The New Leader with Ian Daley

A lot of people say, “I don’t want to give away too much.” I say, “Give away everything. Give away tons of stuff.” It works when you do that. Giving away free samples works.  – Bruce Johnston

Hi everyone, welcome to the show! Today’s guest is the first person who connected with me on LinkedIn that suggested we have an offline conversation, which I thought was a refreshing move in the social media world we live in.

Bruce Johnston is a LinkedIn Expert and Consultant, and I thought he’d be a great guest to talk about LinkedIn and where it should be in our professional lives as managers and (aspiring) leaders.

In this episode, we talk about his story as an accidental LinkedIn consultant, how to optimize your LinkedIn profile, memberships, LinkedIn publishing, and a lot more.

Click that play button to listen, and don’t forget to rate us on iTunes!

Practical Uses of LinkedIn

You have to think of it like a pyramid.

The base level of your pyramid is your LinkedIn profile. It’s important to have a profile, and it’s important to have it semi-completed. It’s important that people can know about you, your track record, background, because it’s the place that people go to reference check.

If I hear about someone interesting in a casual conversation, the first thing I do when I get a chance and no one’s looking is I get my mobile phone and look that person up on LinkedIn.

A lot of people don’t bother putting a photo; you should have a photo. It makes you look trustworthy. The absence of a photo works the other way – when you don’t see a photo, people automatically think, “This person is a technological luddite; they don’t know how to put a photo on their profile” OR “What are they trying to hide?”

Publishing on LinkedIn

There are two big things you can do on LinkedIn: 1) you can increase your reach and have more people become aware of you or your company, and 2) you can increase your credibility.

I get a lot of people who go, “Well, I tried publishing for 3 weeks. I published 5 or 6 times in 3 weeks and didn’t really get anywhere.”

I go, ”Well you have to do it more often than that.”

Ford doesn’t advertise on three football games and then give up. They keep doing it, and keep doing it and keep doing it, and that’s how everyone’s aware of who they are and what they sell. It’s that repetition. You see it, and it doesn’t sink through the first couple of times, but sooner or later it does.

You have to keep it up, and you have to stay focused; you can’t wander off and doing odd things, talking about your hobbies. If you’re doing this as a business, then it has to be the business.

You know what your customers want and what questions they have? Good. Start answering them.

Bruce’s Productivity Tip

Figure out when you’re at your most productive and do your important work then. I’m most productive early in the morning, so I tend to do most of my writing and my work that takes deep thinking – that tends to take place between 6 and 8 o’clock in the morning.

It’s before all the preoccupations set in – before I start talking to people, before people start emailing me, before people start calling me. That’s when I’m thinking very clearly and I can be really focused.

Links and Resources

Connect with Bruce: LinkedIn

Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

The New Strategic Selling: The Unique Sales System Proven Successful by the World's Best Companies by Robert B. Miller, Stephen E. Heiman and Tad Tuleja

Whenever I do reviews with any of the guys in my team, that review always ends with me trying to drag feedback out of them for things that I could do differently and blind spots that I may have, or things that I may be doing that for them personally isn’t the most motivating. – Carl Blundon

Welcome to the show everybody! Today’s topic is Managing Different Generations. I have a great guest with us today who’s the Outsourcing Director for Adecco Taiwan, Carl Blundon.

In this episode we talk about his journey, generation gaps, what he looks for in a team member, customizing feedback, seeking feedback from your team and a lot more.

Click that play button to listen, and don’t forget to rate us on iTunes!

Investing in Your People’s Growth

My two years in that role were incredibly successful from a financial perspective. We had 32% top line growth the first year, 16% following up on that the second year, so it was really good.

I think the biggest mistake or failure that I had was that a lot of that growth was coming from my own sales. I was still spending too much time out, selling on my own and contributing too much on my own, rather than investing that time into the development and the success of the people that I had working for me.

I was taking them with me; in my eyes, I was showing them the ropes but I was still doing it myself.

When you look at those numbers – 32% and 16% - they look great. But had I spent more time investing in their development that first year, maybe that 32% might have been 24 % or 25%, but the second year when we were all working in similar levels of efficiency, maybe that 16% that second year is also up around 30% or 32% or 35%.

Because you’re not depending on your own ability. You’ve brought the people in your team up to a similar level and you can reap the rewards for it.

Managing Different Generations

I think it’s a little bit overblown. I think people make a little bit too much out of the generation gap.

In the end, we’re not the same as our parents were; we don’t have the same aspirations that your typical baby boomer might have had. I don’t think it’s really fair to expect that out of younger people, no matter what generation they’re coming in from.

No matter if you’re managing someone who’s older than you or younger than you, you have to sit down and figure out what motivates that person, what they want and to really understand them in order to get the best out of them.

Giving Feedback

For me, I don’t think you can have a one-size-fits-all approach when you’re giving feedback to people in your team.

I have people in my team that are older than me, that are more senior and have been in the company longer than me. I’m not necessarily going to go in and deliver that feedback in exactly the same way and words that I would deliver it to a 22-year-old.

You can want and expect people to take feedback, but you also have to give it in a customized way. You need to understand your people’s personalities and understand what type of feedback and setting and tone is going to allow them to react positively.

Links and Resources

Connect with Carl: LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

Purple Cow, New Edition: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking  by Susan Cain

Fitbit App

Welcome to The New Leader Podcast. Today we have a short, 12-minute episode on the importance of one-on-one meetings.

We talk about five things:

1. What’s a one-on-one meeting?
2. 5 reasons why we do one-on-one meetings
3. When do you do them?
4. How does it work? What’s the format?
5. Potential pitfalls to avoid with these types of meetings.

Hit that play button and don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on iTunes!

Very simply, it is a meeting between a manager and an employee. It’s dedicated time on a regular basis, it’s pre-scheduled, and it’s always private between those two people.

One-on-one meetings encourage open communication. That’s the basis of a great foundation of a relationship – regular communication. It also gives employees time to prepare. If you know you have access to your manager on a regular basis for a set period of time, it allows you to think and prepare for what you want to talk about.

Before you even have that one-on-one with an employee, you want to give them notice about what’s coming around the corner. Nobody likes a surprise from their manager on a Monday morning about a major change in their routine. So I would recommend that you give them at least 4-6 weeks notice. It sounds long, but it does take the edge off when a change is coming.

You want to be transparent. In that message, you’re telling them why you want to connect.

Links and Resources

Connect with me: LinkedIn | Facebook

[email protected]

The Effective Manager by Mark Horstman

If you are a new leader, I will tell you, be yourself. Be your best self. Bring your excitement. Bring your enthusiasm. Love your job. Make sure you know what you’re doing. Tell everyone what you’re doing, and everything will sort itself out. – Neil Pasricha

Hi everyone! In today’s episode, we talk about how to get back up when life knocks you down. This is the episode where we learn practical strategies about failure. We often talk about success, about over-achievement, disruption, innovation, but we rarely talk enough about when life really kicks us in the gut and how to get back up and keep moving.

Our amazing guest today is Neil Pasricha. Neil is a New York Times Best-Selling Author of The Happiness Equation, The Book of Awesome, and he’s got a new book coming out called Back to Awesome, where he talks all about failure – what do we do with it, how do we become more resilient to move forward in our lives.

Neil is currently the director of the Institute of Global Happiness. He has a popular TED talk with over 3 million views. He has an amazing podcast called 3 Books with Neil Pasricha, which won an award as one of Apple’s Best of 2018 Podcasts.

Neil is an all-around great guy, a down-to-earth human, and I’m really excited for all of you to listen in.

A Benign Envy

You, as the leader, have to be the most excited person in the room. People can only match your level of vision, your level of enthusiasm, your level of commitment. Whatever you show them that you are willing to do, that is setting a high bar that people can aspire to and it creates inside them a benign envy.

There’s two kinds of envy. One is called malicious envy – that’s the negative envy, something like jealousy. The other is called benign envy, which is actually something that we all want. It means that you’re surrounded by someone you consider a role model, and it improves your own behavior and your own drive.

Find your small pond

One of the things I do whenever I’m going through failure or through a loss is I find small ponds. What does that mean?

When I was at Harvard Business School, I was lucky enough to have lunch with the dean one day, the retired dean of HBS. He was like, “How’s school going?”

I’m like, “Bad. I’m stressed, school’s really hard, I’m up late every night studying, and all the big, fancy companies are coming to campus… Not only are we supposed to do homework every night, but we’re also supposed to have beer with people we don’t know and apply for these jobs that we probably won’t get…”

You know what the dean said to me? He’s like, “Oh man, that’s terrible. Well why don’t you just leave the beach?”

“What beach? What are you talking about?”

“Well right now you’re standing on the edge of the beach, like there’s a fence. If you look inside the beach, there’s like 10 bathing beauties, but there’s a thousand people like you outside the fence. The odds of you landing one…are super small.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“Leave the beach. Go find the broken companies, the bankrupt companies, the companies going through a hard time…If you can call them up, if you can work your way inside, if you can take a lower level position, then you will get unbelievable opportunities, because you’ll be working something in there. You will be given a lot of responsibility, promoted, taken seriously in meetings, and they will want to hear from you and your learning will vastly accelerate.”

So I did that.

Neil’s Advice

“Don’t take advice.” That would be my advice. Often when we’re asking for advice, we’re really looking for an alibi. We’re looking to confirm something we already have inside ourselves. That’s why some resonate, some do not.

When it’s resonating with you, it’s something you already believe. The people you’re asking are telling you the thing you want them to tell you, because you have something inside yourself.

You can look at the most common advice of all – it all contradicts.

”Actions speak louder the words” OR “The pen is mightier than the sword” – which one is it? Is it “The early bird catches the worm,” or is it “good things come to those who wait”? Which one is it?

You can’t find objectively true advice that applies in any case.

Links and Resources

Connect with Neil: LinkedIn | Facebook

http://neil.blog/

https://globalhappiness.org/

How to Get Back Up by Neil Pasricha

The Happiness Equation by Neil Pasricha

The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha

3 Books with Neil Pasricha

Neil’s TED Talk: The 3 A’s of Awesome

The One-Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard

The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Forest App

Don’t be afraid to give positive feedback. People are desperate to get feedback, even when it’s negative.

Welcome to The New Leader Podcast! Today on the show you will learn the three fundamental ways to better negotiation. My guest is David Dingwall – a legitimate heavy-hitter in this space, and he has the resume to back it up.

As a lawyer, David was elected to the House of Commons in 1980, at the age of 27. In the mid-90s, he was a cabinet minister under Jean Chrétien, and held various portfolios including the Administer of Public Works and the Administer of Health.

Currently, David is President and Vice Chancellor of Cape Breton University. He holds Commerce and Law degrees from Dalhousie University, has studied Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School, and is also a graduate of the Institute of Corporate Directors through the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto.

I’m really pumped about this episode and I hope you get a ton of value.

As always, don’t forget to rate us on iTunes!

How to become a better negotiator

The big aspect of being a negotiator is your own individual preparation. I have found, time and time again, in law, in university, in the private sector, in nonprofit organizations, is that the person/s who are on the negotiating team leave it to the last minute and think that they can proceed in an orderly fashion by not giving it much time.

So I urge my clients and others to take a lot of time and prepare yourself accordingly. There’s no detail which is too small – whether that be on your subject matter expertise, whether it be on your request, whether that be framing your ask, or whether it’s the mechanics and the logistics of the actual negotiation itself.

Preparation, preparation.

Walk away from a bad deal

I’ve sat down with individuals, big organizations, small organizations, and had to conclude that there’s just not going to be an arrangement here.

These people are so far apart, the relationship is not there, they don’t care about the relationship, and that it’s in everybody’s best interest to say, “Thank you very much. I understand your position, but I’m afraid that we’re not going to be able to conclude an arrangement today.”

You’ll be surprised how that turns the other party.

Up, down, or across?

If you’re in an organization, are you negotiating up? Are you negotiating down? Or is it across?

The dynamics are very, very different.

If you’re dealing with a superior, you need to be much more prudent. You should be prudent at everything, but much more prudent in terms of how you handle yourself and how you frame the different issues that you want to have resolved.

I tell my clients, “Write what your options are before you even sit down with the other side.”

You just can’t sit at a negotiating table, whether it’s up, down or across, and have no justification for what you’re trying to say.

Links and Resources

Connect with David: LinkedIn

http://www.davidcdingwall.com/

Negotiating So Everyone Wins by David C. Dingwall

Whenever you go out and get earned media, you’re going to get people’s attention in an authentic way unlike the banner ads and pay-per-click ads that are constantly distracting us and disrupting our day around us. We go right to the content.

Welcome to The New Leader Podcast! Today on the show we will be talking about the importance of great PR as leaders with one of the world's top experts in earned media and PR, Adrian Salamunovic.

Adrian is the co-founder of CanvasPop and DNA11, as well as the co-author of FREE PR: How to Get Chased by the Press Without Hiring a PR Firm.

In this episode we talk about his book, his two tips on how to fast-track your career and personal growth, owned, paid and earned media, hiring a coach versus finding a mentor, empathy and authenticity.

I hope you enjoy this episode, and don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on iTunes!

Self-awareness

I think being self-aware and knowing where your strengths are and where your strengths aren’t is probably the biggest barrier for any manager or entrepreneur.

In my case, I made the decision early on to bring in a business partner on my last couple of ventures. He had a background, or at least a desire to be a leader as far as managing people. Then we hired a CLO, and then we hired a CFO and so on and so forth.

I think being a great leader is knowing where your strengths and weaknesses are, and then finding people to fill in those weaknesses.

The Benefits of Earned Media

We’re in an attention economy, there’s no doubt about it. Attention is worth more than it ever has been, and the reason is, there’s more noise than ever before.

There’s information coming at us in every direction. Knowing how to work with earned media gives you a superpower, which allows you to cut through that noise in an authentic way like we’re doing right now.

You and I are having a conversation, and people who are listening to this podcast have chosen to listen to this podcast. We’re not actually having this conversation between you and I; we’re having a conversation between us and a few thousand other people. That’s powerful. And it’s not advertising.

Finding a mentor

There’s two ways to do it. The first one is really fascinating, and a bit of a plug for Clarity.fm. I’m not only a huge user, but I’ve used the platform to find people whenever I need just a few minutes or half an hour of advice or coaching.

No matter what you’re looking for, you can find it there.

I happen to be one of the top-rated people on that platform today. It has about 75,000 members. You can just go in, and if you need help with SEO, there’s an expert for that. If you need HR advice, there’s an expert for that. If you need PR advice, there’s me.

The second way is using LinkedIn. It is a little bit more difficult because whenever you’re cold-pitching people, “Will you be my mentor?” That’s not going to work.

Usually, I will reach out on LinkedIn, establish a relationship with a person, and bring value to them first – whether it’s by sharing information I think they should know about, or buying their product and becoming a customer.

Instead of asking, giving. It’s hard to say no to a LinkedIn request if someone’s your client or they’re using your product, for example. It’s hard to say no to somebody if they’re a fan – they really love what you’re doing, or if they’re referring people to you.

And then later you can put them on your podcast, and then they get to know you, and then you an approach them later on.

Build value first. LinkedIn and Clarity are the two fastest ways where you can find the right mentor.

Links and Resources

Connect with Adrian: LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook

Find Adrian on Clarity.fm: https://clarity.fm/adrian-salamunovic

FREE PR: How to Get Chased by the Press Without Hiring a PR Firm by Cameron Herold & Adrian Salamunovic

CanvasPop

DNA11

Clarity.fm

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber

Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets by Al Ramadan

Asana

Fellow

Something that I never believed in was telling people what to do

Today we are going to dig into the topic of why culture is so important in the workplace. Our guest is Workplace Culture Architect, Carolyn Swora. She is also the principal and founder of Pinnacle Culture, and author of the great book, Rules of Engagement: Building a Workplace Culture to Thrive in an Uncertain World.

We talk about the importance of creating a shared vision, connecting people to their “Why”, knowing your people’s strengths, culture and values, and many more.

I hope you enjoy this episode, and don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on iTunes!

The power of creating a shared vision

Carolyn went from being a peer to being a manager in her first leadership role. Below, she shares one of the biggest things she has learned.

Because I had worked with these two people before, I thought, “I can’t come in and tell everyone what to do.” I naturally gravitated to “Let’s create a vision or an image or what the end state looks like for us,” and that really worked well.

It really set me up to realize the importance of doing that. Great managers don’t come in and tell everyone what to do. They give people the space to do it on their own, and they inspire them to connect to something bigger and essentially find their ‘Why’. Finding their ‘Why’ is important.

Why is culture important

So much has changed in our workplace. People recognize collectively, now more than ever – how we get our work done really matters, and how we get our work done will impact what gets done.

You can have the most wonderful, perfect, beautiful strategy, and it will not get executed half as well as you would like it to if how you’re getting things done isn’t given some attention.

Building blocks of culture

Values are the building blocks of your culture. Quite often you’ll see these beautiful words or values painted on a wall when you walk in, in the corporate brochure, on the website, etc. and employees might look the other way and think, “Yeah, right. We don’t really do that.”

Values will tell you how people make decisions.

Carolyn’s advice for New Leaders

You are an enabler. You’re not a doer. You’re there to create an environment for people to do their best work. Help set the context, help them find the vision and the purpose in what they’re doing, and then go let them do their thing.

You’ve likely been promoted into this job as a leader because you were good at getting stuff done, but that is not what is going to define your success moving forward.

Links and Resources

Connect with Carolyn: LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

Visit her website: http://carolynswora.com/

Rules of Engagement: Building a Workplace Culture to Thrive in an Uncertain World by Carolyn Swora

Headspace (App)

Never stop learning, and always treat people with respect.

Happy New Year! Welcome to The New Leader Podcast. This is the place for those who are new to people management and who aspire to leadership roles.

Our special guest today is Trevor Murphy, Senior Vice President of Hockey Operations to the Newfoundland Growlers, an East Coast hockey league team based in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

On this episode we talk about Sports Leadership – Lessons from the Ice. We talk about Trevor’s background, volunteerism, and the lessons he learned from experience, as well as his mentors.

I hope you enjoy this episode, and don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on iTunes!

I learned very quickly to lean on people around you that have experience, and don’t be afraid to ask questions, because there’s never a bad question. It’s not a sign of weakness; it’s actually a sign of strength in my opinion, when you’re willing to ask questions and take feedback from other people.

One thing I learned…was to treat people the right way. If you read different books and watch different videos on leadership and such, you see the difference between being a boss and being a leader.

Developing that leadership aspect as opposed to the boss mentality – the quicker a young professional can figure that out, I believe the more success they’re going to have in a leadership role.

That’s something I learned from watching, seeing how people did things. I tried to do that right away.

The boss comes in and tells people what to do, but a leader shows them what to do and leads by example.

Don’t sweat the small stuff. Don’t get me wrong – I do sweat the small stuff sometimes when I want things to go well. But I’ve learned over the years how to handle some adversity, and how to handle some negativity.

You’ll quickly learn that you can’t please everybody. You’ll never please everyone, but you can do your best to please people.

You strive to be the best you can be, you strive to be the hardest working person you know. You strive to do things right all the time. At the end of the day, if you know you’ve done that, then that’s something that you can be very proud of.

Links and Resources

Connect with Trevor: LinkedIn | Twitter

What it Takes to be Number One by Vince Lombardi

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

Welcome to The New Leader Podcast. I’m your host, Ian Daley. Today we’re going to have a short, five-minute episode to wrap up 2018.

The purpose of this episode is two-fold. First, I want to give you a quick teaser on some upcoming guests that will be joining the show in 2019, and second, I want to remind you about the free tool that you can access to make 2019 a banner year.

Have a wonderful holiday season and see you next year!

One of my guests in the beginning of January will be David Dingwall. David and I will talk about the three things about negotiation that you need to know in your career. David is an expert in this area.

Next up we have Carolyn Swora who’s a workplace culture architect. Carolyn is the author of Rules of Engagement: Building a Workplace Culture to Thrive in an Uncertain World. Culture in the workplace is a very hot topic right now and Carolyn and I will dig into that.

We will also have Trevor Murphy, Senior Vice President of Hockey Operations at the Newfoundland Growlers – a professional hockey team. Trevor and I are going to talk about sports and leadership lessons from the ice. I’ve known Trevor since I was young, and he’s really someone who embodies everything that a leader should be.

Lastly, we’ll also have Adrian Salamunovic, a serial entrepreneur. He and I sat down to chat about his new book, Free PR: How to Get Chased by the Press Without Hiring a PR Firm. We will talk about public relations and PR for leaders and new managers.

If you want to make 2019 a banner year, click this link to access a free tool I’ve created called an Achievement Workbook. If you already have a copy of the workbook, or if you signup to get a copy, I’ll also throw in a free 30-minute consultation if you send me an email at [email protected].

The reason I do this is because I know how much it benefited me having somebody walk me through the goal-planning exercise when I’m setting my goals for the new year. 2019 should be the year where you take control and blast through your goals, and I’d be honored to be part of that.

Links and Resources

Connect with me: LinkedIn | Facebook

Welcome to The New Leader Podcast. I’m your host, Ian Daley. Today we’re going to answer the question: How do you know you’re ready for management?

This episode is geared towards those who aspire to leadership roles but are not there yet, and are curious to know – how do you know when you’re ready for that first management role?

Today’s guest is Catherine Rice, Vice President of Sales at Roche Pharmaceuticals, who has a great wealth of experience and knowledge in this topic. She is a highly effective and motivational leader who inspires improvement at district, regional, and national levels by driving performance and change management through tenets of simplicity, focus, and competitiveness.

In this episode, we look at:

• Catherine’s biggest failure and success as a leader
• How to know you’re ready for management
• Going from “I” to “We”
• Being open to criticism, and a lot more.

I hope you enjoy this one.

As a people manager, it’s natural to want something for someone, but they don’t necessarily want that for themselves. You can see potential in them, and you try to push, and you try to get them there, there’s a lot of advice giving, but nothing’s happening because they’re not there yet. They may not have the self-awareness nor the desire to want what you potentially want for them.

If you ask me the reverse question, what some of my greatest successes were was helping people grow and develop and get those promotions. The failures were not recognizing when someone had the roadblock up and didn’t want it for themselves, or they just weren’t there ready to change, but I was pushing them to do it when they weren’t there yet.

It was really hard, and I had to learn not to get frustrated. I would resort into becoming too much of an advice giver.

“You should do this. How about you try this?” versus “What is it you want, and how can I help you get there?”

For me, the number one thing is, “Are they ready to make that transition from it’s all about me to it actually has absolutely nothing to do with me?”

That’s a key distinction if you're going to be a strong people manager.

It’s tough, especially in sales when you have high performers. I’ve done a lot of reading in this area, and if you look at any group, those who tend to be promoted and put into management positions are the people who are super strong, key contributors, or individual contributors. These are your top sales person, your best physician, your best office worker. If they’re really good at their task, they tend to get promoted.

However, do they have the skills necessary to be a great people manager, and can they make that transition from “it’s all about me and my results” to “it actually is about the team and the team’s results”?

That’s a key distinction, and people have to have an awareness of that.

Being Open to Criticism

If you find yourself being open to people being critical of you, then you’re ready to be a people manager.

As a manager, it’s not just about you giving feedback – you’re going to get it yourself, and sometimes you don’t necessarily like what people have to say about you as a person.

You’re in a spotlight role as a people manager; you can’t hide. So you have to be open to that. And some people are, and some people aren’t.

Links and Resources

Connect with Catherine: LinkedIn

Visit their website: https://www.roche.com/

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier

Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott

Brené Brown

The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are by Brené Brown