jim: It doesn’t surprise me, it doesn’t surprise me at all. I think that more people want to be better parents, be a better father, be a better mother, but especially for executives, they feel whether they admit it or not consciously, or it’s unconscious, they feel it’s better to be good at business. It’s easier to be better at business than it is to be a good parent, and so we shy away.

Jamie: Or spouse.

Jim: Or spouse, yes, and so we shy away because we’re like, “Damn it, if we can pull a company through COVID, then how can we not relate to our child? How can we not communicate with our wife? It’s almost like an embarrassing thing, but again, just like you’re saying with the company, if you haven’t identified core values and objectives and rhythms to help you get to those objectives, how could it happen? There has to be intentionality at home the same way there is in business.

Shani: Yes. Essentially, what you’re doing with them is some family strategic planning?

Jamie: Yes.

Jim: Yes.

Shani: Which, again, Leadershifters, you know how to do this, let’s bring it into your families. Now, let’s talk about retreats because corporate retreats either have one of two reputations. One is, we’re going to go do a ropes course and have forced bonding, so there’s that perception of retreats. Then, there’s the retreats that are game-changing, life-changing, light bulb moment bringing for people because whatever experience has been created for them on retreat with their colleagues changes the dynamic on the team. What is a retreat with 18 Summers look like?

Jamie: Kind of both.

Jim: Well, you know how you say–

Jamie: We like to have lots of fun.

Jim: We like to have fun.

Jamie: Not team building, but just getting out of your comfort zone slightly, so they just have fun together really. It’s like a-

Jim: Big fans of The Office if you ever watched the show of The Office like Steve Carell and, you know, where they spoof on the retreats. You might be outside and have fun, but I think the element that separates us from, oh gosh, and the cliches to the wow, that changed things forever is exactly what you did with your executives. You said he’s been struggling on this, where you brought his daughter into it, and that brought clarity, a higher level, a better leader, and that’s why it’s not just the executives, it’s their family with them and the families involved, and it’s not kids, you quiet down in color over here and we’re going to talk.

No, everyone’s involved in conversation, activities, setting values, understanding where the other’s coming from, and so, that’s the game-changer is the dynamic of including the whole family. A lot of the times our retreats might be since we– if we have any hack to give people, the power of one-on-one time is pinnacle. It’s an unfair advantage if you spend individual one-on-one time with your family members like Jamie and I have our own time, my oldest son, my youngest son, I have them on my own time with them.

A lot of the time in our retreats might be like you– company you’re with, it’ll be the whole executive team and just one of their children, just one. It focuses on that relationship, but puts a magnifying glass in a positive way on that relationship, and just having them there with them and involved and have a better understanding of how hard they work and the things that they might be going through as a pre-team or a team that we’ve forgotten, game-changer, absolute game-changer.

Shani: Oh, that’s fascinating.

Jim: I think that what’s our change. I don’t know what you want to add to that.

Jamie: Yes, [crosstalk] okay. Just clarifying that, it is a mix of things that are physical and a mix of things that are, I don’t want to say– there’s no lecturing, but there are some fun activities that we do that pull out, maybe helping to identify your children’s passion because it may be the first time that you even thought that your child might be passionate about something, because we think that there’re children and they just do as we say so, and then they don’t do as we say, and that’s the relationship.

Really, they are beings that have passions, they have purpose, they have things that they’re going to do, and so it’s just really an interesting opportunity to sometimes for the first time, see what those things are and for our children to see us as human because during our retreats, there’s always– there’s plenty of time available to say, “Hey, maybe I didn’t do something so right,” or, “I wish this would have gone a little bit better.” It’s just beautiful to see the children getting seen for themselves and the parents having a bit of humility. Not that that’s our main goal, but it is a beautiful thing that tends to come out of it. It doesn’t level the playing field, but I think that it increases the level of respect on both sides.

Shani: For sure. Gosh, it takes the bring your kid to work day to a whole other level.

Jamie: It’s about both of you, it’s not just about what you do, but it’s about you seeing each other.

Jim: What I like to see happen at the end of it and it continue on is, and again, you don’t want to force anything. If you try to force the values and you’re like, “No one does ownership, no one buys and there’s no potency.” I like to see at the end two things happen, a sincere apology and a genuine compliment. That might come from the child to the parent, parent to the child, or both. Sometimes, that’s what we’re really looking for. I know, again, with leaders and being executives, I’m just going to pick on us as business guys for a minute, just because we’re providing, fighting through COVID, it does not make us immune from a sincere apology. We’re working hard, fine I lost my temper. I’m distant and I’m short. I don’t owe anyone apology how hard I’m working. That’s a bad thing or you belittle the spouse who’s at home or the child who’s at home saying, “Hey, I really miss my friends.”

I’ve just learned those two simple things, those adjectives in front are important, a sincere apology and a genuine compliment. Those two are like the one, two punch of I think relationship building, but it can’t be a insincere apology and a forced compliment. I mean that doesn’t know those adjectives are real important, but when those start to come up, I mean, you are now starting to feel that that distance in the family get tightened up, and then you are one giant stronghold.

Shani: Once people have bonded in that way, they cut each other so much more slack. There’s an acceptance and benefit of the doubt. I just see it happen time and time again, where people don’t invest the time to build relationships and as a result, they’re quick to judge and make assumptions and make up stories. Then the tension starts and it doesn’t get any better until they cleaned it up.

Jamie: Absolutely. Absolutely right.

Jim: We have the same, we’re all still learning. It was actually, five-year-old taught it to us and that cuts us some slack. Just remember with your family, with yourself, you’re still learning. Like we’re all still learning. Just, let’s just keep–

Shani: Also learning, all doing the best we can with what we have.

Jim: Instead of it should have known better. That should have been handled. You should have known better, goes a longer way. It’s not easy and I mess it up, but when you stick to it, we’re all still learning. It seems to strengthen things in the longterm.

Shani: What is next for 18 Summers? What can folks who are already working with you or folks that are in being newly introduced to you be looking forward to from you guys?

Jamie: Sure. 18summers.com is a great place to find lots of information about us, as well as where to find us on social media. We kind of have everything from Twitter to Instagram. We also recently launched our own podcast. We’ve been doing interviews for a while, but there’s something about us entrepreneurs that we don’t actually like to put things in a box. We’ve just been doing interviews and enjoying them and releasing them, but we actually formally have a podcast now. We recently launched a online course, which you can also find on our website.

Shani: What’s that called?

Jamie: It goes deeper into– It’s our 18 Summers Family Impact Program. It goes deeper. What were you going to say? I’m sorry.

Jim: Family impact.

Jamie: It goes deeper into some of the principles that we talked about today. It goes deeper into the board meeting strategy. It goes deeper into the scheduling, revising, tech distancing, all of those good things that we talked about today. It goes deeper. It has some personal stories. It’s Jim and I dumb it down for you, giving you actual tiny little nibbles of actionable steps to just make an impact on your family and our book. It’s a great time to read the family board meeting because no better time than summer. 18 Summers, this is one of your 18 I’m sure.

Shani: Absolutely. Well, summers both my parents were teachers, as I mentioned to you guys offline before we started the podcast and yes, summers, even though we didn’t have a ton of money, we always did something in the summers, whether it was go to a Lake or the mountains or do a road trip somewhere. Those are fantastic memories for me and certainly contributed to my wanderlust as an adult. No doubt.

Jamie: Well, whatever we put in. It’s put the good stuff in when you can.

Shani: For sure. Well, I want to acknowledge you guys for putting the good stuff in, not just to overburdened, overwhelmed parents minds, but into the children because something that I constantly hear from individuals and groups of leaders that I work with when I teach them some of the leadership skills are– my God, these are life skills, why didn’t anybody teach us these things when we were kids? When we were in junior high school, high school or even college for goodness sake?

Why are we waiting until we’re leading people for many years before we’re learning how to be coaches instead of to be directive before we learn how to give meaningful, constructive action-oriented feedback? Why are we waiting until that much time has passed and too many opportunities have passed before those more emotionally intelligent skills are brought into our radar screen. Thank you for what you guys are doing for kids, for adults, and for everybody, it’s been amazing to have you on the show today.

Jamie: Thanks for having us.

Jim: Thanks. We appreciate it.

Shani: Thank you so much. LeaderShifters, thanks for joining us. Just to give you a quick overview of some of the highlights today, and these are things that really those of you who are in a manager, leadership positions already know, and you just need to be conscientious about bringing them home, you are the arbiter of culture in your home, not just in your office or with your team.

You’re setting the leadership tone, which means the culture, the boundaries, and the expectations, and what your one-on-one time looks like. Tech distancing is something we should all be doing at home and at work. I think we’re all way too attached to our gadgets. Then the idea of being conscious about how you schedule and being willing to iterate with it, to have that flexibility of revising so that you know you’re spending your time wisely.

Slightly different, but also amazing advice, the power of a sincere apology and a genuine compliment, whether it comes from a retreat experience or a fight or a family board meeting, wherever it comes, it doesn’t really matter because those are our relationship building blocks that are foundational. Thank you guys for being on the show today. LeaderShifters thanks for listening or watching, and we will see you next time.

The post 52: Using LeaderShift Skills to Succeed at Home with 18 Summers’ Jamie and Jim Sheils appeared first on The LeaderShift Project.

If you’re looking to amplify your message and make a bigger impact with your ideas, research, or experiences, this is the episode for you! Described by her clients as their “secret weapon,” today’s guest is pro speaker coach and founder of The Science and Soul of Speaking, Jill Wesley. In addition to having coached thousands of business leaders, entrepreneurs, authors, and professional athletes., Jill is the Head of Speaker Coaching for TEDxSanFrancisco. Whether your goal is a Ted Talk, a board presentation, or influencing colleagues about a passion project in a team setting, Jill’s expert guidance is applicable: (1) Get clear on the story you want to tell. Dig deep to find the heart of the new idea or your unique take on an existing one and distill it down to 10-12 minutes maximum; (2) Identify your end game and approach the speech like a product launch; and (3) Work with a coach or another trusted person who can provide candid feedback and help you get the content in your bones. Other timely highlights from our conversation include tips for maintaining the engagement of highly distracted viewers during virtual speeches and five messaging imperatives when talking about race.

TRANSCRIPT

Episode 51: Shifting Leaders and Change Agents into Future Makers with TEDx Speaker Coach, Jill Wesley

Shani Maosky: Is your team not performing well? Is morale low and turnover high? Are you falling further behind the competition? I’m here to help. I’m your host Shani and this is The Leadershift Show where business strategy and culture finally meet and we make the long-awaited shift from rhetoric to results. I promise I’m not your typical boring leadership consultant and I will help you get your shift together. Let’s do this.

Hello, leadershifters, and welcome to another episode of The Leadershift Show with yours truly, Shani. I am joined today by an awesome guest. She is Jill Wesley dialing in from outside of San Francisco. Jill is founder of the Science + Soul of Speaking. Her clients described her as a secret weapon. Another way that she’s been described, and this is how I knew that we were going to have a great interview on the podcast, she has been described as a smartass, irreverent and someone who laughs a lot. Well, hello.

[laughter]

Folks, get prepared, we’re going to talk about speaking and keynotes. Leadershifters, if you are looking to up your game as you give important speeches or keynotes or even have aspirations for a TED talk, stick with us as we talk about those things today. Welcome to the show, Jill.

Jill Wesley: Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here.

Shani: I’m excited to have you here. Let me start with a question I’m sure you get all the time, the name of your business, the Science + Soul of Speaking. I love that because of the yin and the yang. I’m a Libra, not that I’m into signs at all, but the Libra is balance.

Jill: I’m not either but I’m a Libra.

Shani: I just, I love how you even in the name of your business give the essence of what it takes to be good at speaking. If you could talk about how you selected that.

Jill: Oh, I’d love to. Thank you for the compliment. The name came to me because I was sick and tired of watching really wonderful leaders that I worked with, people who were interesting and passionate about their work, we would be having a conversation over coffee or having lunch or working together and they were fabulous while they were sitting eating with me. Then they would get on stage and it looked like the soul was sucked out of them. That’s where I was like, “What the heck? What happened to Chad? Chad disappeared from the–” I used to say, “I need to see more of you in this talk.” Then I realized it’s the soul.

A lot of times you’ll hear people say that really great speaking is an art and a science. The science is pretty straightforward. That’s the psychology and the communication strategy and how you construct a message. It’s an art, it’s not something that most people can tap into. What is an art? If I say soul, most people will immediately understand that they get to show up as themselves. If they’re naturally extroverted and sarcastic, et cetera like me, that’s how I am on stage. If someone is more reserved, and a little bit more soft-spoken, they deserve to be on stage too. We don’t all have to act the same way. The Science and Soul, that’s what it means.

Now, people will define soul differently. I always ask my clients, “What does soul mean to you?” Some people are like me. I’m like, “Soul? Well, I’m thinking James Brown,” but other people are thinking of something way more spiritual.

Shani: I feel good.

[laughter]

Jill: No, but I’m playful because you get to tap into whatever soul means to you.

Shani: There’s an authenticity about it that, yes, of course, you want to grab people’s attention and you got to weave in some story because people will remember what you said or what you did. They’ll remember how you made them feel. All of the stuff that is more of the science and the structure but if you get up there and you’re not yourself, you’ll never have the impact that you want to have in delivering the message.

Jill: That’s right. As a successful woman professional, a lot of us early on didn’t fully show up the way we would naturally show up because we had to navigate rooms where we were the first or only woman in the room. A lot of times, I look back at footage of me years ago, 20 years ago and I’m thinking, “Who is that?” It looked like I was trying to be so serious. I needed to be taken seriously also because that was the messaging I was getting from others. Now, on stage, listen, I am who I am. [chuckles]

Shani: Especially as a young woman, you felt like you had to be serious to overcompensate for the youth even though brilliance knows no age.

Jill: So true. No, it is really true. I think we both walked that path and I don’t want people to feel like they have to live or speak in an inauthentic way to be taken seriously. Part of my work is really about expanding the concept of leadership and what that looks like.

Shani: That’s amazing, I love it. It reminds me of a story that Brené Brown tells, speaking of authenticity, she’s the queen of vulnerability. Everything she writes about, she talks about how a client was engaging her to come do a speech and they said, “Can you stay away from the references to religion and stay away from the four-letter words?” What she said to them was, “Listen,” and I’m paraphrasing here, I’ve worked with thousands of executives and one thing that I know is that when people are stressed out, the two things that they go to all the time are religion and cursing. If you want me to curtail that, then maybe I’m not the right speaker for you.”

Jill: It’s so good. I actually have a sign in my office, a sign that says, “Maybe cussing will help.”

[laughs]

Shani: Of course cussing will help.

Jill: Of course, it will. I was raised never to cuss but it’s too late.

Shani: Oh, completely. I was raised not to cuss but as soon as I started working at Goldman Sachs in a male-dominated industry, first in the oil and gas group and then on the trading floor, forget about it. I was raised in Savannah, Georgia where you know–

Jill: I do declare.

Shani: Right, exactly. I don’t give a damn as if damn was the worst word you could ever say. I throw f-bombs all the time. My poor mother, up until the day she died, every time I said it, she would just cringe and tell me that I didn’t have to use that word.

Jill: You didn’t have to. I think it’s like a little act of rebellion. Plus, there is research that shows when people hurt themselves, it does help in terms of pain relief. Like it’s a release to be able to do it. I’m just saying.

Shani: I love it.

Jill: Tell us, I know, tell us a little bit about the types of clients with whom you work both on a one-off basis and on an ongoing basis.

Shani: Sure. My clients, I call them future makers. The definition of a future maker is a person who’s helping to shape the way we live and work. Their work is beyond just getting up and doing a keynote, they’re doing a keynote for a reason. It’s not back off, I’ll let you know, a list, something on their list, they’re using their voice to create significant change. My clients are successful entrepreneurs, I work with senior executives in some of the world’s top companies, and I work with pro athletes.

All of them have a message that I get the honor of helping them shape it and refine it and make sure that their intellectual property is really clear and people understand that this message goes with this person. Then they can create a movement as a result.

Jill: I love that. For example, do you have the liberty of giving us a few examples of some clients whose messages you have helped shape and give voice to?

Shani: Sure, I’m going to pick some recent examples that way it’s fresh in my mind. I do a keynote accelerator and I just finished working with the cohort. One of my clients is just fabulous. She was an early Uber exec, Harvard MBA, super brilliant, senior executive at another global firm. Her work was all about leading with kindness and she said, “Is that too simple?” I said, “No. I’m in Silicon Valley. I’ve worked with fortune 100 companies my whole career. We could go back to a bit of kindness”.

For her, it was about stepping forward and being willing to just be fierce and courageous with the simplicity of going back to basics. For Zahara, her message was– she went to business school, we created a two by two to chart out what human kindness means. Basically, human kindness is the courage to be kind to yourself because often the people most difficult to work with or report to, are people who are incredibly hard on themselves. They’re chasing some dream that they’re trying to prove something to people, they’re highly critical of themselves when no one’s around and that spills out.

It’s the courage to be kind to yourself and to offer that grace to others. She thinks it’s an act of courage to do it which I think is fabulous. That’s an example of someone who was just in the group. Let me think of someone else who is– I’m working right now with head of strategy for– I can’t say the company but everybody would know who it was that sounded mysterious. His work is all about giving entrepreneurs the permission to not just fail fast and break things but learn deeply from these things and remind entrepreneurs that when there’s a failure, yes you can bounce back and move on that you have to take into account what happens to all those people that work with you.

There are a lot of these mythological stories in Silicon Valley about the leaders that get up and tell all their failure stories. What’s great about my client, he’s saying yes, but those were other people’s dreams that didn’t come to fruition. You can’t forget about the people that helped you build. It’s not just all about us.

Shani: I love that. People who have something meaningful to say you help them craft it into is it always a keynote or can it be some other format?

Jill: It is a different format. What I do with clients is we create the 10 to 12 minutes foundation piece. I call it an asset. It’s the thing that someone’s going to make money with. It’s because I do coaching for TEDx and TED speakers, the hardest thing for someone who has deep expertise and experience, the hardest thing for them to do is to pare things down to a short message. Even though a TED or TEDx talk, a standard talk was 18 minutes, there’s a lot more experimentation with shorter talks on those stages because of the attention span of the audience.

I do the heavy lifting with clients to create that 10 to 12-minute piece that they can then use for their media interviews, for podcasts, when they’re panelists, when they’re speaking on a stage, when they’re speaking in a board room. It’s the heart of what they’re always going to be talking about. Then I teach a component-based system. If someone’s going to do a 90-minute keynote, they understand which components to add to it. If they’re going to do a three-minute segment on a morning show, they know how to pull out the essential piece from the 12 minutes to make sure it’s a really strong sound bite.

Shani: That’s terrific. How has this changed in the era of COVID? There are less keynotes being delivered in person and in front of large audiences.

Jill: There was a huge shift. I’ve been in the speaking industry almost 30 years. It’s basically been every 10 years. There’s something that happens in the economy that shifts things. September 11th and then in Silicon Valley, it was the dot-bomb and then it was again in 2009 that the economic meltdown and then right now the pandemic. The big shift was helping my clients to speak effectively in a virtual world. So many people just assumed, well forget it then. There’s no live speaking. I always have to remind people even if you’re speaking virtually, it’s live.

You’re not speaking into an abyss with no one there. You may not be on stage the way you were but you’re still speaking live to audiences. The big shifts for the clients I’m coaching and I’m actually busier than I was before because there are more speaking opportunities. People are leaning heavily into online events and podcasts.

It’s not an ideal situation, I know people miss getting together in person and speaking at live events. However, it’s not a bad thing to just get up and at least put a shirt on it looks presentable, I’m borderline today and just being able to speak from your house versus traveling half a day or a full day to get to a speaking gig. The big change is how to really grab people’s attention and keep their attention and then also develop the relationships with people who are holding different types of virtual events so they’re thinking of you and they’re placing you on their roster.

Shani: What would be the advice you’d give to a client who’s used to presenting in person who is now going virtual and is a little stuck even though you’d probably say just do what you would do on stage.

Jill: You have to change it.

Shani: What was number one piece of advice you give someone who’s trying to shift to deliver their message over zoom or some other platform?

Jill: Got it. The number one shift I tell people is, you are up against a huge number of distractions. Even in-person, people were not paying attention to us that much but at least they’re looking in your general direction even if their mind is wandering but in a virtual setting, somebody’s eating a burrito and they’re doing their taxes. There are a million other inputs that the listener is struggling with. The number one thing I do is we always design an audience focused talk and the number one thing I teach people is high levels of engagement. It has to be an interaction.

You cannot, even in person with keynotes, you shouldn’t just do a one-way transmission. I’m always looking for engagement but you are going to need to do several moments of engagement throughout a virtual talk. That may be pulling the audience asking them to comment, it may be to allow questions throughout your talk instead of waiting to the end because you need pattern disruption to keep people on board with you because they will drift away. If we don’t design for engagement, the videos is on but people aren’t there with you.

Shani: Absolutely. Figure it being proactive about knowing there are going to be disruptions and proactively putting pieces into whether it’s an online keynote or conference or even just a staff meeting, building in ways to engage and that can be even more creative than people think. Of course, here we are on Zoom and Zoom has some tools at all for our disposal. We can do polls, we can screen share, there’s the chat room, there’s breakout rooms.

Jill: Exactly. Get people in groups.

Shani: Think even more broadly than that. What are the other tools that you can use through screen sharing like whiteboards and sticky notes?

Jill: All of it and there’s ways– I did a virtual keynote a few weeks ago for my client and ahead of time– because it’s like people were already with Zoom fatigue. I knew that that could happen within a few weeks. Ahead of time, we arranged for their team. It was maybe 60 people, it wasn’t a massive audience but we arranged ahead of time to send everybody a package to open up where there were some of the materials we were going to cover but elements of surprise and there were snacks. It’s just something to just show we’re still in this together.

We may be distributed, we may feel disconnected but the technology actually allows for some new ways of connecting. I’m pretty playful. We were teasing each other and being playful about– while we were waiting to start, I said, “Does anybody have a Zoom walk of shame moment that they’ve had?” People were making each other laugh because it was like oh yes there was– My three-year-old ran into the scene without any clothes on running away from the bathroom and being playful.

Shani: I love it. I want to touch a little bit on your experience as a TED and TEDx speaker coach. What’s that like and how did you get into it? Let’s start there. It’s wonderful. I’m head of speaker coaching for a TEDx San Francisco and we’re one of the top events in the country and our event– I’m really proud of it, because it’s in San Francisco, our event is very specific, our speakers are doing leading edge work in science and technology.

Shani: Sure.

Jill: Geneticists and neuroscientists and blockchain and all kinds of interesting speakers. They’re speakers that would be– their goal was not to do a TEDx talk, their goal is to do their work and so our event’s curated, it’s different from most, where we don’t have submissions, it really is like, who won a Pulitzer Prize this year? Let’s invite them. I get to be totally on my game because my job is to help the expert translate, they’ve been doing one thing for 17 years, how do you do that in 18 minutes and in a way that people can understand?

My journey, I love it, it’s life-giving, I really enjoy doing it, I work with TEDx speakers and a bunch of other events that hire me privately. The big thing for the journey was basically, like most people, I had seen talks, and I reached out to them and said, “You need a TEDx coach”. I’m used to working because I have a corporate background, I’m used to working with a lot of different people at once. This is the work I feel like I’m supposed to be doing/ I’m pretty much the first person in my family to be doing exactly what I want to do for a career.

Some events will have nine different people coaching the speakers and that’s fine. For me, it’s not hard for me to coach 18 people at once because I have a system, I know what I’m doing, I’ve been with them the past four years and it’s it’s been a true joy.

Shani: That’s great.

Jill: I know.

Shani: Without giving away the secret and the secret weapon, [laughs] what are two or three tips that you give to anyone you’re coaching for a TED talk that would be relevant, really, for any leadershifter?

Jill: Any leadershifter, if they’re considering they want to do a TEDx or TED Talk, let me just briefly explain the difference, there’s one TED event that’s held annually, and then there are thousands of TEDx events. If someone’s interested in doing a TEDx event, and remember some of the top TED Talks ever were TEDx, Simonson X was in the TEDx talk, Rene Browns was at TEDx talk.

What I care about for anyone who’s interested, the number one thing is, what is the story you came here to tell? What are you really here to speak about? Because the definition of a big idea is, are you sharing something in a different way? Is it either new information or are you sharing something in a way that people haven’t heard before? When I’m interviewing someone who wants to hire me, I will often say, hey, listen, if your message is, if you believe in yourself, you can do anything, I’m going to get rid of that immediately because that can inform what you want to say, but you’re going to have to go deeper than that and you’re going to have to be more explicit and unique.

It’s making sure that man, if somebody said, listen, this is the only thing that you can say to a group of people, what is it? Which is hard, that’s number one. Often when I’m working with clients, they think they have their big idea and at the end, that’s when I– It’s really funny after my clients work with me, about 30% will say, I thought I had my big idea, but it wasn’t my big idea. Sometimes it feels too audacious or it feels too provocative to say what you really want to say and that’s where I’m going to keep digging until we get there because audiences crave that. The second thing, first thing is, what’s the message you came to share?

Second thing I tell people is, if you’re going to do one of these talks, what’s the end game? A lot of people act as if it’s something on their bucket list. If anything, it should be more of a launch. Maybe because I work in Silicon Valley, I approach everybody’s talk as if it were a product launch. What are you doing prior to the talk as we work together to let people know the talk is coming, it’s a launch date of sorts.

My clients who have millions of views on their talks are the ones that have really approached it as– listen, just because I’ve done a TEDx talk, and I can add TEDx to my bio, you want people to see it, don’t you? You’ve put out months and months of work into this, so let’s put together the platform and once the talk is recorded, I help them put a plan together for getting people to see it. Then also, from a business development standpoint, leverage this really powerful message to help your nonprofit or help your business, that’s a big thing.

The last bit, I always tell people, and it is really true, work with someone who has experience as a coach, it doesn’t have to be me, but it’s not something– I always tell clients, whether it’s a keynote, or a TEDx talk, you can’t create a keynote or a talk in isolation and too many people do that. It’s a living thing. You can create your prototype, but you have to constantly be delivering it and getting feedback in a strategic way from people so you get to see what is landing and what isn’t.

The key thing is to think of it as a living thing so by the time you get on stage, it’s in your bones you’ve spoken it aloud so many times and it integrated. You’re not just, here’s my talk I’ve memorized because I’ve done it in my living room 75 times, that’s not it. You’ve tested it, gotten feedback and improved it.

Shani: Are TEDx speakers ever allowed to use teleprompters or is it always from memory?

Jill: Okay, the TED event itself has made different accommodations for big celebrities or big execs who haven’t had as much time to work on things, but in general, for the big Ted stage, it needs to be memorized. They’ll have speakers practice for a year, a year and a half. It has to be– the production is so intense, they have to have it down. Our event is in October, and I’ll usually start with most of the speakers in February, and all of our speakers are super busy working on gigantic projects.

Shani: Right, they’re busy being future makers.

Jill: Yes, that’s right, that’s it. I’m in the speaking industry, but our particular event isn’t for speakers. It’s for people– if it’s someone who’s doing a certain job during the day and they’re coming to speak on it. We are original source stage so it’s someone talking about someone like you, well, what is a leadershift? Well, let me tell you, having gone through these different experiences and coached at the highest levels, this is what I’ve come to tell you. It’s that versus someone getting on stage and just talking about a bunch of other people’s work the whole time. You do have to have it memorized.

Over the years, I’ve interviewed people on stage at TEDx, we’ve allowed people to bring notes, as long as somebody owns whatever the format is, it’s fine. It’s a good pattern disruption for the audience, but ideally, you want to have it memorized and it’s so natural that it feels like you’re really speaking from the heart, because you are.

Shani: Right, because you’ve got the science and the soul. I’m just going to take a minute to address the audience here. For those of you for whom a TED talk is on your bucket list or on your list of goals in the short or the long-term, stop and consider what we just heard from Jill. What is your message and is it differentiated or is it just another take on a topic that has been done to death? What is the new idea or your new way of thinking about that idea? If you don’t have that, you need to figure that out.

Number two, think about any speech that you give as a launch, especially if you’re building towards doing something as high profile as a TED talk, you want to think about that. Even if getting better at delivering speeches and keynotes or even just presenting in the executive suite if your career is dependent on you landing the message, these are all still the right pieces of advice to launch your idea because you’re not just going in and speaking bullshit one and done. Typically, you’re going in and you’re giving speeches about something that really matters in your functional area or for your product or for your customer. You’re trying to influence.

Then, number three, when it really matters get help. The best leaders know to ask for help whether it’s a coach to help you with your speech or a leadership or executive coach or somebody else that can give you the honest and candid and raw feedback that you need to freaking nail it, don’t be afraid to ask for that help.

Jill: Thank you for reinforcing those because why would somebody expect to do something that’s as high-stakes as a TEDx Talk or I’ve coached executives to speak to other decision-makers in boardrooms for years. There’s so much at stake. You can’t go in there with a rough draft. You need a thought partner. You need someone who’s going to help you not just with the strategy, but help you deliver.

I’m playful about it, but I always tell my clients especially the senior executives or if I’m working with the C-suite I’ll say, “Listen a lot of people haven’t told you the truth over the years and that’s what I’m here to do.” You’re smiling because you’re the same, I know it. It’s like here’s the deal, everybody at this point on some level has either put up, shut up or kissed up to you.

Shani: I love that.

Jill: They put up with it because you’re a genius and they’ll overlook your speaking skills. They’ll kiss up to you because maybe they want something. The big thing is– I say it with kindness, but my job is often to go “timeout”, what? I’m totally lost. Let’s get you back on track. You would want someone to talk to you like that with kindness because you it’s too high risk to do it in front of a bunch of people when it counts.

Shani: Absolutely. That’s the essence of feedback. One of my biggest professional goals in life is to get people more comfortable giving feedback. That’s one of my entire online courses is about and it’s not just critical feedback. It’s also reinforcing positive feedback so that people understand what they’re doing well and they know to keep doing it and to do more of it. It goes back to the kindness thing that you were talking about. One of your clients’ doing– being honest with people is actually kind.

Most people don’t think of it that way because it’s hard for them to give honest feedback. You’re actually being unkind by letting somebody continue to do something that doesn’t serve that, right?

Jill: So true and it’s on the smallest level. When you get home after a meal and you smile in the mirror and there’s spinach in your teeth and then, what the hell? This has been here? Or my fly’s down. Come on. Tell me. We can move on, but tell me if there’s spinach in my teeth, please.

Shani: Absolutely. Okay, I want to switch gears for just a minute and this is a little bit of selfish interest, but I think other folks will be interested in this as well. You work a lot with the NFL and NFL players and I went to the University of Miami.

Jill: Oh, that’s why you’re a hardcore football person. Yes. [chuckles]

Shani: Yes, and although lately we haven’t been anything to write home about, we probably have put more players in the NFL in the past 30 years that are household names than any other school out there.

Jill: All right. I love it that you have continued loyalty and pride, yes, perfect.

Shani: Yes. Okay, we’ve been talking about the work you do with executives and TEDx speakers. How is it that you work with NFL players? They have a message too, right?

Jill: Oh, my goodness, they definitely do.

Shani: Can you talk to us about what types of messages you’re helping them with and what the contexts are if it’s different?

Jill: Sure. I’ve been fortunate to work with NFL players for 15 years and my goodness, it’s such a joy to work with them. The clients I’m working with are speaking on behalf of their nonprofits. They may have an endorsement deal and they’re speaking for a brand or a company. They’ve been asked to do a special appearance and they’re going to be addressing a large group of people in a community or in a business event.

I’ll tell you, working with active players who are often much younger than I am and then retired players– the pro-athletes only play for a few years. There’s retired athletes who are in their early 30s, but the great thing about working with them is they know how to put their heads down and do drills. They have a stronger muscle than a lot of executives do. They’re so used to– you’ve been talking about feedback just like in your course.

Coaching in athletics is about giving feedback. There’s a feedback loop. You perform, you get feedback, you apply it, you get feedback you apply– as a coach, those clients have an advantage because they’ll try it. If they know I have a game plan, if there’s a play I’m asking them to try and build, they understand the value of it. They respect the expertise I have if I’ve been doing it as long as I have.

They speak on all kinds of topics from modern masculinity to environmental issues, they speak on healthy families, they speak on entrepreneurship, all kinds of fabulous topics that are relevant outside of football. The number one thing that they often want people to remember is that they’re more than football. Their ability to perform at high levels on the field is also something really valuable to go in and talk to a team or do a virtual keynote for a company because they know more about resilience in a different way than a lot of people.

Shani: Yes, I love that. There’s so much there. First of all, one of the things I heard you say that I want to highlight is they’re coachable.

Jill: Oh, my gosh, yes, they’re so coachable.

Shani: I think that’s really important because executives when they get to a certain level, they either think they know it all which you don’t or they think they need to come across as knowing it all, but even the CEOs of the biggest companies in the world don’t know it all and have coaches. Do yourself a favor, folks, be coachable. So simple, but so important.

Then the other dot I just connected was about the launch. Football players, by the nature of the sport, don’t have long careers. Maybe if you’re special teams, you’ve got a longer career than most because you’re a kicker and you’re not getting tackled up right and center all the time, but really doing some of these extracurricular speeches are a launch to what’s next after football in many cases. They have to think of it that way.

Jill: That’s what I’m really trying to do. Yes.

Shani: Yes. The analogy, again, for leadershifters because as much as I’d love to think that I have a bunch of NFL or NBA or NHL players watching my podcast, prove me wrong in the comments. Tell me if that’s you. I think most of my audience are corporate people and a lot of them are thinking about what’s next because they either want to switch careers or they’ve been forced into a career shift or shifting industry or even their industry is going by the wayside. Whatever it is that’s causing them to have to look forward. pretend you’re a football player and you don’t want to be washed up at 30. How are you going to set yourself up to launch the next phase?

Jill: Right, absolutely.

Shani: Yes, okay. One last question before we call it a show because it’s topical, diversity, inclusion, Black Lives Matter they’re so– we can have a whole podcast on this I’m sure. I can’t imagine that you don’t have clients coming to you right now saying, I’ve got a big speech that I’ve got to give either internally or externally on that subject.

Jill: That’s right. I do. I actually have a background in diversity, equity and inclusion. Even though my day-to-day is doing strategy and speaker coaching, I do have that background and the first thing I would say– First of all, thank you for asking that question because it is important for us as a society to continue to use our voices and call people in and have tough, uncomfortable discussions because I believe that that’s how our country actually becomes stronger, is when we can– just like a family. If we never talk about things, we’re giving each other the silent treatment or we’re always arguing, it’s a dysfunctional family– if we can figure out some common ground so I appreciate the question so much.

I have been very busy behind the scenes working with big companies and execs on how to do some messaging. The number one concern people have is, I don’t know what to say/ what if I say the wrong thing? I say, “Oh my gosh, you’ve been saying the wrong thing for years.” [chuckles] Either nobody told you– There’s no human being who hasn’t messed up. I understand that you feel like, “Oh-oh, I can’t do anything wrong because I’ll be punished.” Listen, this is where resilience comes in, and again, here we come back to feedback, this is a time for people as a nation to get feedback on what the lived experiences are for other people.

I may not personally, and this is true, have experienced the type of fear or violence or discrimination that other people have had, but it doesn’t mean it’s not real for other people. As a leader, my responsibility is to create dialogue and as a leader, to create an environment where people can feel seen and heard and understood. I have a model that I teach, that I use with leaders and it’s a checklist, basically. When they’re going to put a message together and they’re going to speak virtually to their team or they’re going to put together an email or they’re going to have a conversation on the phone with someone and there are five steps that you can use.

Especially if someone is just like, “Listen, lady, just give me a checklist,” I have it for you. I can’t tell you exactly what to say but I’m going to tell you, “If you hit these things, you’re going to have more success.” Step one is, you have to lead with the truth. The truth meaning if your company right now, if there’s some uncertainty, when you do not address the fact that there’s uncertainty, it impacts stress levels for people. You have to say something like, “You may have read in the paper that our industry has been severely hit and this may eventually hit us,” or “We’re going to have to make some tough decision.” Tell the truth because when you don’t, it’s worse for people and you lose. Truth brings credibility.

The second thing after truth is empathy. It’s being able to both affective and cognitive empathy, meaning you get a sense of how other people may be feeling and what they may be thinking. Even if you wouldn’t react the same way, showing empathy as a leader, a lot of time leaders are so far away from what it’s like day-to-day. Right now in the Bay Area during COVID– Obviously, COVID is really serious and a terrible experience for a lot of people. It’s mainly an inconvenience for me. I know that I have a ton of privilege. Yes, I have to home school and order-in food but I’m not impacted the way other people are, so having empathy really matters.

Having a leader saying something like– especially when it comes to diversity or race, “I know that some of you are hurting right now.” It matters. After empathy, people need to hear hope. They need to know that you, as a leader, are interested– you want to share that it could be better, that we are in this together. After hope, people need to hear your vision. Don’t just say, “We’re in this together.” Tell us what it looks like when we’re together. What will we do? Do you have any vision of what that can be? Then, the last piece is your commitment.

One of the biggest pit balls for leaders right now is putting out a statement but there’s no follow-up, there’s no follow-through, there’s nothing happening afterward, so commit publicly or verbally or in your email what you’re going to do. I’m going to continue to listen, I don’t have all the answers but I care about you as people. I know we have employees who are hurting and we have other employees who are confused and uncertain and hearing things for the first time. Let’s work through this together, here’s my commitment to you. We are going to do X, Y, Z within the next quarter because you as people mean a lot to me as a leader, and we’re going to move forward.

Shani: Great. Then, that becomes iterative. At the end of the quarter, you come back and you lead with the truth about how you did versus commitment.

Jill: If you don’t– [chuckles] We’ve all been in that situation where someone’s comes up and said a great speech and it’s like– That’s why my work is beyond the stage. It’s great to have a really powerful message. Did we create behavioral change? What shifts as a result?

Shani: Right. What shifts? Don’t be the leader who cried wolf, oh, we’re going to do all things to commit to more diversity and inclusion and hiring and devotion and then think it’s going to go away that you checked the box by acknowledging it. No, it’s not going to go away.

Jill: Right, and remember that we’re stronger together when we have tough conversations and when we bring more people into the room and sitting around the table.

Shani: That’s fantastic. Jill, thank you so much for joining us today.

Jill: Thanks for having me.

Shani: How can folks reach you if they want to hire you or check out one of your courses or otherwise engage with you?

Jill: Thanks. If someone’s interested, who wants to really work on their messaging and create a signature keynote for your community, you can reach out to me directly. It’s [email protected]. It’s science S-O-U-L speaking dot com and I can give you more information.

Shani: Fantastic. Leadershifters, for those of you who are craving the Ted talk thing, I hope that you got a lot of value out of this today and that you’ll follow up with Jill when you get your chance at the TED ring. For those of you who are just looking to improve your presentation and delivery skills within your own spheres of influence, really, everything that we talked about today is relevant to you too because the big idea doesn’t necessarily have to be on a TED stage. It can be for your team, for your organization, for your customers, for your family, for your religious organization. What I love the most about our talk today was what you call your clients. Future makers.

We’re all future makers if we want to be, and so go out there, be a future maker and tune in next time. [chuckles] Thanks again, Jill and Leadershifters. We’ll see you on the next episode.

The post 51: Shifting Leaders and Change Agents into “Future Makers” with TEDx Speaker Coach, Jill Wesley appeared first on The LeaderShift Project.