Welcome to the Leadership Habit podcast from the Crestcom Leadership Institute, the show that brings you inspiration and information to help you transform your leadership style. We use our experience developing leaders in over 60 countries worldwide to help you develop the skills and tools you need to reach your leadership potential, join us in our mission to create a better world by developing stronger, more ethical leaders. How can you make leadership a habit today?
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Making Waves in Leadership: Initiating Change with Patti B. Johnson
vendredi 6 septembre 2024 • Durée 35:51
In the latest episode of The Leadership Habit Podcast, Jenn DeWall speaks with Patti B. Johnson about a challenge every leader must face—leading through change. Change, both personal and professional, is unavoidable. How leaders navigate it can determine their success. Patti, the former CEO of People Results and author of Make Waves: Be the One to Start Change at Work and in Life, shares insights on how leaders can start initiating change and make a meaningful impact by making waves in their organizations.
Why Do Leaders Struggle with Change?
“Change is hard,” Jenn DeWall remarks during the episode. “It’s something we have to learn to stand with in solidarity to be great leaders.” Often, leadership is mistakenly seen as always having the right answers, but Patti challenges that assumption. She explains that leaders frequently try to create a perfect plan or appear to have all the answers, which can actually prevent effective leadership during times of change. Instead, leaders need to be adaptable and open to learning as the pace of change accelerates. Patti highlights that “the world we live in is constantly evolving, and we need to adapt to keep up.”
The Mindset for Making Waves
Patti introduces the concept of making waves in leadership, which refers to initiating change and pushing through uncertainty. “When you’re making waves, you’re driving change in your organization,” she explains. Whether it’s a personal project or a major business initiative, the ability to take action in the face of ambiguity defines successful leaders.
A major takeaway from the episode is the belief that “I’ll figure it out.” According to Patti, this mindset allows leaders to be flexible and resilient during times of change. It’s not about knowing everything from the start but rather about being willing to learn and initiate change confidently.
The “Think, Know, Do” Framework
To help leaders navigate change effectively, Patti outlines her Think, Know, Do framework—a model that gives leaders a structured approach to leading through change:
Think: Understand what you’re bringing to the table, including your strengths, fears, and motivations. “Know what you have to manage around,” says Patti. It’s crucial to reflect on how these personal traits may impact your ability to initiate change.
Know: Ask yourself, “What do I need to learn that I don’t already know?” Curiosity and continuous learning are key traits of leaders who are successful at making waves in leadership.
Do: Take action—but start small. “Don’t make getting started feel overwhelming,” Patti advises. She encourages adaptive planning, where leaders adjust their plans as they gain more knowledge and insight.
Effective Communication During Change
One of the most critical elements of leading through change is clear, consistent communication. “If you set the expectation that everything will go smoothly, you’re setting yourself up for failure,” warns Patti. Instead, leaders should be transparent and realistic, acknowledging that there will be challenges along the way. Honest communication not only builds trust but also helps teams stay aligned with the overall vision.
Patti also emphasizes the importance of involving others in the process of initiating change. Creating an “idea circle” with diverse perspectives can help leaders gather valuable feedback and expertise. As Patti explains, “Most change is not a solo sport. You need others to help you figure it out.” Having a supportive network during times of change can prevent isolation and increase the likelihood of success.
Take the First Step in Making Waves
The episode concludes with an empowering message: anyone can begin making waves in leadership. Whether you’re a senior executive or a team leader, you have the power to start meaningful change. “Take the first baby step,” Patti advises. “Don’t wait for someone else to initiate it—start making waves yourself.”
Where to Find More From Patti B. Johnson
If you enjoyed this episode, you can connect with Patti by:
At Crestcom, we understand that effective leadership development is essential to helping leaders embrace change. Our programs equip leaders with the tools to adapt, communicate effectively, and drive change within their organizations. If you’re ready to take the first step toward leading through change, request a free leadership workshop and learn how to develop the skills you need to make waves in your leadership journey.
Elevate Your Written Communication with Davina Stanley
vendredi 23 août 2024 • Durée 41:28
In a recent episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, Jenn DeWall sat down with communication expert Davina Stanley to discuss how leaders can elevate their communication skills.
For 25+ years, Davina has advised thousands of executives from some of the world’s largest companies, including Meta, KPMG, and Mercer. She has helped clients from nearly all industries for clients in Australia, Asia-Pacific, the US, and the UK to communicate complex ideas extremely clearly and quickly, ideally within 30 seconds.
She is the Founder of Clarity First Program, which helps C-suite executives and their teams to better engage senior leaders and Boards in complex ideas.
Davina began her career at McKinsey & Company, working in the Hong Kong and Melbourne offices as well as Firm Learning, where she helped executives use the Minto Pyramid Principle(R) to communicate better. She was ranked as one of the top performers of her era.
Barbara Minto approved her to teach the Pyramid Principle in 2009, and she is also the author of The So What Strategy and has recently released two new books: Elevate and Engage.
Elevate will be released during September and helps leaders lift the quality of thinking in their team’s board papers without needing to rewrite them.
Engage will be released soon after that and helps executives write papers that their leaders don’t need to rework.
The Importance of Effective Communication
Effective communication is an essential leadership skill. Jenn DeWall opened the conversation by emphasizing how many conflicts, confusions, and even burnout can be traced back to poor communication. As she rightly pointed out, “We need to stop making things harder because we’re not communicating better.” This set the stage for Davina Stanley to share her expertise on how to simplify complex ideas and ensure that the right messages are conveyed.
Cultural Nuances in Communication
The Vicious Cycle of Poor Communication
A Five-Step Process to Elevate Communication
Simplifying Complex Ideas
Where to Find more from Davina Stanley
Crestcom’s Role in Leadership Development
Why Leaders Need the Aliveness Mindset with Jack Craven
vendredi 7 juin 2024 • Durée 37:03
In a world where leadership demands are ever-evolving, finding a balance between professional success and personal fulfillment can seem elusive. In the latest episode of The Leadership Habit Podcast, Jenn DeWall sits down with Jack Craven, a seasoned CEO, executive coach, and author of his debut book, Aliveness Mindset: Lead and Live with More Passion, Purpose, and Joy. This engaging conversation unravels the secrets to cultivating an aliveness mindset, a concept that can revolutionize your leadership style and elevate your overall well-being.
Meet Jack Craven, CEO, Executive Coach, Author and More!
With a diverse background as a trial lawyer, seasoned CEO, long-time member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), mindset author, and C-Suite team facilitator, and distinguished executive coach, Jack Craven has spent the last decade leading countless CEOs and their C-Suite teams into more fulfilling, authentic lives. Jack blends his experience with neuroscience-based practices and insights from the Enneagram personality system to facilitate transformative coaching results. On April 2, 2024, he launched his first book, Aliveness Mindset: Lead and Live with More Passion, Purpose, and Joy, with publisher Forefront Books.
Discover the Aliveness Mindset
What does it mean to truly feel alive? In this episode, Jack Craven introduces the aliveness mindset as a way to bring the best version of yourself into every day. He defines it as “bringing the best version of yourself into your day-to-day experience.” It’s about identifying moments in your life when you felt most vibrant and using those experiences to guide your daily intentions. Whether it’s feeling the electric buzz of excitement during a successful project or the serene calm of a quiet morning walk, these moments are key to understanding how to live more fully.
Why Leaders Need the Aliveness Mindset
The aliveness mindset isn’t just a feel-good philosophy; it’s a critical tool for effective leadership. Jack explains how this mindset helps leaders achieve deeper connections with their teams, make more impactful decisions, and navigate challenges with resilience. By focusing on how to feel more alive, leaders can unlock their true potential and inspire their teams to do the same. As Jack puts it, “The cost of not living there is being unfulfilled. It’s not reaching your potential.”
Practical Tools and Practices
Overcoming Common Blocks to Aliveness
Where to Find More from Jack Craven
Are you ready to transform your team’s leadership style?
Two Things Leaders Need to Know Now with Gregory Offner
vendredi 20 mai 2022 • Durée 50:09
Two Things Leaders Need to Know Now with Gregory Offner
Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall, and on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I sat down with Gregory Offner to talk about the two things that leaders need to learn now! Gregory Offner is one of the most in-demand experts on this topic of professional performance and navigating disruption. His clients include fortune 100 companies. He is often asked to keynote at conferences where industry leaders and executives turn to him for new perspectives on how to elevate performance, eliminate disengagement and make work suck less. Yes, we could all benefit from having a better culture to come into and, hey, loving to come into work. So I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Gregory as we discussed the two things that leaders need to know now!
Meet Greg Offner, Keynote Speaker, Dueling Pianist and Consultant
Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone. It is Jenn DeWall, and I’m so excited to be sitting here with Gregory Offner, Jr. We are talking about the two things that leaders need to know now, now that the future of work is here. Now that heck, we’re likely being asked to do more than what we ever had before, but Gregory, I’m so excited to have you here on The Leadership Habit podcast. If you could just go ahead, tell us your story. What’s your story? Sure. I mean, that’s a huge question. What is your story?
Gregory Offner: It is a big question, Jenn, you know, it was 1982, and I saw a bright white light and then was smacked by a doctor and started crying, but that’s a little too far back, so let’s fast forward to make it relevant.
Jenn DeWall: <Laugh> I think I had the same experience,
Gregory Offner: You know, in1982, you know, I, I do that in front of audiences, and I have to tell them like now as a new father, I’m legally required to put three dad jokes into my presentation. So if that’s happening in this podcast, there goes number one. Uno. So my story, my story’s a lot. Like most people I meet, I graduated from school and immediately started doing a job that had nothing to do with my degree. I had studied psychology, philosophy and music in school, and so naturally became a sales professional when I got out. 15 years later, I had moved through a few different industries, moved through a few different leadership roles and positions even worked internationally, building some sales teams. And I had kind of become disenchanted with what I was doing. The money was good, but the fulfillment was really lacking. I, I felt like I was sort of just getting through every day and not really giving the best that I could every day.
Relearning Communication
What are the Two Things Leaders Need to Know Now?
1. Leaders Need to Know Skills Acquisition is a Competitive Advantage
2. Leaders Need to Know the Skills That Are Like Rocket Fuel for Productivity
The Foundational Skills Triad: Curiosity, Energy Management and Gratitude
Leaders Need to Know Curiosity and Gratitude Can Shift Perspective
The Hedonic Treadmill
Leaders Need to Know Energy Management
The Shifting Workplace Culture
Putting Productivity Before Physical Presence
Greg Solves the Traffic Problem!
It’s Not About Being Certain – Learn, Unlearn, Relearn!
Where to Find Gregory Offner
Harness the Power of Stewardship with David R. York
vendredi 13 mai 2022 • Durée 45:27
On this week's episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, Jenn sat down with David R. York to talk about The Gift of Lift: Harnessing the Power of Stewardship to Elevate the World. David is an attorney, a CPA, and a managing partner of York Howell & Guymon, named an Inc. 5,000 Fastest-Growing Company. David works with closely held business owners and ultra high net worth clients in the areas of tax and estate planning. He has authored multiple books, Entrusted: Building a Legacy That Lasts, and Riveted: 44 Values that Change the World. But today, we are going to be talking about David's newest book, The Gift of Lift: Harnessing the Power of Stewardship to Elevate the World! Enjoy.
Minisode: Leadership Presence with Jenn DeWall
vendredi 6 mai 2022 • Durée 21:11
Minisode: Leadership Presence with Jenn DeWall
Jenn DeWall:
Hi everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall! And on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit, we’re doing a minisode on leadership presence, which is actually something we just discussed in Crestcom’s monthly webinar! You’ll have to go to crestcom.com/leadership-resources/ to check those out! Today the topic is leadership presence—projecting confidence with authenticity.
And as we start this, I want you to just reflect on when you first learned what leadership presence was. Was it something that someone sat down to tell you about? Was it something that you observed or you learned throughout your life? For many people, it’s actually something that we learn on the job. This means that we can often make some mistakes, errors, and missteps before realizing we weren’t supposed to do that.
And here’s the other statistic from those HR practitioners over 80% believe that it’s easy to spot. So even though they might think that it’s hard to define, it’s actually easy to spot. I like to describe leadership presence as our shadow. It’s what is always with us. It’s what people see, and leadership presence is a felt presence. And whether we like it or not, perception is reality. And again, I think this is important to know– that presence may be easy to spot, but we have to be mindful of the role that our own experience and bias can play that can give favor to someone’s presence.
But what is leadership presence? It is defined as the ability to connect authentically on both an intellectual and an emotional level to motivate and inspire others toward a desired outcome. It leadership. It’s also the ability to project confidence and composure under pressure.
Why is Leadership Presence Important?
The Four Pillars of Leadership Presence: Gravitas, Communication, Appearance and Character
What Can Harm Your Leadership Presence?
How to Build Your Leadership Presence
Intentional Communication
Consistency
Empathy
Emotional Intelligence
Connection
Own Your Value
Where to Learn More
Leading From the Jumpseat with Peter Docker
vendredi 29 avril 2022 • Durée 50:56
Leading From the Jumpseat with Peter Docker
On this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, Jenn sat down with Peter Dockerto talk all about his newest book, Leading from the Jumpseat: How to Create Extraordinary Opportunities by Handing Over Control. Peter is passionate about enabling people to unlock their natural talents. He teaches leadership that is focused on commitment and human connection. This approach harnesses the collective wisdom of teams to generate extraordinary outcomes. He illustrates his insights by drawing on examples from his previous industry, flying and military careers, to explain powerful concepts that can be applied in any business. Peter is a trained leadership consultant and executive coach, and he has also worked with Simon Sinek for over seven years and was one of the founding Igniters on Simon’s team. He took his years of practical experience to co-author Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team with Simon and David Mead, published in September 2017. It has been translated into over 25 languages and has sold over 420,000 copies. Wow. Peter brings a tremendous amount of expertise, and I hope you enjoy our conversation as we talk about his newest book, Leading From The Jumpseat: How to Create Extraordinary Opportunities by Handing Over Control.
Full Transcript Below
Meet Peter Docker, Speaker, Teacher, Author, Pilot, Veteran and More!
Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall, and I am so excited to welcome Peter Docker to the podcast. You heard a tremendous bio. Wow. Peter, you have had quite a career. And I just wanna start off by saying thank you so much for donating your time, your expertise and your passion for leadership with The Leadership Habit audience. We are so happy to have you,
Peter Docker: Jenn. It’s a delight to be on your show. Thank you for having me.
What Difficult Leadership Lessons Have You Learned?
What Does Leading From the Jumpseat Mean?
Leaders Need to Know Their Non-Negotiables
Leading From the Jumpseat with Commitment, Humble Confidence and Belonging
The Danger of Leading With Ego
Leading with Commitment
Leading By Practicing Belonging
Where to Find More From Peter Docker
The Future of Work is Empathy with Work Innovation Specialist, Sophie Wade
vendredi 22 avril 2022 • Durée 47:58
The Future of Work is Empathy with Work Innovation Specialist Sophie Wade
In this week’s episode at The Leadership Habit, we are talking with Sophie Wade about what’s next now that the future of work has arrived. Sophie Wade is a work futurist, an international keynote speaker and a Workforce Innovation Specialist at Future of Work Consultancy at Flexcel Network. Over 475,000 people have taken her LinkedIn courses on empathy and the future of work skills. Sophie’s executive advisory work and transformative workshops help leaders understand and adapt to new business conditions and attract, engage, and retain a productive multi-generational distributed workforce. Sophie got her BA at Oxford University and MBA at International Business School INSEAD. Sophie’s second book, Empathy Works, The Key to a Competitive Advantage in the New Era of Work, comes out May 3rd! Tune into this conversation as Sophie and Jenn talk about what’s next now that the future of work has arrived.
Full Transcript Below
Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall, and I am so excited to be sitting down with Sophie Wade today to talk about what’s next. Now that the future of work has arrived. Sophie, you heard her incredible bio! Sophie, how did you become a workplace innovator? Tell me about your journey and how you came to be. I’m so excited to be talking about your book today, but let’s hear a little bit about you your experience within this work or anything that you wanna share.
Meet Author of Empathy Works, Sophie Wade
Sophie Wade: So, well, I think, you know, my journey is actually kind of interesting and sort of important because I grew up in England. I am British and American now, but I’ve lived I actually studied Chinese and then having done science and, and have lived around the world and I’ve lived in five different, I and worked in five different countries, which really gave me a different perspective that, you know, work is different in every country and how people work and when they start and stop work and the attitudes they have towards it.
So that really helped me sort of understand that there, there is no set way of working. There are sort of different rules in every place. And then my sort of first career, all about strategic development. I build a lot of financial models and help people raise money. But then I have two kids and when my, my daughter became three years old and, and they were sort of both complaining that they never saw me, I then started looking for workplace flexibility and sort of looked into it, did some research having got a job that was three days a week, cause it’s like, there must be many more people who want to work or have more flexibility in their work. And so I actually started working for a friend three days a week doing executive search for hedge funds, which was fascinating. But I really started looking into this aspect of workplace flexibility and this was 2011, so this was 12 years ago. And and so I decided that I had the, was going to try, you know, maybe spend a year, year and a half trying to get myself the kind of flexible job that was going to allow me to have better work life balance the, you know, very sort of old term now but, or set up company that was going to sort of work, sort of work on that.
The Future of Work and Workplace Flexibility
Work/Life Balance Around the Globe
The Future of Work is Technology-Driven
The Project-Driven Economy
Is the Future of Work Everyone Coming Back to the Office?
Human-Centric Management in the Technology-Driven Workplace
The Future of Work Requires More Flexibility for Employees
Empathy Works – The Key to Competitive Advantage in the New Era of Work
The Future of Work is Empathy
Embracing the New Rules
Work Culture in the New Era
Learning New Empathy Habits
Where to Find Sophie’s Book: Empathy Works
Four Words to Transform Your Sales with Merit Kahn, CEO of SELLect Sales Development
vendredi 15 avril 2022 • Durée 51:42
4 Words to Transform Your Sales with Merit Kahn, CEO of SELLect Sales Development
Jenn DeWall:
Hi, everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall. And on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I sat down with Merit Kahn to talk about the four words to transform your sales. Merit Kahn is the CEO of SELLect- emphasis on sell- of SELLect Sales Development, author of Myth Shift: Challenging the Truths That Sabotage Success, co-host of The Smarter Sales Show podcast. And she is also a certified emotional intelligence coach and certified speaking professional. Since 1998, Merit has worked with salespeople, entrepreneurs, professionals, and sales teams, teaching them how to stop selling and start getting selected by their ideal clients. I hope you enjoy this conversation as Merit and I talk about the four words that can transform your sales.
Meet Merit Kahn, Sales Expert
Jenn DeWall:
Hi everyone. I am so excited to be joined here on The Leadership Habit podcast with Merit Kahn. And today, we’re going to be talking about the four words to transform your sales. I feel like everyone’s probably like, what are those words, Merit? I want to know! But before that, before that we’re, we’re gonna leave that as a teaser, Merit. Can you just go ahead and introduce yourself? Tell us about who you are. This is your second time back on the podcast. We are so happy to have you. You provide a wealth of knowledge. So if you could just reintroduce yourself to our listening audience.
Merit Kahn:
Absolutely. Thanks for having me back. I am the CEO of SELLect Sales Development. We, we spell it S E L L E C T. That’s deliberate, not a misspelling. But we actually teach people to stop selling, and we want you to start getting selected by your ideal clients for your ideal clients of projects. And that’s really what we’re all about. So we teach a framework that helps people really us with the mechanics of selling what to do, or the action plans, what to, what to say or what to do, but really the mindset of strong sales and strong influencers. So
Transform Your Sales With Authentic Relationships
The Four Words to Transform Your Sales:
Transform Your Sales with Respectful, Authentic Business Conversations
The Open For Business Framework
Transform Your Sales by Balancing Empathy with Assertiveness
Emotional Intelligence Transforms Your Sales
Transform Your Fear of Rejection
Finding Your Niche
Selling the Appropriate Product to the Appropriate Customer
Transform Your Sales with Straightforward Conversations
Measuring Your Progress
Where to Find Merit Kahn
How to Make Strategies Stick with Executive Coach, Liz Kislik
vendredi 8 avril 2022 • Durée 43:51
How to Make Strategies Stick with Executive Coach, Liz Kislik
On this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, Jenn Dewall sat down with Liz Kislik to talk about how to make strategies stick. Liz Kislik, a Harvard Business Review and Forbes contributor, has over 30 years of experience speciaLizing in developing high-performing leaders in workforces as a management consultant and executive coach. Liz has helped family-run businesses, national nonprofits, and Fortune 500 companies like American Express, Girl Scouts, Staples, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and Highlights for Children solve their thorniest problems! In her TEDx talk about why there’s so much conflict at work and what you can do to fix it, Liz shows how diagnosing root structural issues can resolve current problems and help organizations thrive in the long term. Enjoy our conversation as Liz and Jenn talk about how to make strategies.
Meet Liz Kislik, Management Consultant, Executive Coach and More!
Jenn DeWall:
Hi everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall, and you’re here with Liz Kislik! Liz, It’s so great to have you on the show. I’m so excited for our conversation to talk about how to make strategies stick. Something that I’m sure a lot of people are like, ‘Can you please give me the answer, Liz?’ I’m so happy that you’re on The Leadership Habit podcast. And I know we read your bio, but I would love to just hear it for our listeners to them, for them to get to know a little bit about you. Could you tell us maybe how you came to be, how you became really interested in the subject matter, and you really developed your expertise in this way, or what’s your story said simply?
Liz Kislik:
I’m very happy to be with you. I think you are really uncovering some of the issues that people need answers to. And in my story, when I graduated college, I wanted to go to work as opposed to going to grad school, which is what most of my friends did because I thought work was where the action was. And I still believe that even after going to grad school, I really saw that if you were willing to work hard and you also had to be lucky, you could get access to people and to opportunities. And I say that as a privileged person, I’m white. I am the child of educated people. So you have to know where you’re starting from, but in general, if you are willing to look for the things that are going undone and take care of them for other people’s benefit, they’re usually glad to have you. And so, I had a promotion every six months in the company I worked for after college. And when I was 23, I was running a 300 employee call center. And that was really too— it was too big a job. The hardest job I’ve ever had and one in which I was only partially successful, I was not successful for myself because I actually thought part of my job was to make sure everybody was happy at work.
Why Don’t Our Strategies Stick?
Don’t Forget—Past Performance is Not Indicative of Future Results
How Do We Start Making Strategies Stick?
The Commander’s Intent: Does Everyone Know Their Mission?
Create a Safe Space for Different Ideas
Be Intentional With Strategic Communications
Ask Better Questions
Bring Purpose to the Forefront of Strategy
Where to Find Liz Kislik
One of the interesting points Davina shared was the impact of cultural differences on communication styles. Having lived in various parts of the world, including Australia, Hong Kong, and the United States, Davina noted that while it might seem like communication would be similar across Western cultures, subtle differences can create significant challenges. For example, the directness often expected in American communication can be perceived as brashness by those from other cultures.
Davina introduced the concept of the “chain of pain,” a cycle where unclear or poorly structured communication leads to a cascade of issues. Leaders often fall into the trap of providing input too late in the communication process, creating a situation where teams spend more time rewriting and clarifying rather than moving projects forward. This vicious cycle not only wastes time but also leads to frustration and burnout among team members.
Davina stressed the importance of thinking deeply about the outcomes you want from any communication. “Leaders want their people to write better, but they’ll often wait to provide input into a communication until after it’s drafted because it’s easier. And actually, what they’re doing is creating a really vicious cycle,” she explained.
To break this cycle, Davina outlined a five-step process to help leaders and teams improve their written communication:
Flush Out the Strategy: Consider who the communication is for, why they need it, and what outcome you want from it. This step is crucial for setting the direction and ensuring that the communication aligns with the intended goals.
Frame the Message: Structure your message using clear, concise patterns. Davina offers 10 patterns to help teams organize their thoughts and communicate effectively.
Firm Up the Messaging: Once the message structure is clear, refine it into a one-pager that captures the essence of the communication. This ensures that the key points are crystal clear.
Flip It Into a Document: After the messaging is firm, turn it into a full document, ensuring that the structure and clarity are maintained.
Feedback: After delivering the communication, reflect on what worked and what didn’t. Use this feedback to improve future communications.
One of the standout points Davina made was the importance of simplifying complex ideas. She mentioned that business communication should be at a grade six or seven reading level, ensuring that it is accessible and easy to understand. Tools like Hemingway can help writers refine their language to meet this standard. “If you can’t say it in a sentence, you don’t know it,” Davina noted, highlighting the value of clarity and brevity.
As the conversation wrapped up, Jenn DeWall reminded listeners of Crestcom’s commitment to leadership development. Crestcom offers a robust curriculum covering 24 topics essential for effective leadership, from communication to building trust. Jenn also extended an invitation to experience Crestcom’s Complimentary Leadership Skills Workshop—a fun, interactive team-building activity designed to enhance communication and collaboration within teams.
For leaders and teams looking to take their communication to the next level, Davina Stanley’s insights provide a practical roadmap. By following her five-step process and focusing on clarity, leaders can break the cycle of poor communication and drive better results.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to elevate your communication or want to explore Crestcom’s leadership development programs, visit crestcom.com/freeworkshop to request a complimentary workshop and discover more resources to help you and your team thrive.
Later in the episode, Jack shares practical tools that anyone can use to cultivate an aliveness mindset:
Anchoring Mindsets: These are daily affirmations based on traits that make you feel alive. For example, Jack’s anchoring mindsets include play, connect, learn, grow, and impact. By focusing on these traits, you can set a positive tone for your day.
Reframing Reactions: Instead of getting bogged down by negative interpretations of events, Jack suggests using curiosity and positive reinterpretation. For instance, seeing a micromanaging boss as someone who is scared and seeking security can change your perspective and reduce stress.
Magic Words: Simple shifts in perspective can transform relationships. Jack uses the example of interpreting his mother’s actions as care rather than control, which neutralized his reactivity and improved their relationship. “When I made that shift, it was transformational,” he says.
Jack addresses common blocks like fear, boredom, and feeling unappreciated. He emphasizes that these are often subjective interpretations that can be reframed. “By becoming aware of these blocks and using the tools mentioned, leaders can create a more fulfilling and less reactive life,” Jack explains.
Jenn’s conversation with Jack Craven on The Leadership Habit Podcast is a must-listen for anyone looking to enhance their leadership skills and personal fulfillment. By adopting an aliveness mindset, you can create a life filled with passion, purpose, and joy.
Don’t miss all of Jenn and Jack’s insights into embracing an aliveness mindset! Listen to the full episode of The Leadership Habit Podcast with Jack Craven and start your journey towards living and leading with more passion and purpose. If you want to learn more about Jack’s work:
Crestcom International offers comprehensive leadership development programs designed to help leaders unlock their full potential. Through personalized coaching and workshops, Crestcom provides the tools and support needed to implement these powerful concepts in your daily life. If you want to see how our program can transform your team, contact us today to schedule a free 2-hour leadership workshop for your whole team! Visit crestcom.com/freeworkshop to find out more!
And for my bosses, that was fine. They were getting the productivity they needed, but for me, I would look in the mirror and, and kind of go, is, is this it? And what most people didn’t know was that during that career, during that 15-year career to try and fill that is this it gap that I was feeling, I had started a career in the evening as a professional dueling piano player. So during the day, I would meet with clients in boardrooms, and at night I would serenade patrons in bars and in theaters. And I’ve traveled all over the world doing this. And so I had this really neat existence where during the day I had a nine to five suit and tie type job. And at night, I had a very different experience. But then, in 2015, through overuse misuse, and just a couple factors that contributed physiologically to it, my voice gave out on me, it just stopped working, which I know sounds weird to most people that aren’t vocal professionals, but your voice needs rest.
It was scary— because remember, I’m making my money during the day and my passion during the evening with my voice. And so now, all of a sudden, it’s not working. The doctors tell me it might never work again. I need surgery. If it even has a prayer’s chance of working. And that left me in a place where I was confused and frustrated. I felt alone because I can’t talk to anybody about this cuz my voice wasn’t working. And ultimately, over the next five years, I would go on to have 15 surgeries to repair and rebuild my vocal cords, spend over two months in complete silence while the vocal cords themselves healed, and spend hundreds of hours in voice therapy, relearning how to talk, how to sing again. And in that process, I made the decision I wasn’t going back to that day job. I wasn’t gonna go back and spend what little voice I might have left in my life doing something that I wasn’t 100% super duper into. And that brings us to how we got connected. That now, the work that I do around passion, around engagement, around employee retention, around performing at our best every day with organizations around the world enables me to use all of my interests, philosophy, psychology, music, persuasion, and business skills that I learned from 15 years like we talked about and I get to be on stage in front of others and see those aha moments every day in their eyes, which I know you, you get to do as a facilitator as well.
Jenn DeWall: Yes, no, I think, you know, that’s probably my. What you went through is probably my biggest fear as a speaker is potentially losing my voice. I have multiple sclerosis, and that is potentially something that could happen. How did you, but here’s one question that I also, that as it relates to your story, how did you express your emotions if you couldn’t actually communicate them? Like what techniques did you use to be able to process that? And you know, especially if you’ve never been used to having to adapt in that way before
Gregory Offner: It is a few things to answer that my, the, my, the dad joke that I now have to insert is that I just have a temper tantrum. I would just stomp my feet and get people’s attention. And that’s not true. What I actually did was pull out an old college trick, and I got a whiteboard. Remember we had whiteboards on our dorm rooms in college, right? So people could leave notes, or they could write silly things if they came back from a party after having a couple too many beers. Well, so I would walk around, I would walk around with a whiteboard and a dry erase marker. And I would have to try to write down my thoughts to, to get involved in a conversation, but I like to make jokes. At least I try to be funny. I like to participate in conversations and it’s very hard to do that when you’re writing.
So invariably, I’d wanna contribute something. And by the time I wrote down what I was thinking, the conversation had already moved on. So then I started realizing that the best way to have a conversation with people, if I was gonna be involved, was if we all did a group text. So if I were getting together with friends, we would be out, you know, to eat, and we would just be texting. And it’s really something amazing that the iPhone or smartphones allow us to do, because vocal issues have been around for a long time, certainly longer than cell phones. And so understanding the struggle that folks had to go through before you could text people at dinner. I mean, imagine passing notes throughout an entire dinner when cell phones didn’t exist. So I feel lucky that this happened to me when it happened. One, because it sparked the opportunity for this new life that I live. But two, because I had the technological tools around me to, to at least make it a little easier, to be able to express myself and communicate.
Jenn DeWall: That’s a really powerful story, just in terms of your own resilience, your own adaptability of figuring out, you know, what’s a different way that we can still do and enjoy the things that I want. I think in a lot of those instances, many people can relate myself included. It’s really easy to just stop, take no action and just kind of be at the mercy of the circumstance. So it’s incredibly inspiring to hear your story of how you looked at that. And it actually catapulted you into a completely different life trajectory. That, which is where we are today. Talking about the two things that every leader should know, or the two things leaders should know now, Gregory, what are the two things that you think that leaders need to know today?
Gregory Offner: Okay. And I wanna preface those two things with one little caveat. I believe that a leader doesn’t have to have subordinates to be a leader when you and I look in the mirror, there’s the person we are responsible for leading every day. So if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, I’m not a leader, I don’t have the title. You look in the mirror and that’s the person you’re responsible for leading. So these skills are gonna be just as these tips are gonna be just as valuable for you as they will, for someone who runs a company of thousands. But the two things that leaders need to know right now is number one, how to use skill acquisition as a competitive advantage, because if you’re like me and you get your news from somewhere and you’re paying attention to the news that relates to business and talent and staffing and productivity, you know that there’s a skills gap, a widening skills gap right now, as people reshuffle, they think about going solo, doing their own thing and leaving the corporate world. There is this institutional knowledge drain that’s happening as workers leave the workforce and that’s creating this skills gap. So a leader needs to understand how to use skill acquisition, how to use training and development as a competitive advantage right now. And the second part of that, the second thing leaders need to know right now is what skills should we be training and developing? How, how some skills for an organization are like rocket fuel when it comes to increasing productivity and performance.
Jenn DeWall: Yeah. So let’s level set. How do you define, you know, how to use skill acquisition as a competitive advantage? That sounds like fancy corporate-speak. What does skill acquisition mean? How do we like at the simplest level,
Gregory Offner: It means learning stuff.
Jenn DeWall: <Laugh>
Gregory Offner: Make it real simple. It means learning stuff. We all, throughout life learn in one of two ways. We’re taught by others where we teach ourselves. And my bet is, if you’re listening to this, you’re already a high performer. If you wanna be an even higher performer, you’re taking the initiative and you’re teaching yourself things outside of work, you’re digging in when you have the opportunity to be developed inside of work, but outside of work, your development doesn’t stop. So wouldn’t it make sense if you’re gonna spend your personal time and your personal money, maybe even to develop yourself that you pick the skills to develop, they’re gonna create a rocket-like experience with your career that is gonna propel you exactly where you want to go. Maybe even faster than the people you’re trying to compete with. Absolutely. So this can be a real competitive advantage, not just for an individual, but for an organization.
Because when we talk about the competitive landscape, what dictates a company’s success are the people within it. And if those people are faster, better, more adept at learning, unlearning and relearning skills that the business needs, that business is going to Excel. That business is going to experience that rocket fuel like propulsion and they’ll leap out ahead in whatever vertical or whatever market segment or whatever industry they’re they’re playing in. So this, this is industry-agnostic. As my dad would say, this is, this is not specific to the insurance or financial services industry. Where I come from, this can, this can be applied anywhere.
Jenn DeWall: I love that. Well, and I wanna talk about the ability to relearn unlearn. I mean, I know there are probably a lot of people that are with me. I read Adam Grant’s newest book. Think Again, I love that, you know, thinking and reflecting that we all think we know more than we actually do, but that has gotta be one of the biggest challenges that in an organization or a team is to get them to even open their mind, to consider relearning an approach. So I’m curious, what’s your take on how to support people with unlearning and relearning and even being open to doing something that they’ve not done or doing it different than the, what they have before?
Gregory Offner: Yeah, well, it’s what, and so Alvin Toffler is the futurist that that quote comes from, he said the illiterate of the 21st century won’t be those who can’t read or write. It’ll be those who can’t learn, unlearn and relearn. So one, when we talk about what skills we want to develop, I mean, you hit the nail right on the head. A lot of us operate in a closed environment. That is, we’re looking to learn a skill. And then, as Ron Popeil would say if anybody gets that reference from the old, late-night commercial, set it and forget it, remember that infomercial, how do we cook the chicken? You set it and forget it.
Jenn DeWall: I don’t, but I feel like I, I should, because we’re the same age, but I don’t know about this!
Gregory Offner: Go Google it, and look at it on YouTube. It’s hilarious. But here’s my point. When I talk about that, set it and forget it, that closed mentality, the quo has lost its status, and nothing is made that clearer than the pandemic change is going to continue to accelerate. The velocity of change is not stopping. And so the old way of doing business, where you got good at a skill, and then you coasted, that’s no longer going to work for organizations for large organizations for two reasons, predominantly. One, the competitive landscape got a lot tighter. Now that individuals can open up their own businesses. I mean, we need is a PayPal or Venmo account, and Wi-Fi. And depending on what you do, you know, maybe five or maybe Etsy, or maybe you just do it on your own wholly on your own. The barrier for entry in business is much lower, which means that if we’re going to be an organized business and have all of that overhead, all of that li all the liabilities that come with being a large organization, we need to excel with an open approach.
That is to say, the new way. Here’s a great quote for you for those folks who just won’t let go of the old way of doing things. “The new way is the right way.” Because this is what I see. When I work with organizations who have very tenured, let’s call them. We’re not gonna call them old, but they’re very tenured employees, right? Long-tenured employees who have been doing it, the air quotes the “right way” for a long time when we start working together. And we talk about some of these new programs and procedures and methodologies that we’re gonna implement, they say, well, that’s, that’s not the right way to do that. See, I’ve been doing this the right way for a really long time. Let me the right way. And that’s when we gently and kindly say, the new way is the right way. And I’m gonna need you to follow along and just give us a day to show you how this is going to work. So the skills that are like rocket fuel, one of those skills is curiosity.
Gregory Offner: Wondering what if, instead of being intent on knowing, I got this quote from Tim Ferris, he asked a lot of his podcast guests. You know, if you could put anything on a billboard, what would it be? And the one guest he was interviewing said, I would put on a billboard, Learn More, Know Less. And that always stuck with me because if we’re willing to say, well, I’m not sure. What do you think we’ve opened ourselves up. We’ve created an open mindset and we’re, we’re ready to learn. Versus, have you ever had a conversation with someone maybe you’re talking about an issue that’s controversial or that’s new, or that’s unproven, and you’ve got your point of view and they say, no, no, no, Jenn, listen, listen. That’s not how it works. Let me tell you how it works. We’ve all had those conversations, and we want to get out of them about as quickly as they started. Yeah. Because that person’s got a closed mindset, that conversation isn’t going anywhere, it’s like beating your head against a brick wall it’s gonna hurt. And it won’t do very much of any good. So one of those skills that we try to develop in the organizations we work with is the skill of curiosity that opens the door for this learning, unlearning and relearning that you were talking about, Jenn.
Jenn DeWall: Well, yeah. And the curiosity like starting there, I feel like is it has to be that, or maybe it’s not the foundational skill, but it’s, or like starting point number one. But I feel like that might help some of the people that maybe are more seasoned or tenured and just have a lot of confidence based on the way that they’ve done things. Maybe that’s the skill that will allow them to open up the possibility of dropping that dang ego <laugh> of letting it just, you know, they don’t have to be right. Because you’re right. The, the barrier of entry is incredibly low right now. I think, I don’t even remember the stat that I read yesterday in terms of the amount of millennials and gen Z that are actually really participating in the short gig economy, wanting to just do something different, not necessarily wanting to follow that traditional, like I’m going to stay in this company and just being curious about how are things done? How can we challenge that? Because there’s a lot of workers that are ultimately just choosing that. And I mean, if your organization isn’t curious, then I guess it’s really hard to want to engage. So we’re starting to talk about the skills that are needed right now for rocket place. What are some ways, or to rocket or like rocket fuel, like rocket place, like rocket fuel right
Gregory Offner: Now I’m a rocket man….
Jenn DeWall: Yeah. And then we’ll start singing Elton John, and everyone’s gonna be happy. Curiosity, like how do you actually practice that? Because I think about the thing that gets in the way, you know, that defense, that, that need to be right or feel like people see you as they’re smart. How do you, what do you practice to allow yourself to be curious when you know that you can default into a judgment? So you can maybe say that you’re smart or kind of where you like, oh, let me tell you what my experience right. We wanna offer and help. What tips do you have to be more curious?
Gregory Offner: So you mentioned something. I, I wanna answer that question, but I want to address something you said just a moment ago about, is it a foundational skill. Maybe it’s the foundational skill. So there are seven skills that we’ve identified that are truly transformational when we start to develop them in our people. And of those seven, there are three that are foundational. Curiosity is one of them. We call it the triad, cuz there’s three of them. And in music, a triad is, is basically a chord. It’s playing three notes at the same time. Yeah? So when these three skills are deployed at the same time magic happens. So they are very foundational. Curiosity is one of them, energy is the other, how do we manage our physical energy? How do we manage our emotional energy, our mental energy. And in some cases, even how do we manage our financial energy?
Cuz if you’re thinking about all the money you don’t have and all the bills you do have, it’s really hard to be present in the work that you’re doing. So financial literacy is a part of that energy component. And then the last component is gratitude. And I wanted to mention that because gratitude really lifts is that, is that sort of, what’s the expression– the tide that lifts all boats. Yeah. If there’s one place that I can work with someone it’s, it’s gratitude. If I start anywhere, it’s going to be with gratitude because once we have gratitude, everything else opens up. And gratitude is really linked with curiosity. So to your question, you know, how do you practice? How do you become more curious? Yeah, there’s exercises that I work on with my clients and that, and that we go through. And, but the number one thing I think we could start to do to develop more curiosity is to develop our gratitude because the first part of a gratitude exercise is thinking about what we’re grateful for.
And if we haven’t done this before, it, it feels kind of hard, feels kinda weird. And once we start, it’s inevitable that we’re gonna run out of the big moments and then we go, oh man, is that it? Is that all I have to be grateful for? And that’s where the magic happens with this process because what makes the gratitude it’s called the three blessings, the exercise that I’m referring to. So in positive psychology I don’t know if this was invented by Martin Seligman but certainly popularized by him. He runs the positive psychology program at the University of Pennsylvania. So the, the three blessings exercises every night or at a time that’s convenient for you. I do mine right before I go to bed. You write down three things that you’re grateful for. It could be three things that happened that day. Three things in life really doesn’t matter.
But what’s interesting is that the smaller, these things are the better it is for your practice. So if I opened up, let’s just do this on a fly. So if I open up, I, I use notion. So three things I’m grateful for today. This is from yesterday, I got to fly to Chicago and enjoy an hour drive and a comfortable rental car- that is not an oxymoron friends. It was a comfortable rental car! <Laugh> And present to a room of HR professionals. Number two is I got to hear my daughter being silly on the phone when I called to say hi to her. And I mentioned how she’s starting to be a really great communicator. And number three is that I enjoyed a sandwich, a torta from one of my favorite sandwich shops in Chicago O’Hare airport. And I haven’t been out there since the pandemic started.
This was my first gig in Chicago. So I was thrilled to be able to get this sandwich from this sandwich shop! Those, when you think about gratitude are not monumental things, right. But they’re so important to this practice because it trains our brain to start looking for the little things and noticing them. And when we talk about curiosity, it’s I wonder. So as I’m reflecting it’s I wonder what I could be grateful for today. I wonder what if, what if it didn’t have to be winning a million dollar power ball for me to write it down on my gratitude journal? What if it could be as simple as a sandwich in an airport?
Jenn DeWall: It’s thinking about, I mean, It’s that shift. Shift into recognizing that we all have so many more things around us than I guess that, you know, going from that scarcity or lack mentality, like we have so much, but yet we’re operating too fast, or we’re too busy or maybe we’re just overwhelmed that we can’t even stop down to or stop and slow down to smell the roses. I love bringing in gratitude. Yes.
Gregory Offner: And, and, and Jenn, it’s also about gaining perspective. So one of the most gratifying experiences for me in terms of international travel we were talking about me going to Africa with my wife on our honeymoon a couple years ago. And while we were there in South Africa, there are townships. If, if someone’s listening and they’re not familiar with what a township is, it’s a ram-shackled development. I mean, development is using that word liberally it’s, it’s where people who can’t afford to live anywhere else live. And they’re generally not living in the best of circumstances and it’s generally not the safest place to live, but it’s, it’s where they live. And so I was very adamant that we take a tour of one of these and not to be disaster tourists, so to speak. But because I really wanted to understand, I mean, I live in Philadelphia, which is the poorest big city in the United States. And so we’ve, we’ve got poverty. I mean, I drive through it every day.
But I wanted to understand what it was like in another place. And what, what I, what I had been told was some of the poorest of the poor live in these townships. And we had a really amazing experience because there were only six of us on this tour. We were all about the same age and I guess the guide liked us. So he, he kind of was telling us more and showing us more and then ultimately invited us to go to a bar, basically in this township with him. And I was chatting with one fella at the bar who happened, I guess his kid was just there. I don’t know, maybe three years old max, that the kid was just hanging out. Kid’s smiling, he’s smiling. Everybody’s having a good time.
Gregory Offner: And I said to him, I said, Hey man, do you mind me asking, what do you do? Like, how do you, how do you make money? And he said, oh, I I’m an HVAC technician. Now at least where I live in Philadelphia, HVAC technicians can make 70, 80, a hundred thousand dollars a year. I mean, that’s not a bad job. You certainly would have a home. And I said, man, like that job where I’m from is well-paying. And he said, I know. And I said, does that frustrate you, that you have a great job skill-wise, but your circumstances are having you live in this township here. And he looked at me and he said, I’m smiling. My son’s smiling. I have friends that I get to hang out with. He said, it’s all about perspective. And that has stayed with me ever since that conversation, because gaining perspective is truly how we can appreciate what we have.
If we’re not stepping out of the bubble that we live in. And we all live in bubbles, no matter how hard we try, we, we live in bubbles. But if we try at least to step out of it, what we learn about ourselves, what we’ve got is really transformational. And so this exercise, I think, will be so valuable to the listeners to try, because it starts to train the brain to look for those things that to us have become ordinary. It’s like, do you ever go, do you ever go visit a friend’s house for the first time? And you look around and you go, gosh, this is a beautiful house. I wish that I lived in a beautiful house like this, you know, my house, oh, the paint in the one room isn’t even, there’s some paint that’s on the ceiling. It’s not just on the wall, like bled through. And there’s always that crack on the baseboard that I see. And, ah, man, this is just a beautiful house. Maybe I do that because my dad was a carpenter and in construction. And so that’s stuff that I look for. But if you know what I’m talking about, you know that the second, third or fourth time you go over that friend’s house, you notice that there are some places where they have paint on the ceiling too, and where their baseboards are cracked. It’s just a matter of perspective. So give yourself the gift of that perspective of gratitude and watch what happens. Watch the transformation.
Jenn DeWall: I want to go out and like stare and ah, and I think you’re right. There are points where it’s easy. You just forget. I live in the mountains or not in the mountains, but adjacent to. And I can forget about the beauty of the mountains because I see it every single day. Almost every time I walk, I see the mountains and we just need to remind ourselves to see things again. I just love that challenge kind of to asking us to think, how can you see it differently? See something old as new. Maybe I dunno if that’s necessarily the truest way.
Gregory Offner: That’s exactly it. It’s about, I mean, it’s about habituation. So in psychology, there’s a term called the hedonic treadmill, and it talks about– the easiest way to exemplify what that means. If you’re not familiar with the term is that let’s say you make $40,000 a year and tomorrow your boss gives you a raise of $50,000. Eventually that $50,000 you will habituate to as the new norm. And it won’t matter. And you’ll need more money to get that same hit of dopamine. That same feeling of accomplishment. If money is how you’re judging your self worth and your accomplishment. Yeah. And you can call that the new car phenomenon and how we go out and get a new car. And then a year later, it’s just my car. It’s not the new car. You’re not necessarily in love with it anymore. Or maybe you get a new romantic partner and then a year later, they’re just that person I live with, I’m not saying that happens. I’m just saying we habituate to what we’re used to. Good and bad. Yeah. Folks put into bad circumstances can habituate to them. And then not notice that they’re in a bad circumstance anymore.
Jenn DeWall: I honestly had this self conversation last night, driving over to bring a meal to a friend and I was driving her car. We just bought a new car in August. So exciting. This is the nicest car I’ve ever owned in my entire life. And I already started to look at it as like, it’s just a car. And last night I had to sit and be like, Jenn, you have a really nice car. It’s I mean, it’s not like a Ferrari, but for like me, like, this is a beautiful, nice car. Like I want to be able to step into it and be like, yes, I get to drive this. This is so exciting. It’s way better than my 2001 Volkswagen Jetta that I had with like broken things. Like I want to be able to constantly remind myself.
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Jenn DeWall: So – the skills we talked about, curiosity, and you talked about also energy. I wanna go into energy because I don’t know what you, when I entered the coaching space, if I said the word energy to people, it was like I said, the most Fu-Fu like high overly-conceptual word, but I it’s not and not, and not in how I experience. So how do you define energy? Let’s talk a little bit more about that. I know you kind of gave us the, you know, the triad, but what do you mean by energy as a skill?
Gregory Offner: So you, you brought up your car. I’ll tell you, tell you my car story. I am not a sports car guy. I am not even a car guy, but I love the color blue. And I saw advertised online a Corvette, a blue Corvette, and I thought, Hmm. You know, maybe I’ll think about buying this Corvette. And so I started to look at it, the specs, the details, everything about the car and this advertisement. And I went to Kim, my wife, and I said, Hey got a question for you. I know it’s a little out there, but I’m thinking about buying this Corvette. And she gave me that look, and you can all probably hear this look, right. You’ll know it when I make this noise… Right?
You know, when you say something stupid and your partner, your friend just does the eye roll, like, okay, go on. And so I said, well, alright, it’s got brand new tires. The whole electronic system has recently been redone, like super dope stereo system. The seats are this gorgeous, like peanut butter leather, you know, like the light with like the dark pin stripy seats in there. It’s manual. I love manual. I haven’t driven a manual car in a long time, but I know how to do it. So like, that’s really cool. It’s just, it’s beautiful. Look at it. And it’s blue. She’s like, how much is it? I said $300. She goes, what? I said. Yeah. The thing is <laugh>, it’s just the shell of the car. They’re selling it without an engine. So I’d have to get an engine. And as like a summer project, my cousins built engines before, put an engine in the car and she goes, what is the point of buying a car without an engine?
<Laugh> yeah. And I feel the same way about this concept of energy. That our body is the vehicle for our brain. And if we’re not taking care of that vehicle, I don’t care if you’re an Ivy League graduate, your brain is not functioning effectively. So managing your energy is a business imperative. It’s not frou-frou Lululemon, crunchy granola on a mountaintop at sunrise. It’s a business imperative. And the fact that we don’t emphasize that or help our people understand how to better manage their energy is a crime. I mean, Zig Ziglar. One of my favorite motivational speakers used to have a bit about, would you if you owned a million dollar racehorse, would you let it stay out all night, give it cigarettes and whiskey to drink and then let it come home in the morning. And everybody goes, no, of course, I said, what about a $20 dog?
Would you let a $20 dog? If you owned it, let it stay out all night, howling at the moon, drinking whiskey, smoking cigarettes. They said no. He said, what about a $5 cat? He said no. And he said, and yet how many of you spend a night out at a restaurant, late night drinking, maybe having a cigar. You are a billion-dollar asset. You are irreplaceable. And yet we treat ourselves like a car without an engine. That’s a problem. And that’s where the energy really focuses in, on creating change for individuals and the businesses with, and the individuals within your business.
Jenn DeWall: I love the way that you just described that Gregory. I think that’s, I’ve never heard it described like that. I think that’s a perfect way to describe it, and hopefully to drive home the importance of why we need to practice self-care and why we need to make sure that we’re treating ourselves with the utmost respect, love, and just, I don’t know, treating our needs, putting oil in the car, gas in the car at the right times, tuning it up, what we need to do. And I just feel like that’s still the thing that, how do you think people are resistant to like maintaining that in the workplace? Is it because there’s still this place of, we don’t talk about emotions at work. You just put your head down. Like I know that we’re seeing with the future of work. People are starting to be like, no, we have to pay attention to this. This is burnout here. And right now, so many people are stressed. I guess I stacked a lot of questions in there, so that’s probably gotta be real confusing to follow.
Gregory Offner: <Laugh>. Well, no. No, I we’re coming from a culture, and I remember my first year in sales <laugh> now admittedly, I had these Zig Ziglar tapes. So I’m gonna, I I’m, I’ll just tell the story and then I’ll explain why I think it’s ironic and funny. So I remember my first year in sales CEOs would want to schedule a call and they’d say, how early, you know, can we schedule? And this was my first job outta college. I finally have some money. So like, I’m going home and drinking. I’m going out. I finally got some cash, baby. I’m gonna go enjoy my life. That’s how I was living at the time. Now, admittedly, things are different since I was 23 or whatever I was. But so I would say to the CEO I don’t know. I was like nine. And in invariably they would say, look, I’m in the office at six so we can get started. And I would think to myself, I’m sorry, your life sucks. Like we are done this era of who’s in earlier, who stays later
Jenn DeWall: Preach! <laugh>
Gregory Offner: We’re done! We’re done. And what the gig economy is a sign of is that people are not willing to sell their life to a company anymore. They’re just not. Cuz that’s what it was. What it was, was a job offer for. Here’s a salary, here’s the benefits. But we’re getting at you anytime we want. You’re a salaried employee. We effectively own you. That was the mentality of most corporate jobs and folks who are entering the workforce. Now, kids, I guess I can say that. Cause I’m 40 kids saw their parents go through this. They saw their parents go through 2008. What do I have to show for all of that sacrifice? And they said, not me. And again, back to that conversation of wifi, peer to peer payment, like we have new tools. We have tools that our parents and their parents didn’t have. And those tools, those new tools require new rules. And you’re seeing the workers of tomorrow, the leaders of tomorrow stand up and demand it. And there’s not a thing that business can do except adapt. So you ask why people are so resistant. I wanna know why businesses are so resistant? Hint- businesses are run by people. So there’s probably a tie in there. <Laugh>
It’s, it’s this, it’s this fear of change. And I had to confront that when I was losing my voice and trying to understand what my life was going to look like in the first couple of months, the first year of that process was, was scare, fear rather. I was scared. I was defensive. I was, I mean, I was moving money around trying to guard, how do I put this here? How to put, I was in protection mode. I’m not even 33. What protecting what? Like, dude, you got you hopefully ever whole life ahead of you. Like you protection mode is not where you’re at. You’re not like retirement age. You gotta figure this out. Yeah. And that’s when I started developing the skill of asking better questions and all of this led to increased curiosity. Well, so I, I may have stray a little bit for, from your, from your question there-
Jenn DeWall: That’s okay. And I wanna get back to it cause we didn’t hit this as much yet. And I know in our prep call, we had talked a little bit about the gig economy and really what that is. You can go willing with it or you can go against it, but it is pushing organizations to change because it’s changing the way or the expectations that workers have. Why, you know, talking about what the gig economy is. And maybe we can level set to what that is for someone that is still, maybe unfamiliar. Hasn’t heard that term before. Why do we need to bring the big or the gig economy into the traditional workplace? Because these are, that’s what some of these skills are curiosity, right? Like that’s what you were driving toward energy. Why do we need to bring that into the workplace?
Gregory Offner: Yeah. So I mean, if I go back to thinking about like the Mad Men era of business you made and met professional friends, you know, you get outta college and folks move on and they move geographically. So you made new friends at work. Well, we’ve got social media, we’ve got all sorts of ways to interact with and meet people all over the world. So work no longer needs to be this social club that people go to and, and maybe, you know, for good reason, it, it shouldn’t be anymore. Folks wanna go to work, do something, and then leave. Whatever that something is, needs to be quantified by the employer. But previously the employer didn’t have to put that much thought into it, cuz it was just expected that you show up at nine, you leave at five we’ll figure out what to do with you in between, here’s your money and folks are going no, no that, that don’t work anymore.
Gregory Offner: Cause see, I can make money here over here on my own. I can make money here over here with my friend. We can start this other business. There’s a lot of negatives right? To the gig economy. For sure we can. We, we don’t, we can avoid that for this conversation and focus on the one positive. The gig economy allows people to show up, engage fully complete their job efficiently and effectively, and go on with their life. And business is so resistant to this idea ex unless you’re in sales, if you’re in sales, you can make your quota and then you can goodbye. You can go golf. You can go to Tahiti. I mean, it depends on what you’re, you know, what type of boss you have. But generally if you’re in sales and you’ve, you’ve met your number, nobody cares what you do with your day. You’ve done what’s expected of you.
Jenn DeWall: I wish that organizations knew that. I’ve a few friends in sales and it’s always like, oh yeah, I hit my numbers in February this year. So now I get to coast and anything I make on top of this, like that is just so foreign to me to look at. But it makes sense in terms of I hit the numbers, I hit the targets. I created value in the way that, you know, I overly exceeded it. I don’t even know what other organizations would do to put that level of trust into people to extend that. Or so many other things to change and evolve.
Gregory Offner: Well, the first thing they’d have to do is they’d have to decide exactly what they want done. And so this is gonna put more of the onus on, on the leaders, on the managers, to better define what success looks like in a given day. And then they’ve also gotta provide an offramp for accelerated success. So using in the insurance world, let’s say there’s an account manager and their job is to create certificates of insurance, a lot of administrative stuff relating to policies and policy holders.
So what if the bosses figured out exactly how many cert certificates need to be issued a day? How many of this and that, and the other item need to get done each day and then said, all right, if you decide to do this much extra, here’s the bonus we’ll give you, they need to start paying for productivity or else. The employees are going to choose options that will pay for productivity. Because I’ve met very few people who are like, I can’t wait to go to the office and sit there and watch Netflix and pop my head up over my cubicle, like a little cubicle gopher every five minutes to make sure that when the boss is coming, I open up a spreadsheet and pretend I’m doing something like who likes that game? Nobody.
Jenn DeWall: No, I, you know, I, I mean it is time for a change. Like I worked for a large organization, and I just remember it, it, you know, how stifling or how much your motivation and even your sense of like why bother being productive? I think about a corporate culture where it was expected. Like first one in last one out, like you must be really just slaying your business, doing really great, but then you got no reward for being efficient. And the only reward that you got was essentially met with, well, it seems like you’re not doing your job because we looked at you and you were doing this, even though we didn’t look at your performance, we just looked at the time in and out. And it was, it drove me bananas, like I would see. And I still think that there are organizations where people are held to that standard of prove it to me, how much you want this and they are productive. But the only way that they’re supposed to prove it is by being in and out at these certain times, instead of saying, are you efficient? Because why would I continue to be efficient then if I still have to be there for the full day? Like, why would I be efficient?
Gregory Offner: This? This is why traffic in America will never get better. My dad, I told you earlier is in construction. And the first day on a job site, if you’re new to the crew, you learn what speed they work at. Doesn’t matter how fast you can get a wall up. It matters how fast they’ve decided they’re putting walls up. And if you don’t fall in, they will push you out. Because there is no incentive to build that house, to build that structure any faster than you absolutely have to because, oh, they’re all paid hourly. So let’s just get to the end of the day. Don’t break your back, literally and figuratively, and let’s go have some beers. Same thing with road crews, same thing with road crews. So what if, what if instead we realigned incentives? What if, what if we created a situation where let’s say repairing a stretch, a five mile stretch of I-95, right? That’s a road here in the east. If you’re on the east coast, you know, I, 95, it’s the misery <laugh>. So let’s say repairing a five mile stretch of I-95. And I don’t know, these numbers are gonna be way off, but let’s say it’s worth $30,000 to every worker, right? Let’s pretend that’s a great number. I don’t know. And let’s say that it’s project it to get done in six months, five mile stretch repaired in six months. Great. If that crew gets it done in eight months, they still get $30,000. But if they get it done in three months, they get $30,000. They effectively double the value of that job to them. And we all know that road work is not going away. So it’s not a question of, we don’t wanna do it faster cuz there won’t be any more jobs! Buddy. There’s more jobs.
Gregory Offner: There’s more jobs for road workers for sure. But the question and the pushback that would naturally come next is, well, they’re gonna cut corners. It won’t be safe. This is what I mean by realigning incentives. So if you pay the workers, the production workers per project, and then you pay the supervisors and the safety engineers and the auditors per hour. So they’re incentivized to go as slow possible. Take the extra time to check every defect, just make the double-check. Let’s make sure it’s done right. And you have the workers pushing against them. Come on, come on, let’s hurry up. We want it. We wanna get this done. Right? We wanna get outta here. The workers are now incentivized to come up with more efficient, safer, more effective ways to get that job done. Everybody wins! So why aren’t we doing it?
Jenn DeWall: Why aren’t that’s because we need to. And in conclusion, we need to be willing to relearn. <Laugh> like, I love that you’ve provided so many great examples of what we can do. Why maybe we need to be curious, you know, going back to that foundational skill of thinking, like I forget, what did you say in the beginning as it relates to defining your future success? Like the plan is you’re doing the plan right now or right now, the way you’re doing it is the right way. I forget exactly the language.
Gregory Offner: Oh, I see what you’re asking about. Yeah. So it’s the new way is the right way, is a way of thinking about those folks who are a bit resistant to change. And you know, let’s say you’re a new manager out there and you got that old salt on your team. That’s been doing it for 30 years and you’re, you know, you’re the junior Lieutenant. So to speak, to, to use an army reference. And they say, well, listen, listen, young whipper snapper. Does anybody say that anymore? Listen here. Listen here, sonny. Yeah. I’ve been here for 30 years and there’s a way that we do it. A perfectly acceptable response is to look at that individual and say, I appreciate that. But the new way is the right way. So let’s get through this together. Let’s figure out how we can win together.
Gregory Offner: Cause that’s what it’s about. It’s not about being right. It’s not about being certain, you know, talking about, learn a no lesson and learn more. It’s not about being certain. It’s not about being right. It’s about making progress and moving forward, the folks who wanna stop progress tend to have a vested interest in the way things are. And so we have to have an honest question with them about, okay, what is the purpose of the work that we’re doing? What is the impact of the work that we’re doing? And then when we look at processes, I’d invite every leader here to turn themselves into a process hunter, to stop trying to justify a new way and start forcing the justification of the current way. If you didn’t do it this way today, would you start? That’s a great question to take back to your organizations, look at a process, any process, the way you track sales data, the way people clock in and clock out. If it wasn’t being done this way today, would we look at this and go, this is the best way for us to do this. If not, it’s time for a change.
Jenn DeWall: I’d love that. That’s a great, closer, Gregory. How can the audience get in touch with you? How can they hire you, bring you in.
Gregory Offner: So I wanna, I wanna give them more than we had really time to go over today. I wanna give them access to all of those seven keys. So the first thing I’d invite them to do is to take out their smartphone and text the word “keys” text the word, K E Y S to the number 33777. So if you do that, if you text the word keys to 33777, I’m gonna send you, I think it’s gonna ask for your email and your phone numbers or, well, it’ll have your phone number and your name so I can send it to you personally. But I will send you a one-sheet with these seven keys of success so that you can decide how you wanna move forward. Maybe you, you get a book or you watch a Ted Talk or I can help you if you want some extra help in your organization with this development.
And if you don’t have access to texting 33777, I’ve been told this works all over the world. You can go to my website, GregoryOffner.com. There’s a button on there that says “Email Gregory“, send me an email, mention this podcast. I’m happy to send it to you. And then if you just wanna connect and see pictures of my daughter and where I’m at from place to place, you know what sandwiches I’m eating in airports across the universe, you can follow me on Instagram at GregoryOffnerJr. Or I’m also on LinkedIn. I I’d love to connect with you there. And tell me what stood out in this episode. Tell me what meant the most to you. What you’re gonna put into practice. I really do wanna hear from you.
Jenn DeWall: I love that Gregory. Thank you so much for all the insights. I would love to have you back on the podcast again, just to have another discussion, but thank you so much for giving your time, your energy and your expertise to The Leadership Habit audience. We are very grateful for you.
Gregory Offner: It’s a privilege and a pleasure, Jenn, thank you so much.
Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast with Greg Offner. I love my conversation with him. I felt like he just had such great energy and insight, but I know what you’re thinking. Okay. I want to implement this competitive advantage right now. I want my people learning, unlearning. That’s the important piece in relearning quickly and effectively, but where do I start? Gregory is offering us access to his performer’s process overview as a special thank you for our listening guests. Just go to GregoryOffner.com/perform. And you can get access to this video series right now. Absolutely free, no spam, just results.
And, of course, if you want help with your additional leadership needs to focus on engagement, communication, storytelling, or innovation, reach out to Crestcom. We would love to come in and offer a two-hour complimentary leadership skills workshop. And if you enjoyed today’s podcast episode, please leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming service. Or, if you know someone that could benefit from hearing Gregory’s message, share it with them. Thank you so much for listening! Until next time.
That means someone might make marks against your leadership presence. If, for example, you are in a meeting and you disagree with what someone is saying or maybe the direction it’s going to go. And instead of having a productive conversation, you might shut down, and your body language might move inwards. Your communication might actually be rude or condescending, or defensive. And people again are looking at that to determine, is this a leader I want to follow? Can I trust them?
When employees are working with a leader they might deem as a bully or insensitive, or overly authoritarian— you’ll likely find that they shut down and look for a more supportive and productive workplace culture. Workplace presence also impacts our productivity and our ability to be resilient. And even how we treat our customers.
Now, there are four main areas of leadership presence. First is gravitas, and that’s essentially how you act and project your confidence— your actions. And that really plays into perception is reality.
The second area of leadership presence is communication. Not only how we communicate verbally but also non-verbally. What’s your body language saying about a conversation? Are you engaged, or are you shut down?
And its also appearance. But I would again say that there’s an asterisk next to this one. Because it depends on the industry that you’re in and the workplace culture in terms of what the expectations are for dress and appearance. Many companies have different expectations. And this poses a unique challenge as it relates to leaders in bridging the gap.
So, for example, let’s say that you’re onboarding a new employee, and this employee came from a more casual culture. You might notice that they come in, and as far as their physical appearance, they come off as more casual. And you might find yourself judging them. Like, don’t they take this work seriously? Why aren’t they dressed like a professional? But you see, if you didn’t have the conversation with them, they dress based on what they know success looks like. And so, again, remember that appearance is something that we need to challenge.
And then, of course, the final area of leadership presence is our character. You can think about that as our values, what we stand for. And, of course, what we fall for.
The Center for Talent and Innovation actually describes this mix in three parts. Gravitas— how you act— accounts for 67% of your leadership presence. 28% is communication. And again, that’s both verbal and nonverbal, and then only 5% is appearance.
But what do you need to watch out for? These are the things you could do that would negatively impact your leadership presence, or they’re eroding whether or not people want to trust you or follow you. One- the blame game. Hey, did you see what happened here? It’s all your fault. I’m not taking any responsibility for it. No, it’s their fault. They didn’t send the email. They didn’t do this. When you can’t take responsibility. It says that I can’t trust you. The second pitfall of leadership presence is inconsistency. People want consistency. Our brains actually operate better when we understand what’s expected of us. If you find your emotions change day to day, meeting to meeting, and that you aren’t consistent in how you react to problems or challenges, or maybe some days you actually go off the deep end when someone makes a mistake. But for others, you might have more empathy. Chances are, someone is going to assume your worst is your best. And then they might say, I don’t want to follow this person.
Another pitfall of leadership presence is closed-off nonverbal cues. I know you can think of this person in a meeting with their arms crossed, and there are 20 other places they would rather be. If you are that individual, it’s telling people I’d rather not be here, or I don’t have any interest in this conversation or entertain me. And again, it’s creating this perception that you’re distant, disengaged, and maybe not even worthy or willing to collaborate with others.
Other pitfalls of leadership presence would be: listening to respond. Leading from the tower, pretending that you are above it. If you want to have a productive and appropriate leadership presence, you must be willing to get your hands dirty and do the work, not just point and look down at others, especially in a time of crisis.
And of course, another pitfall is a lack of professionalism, not understanding what you’re saying or how you’re saying it and how it could be construed by your audience. And this is what I want you to pay attention to. When are people determining or essentially judging your leadership presence?
Well, one— first impressions! Are you meeting people with a nice, positive greeting, or are you indifferent to their presence? Maybe you don’t even look them in the eye or show them that you care that they are there. So first impressions when you’re first meeting a customer, a potential business partner, or even a new employee during that interview process. If they get the impression that you are not supportive or not open. That might signal to them that that’s not the right fit for them, which is important to pay attention to, especially where many companies compete for top talent.
Leadership presence can also be undermined by your dress and attire. Are you wearing clothes with stains on them? Because you know, sometimes we have to take care of ourselves a little bit, or are you wearing really wrinkled clothing in your industry? Again, depending on what people are used to, they may want to see you in a different way. And so it’s very important to understand who you’re trying to influence and what their expectations are. And again, I understand that this can also be latent bias or that bias can be attached to appearance. But it also is something that we have to pay attention to.
Presence is also determined by your communication style. How do you communicate what you say? Are you condescending? Or do you offer respect? And taking that one step further, even what you put online. What you’re putting on LinkedIn or your social media, if people can see that they’re making assessments about you, leadership presence is also determined in the face of crisis. Are you the leader that’s going to help us whether and navigate this crisis? Or are you the leader that might actually take us down?
So, how to build a leadership presence? First and foremost, understand this communication is a strong piece of leadership presence. And 70% of our communication is nonverbal. So it’s not always what you say, but it’s how you say it. An example of nonverbal communication is the tone that you use. Whether that’s an email or text message, or even just in a regular conversation. Also, your posture. Is your posture up? Are you slouched over? How are you moving your body? What are your facial expressions? Are you rolling your eyes? Are you smiling at inappropriate times? Eye contact. Now, of course, this is cultural. Is it appropriate to make eye contact when first meeting someone or communicating with someone? And hand gestures touch and, of course, physical distance.
But let’s talk about the six ways to build a presence. It starts with intentional communication. Number two is consistency. Three is practicing empathy, and four is emotional intelligence. Five is connecting with others, and six is owning your value.
So let’s talk about intentional communication. The tip for developing your leadership presence through intentional communication is to make sure that you’re doing your research. What level of knowledge does that audience have? Do they, are they in the meetings with you? Meaning they’re very familiar or are unfamiliar with it. And are you adjusting your communication appropriately also? So when you’re going into a meeting or a presentation, or maybe you have something important to say to your boss, are you trying to talk about multiple topics? Or are you focusing on one topic? When we have a tendency to stack topics, it can actually confuse our audience. So make sure that you’re thinking through how much time I have, what I want them to know, and creating a structure accordingly. Also, understand less is more, especially if you are crunched for time. You want to make sure that your message is heard, but make sure that you’re eliminating filler words or things that actually have nothing to do with what you’re talking about.
And one of my favorite tips, and many of you have likely heard this before, is when you are communicating, pretend that your words, the language you use, whether it’s in your email or in a conversation, will be placed on a billboard. Would that be something that you would want put on a billboard attached to your name? If the answer is no, it’s best that you rewrite or think of a different way to say something. And, of course, the final piece of rounding out intentional communication— always, always, always think before you speak!
Now, if you’re going into a presentation or a meeting, consider these tips, the power of the pause. When you pause, you allow your audience to actually process what you’re saying. However, sometimes this can be difficult if we don’t prepare, or if we’re nervous, we might have a tendency to increase our rate of speech.
And we might just jump over their pauses, which makes it more challenging for the odd to follow our conversation. More communication tips for a meeting or presentation, always explain the why. If you’re asking someone to do something, make sure they understand how it relates back to them. Or, to say it in a different way— what’s in it for me? The WIIFM! I like to also practice the rule of three. If I’m going to a meeting, I like to think what are the three things that I want them to walk away with. To do, think or know? And then, I’ll structure my conversation and presentation around those three things.
And the other piece with communication is to consider what words and phrases you want to avoid that can negatively impact your presence. Filler words! Just like I’m sure that you’ve heard some of them in my speech already. We all have them, but if we want to have clear communication, this is where practice and preparation can help us reduce the filler words. Another phrase that I absolutely wish everyone would get rid of is, “does that make sense?”Does that make sense signals to your audience that you might be confusing, and it also signals to yourself that maybe you’re not communicating clearly when we asked. Does that make sense? We’re assuming that the audience didn’t hear a message. So instead, wait for people to ask questions. Another phrase to avoid. I don’t know when we say, I don’t know. Yes, it’s forgiving. But another way to say that might be, let me check into that for you instead of, I don’t know or let me think about that for a little bit longer. Other phrases to avoid. I haven’t prepared much. Well, then why are we here? Or I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It can weaken your confidence and, then again, make your audience turn away from you. I hate to bother you. I might be wrong but avoid those phrases. If you want to come off confident.
The second thing you can do to develop your leadership presence is be consistent, which means you need to be present. Do what you say. You will practice what you preach. Don’t just talk about it. Be about it. You must be the one that leads by example. And to do this, to help you, you might want to create a personal mission statement to guide you. That can determine what behaviors, words, or how you want to show up.
The third thing to build leadership presence is to practice empathy. To be an empathetic individual requires us to be foundationally curious. Every single person is both our teacher and our student. We can learn something from everyone, and you know what? Sometimes we make really bad assumptions, and these assumptions can not only create conflict. They can create and damage our relationships and erode our communication. But when we lead conversations with curiosity, we likely will come to a different solution because we’re letting go of the judgements we had walking into it. Another way to practice empathy is to be flexible. Understand that your way may not be the way that works for everyone. And that’s okay. As long as you’re getting to that same destination that you both need to get to another tip, assume positive intent, assume that people actually want to work hard. They want to do well. And that they aren’t actually trying to erode or diminish or thwart your efforts assume positive intent that goes hand in hand with curiosity, you go into a difficult conversation, and you lead with I’m sure there’s something I’m missing. Assume positive intent. And then practice curiosity. You might be surprised at the direction that conversation goes. And of course, give, give, trust. Often our ego says, prove to me that I should trust you. If we want to give empathy, we want to assume positive intent. So we’re going to give trust to people.
The fourth area of leadership presence and how to develop it is your emotional intelligence. Your emotional intelligence consists of multiple parts. Your self-awareness of who you are, your ability to manage yourself, and how you perceive your relationships. And then, of course, how you react and interact in your environment. So if you want to exercise emotional intelligence, which is actually the foundation of presence, you want to understand who you are. To do this, you could think about your triggers. What things can get under your skin that you might then have an emotional reaction that you don’t want to have?
If you, once you’ve identified that trigger, let’s say if someone’s late for a meeting, that triggers you because it says that in some way, they’re not respecting your time. Once you identify that trigger, I want you to ask yourself, what’s another to look at it. Maybe that person was stuck in traffic. Maybe they were derailed because they had to talk to a teacher after dropping their child off at school. Assume positive inten! Other ways to build your emotional intelligence— maintain our composure, practice deep breathing, make sure to get feedback on how others see you, but also be receptive to feedback. Sometimes our ego will say, there’s nothing wrong with me. I do everything. This is their issue. Well, there are two sides to every story.
And remember, with presence, perception is reality and, of course, understand what the needs of others are. If you want to know how to navigate the environment you’re in, including the team you’re on, you need to listen and pay attention.
Who are the individuals that you’re working with? What are their strengths? What are their opportunities? How do they like to be rewarded? The fifth is to connect with others. If you want to build your presence, be a human being! Incorporate water cooler talk into your meetings and ask non-work questions such as what’s your favorite karaoke song or what’s your favorite color? I know this might feel like it’s a time-waster, but it’s actually a time-saver because it’s improving the relationships and communication and collaboration abilities of those that you’re influencing. And if you want to connect with others, know that we are all more alike than we are different and work to find common ground.
One favorite activity that I love is to just have maybe groups of three or four, sit together and time them. And they can have five minutes to come up with something that they actually all have in common. It’s a quick way to see again that we’re all more alike than different and to get people talking. And the last piece that’s so important with connecting with others is to make sure that you’re creating psychological safety. Are you creating an environment where people feel free from retaliation and discrimination and feel free to be themselves?
The final piece of building leadership presence is to own your value. And to do this, we want to see everyone as human to know that we can learn from them. And that just because they may be great doesn’t mean that we’re less than others, so we need to stop comparing ourselves. Stop comparing yourselves. The fastest way to erode your confidence is to try to be someone you’re not. And that’s often what happens when we compare ourselves and assume that that’s the person we need to be like.
So to build your own confidence, create a great list. Write down all of your accomplishments or noteworthy achievements that you are proud of. And use that when you might not be feeling great, or you might feel discouraged, to remind yourself of how great you actually are. And, of course, check in with that inner critic. The inner critic always has a way of telling us that we’re not smart enough and not good enough. And here’s the thing about our thoughts. We always get to choose them.
So this was our conversation today on how to develop leadership presence. And just remember this— people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. Thank you, until next time. And please check us out for our monthly webinars. Talk to us about bringing our webinars or leadership skills workshop to your team. We would love to come in and help to develop your leaders. Thank you so much for listening today. Bye-bye.
Jenn DeWall: Great. Peter, we’re gonna be talking about a lot of things today. I know we’re going to get into your book Leading From The Jumpseat, but before are we getting into your book? Which people, I mean, I know they wanna hear more. We heard that teaser in the bio. If you could just share how you came to be, what, what’s your journey like that led you to today being now the author— and I know this isn’t even your first book— being now the author of Leading From The Jumpseat. If you could just share with the audience your experience that led you to where you are today
Peter Docker: Good heavens. Well, first of all, Jenn, I’m old. So, you know, it is quite a long story, I guess. <Laugh> but yeah, let’s start. When I joined the Royal Air Force in my early twenties, I joined the Royal Air Force as a pilot and an officer, and I spent 25 years in the Royal Air Force. I flew large aircraft jets and also fueling aircraft that carried gas to give away to fighter jets. And during my time, I led squadrons. I was a force commander leading people in combat during the 2003 Iraq war. I negotiated with the Russians when the Berlin wall came down on behalf of NATO. Good heavens, what else have I done? Oh, I’ve taught leadership at the defense college to the postgraduate level here in the UK. I’ve well, I’ve led $20 billion procurement programs.
And that took me to Washington to negotiate with your state department. So all sorts of wonderful things to the Royal Air Force. But then, after about 25 years, I thought there was more I could do. So, I left after, as I say, just 25 years, I joined a consultancy that had got nothing to do with flying all the military, but it had everything to do with people. And what we did, we worked, it was a consultancy. We worked in high-risk environments, such as oil and gas, and mining construction, where people typically got killed and injured. And what we helped them to do was create cultures and create a way of leading, which ensured that everyone went home safely at the end of each day. So that took me to the Middle East. It took me to Africa. It took place like Kazakhstan, but then after about three years, I thought there was more I could do.
So I left that job. And I started my own business, bringing together everything that I’d learned. And it was around about that time. I came across a fellow called Simon Sinek, and long story short there, he’s known pretty well for the books he’s written, but I spent eight years with Simon, helping him to take his message around the world. And in the process, I co-wrote the book Find Your Why with Simon Sinek and David Mead, which has done really rather well. But after about eight years, I thought that’s more I could do. So I left. That was another crossroads. And I sat down, I threw together everything I’ve learned through all the experiences I’ve had in my life. The privilege of that. Visiting 93 countries working with every industry you can imagine, and I’ve brought it all together, all in leadership lessons and put them in this book, Leading From the jumpseat: How to Create Extraordinary Opportunities by Handing Over Control. And yeah, I just wanted to bring together everything I’d learned and share it with other people so they can benefit from it too.
Jenn DeWall: What do you think? And this is more of a personal probe because leadership lessons can be hard to learn. Sometimes it can be that we had to let someone down. Sometimes we might. It felt like we let ourselves down. What was one of the hardest leadership lessons that you learned?
Peter Docker: Hmm, that, that’s, that’s a really good question because I, I think leadership lessons can be very hard to learn, and we don’t always learn them because we don’t give ourselves permission to sit and reflect. And I’ve been lucky in that I’ve dedicated several years to sitting and reflecting, not only on my own leadership lessons, but what I’ve and mistakes, but what I’ve learned from, from others as well from the boardroom, you know? So that’s the first thing having the opportunity to reflect on. I think, is really important. I, I think one of the greatest things I’ve learned is it sounds very simple, but it’s actually very tough. And it’s around leading yourself because it life’s a journey you to learn how to lead yourself. And the more we invest in that the better able we are to lead others. And as part of leading yourself, I think one of the greatest lessons is to learn how to be yourself.
You know, that’s the simple thing many, many years ago when I was going through officer training for the Royal airs, I remember one of my trainers say, you know, be yourself as an officer, just be yourself. And at the time at the age of 2021 I didn’t really fully get it, you know, but it was much later on in my career where the penny really dropped. And I realized that, yeah, you’ve just gotta be yourself because while everybody else is taken, first of all, you know, <laugh>, but when you are, when you are yourself, it builds trust, it builds relationship. And whoever that person is when you’re being yourself, that is the greatest foundation on which to build your own leadership, whether it’s leading yourself or leading others.
Jenn DeWall: I gotcha. So those that are listening, even if you’re maybe not feeling confident, you’re looking to the left, looking to the right, trying to figure out who you should be. The answer is right inside. I love that learning how to be yourself, which is a challenging lesson because it’s easy to compare or think about. Am I getting it wrong? If I’m not doing what that person is doing and what that person is doing? Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that because I think we often don’t talk about the fact that we all struggle with that and that it is challenging, but I wanna get into your book because there are so many fantastic lessons, but first, why, why the title- Leading From The Jumpseat? Why, how, how did you come about picking that title?
Peter Docker: It was inspired by a story, and there are lots of stories in this book, but every story has got a purpose to it. A point to it. This story goes back to when I was still in the Royal Air Force, I was a senior officer, and I was a senior pilot, and we were flying large passenger jets at the time. The thought that you might go on holiday on vacation in, you know, carrying about 140 people. And on this particular day, I was checking doing the final certification of this new captain. His name was, was Callum, and he’d been a first officer for many years, but he’d just gone through about six months of training to equip him to become the captain, the guy in charge of the whole aircraft and all the safety, all the passengers. And the final part of that training was for someone like myself to be part of his crew and monitor him as we flew from the UK to Washington Dulles and then onto San Fran.
And he did a great job. We landed in San Francisco, a very busy place. Landed in San Francisco, taxied it in, shut down, the passengers got off. And it was with great pleasure I could turn to him and say, Callum, great job. You’re fully certified. Now, as a captain, we’re stopping here the night, but tomorrow morning, we’ve got a full, full passenger load of people on the aircraft. I’ll be down the back with them. You’ll have a regular co-pilot you fly us back to Washington Dulles. And that was a great moment, as you can imagine because he really worked hard for this qualification certification.
Anyway, the following morning, I was just reading a magazine. He came up to me he said, excuse me, sir. And he’s called me, sir, because I was very senior and ranked to him. You know, it was that deferential, but nonetheless, he out to me, he said, look, it’s really busy here. Alice, San Fran, during rush hour, can you come and sit on the jumpseat to help watch out, make sure we go the right way and watch out for other aircraft as we taxi. So the runway, because we don’t go there very often. And I said, yes, of course. I thought at the time how courageous that was because he just got me off his back after six months. And this was his opportunity just to, you know, do his thing. But no, he was connected to the higher purpose, in this case, the safety of everybody on that aircraft. And so he wanted me to sit on the jumpseat to help lookout. And the jumpseat is the third seat on the flight deck of most large aircraft. It’s usually empty, but crew members can sit there. And when you sit there, you can touch the pilots on the shoulders. You’re that close. And you got a great view out the front of the aircraft. So that’s where he wanted me to sit.
So I strapped in, and we taxied out. He did a great job. He didn’t need me, but he, he did great. We lined up on the runway. We had clearance take-off. We thundered down the runway, and we’d only just climbed to about three or 400 feet. We’d just taken off. And we had an emergency. And Callum was wrestling with the controls, desperately trying to keep us away from the ground and what I chose to do in the next couple of seconds, which fundamentally affected whether I and everybody else, the 140 people on board, would survive or not. And this thing I did- absolutely nothing. I sat there with my hands in my lap, perfectly calm.
Because at that moment, I didn’t need to lead. At that moment I needed to become a great follower. I needed Callum to feel that I had his back to feel quite rightly that I had confidence in him to sort out that problem and look, what business would I have. I had the day before signing him up, as a fully certified captain, if I didn’t think he could handle any problem that came his way, I just needed to stay out of his way and let him do his job. And that’s what prompted the title Leading From The Jumpseat because, you know, we all hand over control at some stage in our life. You know, if we’re the CEO of a company, we will retire. If we’re leading a team, we’ll move on to another team. Heck as a parent, which by the way, is one of the toughest leadership challenges. Many of us will face. Even as a parent, our kids will eventually grow up, leave home and start to lead their own lives.
So handing over control is inevitable— jumpseat leadership. It’s all about embracing that. It’s all about focusing on lifting others up, not increasing or maintaining our own power, but empowering others, lifting them up and equipping them, such that when the time is right, they can take the lead and we take the step back. And it turns out that when we do that right here in the present, it creates the most extraordinary opportunities for our team and helps us to progress way quicker than we would otherwise. And it all came back to that story of taking off out of San Francisco.
Jenn DeWall: That is a powerful, insane, so many words to describe that story that I probably can’t say, right? Like, holy cow, how’d you do that? What?! What, but the first piece, because I think at a high level, I, you know, I love that concept of Leading From The Jumpseat, but what, what about the times of life or death? What, how, how do you possibly hand over and, and that’s what more of a personal question? How are you able to practice that self-restraint? Because sometimes, you know, when we bring that back to the non-life or death situation that we might see at the corporate workplace, you might see leaders jumping in and saying, no, no, no, I’ve got that. There might be a difficult email from a customer, and they just still jump in, and they, you know, they really struggle with even, I would say non-life or death situation. So how were you able to do, how are you able to just actually do that? Because that’s wow. Because I would be like, Nope, this is my life. Like, you know, just like a lot of people are probably like, this is my job. This is my blank, all of the reasons of why you should have jumped in, yet you still took a pause.
Peter Docker: Yeah. And you, you bring a, a great point out, Jenn, you know, most of us and most people listening are probably not gonna be in the situation I’ve just described. However, if they’re running a team, if they have their own business, let’s say they founded a business 10 years ago and they put their life and soul into that business, and they’re expanding and they know that they need to delegate and allow others to take the lead. It is just as scary when we’re handing over control. But unless we do hand over control, it’s the, it would be the same as just having one pilot. You know, you can only fly from A, to B, what we need are lots of pilots who can fly in the way that we would wish. So, you know, it is something that we face. The circumstances might be different, but they’re nonetheless very real.
And I think some of the insights for the answer to your question comes back to that story, which is how did I get to be invited onto that jumpseat? Just think about that for a moment, because the relationship, the context had to be very, very special for someone in call’s position to invite me his senior, senior boss, who’s got way more experience than he has to invite me to sit on that jumpseat. When the easiest thing would’ve been to have kept me down the back with the other passengers. And I think when we start to dig into that, and this is what we, part of what we unpack in the book, it gives us insight into the sort of leader that we need to be to create those conditions for our people, where we feel, where they feel comfortable, inviting yourself to the jumpseat or whatever the equivalent is, you know?
Peter Docker: And in order to get there, it comes actually back to your earlier questions, you know, something I’ve learned about leadership, the most important it’s about being yourself. It’s about being comfortable with who you are. It’s about being very clear on what your non-negotiables are. And I describe how to identify your non-negotiables non-negotiables are deeper than values. You know, values change. I’m sorry, but they do. You might think you’re a courteous person. Yeah. But Hey, if you are late for a business meeting and as you drive up to the parking lot, there’s just one more space. You’ll dive into that space. Even though at the corner of your eye, you’ll see someone else who’s been hunting around for the space. Yeah. Now you might feel bad about it afterward, but Hey, you’re not gonna be late for that meeting. So what happens to your value of being courteous?
Hmm it’s circumstance-based, context-based your non-negotiables are much deeper. These are the things that are unshakable in you and describe how to identify these. But these then give us the, the handrail, the guide when we’re stepping into the unknown and they help us in situations of well, crisis, as well. So just like being on that jump, you know, you ask, how did I get there? Well, it’s all about being able to recognize what triggers fear inside of us and how to better respond to it rather than to react to it, which is what normally we would do.
Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh, what triggers fear in me! Depending on the day, it can be a variety of things, but I love that because I think leadership there is whether you’re a new leader, whether you are new to an organization, whether you’re an existing or tenured leader, that’s making a new decision that may or may not be favorable. There’s fear. I think that’s the one, one universal that we can relate with is that we all are afraid of something, of letting someone down, or fear of doing the wrong thing.
Peter Docker: So fear is triggered by one of four things. OK? The first fear is triggered by when we sense that our life is on the line, and this is deeply ingrained. It’s part of our DNA. You know, it has us jump back when there’s an oncoming car that we didn’t see until the last minute. And it saves our life. So fear in those circumstances is good but general on a day-to-day basis. Thankfully, our life is not under threat, but fear then is still triggered by three other things. It’s triggered when we sense that our livelihood, our status or our reputation is under threat. And when fear is triggered because our status, reputation or livelihood is under threat, it generates a very different reaction, which is generally not helpful at all.
It generates a situation where we close down, and we start seeing the world’s a place of scarcity rather than a place of opportunity. We start seeing it as a binary win, lose, and we gotta win at all costs. Instead of thinking of others, we start thinking of ourselves. That becomes our focus. We might become angry or the other extreme. We might become timid. None of these things are useful when we’re leading ourselves or others. And the biggest thing that comes out is ego. Ego is Greek for eye. And we’ve all seen it when we’ve seen others lead by ego. We know when we are led by ego, and it generally does not turn out well, we start making decisions, which end up hurting others, but here’s the good use. We always have a choice. We always have a choice. OK. And that is to see fear as a warning flag rather than react to fear. See it as a prompt to be driven instead by love. Now, when I start talking about love of the business context, people get a little bit twitchy, and that’s OK.
Let’s just let go and embrace it. This is not about running around and hugging trees. You know, <laugh>, I’m talking about love as it shows up in business where we think about others. We think about our team. We think about the customers we serve instead of seeing the world as a play to scarcity. We see it as a place of opportunity and possibility. And instead of leading with ego, we lead with what I call humble confidence and humbled confidence. It’s all about, well, a confidence bit. First of all, it’s all about being absolutely clear on where we’re strong, resolute on where we’re going, absolutely resolute and ready to make decisions when they need to be taken. But importantly, we have the humility to listen to our team <affirmative> and whereas someone who’s being led by ego is determined to be the one with the answer, a leader who leads with humble confidence is focused instead on asking the important questions and becoming comfortable leading when they don’t know the answer. And that’s one of the main things in the book.
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Jenn DeWall: You know, the book talks about three different themes about commitment, humility, confidence, belonging, and, you know, let’s unpack those at a greater level because I think it makes me also think, you know, going back to the conversation about ego is that fear that throws us into ego or our, are we, you know, what else is it that, you know, is it always fear? I don’t know if you know or can say it. I’m not expecting you to know the full answer to this, but from your lived experience, what do you see trigger people into or triggers people to go into a more of an ego response? Is it fear or is it other things? Is it like wanting other people to accept us, which I guess would also be fear? You know, is it always just fear?
Peter Docker: Short answer. Yes. You know, and I, I say that from not from scientific study, I’m not a scientist. I say this from a practitioner’s point of view. You know, I’ve led people in combat; I’ve led big commercial projects. And you can tell when someone when their behavior shifts from being sourced from a place of love and possibility to a place of fear and scarcity, and ego is always generated by fear. I saw this in I was running a workshop some years ago, one of the biggest companies on the planet, and I had the room all of the directors from the board and ego was present in the room. It was. They were not doing well as a company. Their stock price had fallen through the floor, and they’d lost a lot of their reputation. And instead of coming to the table with humble confidence, they came in there with their egos, all trying to have a pop at one another to try and put the other down.
So as they could protect their own status, reputation and livelihoods, that was ego coming to the floor. You know, when I’ve flown within the military, I’ve led formations of many aircraft. What you don’t want in that formation is any pilot who’s got a big ego, you know. You don’t want that because they put themselves first instead of their wingmen first. Yes. And that’s when it falls down. That’s when people start to lose their lives. So, you know, when I talk about ego, when I talk about fear, when I talk about love. It comes from working with and observing companies. So in the business world, but also when people’s lives are on the line, you know, their life, their livelihood, their status and reputation, when it’s all on the line and ego can come out.
Jenn DeWall: Gosh, I’m sure there are a lot of listeners right now that can already put themselves into that boardroom into that training where they feel like it’s not even a conversation so much as this as it’s a debate of egos. Or a debate of, Hey, let me show you how I’m good enough, or let me show you how my idea is the best idea. And what are the consequences to a team when you show up with ego? I know some of them are probably pretty straightforward, but from your experience, what do you see if you’re just pushing and you’re not leading with that humble confidence? What are the consequences that people will feel are the ripple effect of that through the team and organization?
Peter Docker: Well, first, it’s disengagement, but also, it tends to be infectious. Ego tends to be infectious. I, I think one of the most dramatic stories from my book that illustrates what happens when the ego is in the driver’s seat goes back to March 1977 on the island of Tenerife, off the west coast of Africa. And it was the scene of the most horrendous air accident the world has ever seen. Two jumbo jets fully packed jumbo jets collided in fog on the runway. One was crossing the runway, and the other was trying to take off. 583 people lost their lives that day. And the subsequent inquiry identified quite a few factors. One was the poor radio communications between the air traffic controller and the aircraft, the KLM jet taking off.
But one of the key factors was the ego of the captain of the KLM jet, he was captain by the name of Jacob Veldhuyzen van Zanten, and Jacob was one of them, the most highly respected, most experienced captains in that airline at the time. He trained other captains, he was literally the poster pilot on all the adverts for the airline. And when they lined up ready to take off, he pushed the throttles forward to start the take-off roll, thinking that they had clearance to take off. But they didn’t. And the other, the pilot and the flight engineer on, on the crew is what we call a cockpit gradient- he was so senior in comparison to their time on the in the airline and their rank that they felt they couldn’t question him. And the result was that 583 people died.
The good news, I should say, Jenn, out of this is that out of that accident, the good thing that happened was something called well cockpit management. It’s, it’s about how we respond to one another on the flight deck of an aircraft called crew resource management. And it gets rid of this, what we call gradient, where you’ve got a very senior person and a very junior person. It, it creates an environment where the most junior person feels able to speak up. It’s called crew resource management. And so that’s one good thing that came out of it. And every airline pilot has been taught that since the early 1980s. But yeah, this is at the extreme of what happens when ego comes to the fall. But in businesses and smaller teams, it can have just as a dramatic effect and that people take a step back, they disengage, they just let you get on with it cause you know, best. Yeah. And they’re not part of the solution to the challenges that you’re facing, and then you are on a downward slope.
Jenn DeWall: Well, I’m curious, what would you say to someone that, you know, because I feel like there was this traditional leadership where ego was actually a very regarded skill or attribute of someone if they appeared confident or decisive and you know, maybe more direct or authoritarian that was more valued, but some of those things are much more into ego, but it’s understandable based on where your lived experience might be, but that you have come up learning that. What would you say to someone that says, well, I still get a lot of success with that, and why would I give it up now?
Peter Docker: Um, Good luck.
Jenn DeWall: Yeah.<laughter>
Peter Docker: You know that’s fine. Ask your people how they feel about it. You know, here’s the thing with ego as well. It is not just poor practice in my view, it’s a limiting practice because what comes with ego is the belief that you’ve got to be the person with the answer.
Jenn DeWall: Yeah.
Peter Docker: And if you are the only person with the answer, you become the constriction in the pipe.
Jenn DeWall: Yeah.
Peter Docker: Your team can only progress as quickly as your knowledge allows. But look, let, let’s not be too hard on ourselves because this is again baked-in in terms of our development. When we’re at school, we are rewarded for knowing the answer. You know, we put our hand up, we know the, and we’re rewarded. We then focus on the subjects where we feel we know the answer and we’re inspired to find the answer. We then perhaps go to a college university. We further specialize. And then we leave, we enter the job market, and we are hired because we’re the person who knows the answers <laugh> yeah. And if we do really, really well, we’re then promoted. And eventually, we get promoted to the point where we are no longer the ones who are doing the work. We are leading the experts who are doing the work. And that is very unfamiliar territory. So what happens? Fear kicks in.
Because we’re outside of our comfort zone, and nobody has taught us how to manage this transition, where our job is no longer to be the expert. We are managing and leading the experts. And so what do we do? We revert to type. We revert to being well, no, I’ve got know the answers to this. When people come to us with a problem, if we know the answer, we tell ’em what to do. If we don’t know the answer, you say, leave it with me. Yeah. That’s a classic. I’ve done it myself. You know? And so people start to rely on waiting for you to tell ’em what to do. And you become the constriction in the pipe. The opportunity that is jumpseat leadership is learning how to be comfortable leading when we don’t know the answer and embracing that. Now, this doesn’t mean to say that we’re weak or timid, not a bit of it.
What it looks like in practice is look, I don’t know the answer to this challenge. Let me tell you the reason why we’ve got to figure it out. And I gotta support you on my team to give you everything you need. So can work with me to figure out the answer to this challenge that we’re facing right now. Are you with me? Yeah, much, much different environment to work in. And one where you’re lifting people up where people are showing up where they’re working harder because they want to not because they have to. Right. And that’s how you accelerate the progress of your team. So all the people out there who are leading with ego, as I say best luck to you, <laugh>, you’re probably advanced quicker. If you learned how to lead from the jumpseat and learn to lead with humble confidence.
Jenn DeWall: Yes. I love that. I mean, and I’ll the last thing that I would even just from what you’re saying too, and like, what I would add is when you actually give yourself permission to not know all the answers, think about how much you can protect your own mental health in the form of stress, anxiety, burnout, by being able to allow other people to be and offer a solution. But I know we are writing and running through this. I love our conversation, but let’s get into the other two themes. So you talk about three themes in the book. One is humble confidence. The next one is commitment. Why is an important theme?
Peter Docker: Well, commitment. These three you’ve mentioned are commitments, humble confidence and belonging. They are three practices. And practice as a word’s important. It’s not about being perfect. We are not perfect as human beings. It’s about our intention and our trends. You know, that’s, what’s important to, to measure. And so we, we practice and we get better. Commitment is the first practice because commitment is all about figuring out what are your non-negotiables, what are those things that are unshakable? Now I’ll give you an example. Family, for many of us is something that’s a non-negotiable. You know, when I phone call about two and a half years ago for my wife, she told me she’d just been involved in a car accident. I dropped everything. I left the business calls. It was only two miles down the road. I was off nothing. Would’ve stopped me from going to her.
And many people listening can relate to that. But it’s the interesting thing, Jenn, the energy, that least inside of me think about it. I was stepping into the unknown. I didn’t know what I was gonna find, but there was nothing on this planet, which would’ve got in my way. Would’ve stopped me from going. So identifying your non-negotiables it’s about identifying those other things that have got a similar amount of energy inside of them, because together they create this foundation that can help you move forward. Even in the face of adversity, even in the face of uncertainty, they act as a handrail. I’ll tell you in the book, how to do that. It’s through the choices that we make in life. Those are the clues, but when we identify these non-negotiables, they become stands. What we stand for and we can turn those stands then into action and turn them into commitments.
What we’re committed to and this isn’t, you know, an airy-fairy thing. Commitment is a promise that we make to ourselves. Not actually anybody else to ourselves, you know, you and I could have a contract, we could sign it up and people say, oh, we’re committed now, but I can guarantee that if we wanted to get out of it, if we hadn’t made that promise to ourselves to follow through, we’d get out of it. OK. So commitment is a promise we make to ourselves to follow through. And so the first point book is helping people to understand those distinctions in language, to identify what their non-negotiables, what their stands are and how to use them to form commitments, to follow through. Because when we practice that, people start to build a relationship with us, it forms what we ultimately call character. It helps us to act consistently. And that helps us not only to lead our own lives well, but to lead others well, too. It’s the foundation as well of being able to have the courage to lead with humble confidence, you know? So that’s commitment, that’s humble confidence. Would you like to about that? Or should I dive into belonging?
Jenn DeWall: Let’s do a little bit more on commitment. I’m curious. You talked about what it looks like. What does commitment look like at work? Because I think many of us could probably relate to the non-negotiable of family. What are examples of maybe non-negotiables that you see that might be successful in the workplace?
Peter Docker: Sure. so <laugh>,let me give a story to illustrate this, because I think it’s easier to grab I went to university to study two subjects about which I knew nothing. OK. This was 18 years old electronic engineering, computing. I knew nothing. This was in 1981, good evidence it’s a long time ago. Right. But the reason I went to university to study those subjects was that I figured I’d be able to get a really well paid job at the end of it. And that was important. It was important because at the time both my parents had lost their jobs. Money was very, very short. Me going to university actually helped because at the time it was paid for by the government here in the UK. So it, it was, it was no cost to appearance. And I figured that it would reduce the burden on them and also I’d be in a position to help them afterwards.
So that formed a non-negotiable in me looking back, I said, it’s about the choices we make in life. And this was a key choice of mine. And the non-negotiable for that event was that with me is the notion of self-sufficiency. I don’t wanna be a burden on anyone else. I wanna be self-sufficient and I want to be able to be in a position to help others. So that’s one of my non-negotiables. Now halfway through my degree course, something else happened. Argentina invaded the Falkland islands down in the South Atlantic, the Falkland islands, tiny islands, which are a British territory. And the people there consider themselves to be British. But at the time Argentina invaded, they imposed their will on those people. Now I knew hardly anything about the politics, but I was incensed by the fact that someone was imposing their will on others who were unable to help themselves.
And so I left university mid-degree to join the Royal Air Force because I wanted to be part of a team that in future could help others in that sort of situation. Now what that pointed to that choice is something that is another non-negotiable, which is the notion of mutual respect. And if I see or sense anyone not mutually respecting– or mutual respect not occurring, that incenses me, that drives me forward. So how does that look in the business world? Well, those two things, those non-negotiables turn into sounds, which give me guidance, show me the way when I’m treading into uncertain territory, when I don’t know what to do, where there isn’t a roadmap, those and other non-negotiables help me to figure out what direction to, to head in and help me lead my team.
Jenn DeWall: I love that. And it’s the foundation. I think if you’re a new leader, I love that you talk about finding you’re non-negotiable because I think whether you’re an existing leader or a new leader when you’re a new leader, this could be one of the first places that you can build your confidence within yourself. Absolutely. <laugh> understanding what are the things, how do you want to treat others? How do you want to be treated? What are the things that you’re not going to stand for? And you know, what are the things that you might be like, OK, like, I don’t love that, but I’m not going to also, you know, jump over if something like that happens, too. Because I imagine there’s also a place like, is there a, is there a magic number of non-negotiables that you think are helpful? Like, is it, is it three, is it five or is it just all about consistency?
Peter Docker: It’s about consistency. It’s about where those non-negotiables have come from. And they, they come from those choices that we make in life, the big crossroads. But actually, here’s something right now that people can do. Think about a time where something has really triggered you and perhaps you felt like you were getting angry or annoyed in some way. Take a moment, pause and reflect on that. It’s probably because you feel strongly against something. OK.
Jenn DeWall: Yeah.
Peter Docker: Now take a moment to turn that coin over and recount in terms of what you feel strongly for. OK. So in the example of the reason I left university, you know, I, I was against what was being imposed on the the British population down the Falkland islands. When I turned that coin over what I found was my stand for mutual respect. OK. So this is something that’s we, we can, we can do right now, you know, beneath every complaint is a commitment for something. And it’s something I, that that’s a really helpful thing that one’s not in the book, but it’s really helpful. <Laugh> in a business, a team situation. If someone comes to you with a complaint, rather than trying to brush it under the carpet, sweep it away, ask questions to dig deeper and find what’s the underlying commitment. What’s really important to that person that they’ve had the courage to put their hand up, stand outta line and say, Hey, I’m complaining about this because when we can find that underlying commitment, instead of squashing the complaint, we can harness that energy that comes with it and work with the underlying commitments to achieve something remarkable.
Jenn DeWall: Yes. I love this. This is where we can envision success. What are we working towards? Where do we want to bring people a long? I love that. My gosh. And now we’ve got to go into the, the third practice– belonging, which I just love that this is a part of your book because belonging is so incredibly important to everyone yet. I think it’s often an overlooked area that people just kind of think like, does that really matter at work? I mean, they might know it on some level that it matters, but we don’t really look at it as a strategy because what? Like, they should be happy they have a job <laugh> but tell me what you mean by belonging.
Peter Docker: Well, as human beings, we all want to belong. We do. Yeah. You know, even going back to school, you know, we, we wanna find a group where we belong and <laugh> actually my, my children now they’re, they’re both grown up, but my daughter, when she was in her teens, here is something that any parents out there can relate to. You know, how do you get your teenage daughter to put her dirty laundry in the basket? <Laugh> Yeah, am right. It, this is, it’s actually a leadership challenge. How to you get her to choose to put that laundry in the basket. Well, what’s behind this is well, you can gain some extra insight because the time when she will choose to put it in the basket is what if she’s going out the weekend with her group of friends and she wants to wear a particular outfit that needs washing. Heck, she’ll put it in the basket. She might even go and wash it herself. OK. So what’s that all about?
Jenn DeWall: <Laugh>
Peter Docker: Because she strives, she wants to nurture this sense of belonging. Yeah. When people feel they belong in this case of teenage daughters is to belong to their group of friends by expressing through the fashion that they’re wearing. You know, that identity, it’s such a powerful driving force and in just the same way as it works at a fashion level with teenage daughters, it actually works in the work environment too. And I give an example in the book of this working at scale with an incredible company called as Aesop, a British based company, they’ve got about four and a half thousand people, average age 27. And they in, on online fashion retail, that’s what they do. But the whole story is in there, but they nurture a sense of belonging because when people feel that they belong, they want to step up. They want to take responsibility.
They want to start to lead in exactly the same way as our teenage daughter starts to lead by choosing to put the washing in the laundry basket because they wanna be a part of the group that they wanna belong to. Yeah. So belonging is hugely important as leaders. We do well to nurture that sense of belonging and the way we nurture a sense of belonging is that we show that we care, not in empathy. Empathy is fine, but it’s not enough. Empathy is, yeah, I get it. I can see it from your point of view. No caring is showing well. It’s showing that we care at the human level and the way that we show that we care by giving people our time. And doesn’t need to be much time, you know, busy executives out there. I know your diary, your calendar is full, but you give your time.
One of my most challenging leadership roles was leading 200 people during the Iraq war. And outwards as the, we were there four and a half months, and we flew large unarmed undefended aircraft. We got shot at quite a lot, and that was quite irritating, but you know, I had 200 people that I needed to care for. And what that looked like was, well, sometimes I’d sit down with a coffee on the floor, back against the wall with while the most junior people in my team, chatting with them, you know, how’s things at home, everything all right? I, I hear you had a new baby recently. You know, how are they doing? I remember during our time I had three people whose grandparents were dying, and we moved heaven on earth to get them back in time. You know, that’s just something that we did. Now you don’t need to make a song and dance about it. And we didn’t. But when people instinctively sense that you care, they are willing to contribute more. And so if your aim is to progress more quickly and further with your team, you need to care. You need to nurture a sense of belonging.
Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. And that’s, I just think of so many different examples. And I am seeing more company is practice this even in interviews. I had an organization that I recently am working with them now to facilitate. And one of the first things that they had said to me is we just want you to be you. We want you to be you, your unique self. We don’t want you to watch our current facilitators and try to be like them. We want you to be you because we know that you provide an individual perspective that makes the total unique. And that will probably stick with me for the rest of my life, because I have never up until that moment, two months ago, three months ago, actually a little bit longer than that, ever had an employer, actually bring that up in an interview process.
And to now see it as I’m in that company, to see how true that is. Yes, you’re absolutely right. And makes me work that much harder. I just went through two and a half weeks of tech challenges, things that I could have just said, oh, I don’t know. Maybe you guys could figure this out, or you do this. But I called every single person on my end, my provider, I upgraded my, you know, I did so much all because they believed in me and they created the right place. But if they didn’t maybe have that approach, I’m not sure I would’ve invested in 20 hours of my tech challenges, investing in a new computer, buying a modem, all that stuff, because it wouldn’t have felt like my contributions or even why that would matter because I’m like, oh, they probably are fine anyways. Like we can do the work-around, but because they cared, I wanted it work the way that they want it to.
Peter Docker: Well, and, and here’s the thing, you know, what is it that you’re doing when you are, you’re spending some time with people. It can be a fleeting moment. And the more senior you are in a company, by the way, the more meaningful it is. Yeah. Those few moments, because people know instinctively how busy you are. But in those few moments, what are you doing? You’re lifting people up. And that goes to the heart of jumpseat leadership because when you lift people up, they then start to choose to leave and take responsibility. And that’s when, when people choose to do things, it’s so much more powerful than when we rely on telling people to do things.
Jenn DeWall: Yes. Peter, thank you so much for all of your insights today. I even love that- empowering people to choose. Empowering people to take that responsibility. Leading From The Jumpseat: How to Create Extraordinary Opportunities by Handing Over Control. Peter, how can people get in touch with you? Where can they purchase your book?
Peter Docker: Well, my website is LeadingFromTheJumpseat.com and there’s lots of videos and resources on there. The book is available, paperback, hardcover, audiobook, e-book, in all the usual places, including Amazon and bookstore.org. And you can find me on social media, on LinkedIn.com/in/PeterDocker and Twitter, @PeterDocker, and Instagram. I’ve had to go at TikTok, but you know, Jenna, I don’t think I’m quite up to speed on TikTok yet. <Laugh>, you know what, let let’s stick to to what we know for, for the time being. But yeah, so you can find me,
Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh, Peter, thank you so much for just again, your time, your expertise, your passion. And I love that. I’m so excited- Leading From The Jumpseat. Pick it up now. Thank you again, Peter. It was so great to have you on the show.
Peter Docker: Thanks for having me, Jenn. It’s been great.
Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone. Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Peter Docker. And if you want to know more, if you want to get your copy of his book, you can head on over to LeadingFromTheJumpseat.com. Now, if you know someone that could benefit from hearing Peter’s message— as I feel like everyone could— don’t forget to share this episode with them and of course, if you enjoyed this episode, feel free to leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming platform. Until next time.
Sophie Wade: And that’s what I did instead. I set up a company. And so I’ve really been in this space advocating for trying to, you know, connect people, trying to, you know, do consulting workshops. And then, around 2014, I came across the term, the future of work, of which workplace flexibility is a big chunk of it. And I realized that that was a, there was alot that was involved, and that was going to be very challenging for companies to adjust to because really driven by technology. So that’s how I really got into this and, and, and really looking at how leadership has changed, a lot of challenges between generations in terms of communications and miscommunications and Jenn, that is something that you are, we’ve had some great conversations so that was something.
And then the last piece of it was through three pillars, and the third one was the decentralized workforce, which was increasing then of course, you know, we know a lot more about that since the pandemic started, but, but that was, that was sort of where it came from. And really, the sort of the human-centric counterbalance to this technology-driven world that we’re dealing with. So that’s how I sort of got there because the talent aspect of it, how people are working, has changed a lot with all the technology. Now that’s integrated into our work.
Jenn DeWall: So when you, oh my gosh, like so many questions, right? Like one question, what’s the biggest difference that you notice between the five countries that you’ve worked in terms of the attitude towards work, anything stand out or any, you know, any A-ha’s or interesting, I guess, observations that you’ve made?
Sophie Wade: One of the big changes I mean, I, so I lived in Germany. I lived in worked in Germany for two years and most people got to work nine o’clock on the dot and left at five o’clock on the dot and worked very hard during that time. But I was actually in, it was one of the first sort of online businesses, digital business and the technology people, the technologists were the only people really that I knew. And I knew a lot of them in the company who would be working over the weekend, who’d be working past five o’clock. So that was really interesting having been working before that, or recently before that in Hong Kong, where for the, you know, around five years that on and off that I worked in Hong Kong, I worked not only long hours, every weekday, but I worked two out of three Saturday mornings from nine till one, every single weekend. Like that’s just how the work was set up. And it, it was a while ago. I don’t know that they do that now. So going from sort of working five and a half days a week to, to, and long hours to a much shorter you know, schedule, I mean, I was working past five o’clock.
So that, that sort of showed me immediately the range. And then, and, and also, you know, Europe had say, what I would say is a more balanced view of work. That work is important but it has its place and it is it, you know, there there’s non-work, and I wouldn’t sort of say life because these things were all, all integrated and should be in my opinion. But they have, it’s a more balanced, and it isn’t assumed that your work in the evening, it isn’t assume that you would work over the weekend. And so coming here to the us and I’ve always been engaged in, you know, digital media and lots of things. I was doing venture capital and I work very long hours and I always love my work, but it has a, there’s a very different work culture here compared to Europe. And that was, that was, there was a strong contrast from, from living in Germany to working here.
Jenn DeWall: Gosh, I love the perspective of even just bringing it back to our listeners that no matter where you sit, you likely have a different culture than the next. And it’s always important to remember that because when someone’s coming into your organization and you’re onboarding them, they are carrying with the norms of that past industry. And it’s really important to have those conversations with them to let them know what is it like here? What does work look like you? And I talked about it on the pre-fall even perception versus reality. How are you judging people in your workplace? How are you evaluating them and determining whether they’re a fit or whether they’re ready for the next role, those expectations are often missed when someone joins the team?
Sophie Wade: Huge. And, and, and, you know, I have talked about this in some of my speeches, which is about how people react and, you know, from a generational perspective, but it’s huge on the cultural perspective as well, in terms of, let’s just say hard work now, hard work for older generations typically means working long hours late at night, you know, grueling, probably grueling, boring work. And that’s kind of how it was. And it goes back to the Protestant Calvinist doctrines, which is like, you know, you will go to heaven if you suffer in your work. I mean, you know, it’s kind of, that’s where it came from. But now, you know, younger generations, if you’re you using really, you know, good tools and, you know, project management apps and, you know, slack and all the rest of it, you can be working very hard in 40 hours, get all your work done, achieve the same results and that’s hard work. how different you could be evaluated by someone older, it’s like, well, you know, yes, you know, she gets stuff done, but you know, she’s not working hard because, you know, she leave work at six o’clock or something like, right. That’s where you get serious repercussions from people who come at things with very different attitudes and understandings based on, based on their history. It’s not, there’s no critique. It’s just, we have different backgrounds and interpretations and experiences. And that really we have to be careful how we evaluate other people and how we judge other people based on, on sort of our own context.
Jenn DeWall: My gosh, I love that response. And I hope that there are a lot of aha moments that were triggered by that. So let’s move into our conversation. What is next? Now that the future of work has arrived. I know that you had talked about it, you know, at a high level. And could you just say, what are the components again, or how do you define the future of work? Just a level set before we progress again?
Sophie Wade: Huge. Yes. So the future of work, there are many definitions out there. Absolutely. It is very hard to nail on one, but the way I look at it, it is really based on technology. It is a much faster, interconnected, technology-driven world, which is because it’s all interconnected. We have a faster feedback loop. We have a lot of new technologies coming in, which are, meaning customer behaviors are changing, and we’re having to respond to much faster work. Isn’t linear in the same way because of how we have to react. So work itself has evolved. There’s much more knowledge work. There’s much more non-routine work. So non-routine versus routine work non-routine work has grown enormously over the last few years.
Jenn DeWall: What do you mean by non-routine like special projects? What do you mean by non-routine?
Sophie Wade: Well, anything that it, so we’ve had a lot of routines, you’re doing the same thing over and over again, predictable you project it out three to five years instead. Yes. Projects. So when we talk about non-routine work, then project work is a, is a huge portion of that. And in fact, the Harvard Business Review November-December 2021 issue said the project economy has arrived. They actually used Germany as an example that now 41% of their GDP was, was accounted for by projects and projects, because they’re not, they’re not linear, they’re not the same. They could be a bit different sizes and lengths and grouping together, different people. That’s a different way of working. And so that’s part of, so there’s a lot of things that have been changing about the speed and the nature of how we’re working and how predictable it is.
Because if we are integrating new technology at our company, and then we have, you know, consumers who are then reacting in different ways to how the, you know, what the product is like, or how, how we’re delivering our service, that’s gonna change the behavior, which then changes kind of how we need to operate. And then what technologies are competitors integrating. And what does that mean about how com how our customers reacting to our products? So we have to just keep innovating and, and I sort of use know the video call, like zoom you know, Microsoft teams over the last two years, how many times have we noticed or been alerted to, but, but notice, oh, there’s a new future here. Oh, oh, cool. And we don’t kinda go, oh, there’s a big software release. And, you know, so we’re really used to, so the future of work is really about constant innovation, constant change in a more, in a less volatile way than during the pandemic, but it is to do with a lot of change. And now there have been societal developments which have, you know, helped move that along. In terms of now you have typical, we have two people in a family working for economic reasons. You have, you know, a lot of single parents, you have, you know, a lot of single mothers who are the, the primary or soul you know, earner in a, in a family. And so you have a lot of different societal situations, which make it more challenging, which are increasing the need to have more flexible working options. But, technology is really the drive in terms of how it’s changing so much about how we do business, how fast the marketplace is developing and how we need to work as a result.
Jenn DeWall: Okay. Again, so many thoughts were stimulated. I, you know, I, I really do love that, whether it’s thinking about because I know in our pre-call, we had also talked about the fact that, or maybe I think it was us talking about the fact that there were organizations that are now forcing people to go back to a fully in-person structure and they’re met with resistance. Right. Do you talk about flexibility? What do you see from where you sit?
Sophie Wade: From where I sit? I really look at that as being— it’s not gonna set up that business or institution that somebody was asking me a question on LinkedIn about, you know, their, their college reinforcing, reinstating, you know, old pre-pandemic rules. It’s not gonna allow entities to be competitive because when we’re talking about this technology-driven, fast-moving marketplace, when you’re needing to kind of like being able to pivot, not just, you know, you know, post-pandemic to be able to, to adapt to new marketplace developments, you need to, you need your company to be responsible. You need your employees to be responsive. It’s a mindset. It really is driven by a mindset. And if you want your people to be, to be flexible, they need to be in an environment that is flexible, and that includes their work arrangements. And so we also need employees to be engaged. We need them not just to be going through the motions and turning up, or, or staying at home and just doing, doing whatever. And just like, you know, checking the box at the end of the day, we do need people to be engaged because the problems are much more complicated, and we’re also working together much more closely. And, you know, we haven’t been used to that. Right. We’ve sort of come in our kind of like, yes, you know, showing up as, you know, of course, a two, two-dimensional person, and now I need to know who you are and be able to respond and you, and, and bring both help you bring your best self. And I bring my best self to tackle the problems of today.
Jenn DeWall: Okay. Now we have to go into it because I think seeing the whole person. And then, not the norm, right? Conditioned to come to work like, Oh, by the way, you leave your personal self behind. Deal with that on personal time we don’t see that, we don’t have time for that. And it’s interesting because I think it’s created confusion around younger generations that might want it, but then also are observing, and they’re like, well, maybe you don’t do that again. We’re just talking, we’re not labeling here if you’re listening to this, but, you know, because I think this can be a contentious topic, but talking about seeing the whole person, why do you think this is such a big piece of the future of work?
Sophie Wade: I think, well, for me, this human-centric counterbalance to the technology-driven environment that we’re in now that you know, who are the people who are actually using the technologies, which are now the tools. We’re not so focused on the technology instead of, you know, living inside the factories that we needed to produce enough food. I mean, that’s where it all came from. We really focused on, on, you know, increasing production. Now we’re a place where we have sophisticated tools that we can really use. And it is the human beings that we need. And we need to have people be doing their best work.
And if they’re gonna do that, they need to feel comfortable. They need to feel included and welcome. And so that’s where I come, you know, come from the empathy angle because empathy for me, I mean, it can be about being nice and being kind, but really empathy is about human understanding. And so when we’re thinking about like, who, if I want to engage you in my team, I, we need to, I need to understand who you are and you know, what your background is and okay, so you, you know, where do you live? And, and, and I don’t have to engage you sort of intimately, you know, in terms of like knowing, you know, confidential things about you or whatever you, whatever you are comfortable sharing. And that’s where we sort of need to understand, like, what are you comfortable sharing? What should I, or should I not share so that, but so that we have a relationship. So we have some shared understandings which helps us work together more closely, mostly particularly in the kind of more challenging dealing with the more challenging questions and issues and, and solving the problems, which are requiring us to come together.
You know, somebody from marketing, someone from business development, someone from finance, you know, all the different and technology, we all need to be, you know, working together, coming with very different and diverse mindsets and context and backgrounds. And that’s what we need to solve the problems of today. And we need to be able to bring, you know, everything that we can to the table and the other people around the table, be able to, to deal with that and accept that and embrace that. So inclusion and empathy, which are really about welcoming and understanding people and, and allowing people to be comfortable and understanding they are, are, are absolutely critical to be able to move forward and be, and be competitive. You know, in today’s environment.
Jenn DeWall: I love even saying that, because that example earlier talking about flexibility, whether let’s say, for example, you are a single parent and you, you know, if you don’t get to know the whole person, you don’t know what they’re walking out to, like the type of responsibilities, what that schedule looks like. And I think the individual wants that tailor now, right? That’s what we’re saying. They want flexibility.
Sophie Wade: And they just need that flexibility. There was one case I came across probably six or seven years ago and the flexibility that this woman needed at that point, she needed half an hour. She was a single parent. She had two kids, and the kids were, I think, like six and five and she needed to be able to get to work half an hour or later, so that she could put the two kids, six and five on the bus going to school. So you know, that’s all she needed and that was gonna make all the difference in the world to her because of her, her family situation.
Jenn DeWall: Yes. And what’s interesting though, like again, because we’re challenging the generational norms, we’re seeing a full person, I have absolutely sat and mediated a conversation between a manager and their employee and the manager. And maybe this is generational. Maybe this is just their lived experience, could not fathom that this employee was asking for accommodations as it related to their children. And I think it was like a doctor’s appointment that was going to be recurring and, you know, really pushing them well, if you want to make that appointment, you have to do it outside of work hours, which when are medical clinics open, you know, like when are they actually able to get care? But it was so interesting to again, and I think, well, that was in 2018. Just to see that level of, in my eyes where I sat it was, yeah, let’s just push it out just as you said, a half-hour, like, and this is, is already what the employee had proposed. It’s like, could I come in later and work later? And this manager was still saying no. And I think then it comes down to our own ego of like wanting to enforce this and being resistant to change, to seeing things in a different way.
Sophie Wade: Well, I mean, so yeah, a couple of things. One is absolutely weird. Human beings be, are creatures of habit. And that’s what we know. And I think, you know, that’s one of the reasons that, and also what we feel comfortable that we can control and sort of getting our arms around things. And so I think that’s one of the reasons where, why people do want to sort of go back to the, bringing people back to the office because it’s kind of like I can get my hands around it, but also, you know, I think one of the things, the big change that needs to happen, what’s very helpful when it happens is focused on results.
Because if that manager had the comfort that that person, you know, is, is beholden to the results. And they kinda like, well, you know, as long as you get your work done, you know, you get it done. And at the same time, you know how I mean, we do now understand we have much more data now to understand how distracted that worker, that that employee is. If they can’t get it done. And they’re focused, you know, instead of being able to get their work done and really engaged in their work, they’re keeping distracted by the fact, well, how am I gonna get this done? How am I gonna get my kid to the doctor? These are, these are the issues that we now understand that we, that are sort of distracting people and not allowing them to really get the job done.
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Jenn DeWall: I wanna jump in because we haven’t done the formal introduction, your newest book drops on May third. I believe that it’s called Empathy Works. What was your kind of perspective on creating that title or Empathy Works? I mean, yeah, Empathy Works, but what was your experience with wanting to name your book that.
Sophie Wade: Well, it had a lot of, so it’s Empathy Works- The Key to Competitive Advantage in the New Era of Work. So empathy, what I started off with a title about strategic empathy because it was trying to sort of say, well, this is not, and empathy is not just a skill. It’s a cultural value. It’s a mindset, and it’s a skill I was trying to understand to, to sort of getting the point like how to, to communicate that it really is a, is strategic to enable companies to enable employers to, to really make a difference particularly. I mean, really, especially now we’re dealing with much more challenging over, so really trying to come up with something and came up, you know, the sort of play on words when I just suddenly came up, I was like, Hmm, that really resonates. Cause you know, you, you play around with titles, and I was strategic empathy being like, oh yeah, it’s fine. Or whatever, but it didn’t, it, it, but Empathy Works really seemed to just sort of nail it. It was, it, it, it like, and it does, it really does.
Jenn DeWall: Absolutely. Well, even I think about empathy just goes back to seeing the whole person. So what message is the message of Empathy Works? Let’s talk about the messages that are within the book. What is its framework of it? Tell me more about your book and how your book is written.
Sophie Wade: So, thank you. The aim of the book, it’s not just to say, well, this, you know, human understanding and, and, you know, if we can tap into, you know, our people, that’s, that’s it, because we do have this new era of work, the future of work is, is really different. And I wanted to, to present a sort of framework that will help people really understand a way to move forward, not, not just as kind of like a skill that you can practice. Although there are lots of empathy habits, which I clearly layout in a very practical way. Like these are the things, the empathy habits you can practice as a leader, as a salesperson. But starting off with a framework, sort of understanding where we are, why we are here, you know, technology and all the rest of it.
And what technology has done really allowed us to focus on rather than like a TV blasting out to millions and millions of viewers with a very sort of generic message. We now can actually focus and target to customers on a one-on-one basis. We can actually recognize them in the street and go, oh, that’s one of my customers. And we sort of have a sense of who they are. We empathize with them. So now, you know, lot of stuff that I have a LinkedIn course, which is, which has got, is called Empathy for Sales Professionals, which has been doing really, really well, because we need to understand and tap into and, you know, understand what the pain points of our customers are. So that’s the, that’s the first piece. And then we sort of look at the customer journey and all different elements of that customer journey. Sophie Wade: And so I sort of have this yin yang symbol and there’s the customer journey. And then there’s the employee journey. Well, if we have all these people within our organizations who are trying to get to, to empathize with customers and trying to understand whether they’re, you know, delivering the technology solution, whether they’re talking to ’em in the sales, or when you are, you know, wherever you are in the organization, all the different elements need to be coordinated and focused on understanding that particular customer. So they also need to be able to empathize, not with a customer, but with each other because it, this needs to be consistent. So the employee journey. What is the employee journey for each person from when they first are attracted to the organization and how they sort of get promoted all the milestones along the way? And now as they leave at some point, because, you know, not every organization is big and had, you know, diverse enough to be able to keep people, but you may want them to come back again in the future and also spread the word, about what a great organization you are. So have them as ambassadors. So there’s no more, there’s no sort of like when somebody’s left the organization near we burn the bridges.
Jenn DeWall: There is, I, I say that because I, I still observe that. And I, I do think it’s, it’s bananas because I’ve watched employees that have been there for multiple years, great attitudes, great contributions, and right, because of a variety of reasons, it could be size, scope, career opportunities, development, the employee has chosen to move to a different thing. And then I watch the ego of leaders taking it. Maybe it’s incredibly personal, maybe whatever that is, but then you burn that bridge. And what do you think that employee’s gonna do? It’s like a slap in the face of all of the contributions. Like
Sophie Wade: It doesn’t even make business sense, to have someone who leaves, if you have them as an ambassador of saying, oh my God, that company was so amazing, right? Recommending in a tight labor market. You don’t want people to anybody to be a bad out in your company or feel disconnected that we are in a, this, you know, we have a much more network fabric type of economy now, and they can be recommended. They can be introducing people or, you know, being, being a, you know, in sort of marketing, you know, your company. And they may come back. I mean, I have recommended in the past for people, if there are like warrants or options that you give employees, you can put them on hold, they can go and get valuable experiences somewhere else, and then come back and then reengage with that sort of, you know you know, employee optional, you know, warrants programs so that you actually encourage them to come back once they have more experiences. So I think that there’s, there’s a lot that can be done to have that, not be a sort of, you know, linear journey in and out of the organization at some point, because we know these 30-year careers are not there anymore, but it be sort of much more circular and, and networked, and people might have been an employee at one point, then they might be a part-time employee. They might later in the future become a sort of expert consultant. Because you know, that they know about this particular marketplace or we tried something there. And, you know, so there are lots of different arrangements that you can have, which with employees currently and in the future that aren’t necessarily full-time or, or part-time employees. So that’s the framework. It’s really the customer journey and then the employee journey. So that gives a framework, for the whole book.
But really look looking at what I call the human-centric system. So it’s really then thinking about empathy, empathy in terms of, you know, integrating some remote, working some workplace flexibility, flexibility for people who may be fixed site. Cause there are a lot of employees still who, who don’t have any option. They have to be working on-site wherever that may be. And so remote working is gonna be a possibility for them, but they can still have flexibility. But, but with thinking about everybody’s situation and how to get to, bring the best help everybody do their best work. So that’s, that’s what it’s about. So it’s very, it’s practical. It sort of gives you the sort of the, it sets the stage gives a framework. And then as I said, it, it shows how empathy can be practiced, bringing it into the culture, integrating into the culture, elevating it as a cultural value, helping change the mindset. Because the mindset is really key in order to make workplace flexibility work. For example, it really is about focusing on each person as an individual. And, and then how you can practice empathy in all aspects of, of, of your work, teamwork, leadership and, and really, you know, a lot to do with inclusion as well. Empathy and inclusion are, are very closely connected.
Jenn DeWall: Absolutely well, and I think it’s important, you know, as, as the leaders are listening to this right now, thinking, examining, being curious with yourself, what are the beliefs or let’s call them old rules, traditional rules that may not serve today’s working environment. And what do you need to relearn or adjust to be able to accommodate that? Because yes, you said it’s a tight labor market. If you don’t accommodate it. Yeah. Someone else will. And it’s as I hate to be as direct and blunt as that, but for the most part, yes. And I think we talked about this in a pre-call, the companies that are, you know, really addressing, like seeing the whole person, making sure that they’re making certain accommodations, even changing the expectation of how a leader shows up. I feel like a leader shows up, I feel like the accountability of a leader is that much different. You can’t just show up as the office bully or the office jerk and be that authoritative person because you will have turnover underneath you. And then the buck will ultimately like, you know, that spotlight will shine on you and it’s again, don’t judge yourself for maybe embracing those things today, be curious with yourself about, okay, what can I let go and know that it’s just a new muscle that you’re building. It’s just a new muscle, but I have a question as it relates to I forget what you had said, which I loved, but I kind of equate it to the gig economy, right. The project or the project worker. And because that is a big piece. If I look at even myself as an individual, you know, I work, you know, quarter-time sometimes for Crestcom, part-time Crestcom, but then I have my own business, but then I consult and then I work for a different organization. I have five different email addresses. Right, right. And so when you’re really thinking about culture and the need for the individual to see the whole person to understand the scope because it also impacts, you know, even if I think about being a gig worker, cuz that’s kind of how I, I guess I would classify myself to some extent it’s that, you know, they have to see what else is on my plate because you can’t just drop in and say, I want you to do this now because I said so, and I forgot to drop no, actually like you have to be more mindful of what I have and I want to help you achieve your success. But it’s not the same like quick feedback loop when you’re talking to people that have different priorities. I dunno.
But, and so my question with that, that being said, understanding that the gig economy is there and that empathy needs to happen. How do you preserve your culture in the face of a gig or project-based economy, because then you’re that individual is caught between cultures? Like how do you actually preserve that, from your perspective, I know we didn’t plan to talk about this, but it’s just more of a curiosity.
Sophie Wade: Sure. There are so many things that you, you talked about there. So I do want to say that a key thing about how I see leadership changing and I will say, I’m sorry about it being so dark, it was very, very bright, here in New York, but it suddenly got dark so I’m sort of in the shade.
Jenn DeWall: Hey! We understand tech challenges. Now I know I do. Every single person needs to understand when I set my lighting, the sun was shining, but I don’t need to stop and change my lighting!
Sophie Wade: So, so thank you. So first of all, leadership has had to change enormously. And I actually, in my first book, I talk about going that leadership is going from ego to empathy. And, or, or you can sort of look at it as being the, for being from the person to the organization. And so, so you have this culture, which really is the culture and it isn’t driven by the leader, the leader sets, you know, helps set it, but it is a culture of the, of a company, something which is very much involved, everybody’s involved, and everybody loves it and every day but it, it really has changed how leaders need to interact with people and understanding all the different things that they’re dealing with. And so on a cultural basis, you know, these are, these are what connect they and us, they can be very strong for each individual organization when it comes to the project economy or the 1099 economy, I do, I personally differentiate between the gig economy, which tends to be in my mind, it’s sort of easier to differentiate between gigs, which are, tend to be very, very short term, lots and lots and lots of projects like Handy or TaskRabbit, something like that versus the 1099 economy where you have, you know, long, long term, but you know, maybe two days a week with one company one day a week, so that those are longer-term project or independent contracting relationships.
And that changes because you have those certainly the research in past was showing that TaskRabbits and Handy and those type of gigs were supplemental income for the most part, not the main income. So 1099, when I’m looking at the 1099 income, that becomes important in terms of how it’s being supported and, and how much, how many more people are choosing a range of work arrangements, including which may be, you know, a part-time employment. And then, and then more project work on the site. So what I would probably say in terms of culture, connecting it is that you likely work for, for many of these, these companies that you’re working for have similar cultural characteristics, because you would not be working probably I’m guessing we don’t know each other very well, but I’m guessing you’d be choosing companies that have the kind of mindset or the kind of, or the same, the kind of vision that you, that aligns with your vision and the, and the kind of cultural values that you have. So you’re not, you’re not having to massively change the type of culture like, oh, this is a real sort of toxic culture versus this is, you know, that, or, or maybe you, you know, maybe you can deal with the toxic boss in, in, on one company, but, but overall the vision and the mission are similar so that it isn’t, it isn’t discord.
You’re not having completely, you know, kind of like put on a completely different hat because we’re trying to be who we are every day and that that’s going to, if it isn’t consistent or congruent with the, the sort of environment and the, that we’re working in, or, or the people that we’re working with that becomes more challenging these days. And that’s why, you know, a lot of younger folks certainly are leaning into and asking about the cultural values before they go and work somewhere.
Jenn DeWall: Interesting that you say that because I will not take, and maybe I am more of a project worker like 1099. I’m like, I’ve never gotten so many 1099s in my life before, like, as I was doing my taxes this year, because it is like, I will not do business now that I have a choice as an entrepreneur. I won’t do business with a culture that I think is, you know, just not a fit for me. I just won’t, I don’t I’ll find something else. I trust that I find some I’ll find something else or I’ll figure out how to offset, subsidize my income if I need to, but I will not compromise my values.
Sophie Wade: And then on the other side that somebody who’s hiring you, they’re gonna want to have, you know, so we talked about cultural fit and the cultural fit, you know, can mean when it’s not a practiced what I would say correctly, cultural fit for me means that you are aligning values. It’s not about having people that look and sound the same or have the same education, you know, because there are certainly, it’s about having a lot of diverse people, but who have, who are aligned with their values because rather than being something that can, can be discriminatory. So, but it means that if I’m hiring you and I’m making sure that we, that, that we’re, it’s a cultural fit so that you are going to enjoy working in my company and you are gonna feel included and welcomed and comfortable and be able to contribute. And all the rest of it, that means that you, that we can feel connected on those values, even if I’m, you know, you’re not with and, you know, working with, with, with teams in, in the company, you know, five days a week. And, and so that’s, I think how you can, you can be working across different companies and different work arrangements because those values are profound to who, to who you are and to who, you know, you know, I am in my company, that’s hiring you. And that’s the way to connect us and have that sense of belonging, even if you’re not there five days a week.
Jenn DeWall: No. And I love that you talk about the values because I can think about organizations where, you know, earlier in my career, you get your employee handbook. These are our five values, right? Honesty, trust, or whatever the heck they’re all about respect, right? They’re all the same at every company. It feels like sometimes. And then you come into the company and you’re like, oh, but these values are really just part of the employee handbook. We actually don’t hold people accountable to this. Right. It becomes funnier. It should be like, what are values now? And so it’s interesting to feel like there were these, like, I don’t wanna call it a of values because I do know there were plenty of people that absolutely adhered to them, but there were also people that were not held accountable to adhere to them. Mm. But now you have this thing of like, you can loosely as an organization, talk about your values, but I will enforce the values. Like I will make sure that I am standing confidently in that right place. So like, if you don’t actually adhere to your values, I will walk. And I think there’s a lot of people that will do that now from my generation.
Sophie Wade: Oh, absolutely!
Jenn DeWall: I’m not gonna just sit there if you’re gonna pretend and like smoke mirrors, make it look so cool. And it’s not by, like, why would I waste my time. Sophie Wade: My thing is if I don’t, if I don’t trust you as a company, right? This is, this is why the whole, the whole leadership dynamic has changed. And it’s going away from this command. I sort know, going from commanded coach. And I talk about this a lot in my book, because in that relationship, trust is so critical and trust and empathy and under in someone, because if you don’t trust me, there is no, I am so aware of the, or certainly the younger generation is so aware of the lack of job security in this country. It has been there for a long time, but it, we, I, I think, you know, I was certainly sort of delusion that, you know, there was more job security, but really when you are at-will, you are at-will. And, and, you know, you can be fired for, for any reason almost or just be let go because things have changed and these things are pivoting and, you know, goodness knows what, but if, if I believe the company values are integrity and trust and empathy or transparency, then I think it will least the company that I’m working for is going to give me a heads up, is gonna be open and clear with me so that even if things are changing, that they’re actually going to help me, you know, maybe find a new position or job and upskill, so that I, at least I can be looking for another job either inside the organization, there are companies that help people find jobs.
Sophie Wade: I mean, seriously. I mean, obviously the, as outplacement, but really engage in trying to help someone find a job because things are changing. So if I think this company is going to help me in my career, I’m going to stay there and I’m going to that. Loyalty’s gonna come from the connection on the values when there isn’t any, any legal reason that, that sort of, that loyalty, the relationships and the sense of trust that, that are going to keep, keep people there. And the, you know, the feeling that, you know, this company’s investing in me they’re gonna keep me competitively challenged and, and developing me. And I actually was just talking to a friend of mine from business school, who his company just one, the company most likely to help me grow in my career. And that was a new, it’s a new category. And I was like, oh, that’s so awesome. Because what it means is that those employees are saying that company is going to help me stay competitive. And, and they were as well as obviously contributing the bit to the business, because if, if, if the employees are growing and developing, they’re obviously going to be, you know, investing in the business as well. So I thought that was a really interesting new category and was very exciting.
Jenn DeWall: That’s so true. Like in the work that I do with Crestcom, gosh, Crestcom has been one of the best organizations at showing like support and value and feeling seen. It was just almost startling. At first, when I got that, I was like, what do you mean? Because I worked in a cutthroat or more cutthroat, two different cutthroat, like kind of conservative cultures, and then talked about this too. And now I’m working for another company. And the first thing that they said to me is we just want you to be you, don’t worry about everyone else. We just want you to be you. And, and those like, you know, I will absolutely take less money. I will, you know, work harder to just , but I will, because those values are so important. And yes, I have student loans to pay. Yes, I do.
Sophie Wade: So pay her more!
Jenn DeWall: Like, but I will still figure it out. If I, you know, I would still take less pay. I know that I’ll figure out how to pay my student loans or whatever debts I might have. And like, I will still do that because my happiness is so important, but I, I know that we’re near the end of show. And I just want to ask you Sophie, like any final thoughts as it relates to maybe the conversation that we’ve had today, or your book Empathy Works, what would you like to share on a final note with our listeners?
Sophie Wade: Thank you. This has been a great conversation. And I, so the thing about this book is, you know, ultimately the whole point of it was to be practical. And to actually, again, help people understand each other, because, well, you have to start with yourself first. So you have to have enough understanding about yourself, to be able to understand other people that you’re working with. And it could be within the company. It could be along your supply chain, anybody in your ecosystem, and really just leaning into that and, and being very practical about different empathy habits, which could be really small, just like, you know, having whether you’re working virtually or in person, you know, connecting with someone at the beginning or the end of the meeting, you know, oh, you know, how’s, how’s your dog doing? We’re both dog owners. You know, we had, we both had our dog dogs in interrupting us. And they actually out right, right here next to me,
Jenn DeWall: Mine’s locked out right now. Mine’s locked out. She can’t come when we’re doing it live otherwise. Sophie Wade: Oh, OK. Well, I thought I’d have them here. . So you know, so we connect on that. These types of, of, you know, connections are so important. So that’s a very basic one, but there are lots of things that you can do in terms of empathy, which is like reading, reading, other people, looking at their faces listening to, to their voices. When somebody sends you an email or a text you know, looking checking, did somebody really mean that checking what, what they, what they meant without making a judgment? So there are lots and lots of practical things that in the book as well as sort of giving a, a greater framework. So the idea is really to, to bring more human understanding, you know, really lean into that the sort of the human-centric, as I said, counterbalance to this technology-driven landscape, because where now we’re coming out of the pandemic. I know we just had some huge new COVID cases coming up. But, but now that we’re coming out of it, there is no back to go back to. So we need to really craft the way forward for every single, you know, organization for their company, for their employees, and that’s gonna be different. So really trying to work out how to do that and how best to be able to connect with people and work that out, bringing everybody together and getting their contributions, because that’s gonna be the most successful way forward, really getting the expertise from, you know, more seasoned new managers and executives and the technology staff for from tends to be from people who’ve really grown up with the technology and having everybody together working together effectively. And that for me, is really using empathy to do that. So, so that’s kind of like the reason that I think this book is important is to, to sort of help people, you know, coming out of the pandemic and really being able to forge a new way forward, that’s going to be effective and enjoyable, and people engage in their work and have some fun of me. Come on.
Jenn DeWall: I, we have one short life, like work does not actually this awful place. Like there are a lot of things that we can do and it all starts, well, actually, I’ll just say this. It all starts with empathy, Empathy Works! So how do people get in touch with you? Where can they get the book? The book drops on May 3rd. How can they get in touch with you?
Sophie Wade: Wonderful. So please preorder, it is available on Amazon on all kinds of online retailers. Whatever your favorite retailer is, please go and preorder it there. And if you do, there is actually a preorder offer, you can get a free to get to, to join a live webinar where you can ask me questions live. So that’s great SophieWade.com. There’s lots of information about the book there. There are also worksheets that will be available in the book. You’ll see that there are worksheets to help you sort of go through all kinds of things and choose your empathy habits and stuff like that. So SophieWade.com. My company is also Flexcel Network, but sophiewade.com is where all the information about the book is. Also, I have some LinkedIn courses which are actually free for the month of April if you want to take advantage of those now. Jenn DeWall: Oh, fantastic. I love that. Offer free courses, Sophie, thank you so much for donating your time, passion and expertise to share your perspective, your lived experience in with The Leadership Habit listeners. I am so grateful to have you on the podcast. I hope to have you back again and for everyone listening May 3rd, preorder your copy. Empathy Works. Thank you so much, Sophie Wade, Sophie Wade: Thank you, Jenn. Really, really appreciate it! It’s been such a fun conversation.
Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast. I loved the conversation with Sophie. So many different thoughts, different points of awareness and reflections came up as a result of that conversation. And as Sophie shared her new book, Empathy Works, The key to Competitive Advantage in the New Era of Work comes out May 3rd, and you can head on over to Sophiewade.com and there you can actually preorder your copy if you know someone that could benefit from this episode or they could really maybe gain a new perspective from hearing our conversation, share this episode with them. And of course, if you enjoyed this conversation, don’t forget to leave us a review. I’m your favorite podcast streaming service. Thank you so much for tuning in until next time.
Wait, I mean, you made that sound simple, but here’s the thing. If the audience might be like, what do you mean stop selling? What do you mean by that? Because is that’s my job, right? If I want to generate revenue, what do you mean by that?
Merit Kahn:
Exactly. You know, I mean, I don’t know, maybe you’ve never gotten any of those pushy aggressive sales messages through LinkedIn or email again, your voicemail, those people that knock on your door, like all of the pushy, aggressive sales-y things that you’re kind of hardwired to push against. We don’t teach people how to do that. Most of the people that we work with, people, what people really appreciate is, you know, they’re professionals, they’re experts at what they do. They’re entrepreneurs, they’re, they’re good in their area of expertise, and they don’t necessarily want to feel like they’re pushing their solutions on anybody. They really wanna have what we call the new ABCs of selling. So it’s no longer about “always be closing,” that sales and pushing <laugh>. Now it’s about authentic business conversations. And so that’s when you are making that transition from sales old school, like how do, what do I say to close the deal and press hard? The third copy is yours. It’s Tuesday or Thursday better. Once you get rid of all that nonsense, you can really start to have authentic business conversations with your prospects and clients to determine together if there’s a mutual benefit to doing a transaction or creating a relationship together and do some appropriate business. And that’s what we’re all about. We wanna teach how to ask the right questions and, and create relationships that are truly those win-win partnerships.
Jenn DeWall:
Gotcha. I mean, I love that you talked about the word authentic. I think that’s so important. And I feel like, I don’t know if it’s that people today aren’t necessarily being trained or educated on sales, but what I feel like I see as a consumer, as an individual more and more is I would say more aggressive sales tactics. Oh, you haven’t, you didn’t respond to my email that I never asked you to send me. Right. And they kinda get like worse and worse. And I’m actually very surprised because where I don’t know how some of these things are being picked up, but I am seeing more and more of it. And so I am begging people to hire you because I want someone, cause you also said the second word— appropriate. And you know, I, I really do feel like there’s a need for people to understand what is appropriate today. And just because you got my email does not give you permission to basically send me five, six emails when I never asked about your product. I mean, I don’t, like I never asked, don’t even know what your product was. I don’t even know why you asked me. Like, and it’s, I don’t know. I think it’s because when I get that second one, that’s really rude. I’m that more frustrated? Like why would I ever do business with you now, ever, even if I did think of you. Speaking for anyone in the universe right now, <laugh>
Merit Kahn:
Well, and what you’re speaking to you is pretty common. It’s, you know, nobody wants to feel sold. Nobody wants to be pushed into anything. We all wanna make our own decisions. We wanna make our selections and what people are forgetting. And, and actually, I, you know, I’m guilty of this and the first half of my sales career, I didn’t really understand the value of this. But really, the first step to a closed deal is always an open mind. And when you step over that, when you try to imagine that everything that you’ve got is, is this perfect solution for somebody and you’ve got the right answers and you’ve got something there. You know, if everybody just knew about this, we’d close more deals, we’d have more clients. And so there’s an excitement. I appreciate the excitement, the enthusiasm about your offers, but you haven’t earned the right to pitch that yet first you and, and also you’re going to run the risk of ruining re potential qualified prospects by not treating them properly in the very beginning, which the very first thing that you wanna do is make sure that they’re open to hearing your offers, your solutions, your ideas, your opportunities, because if they’re not, not, it’s really no different than talking to a brick wall. Right? <Laugh> you know, It’s like, they’re not hearing you so stop wasting your breath.
Jenn DeWall:
Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for saying that. Sorry that I went on my pain point. I am just fatigued of hearing those messages and I just don’t know where they’ve been picked up, but now we’ll get into the top of good hand because I know even just with the knowledge and truth that you just shared right now, this is going to be a great conversation. So the four words to transform your sales, what are the four words?
Merit Kahn:
Well, if you’re open to it, I’m gonna give you I’m you a couple questions before I reveal those words. Are you okay with that?
Jenn DeWall:
Yeah!
Are You Open To
Merit Kahn:
All right. So there was a study done at Pepperdine University a number of years ago. They were trying to figure out if people really identified themselves as being open-minded. So they asked people if they would rate themselves as more open-minded than the average, and 95% of people said yes. So I don’t know about you, Jenn. Like, I don’t know where you learned math, but I learned old math. I’m old. Right? So in old math, those numbers don’t work. 95% of us cannot be better than the average. Just doesn’t work. Maybe new math. I dunno.
So if that’s the truth, then when I ask you, are you interested in something, Hey Jenn, are you interested in inviting me on the show to do a podcast? It’s pretty easy for you, actually. Well, you, that’s a bad example because you already know me and love me <laugh>, but it would be easy for you to say no to that. Like you can be uninterested in something, and it doesn’t impact you. Like you’ll sleep at night. No problem. Right. But if you wanna identify as somebody who’s open-minded and I ask you, are you open to inviting me back to do a second show on the podcast? It’s pretty hard to say no, I’m not open to it. Right? Because that speaks to who you are in terms of your identity. So the magic words I know, right? So the four magic words that will transform sales and I would argue pretty much anything else in life. Is, are you open to, and it’s really as simple as that, rather than asking somebody, if they’re interested in something, ask them if they’re open to it and, and see what happens from there.
Jenn DeWall:
I love that. Just, I mean, it’s so simple, right? Are you like, instead of, are you interested? And plus I feel like that gets added to like, Hey, let me know if you have any questions, if you’re interested, but “are you open to” actually makes me stop and think, I love that. And you described that. I didn’t even recognize the mind cycle that I just had marriage <laugh> of thinking like, yeah. Are you open to, because I think there is that piece of like it’s natural that’s or I guess in your experience, how do you notice, like how have you seen people apply that and change or transform their sales?
Merit Kahn:
Well, you mentioned LinkedIn. And so it seems like all of a sudden, you know, those of us who’ve been using LinkedIn for a really long time, you didn’t used to get the sales, the pushy aggressive lengthy sales messages in your LinkedIn messaging. And so now we’ve kind of, they’ve already, we’ve already trained ourselves like, oh, that’s, you know, not, not reading that one, like that’s a sales pitch. And so we are already not seeing it. So maybe just try this new approach and if you’re gonna do an automated, you know, process in your LinkedIn, try just less is more. Try getting to them open first because the truth of the matter is until they, they opt-in, in a sense and say, yes, I am open to learning a little bit more. Then you’re basically, you know, giving your sales pitch to the spam, you know, delete folder anyway.
So none of that is making a difference. So if you just tried a different approach and if you even got a few bites on that, then you’re actually able to deliver your full message to somebody who’s actually open to hearing it. So I would just try that and just say, you know, Hey, we haven’t done business. Would you be open to having a conversation to see if what you, what we do, and what you might need is a match at all? It’s a little harder to delete that there’s a curiosity factor, and I’m not trying to sell you prematurely.
Jenn DeWall:
Yes. Well, and I feel like there’s that makes me feel like they’re respecting me my time, me as a person, whether or not I would even want to buy, I feel like there’s an implied respect through those four words. I don’t know if that is also an intentional piece, but it just feels much more you’re inviting me into the conversation instead of pushing all of your stuff and then I’m yelling at me if I don’t want it, which is how some of that stuff feels exactly.
Merit Kahn:
Yeah. You picked up on it. It is respectful, and it is an invitation and, and it does fundamentally feel different, but it also sets the stage for the conversation, the authentic business conversation that you really do wanna have. And you absolutely can’t have that if they don’t start with an open mind. So again, I, I always remind people, I’ll say it a few times. The first step to a closed deal is always an open mind. And so we really wanna be aware of that. That’s not something that’s baked into a typical sales process, right. You know, opening the other person’s mind, but it’s very simple. It’s very quick. And it’s really universal. In fact I use the same question, whether you and I are meeting one on one for a sales conversation, or I’m doing the opening keynote at a large conference. It, I open with the same question and that is, have you already decided it can’t get any better?
Or are you open to a new possibility? And I mean, think about that. Have you already decided it can’t get any better? Or are you open to a new possibility? When you ask that question- First of all, there’s two people that have to answer that question. First. We need to ask ourselves because, honestly, if I don’t think anything’s gonna get better in my business, I’m not gonna go to that networking event. I’m not paying to go to that conference. I’m not picking up the phone. I’m not, you know, renewing sales navigator on LinkedIn, right? There’s a host of things that I’m not gonna do if fundamentally I don’t see any growth potential in my business. So that’s the first thing you have to first see more. You have to be open to new possibilities, maybe in an aspect of your business. Am I open to things being easier and the sales cycle being shorter.
Okay. If I’m open to it, now I’m on the hunt for what are, are the ways that I can actually manifest that? Or maybe manifest the wrong woo-woo word. Execute right? Execute for all of the-
Jenn DeWall:
Just providing options, right?
Merit Kahn:
Yeah. You know, manifest if you want, but execute, if that’s more comfortable for you, it’s the same thing. But first nothing’s gonna happen unless you’re open to that new possibility. So the first person we ask that question is of ourselves. The second person is that we ask whoever we’re in a conversation with about a sales possibility. And so when I ask a prospect or an audience, that question, they have to think about that. They have to ask themselves, you know, am I open to a new possibility or is this about as good as it gonna get? And when they ask themselves that question, the magic is whatever they come up with as the answer that cannot be wrong. So I can’t force you to be open, but if I ask you the question, then you ask yourself and, and you discover for yourself that, yeah, yeah. I am open to a new possibility. And now it’s a whole different starting point to a sales conversation.
Jenn DeWall:
I, well, where do people get the starting point wrong? Cuz I, I love this. I can see that very clearly. Are you open to it? You know, you had talked about, it creates curiosity. It allows someone to make that choice conscious and intentional choice for themselves, whether they’re ready to invest and it sets the stage as you had said for that authentic connection, where do people get this wrong? I mean, I know we talked about a few different examples, but what are you seeing? And maybe we should preface it as you’re not incorrect, but maybe your sales process has an opportunity to change. <Laugh> are you open to it yeah.
Merit Kahn:
I think there’s a, there’s actually a couple places where people get it wrong. So I’ll say it like this. Most people in a sales conversation are, are really relying on the mechanics of selling. The what do I say? So they start with their quote unquote elevator pitch and they dump all over somebody. Like here’s all the ways that we can help you. And they start with the how, instead of why, like nobody cares how you deliver your programs or your solutions or your products until they understand why it’s in alignment with what their concerns and frustrations really are. So, so that’s the first major mistake is people are just quickly getting to how they fix things without understanding why does that really need to be fixed in the first place? Right. the other thing that people are getting wrong is they’re in an argument with reality about how the they might be wired and how that impacts the words that come to them to even say in the first place. So let me unpack that a little bit slower.
We have what we call our open for business framework. So when we work with a company or an entrepreneur, when I’m doing a program for an organization, there’s always three main components, you know, to be open for business is so much more than just having open office hours. And you’re able to transact business, you know, do a, a transaction, right. Being open for business, really open is its beyond the motions and the actions of, of B doing business. It’s a mindset as well. It’s an attitude it’s really being open to receive. It’s being enthusiastic about the business it’s being prepared. There’s a lot that goes into that. So the framework is really mindset, mechanics motion. So if you think about it, mindset is what you think. Mechanics is what you say, motion is what you do now. I hate to use the pandemic as an example at this year, at this point where two years passed all of the drama at this point, but it was a universal shared experience. It’s a little hard not to pick on it. Right.
Jenn DeWall:
Right!
Merit Kahn:
So if you tell me in an example, sales people, I was doing a lot of webinars at, or you know, early 2020 because what people were frustrated with is they didn’t know what was an appropriate conversation to have. You know, like I know I should to keep in touch with people. I know I should check in. I still think I need to sell something, but I’m not sure what’s appropriate. And so I found myself really leaning a lot more on the emotional intelligence training and, and certification that I’ve had. And what I recognized was there’s a, there’s a relationship between your level of empathy for others and your level of assertiveness for your own solutions. And when that was out of balance, it, it was ineffective in a myriad of ways.
Merit Kahn:
So let’s pretend you’re, you’re a sales professional, your business leader, and you’re making calls to your clients or prospects and you’re high empathy, but you have very little assertiveness, so that conversation is going to sound no matter how, how well you’re trained you’re gonna say, gosh, you know, it’s really hard out there right now and there’s so much change and are you okay? Is there anything I can do to help you? And you’re gonna feel good because you were putting yourself in their shoes and all of that, but you get off the phone, even knowing that what you have could really help them in this moment in time, but you don’t offer it because your high empathy, low assertiveness,
Jenn DeWall:
I can think of so many times that I, as a business owner, as a coach, like have done that of, you know, you get in and you hear a client’s needs and yes, you just start to like, I want to serve or fix or help. Oh my gosh. I can totally relate to that. <Laugh>
Merit Kahn:
Right. OK. So let’s, let’s that’s one example then there’s the other side of the coin, which is people who are highly assertive, not aggressive, aggressive is mean assertive is grounded in your solution, confident in your and all of that. So if you’re high assertive, but low empathy, and then you’re making those calls that same timeframe. Well now you’re just kind of coming across as a jerk. It’s like, do you not know that there’s a, a global issue going on right now? Like seriously, you’re trying to call me and sell me your widgets, like right?
Jenn DeWall:
A disconnect.
Merit Kahn:
What people really need. And I would argue, this is true in any marketplace, no matter what is going on in the world, we won’t always wanna balance our level of empathy and assertiveness and what that sounds like in actual language using the four magic words. So let some forum is, Hey, I know things are really difficult out there. I can’t even imagine what’s going on in your world and I’d love for you to, you know, share whatever is happening. But if you’re open to it, can we have a conversation about the one thing that is within our control and see if our solutions, as it relates to business development strategies and these crazy times would be appropriate for helping you out of, you know, the situation that you’re in right now. Now the words, the actual words, and maybe I embellished, maybe it’s a little longer than you might say it, but the premise is the same.
It’s, I’m, I’m aware I wanna balance my empathy for them and my assertiveness that I do have a solution that can help. And I’m not gonna be quiet about it, especially if it’s a challenging time and I serve you right now. And the glue in between it is would you be open to having a conversation about the part that we can control? So that’s an example of really the importance of understanding how mindset plays in, because no matter what I train you to say in the mechanics of selling, if we’re layering that on top of you don’t know where you stand with empathy, assertiveness, self-regard, optimism, flexibility, some of the other emotional intelligence attributes that we can test for, then you’re at an incredible disadvantage because you don’t know how to adjust your approach or your language in different situations.
Jenn DeWall:
Which I think brings forth. Or I guess the question for me is, you know, I know emotional intelligence, I love that this approach is really rooted in that. What do you do for the person? Like I have to think that there is someone on LinkedIn that actually probably thinks that they have a balanced approach to both assertiveness and empathy. Oh, I’m not certain if you have the answer, but how do you work with clients to maybe develop that self-awareness around, Hey, like maybe this approach probably could be dialed down or dialed up. Like how do you help people generate that self-awareness?
Merit Kahn:
Well I, I look at the ink in the paper. I do an actual assessment. I use a tool from multi health systems out of Toronto and they’ve got a highly scientifically validated assessment tool. And that really does tell me, you know, it measures your level of self-awareness. So if there’s a lack of self-awareness, then I know I have to read the report a little bit differently to them see the reality of the, their current wiring. What I love about that whole body of work is that it’s a snapshot in time and it can change and you can put some deliberate intention behind learning and growing and expanding your capacity in any of those areas that we can assess. But in particular, I, I always think it’s interesting to look at the individual attributes, but it’s always really the combinations and how they play together.
That really paint the full picture. And, you know, if you may have, you may not really see a finding the way that it, that others around you see it, but once you have that initial awareness, it just, it, it tunes you in to some of those potential blind spots that could be sabotaging your success without even knowing it. So I guess it’s another application for that. Are you open to question because you know, it really in, you know, you could ask a question of somebody, like, I know that you relate to yourself, you experience yourself as being balanced in empathy and assertiveness? And the example that I shared, would you be open to sharing with me real-world scenarios where maybe it’s been a little out of balance or maybe, you know, you’ve experienced other people out of balance and you kind of just invite them to discover for themselves where it may not be as balanced as they thought.
Jenn DeWall:
Yeah. And I think you hit the nail on that. If you find that you’re reflecting and you’re like, you know what, maybe I wasn’t showing up in this way as balanced, you had said it, it can be changed. You can change, you can grow only if are you open to, or you are open to <laugh>. Right. But I feel like that’s, you know, cause I think with emotional intelligence, it does get really easy to beat yourself up around maybe how you didn’t approach things in the past and how yes. Those relationships might be damaged or that person just maybe doesn’t remember at all, but give yourself permission to change today. So your first piece is mindset. Anything else you would add about the open to business framework as it relates to mindset?
Merit Kahn:
Well, mindset, really it’s more than the emotional piece. So I, I wanna, I don’t wanna step over the other pieces. It’s re you know, when I first started talking about the importance of a strong sales or leadership mindset, success mindset, you know, it, it’s one of those things. Everybody goes, yeah, that makes so much sense. And then they leave. They’re like, I have no idea what to do <laugh> to fix that or to figure out where I am, like, what is my mindset? It seems so ambiguous. And I really worked hard to try to figure out what are the pieces of that puzzle. I came down to three, there’s your internal mindset. That’s what you say to yourself. Those are your beliefs. Right? And you wanna do like a beliefs inventory. There might be things that you believe about money or the level of decision maker that you’re comfortable talking with, or the, the amount of money you think you’re worth. And maybe that got set at a certain point in your career and then life changed, or, you know, it used to be when I was in my twenties, I thought a hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money. And now I’m like, how does anybody live on that? <Laugh> like, oh my God. Right? So, but it’s shifted because my, my life experience shifted my needs shifted, right? So, but if my money mindset didn’t shift along with it, I’d be starving.
So, internal mind is an opportunity to take an inventory of the beliefs that you have about different things that are either supporting you or sabotaging you. And sometimes those hand me down beliefs, we need to hand back. And so that’s the first piece, the second piece of the puzzle, we call behavioral mindset. And that is what your actions say to other people. So that’s, you know, you’re probably familiar with behavioral style assessments, personality assessments, disc profiles, things like that. And that’s understanding, you know, how your actions are gonna be interpreted by other people and how to adjust your approach so that you can be better understood by someone else who has a different style than yours. And then that third piece is your emotional mindset, which we’ve talked about, but that’s really how well you underst and your own triggers, how well you are in control of your own emotional responses. And you understand how that, how your emotions impact others around you. So those three pieces of the puzzle are very easy to identify. And then there’s very different ways that we work with clients to make sure that they’re strengthening their mindset in the appropriate ways that will help them have those awareness moments that then we can layer on the, the training and the, the skills and the action plans that really work with their strengths.
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Jenn DeWall:
Okay. I have to ask, it’s probably a personal question, right? How do you coach people? Because I, you know, one of the things that makes sales an intimidating thing to even pursue or to execute as an individual is the fear of rejection, which I know has to be tied to that emotional mindset or the behavioral mindset. How do you even coach people, like what would be your tips to manage rejection? Because that is still the hardest that’s, you know, the biggest reason of why I think you might be more assertive then is like, well, I’m just gonna push it down your throat. Like, and I don’t care. But what do you say to that? Because that that’s me, I’m sure there’s so many other people that are like, I just am afraid to sell because I’m afraid of being rejected.
Merit Kahn:
I actually think that the fear of reject the most effective way I’ve seen to deal with that fear of rejection is kind of coming in the back door. So we’re we’re impact mindset, but we’re gonna do it through being in motion. And part of that is, again, it’s that awareness it’s going through that exercise of, okay, I wanna, I’m just making up numbers here. I wanna close a hundred thousand dollars in business. And my average sale is $10,000. So clearly I need 10 of those. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> automatically takes you from everyone in the universe is a prospect. If you could fog a mirror, you could buy my stuff and maybe, you know, and I’ll reach my 10, my, my 10 customers to, oh, I only need 10. That’s not even one a month, like, huh. So I think there’s, there’s more power in the, the reality.
Again, it does relate to emotional intelligence in the fact that we do wanna have a sense of, we can measure your level of reality testing and your level of optimism. So that’s another great combination to look at for sales people, like I’m really high optimism and I have to work at keeping reality in check, right? So that that’s like the beginning of the year, I’m like, of course I’m gonna make my aggressive goals that I’ve never hit my entire life. Like, of course this is gonna be that year <laugh> and like, absolutely. But then I have to be like, well, you know, and then the reality is this is my actual capacity, given the team that I have right now. If I really wanna reach that goal, I’m gonna have to do something different about the team. I’m gonna have to do something different about our offers, our marketing strategy, like there’s work to do, right. So it’s that balance of reality and optimism. That’s going to help you deal with that fear of rejection, you know, because I have to have a clear strategy to, to reach my goals and recognize that not everybody needs to fit in that picture and that that’s okay. It’s almost like, you know, it’s, it’s like dating. It’s like, I’m not gonna be a perfect fit for everybody. You’re gonna marry that one person. That’s the person
Jenn DeWall:
<Laugh> right.
Merit Kahn:
Just dating to find that person.
Jenn DeWall:
No, I think that’s a helpful way to look at it is like having optimism, the belief that it can work out, but also acknowledging reality and what might be the barriers or obstacles or constraints that you have that are getting in your way. And it’s, it’s not just you. There are other things outside of you that are impacting it like the pandemic.
Merit Kahn:
So the open for business framework Is all about the mechanics of selling. So that’s really focused on what do you say? And there are pieces of the process. And I think that when, when, when people are winging it through the sales process, not only does it feel unorganized for your prospect and they get a sense of, I don’t know if I can trust you because I’m not sure that either one of us knows a, what we’re supposed to do next, like it’s not up to your prospect to guide you through how to sell your solutions. Right? And so you really wanna be buttoned down with that, right? You, you need to know where you are in the sales process. It, it also eliminates a lot of the stress and the reason that people don’t like to think of themselves as salespeople because they feel like they’re pushy and aggressive because they don’t have a roadmap for it.
And so it’s very simple. First we start with investigation, like, who really are your ideal, what’s the ideal profile. And and, and how do you approach that with a curiosity? So you’re really looking for who’s, who’s the right fit. And then you set an expectation, which is, you know, this is kind of how it works. And we’re first gonna, I’m gonna ask you some questions. We’re gonna determine if we kind of feel comfortable each other to going on to the next step. And then if we do, you know, we’ll make a decision, this makes sense or, or doesn’t it’s appropriate offer it isn’t. And so it’s kind of like putting that frame around the whole process and then you get into questioning, you know, there should never be a question that is ever asked of you at any time of, of the sales process where you don’t feel like you are in control anymore.
And if you’ve ever had that experience, somebody gives you an objection or they ask a question you are prepared for, like, you sh there’s always a way to deal with that. And so I teach very in depth, very easy questioning strategies so that you’re never caught off guard. Once you have those things in place, then you can go on to qualification. And those are things like, you know, do they have pain, right? Like, is there a reason for them to buy? Do they have, you know, are they willing and able to make an investment to solve the problem and does their decision-making people process all of that? Does that match with something that I’m comfortable working within? So those are qualifiers. And at any point, somebody might not qualify for how you like to do business or, or your offers or how much you charge or any of that. So that’s the next piece. And then the final piece is–
Jenn DeWall:
Can I ask a quick question about the, like, about the, because I, I want, I wanna ask about objections, but even in the investigation, because I feel like, and whether it’s someone that, you know, is with it in sales or even leaders of an organization, I think one of the most difficult pieces it, or that I see is that they try to be, as you said, like, if they can fog up a mirror or they can buy my, they try to be everything to everyone. So I’m curious, how do you help people actually know you’re not just shutting down business by saying no to someone, because I notice that people, they can be told that advice or like make sure, and from a business capacity, you know, make sure you’re thinking about your core product and not deviating your innovation efforts from that. What do you give to kind of reduce that? I think what is it, a scarcity mindset then that we have of just feeling afraid that if I, if I niche down or if I really get specific, I’m gonna miss opportunity. How do you help people with that?
Merit Kahn:
I, I think that the, the easiest way to help them through that is to help them see really the potential of the marketplace, even if they niche down to something pretty small. So in our ex, in, in my world, as an example, you could say that we provide sales, training, coaching consulting to anybody who sells anything, right. Like, right. You could, but that’s a, that’s really hard to target. It’s really hard to find them, you know, like AI doesn’t program for that. Right. Like I but instead, you know, we, we drill down, okay, well really in who do we, who do we not serve? Well, if you sell to governments you know, any, anything like that, like, that’s just, that’s a whole nother animal. Like we don’t touch that. If you can click here, buy now, that’s probably not our market. And we actually drill down to, it’s still pretty broad, but it’s, if you sell something custom creative, it requires a consultation and not a click here to buy now, we’ve got something for you.
Jenn DeWall:
Oh!
Merit Kahn:
Right. It’s complex, creative or requires a consultation. That’s when somebody, so that could speak to my engineering firms that I work with. My, IT companies, my in entre entrepreneurs, the woman who sells to nonprofits. I mean, it’s like, there’s a lot in there, but it we’re narrowing it down to a type of a process, not necessarily an industry or a decision-maker. So there’s lots of ways to narrow down your market without being concerned about whittling away so much at it that there’s nothing left. You’re gonna like pick up the phone and call your two prospects. <Laugh>
Jenn DeWall:
I like you just, just, it’s just narrowing down. You’re not closing opportunities. You’re just narrowing the list. And I know that I cut you off. I thought you were gonna say a four thing unless you were gonna go into the third of the open to business framework.
Merit Kahn:
Oh, right. No. Well, the last piece of the mechanic step is presentation, but the thing that people get wrong is they get so excited about their solutions that they step over qualifications or questions. Because they feel like their solution is so good. It’s gonna do the selling for them. And yeah. If you’re in a consultative sales process and your solutions are so good, then guess what? They don’t need a salesperson!
Jenn DeWall:
Right. So like we’re coming to you, you don’t even have to ask
Merit Kahn:
<Laugh>. Right. Yeah. So you only wanna, you wanna make sure that you are only presenting appropriate offers to the appropriate, you know, because they match for that pro prospect. And I, I have a whole online course on presenting proposals. And how do you, how do you set up the proposal? How do you go through all of that? I mean, there’s a lot of meat in there, but at the, you know, and it’s bare bones, it’s making sure you’ve gone through all the steps, checked off everything on the checklist before you get to that part where you’re really providing that, that solution and, you know, closing a deal.
Jenn DeWall:
I love the different, or just the distinction that you made of how important it is to balance, you know, going back to an earlier example the assertiveness with empathy, like your assertiveness might, your over assertiveness might show up in your mechanics piece by way of saying, everyone’s gonna want this. And that’s not true. Well, is there product, is there even a product or service that every single person on the planet would ever possibly want beyond water? Or like,
Merit Kahn:
No, even water, there’s so many types of water, bottled water, bubbly water, we can’t even agree on that.
Jenn DeWall:
If you really think of, like, I don’t know if there’s one thing I could think of that everyone loves or just feels that they need in their lives, unless it’s, you know, related to like me being alive. I don’t know what that is like, and I think, but maybe that example comes to mind because I think of that assertiveness, maybe that’s the way that I would think of it as like, Jenn, this is why you can’t try to please everyone. Cause you’re not there for everyone. And like just doing my own processing Merit <laugh>.
Merit Kahn:
Yeah. No, I, I love that. I’m like, I feel like I’m watching therapy in real time. Like just you know, I think it’s fine to be not a perfect fit for everybody. And the more comfortable you are acknowledging that upfront it, it, some, some people use it like a strategy, like a technique, like a sales technique to say, you know, we’re not a perfect fit for everybody, but if I could show you a way and they, they take this like good new sales principle, but they marry it with some old school, you know, thing that doesn’t work anymore. Like, don’t, don’t say if I can show you a way, that’s no one that’s just pushy. But I feel like, you know, it’s okay to say, look, we’re really not a perfect fit for everybody. So if you’re open to it, let’s just have a straightforward conversation.
Merit Kahn:
Like, let’s just, I’m not gonna, I’m not, I’m nothing to sell you or I’m not gonna push any solutions. I don’t even know if we’re, if it’s appropriate for us to do business together. So why don’t we just take a first step, which is, let’s have that conversation. Let’s discover for each other, for ourselves, if there’s enough of a match to, you know, have a deeper conversation, like let’s start with 15 minutes. Is there enough that we could uncover in 15 minutes that leads us to, it’s appropriate to have a next conversation. And in 15 minutes, I know my basic qualifiers, you know, like you know, I’m listening for, is it complex? Is it creative? Is it consultative? Is it high ticket? Because you know, we’re not the cheapest training outfit in town either. And my clients, if they’re low, if they’re selling based on price, we’re not a match for them.
Merit Kahn:
I don’t work with people like that. I don’t want you to be the lowest price provider ever. You’re never gonna you’re you don’t set yourself up to win that way. Right. So I know that there are certain qualifiers. I might as well get those out of the way first. And every one of my prospects is gonna have that same deal. Right before we got on this podcast. I had a discovery call with a woman in Austin, Texas. And that’s where our company is headquarters, but I’m in Denver and I’m the, you know, the lead trainer. We have some trainers on the east coast and, and in the, you know, Central US, but you know, her first, I said, how did you find out about it? She said, I looked up sales training, Austin. And I was like, Hmm, well, here we go. Like we, you know, so. You know, like, all right, well just ask you right outta the gate. Is it a deal breaker? You know, we, we are no longer doing right now. We’re not doing our local training center that we have in Austin. We’re not doing training in that delivery model right now. Are you okay with that? Are you open to a virtual training program? And she’s like, oh yeah, actually that would be much better. Oh, okay. You know, so I didn’t like she, she was still qualified even though that could have been a disqualifier right outta the gate.
Jenn DeWall:
I love that. Like, and it’s simple. I feel like just to ask your qualifiers, you’re saving my time. You’re saving your time. Yeah. Gosh. I feel like all of us would get time back if we, if we did ask those questions, I think that’s, so I wanna get into your third part of your framework, which is, I believe it was motion. Am I right by that?
Merit Kahn:
Yes. So motion is all about what do you do? And that’s, you know, you start with your goals and then you build your action plan. You get really specific, but it’s about measuring and tracking. Make sure you have making sure you have the accountability structures in place to hold to make sure that you are going to reach your goals that you’re tracking well, every week you gotta check in on these things. And so we, you know, we have tools and tracking systems that we use with clients to check in and make sure that they’re holding themselves accountable or we’re holding themselves accountable because the numbers don’t lie. You know, if I, if I see that you are, you’re having a lot of discovery calls, initial conversations, but they’re not leading to an equal number of, you know, presentations where you’ve, you’ve gone through the qualifiers and now you’re presenting a solution. Well then there’s something wrong in that conversation. Or not wrong, but maybe that’s, you know, are we putting the, are we having calls with the wrong people? Are we not saying the right things on those calls? Like, why aren’t we leading to presentations or if you’re having a lot of presentations, but very few are turning in converting a closed business. Well then there’s something wrong with the presentation. So let’s use the numbers to tell us the stories to inform the coaching.
Jenn DeWall:
Yeah. And the part that I think is easy to be afraid of. Right. It’s easy to look at that and be like, but I have one, or I have a closed rate of 20%. And I feel like, I’ll just say, as a business owner, that’s often the one that I like to hide from <laugh> it’s like, I don’t wanna see the reality of what I think will happen and then reflecting, because I think that’s where the disappointment really sets it. And that’s where the, the, you know, that the inner critic just starts to say, are you in the right path? Are you doing the right things? So I love to hide from that, but obviously it’s not an easy thing to hide from because you can look in the bank and be reminded. <Laugh> like,
Merit Kahn:
You know, it’s, there’s no, there’s no getting around it. You’ve got to know what your numbers are. You’ve, you’ve got to track your percentages so that you, but not in an it, so it’s not to make yourself wrong. It’s to find the areas where you can improve. And I think there’s two things that, that make it a lot easier for people to come to grips with, with tracking their numbers. And one is that they, they let go of the make wrong part of this conversation. They lean into the fact that they have a growth mindset. That’s really the first thing. They have a growth mindset, so they know that they can improve and the numbers are strictly a tool to help them find the specific area is to spend their time on that improvement practice.
Merit Kahn:
And, you know, when you look at it like that, it’s like, oh, you know, okay, numbers gotta check my numbers, but I’m learning. And so I think that helps a lot. And the other thing is just that reality-testing piece, like, you know, balancing that like with optimism, like we talked about, as long as you can see a greater possibility, then the numbers are really just giving you access to make that a reality. It, but it’s not about, you know, we don’t track numbers to beat you up with them just to inform how do we help
Jenn DeWall:
And I love it. And to help you access what you want. Yeah. We need to understand that Merit I’ve loved our conversation. How I, I know I’m gonna reinforce this with the bumper, but I, I always love it when, when our guests share it, how can people get in touch with you? How can they have you help with their sales? Cause I would actually appreciate it more people did. So then I don’t get harassing emails. So if you could help them with that but how can they get in touch with you?
Merit Kahn:
I think the best thing that what I’d really like to offer people is an opportunity to do an online assessment. It’s very, it’s pretty in depth. It’s our sales SWOT on steroids. We like to call it. So, you know, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, but we’re just looking at that sales. We’re looking at the specific components of that open for business framework. So mindset, mechanics, motion. So if you go to MeritKahn.com/podcast, so M E R I T K A H N slash podcast, that’ll take you to a page there’s a free download. That explains a little bit more about the open for business framework. We’re always adding some new resources to that page, but there’s a link to take you to this online assessment. And let me tell you, Jen, what is, I won’t always be able to offer it like this, but for the time being until we’re way overloaded with it I will continue to make this pledge. I actually personally review all of the information that comes in through those SWOT assessments. And I do a personalized, a hundred percent custom, hi Jenn video to you to take you through what I see from the way that you answered that report. And, oh my gosh. I know it’s, it’s literally
Jenn DeWall:
Like an instant partner from taking that. That’s fantastic!
Merit Kahn:
Yes. Eventually we will get to the point where we need to automate that and it won’t be as personal, but I really believe that it’s a great tool. It’s been very eye-opening. It’s, you know, yes. You may wanna talk to us more about how we specifically can work with you on these things, but I will give you some various pinpoint feedback on what you can do and what’s the right part of that framework to start to work and, and make some progress for you. So highly recommend. Take me up on that. If it is, it’s a hell of an offer, I must say. And then also on that site, if you wanted to learn a little bit more about the select sales training offers, there’s a training tab on the Merit Kahn site wanna know about the speaking engagements I do for companies and associations, conferences, there’s information about that. And then there’s always the Let’s Talk button! 15 minutes on my calendar. I don’t know if we should work together. Let’s have a conversation if you’re open to it, take it, take me up on that too.
Jenn DeWall:
Oh my gosh. You just really laid down some offerings there. I love that, but me, what I really appreciated was just walking through and just giving it and making it accessible and also answering probably some of my personal and likely other people’s questions too. Thank you for giving The Leadership Habit community, your time, your expertise and your passion. I was so thrilled to have you back on the show. So thank you again.
Merit Kahn:
Thanks Jenn!
Jenn DeWall:
Thank so much for listening to this week’s episode in The Leadership Habit podcast, I loved my conversation with Merit and I just felt like it was stimulating and it helped me gain the confidence that I needed to even approach sales in a different way. And of course she just shared a great offer with all of our audience. So if you want to have access to Merit’s free online SWOT and get feedback directly from Merit, you can head on over to MeritKahn.com/podcast. Or you can find that link in our show notes. It’s spelled Merit, M E R I T K A H N dot com slash podcast. If you know someone that maybe is struggling with sales, or maybe they’re just getting into the sales part of their business, share this episode with them, spread that as well. And, of course, if you enjoy today’s podcast, don’t forget to leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming service until next time.
And yes, I feel like a lot of people can relate to that right now. They’re like, that’s what keeps me up at night is trying to keep everyone happy.
Liz Kislik:
Right? And what I’ve come to learn is people need to keep themselves happy. What leadership needs to do is create the conditions in which work can be really satisfying. And the workplace conditions are good to work in. So they’re fair. They recognize people’s efforts. They know who you are—all that kind of stuff. And you have the opportunity to be curious about your job and what else is going on there. And to look for ways to make things better. And that can create satisfaction and meaning in an employee’s life. But no workplace leader can actually make everybody happy. And it’s a false, false premise.
Jenn DeWall:
Where do you think that we pick that up? Because I, I know that in your work, you see it in my work, what teaching for Crestcom. I hear it all the time, this expectation that as a leader, I’m supposed to know all of the answers, and I’m supposed to somehow make everyone happy. Where do you think you picked that up? Or where do you think some people, just from your perspective, where do you think people pick that up?
Liz Kislik:
I’m having a bunch of thoughts. For myself, I picked it up from my grandfather who had his own business and loved his staff and his staff loved him. And I learned about many of the things that he did to take care of his staff. And I just made the assumption that that included their being happy. But I think we learned it, you know, from the movies and TV and the way we learned about romance and stuff like that. You know, I think that’s all in there even though workplace and movie, sorry, TV and movie workplaces are often terrible, but that’s how we know that it’s supposed to be fabulous because they’re showing us that it’s terrible on purpose, you know? So we think, oh, the reverse must be this wonderful idyllic thing.
Jenn DeWall:
No, and it’s not. And it’s OK that it’s not because we are all so vastly different in a lot of different regards, different periods of our life, different periods of our career. So on and so forth that it’s going to be virtually impossible for any leader to get it right for every single being. I love that, cuz that’s gonna make, you know, I know we’re going to be talking about strategy and that’s likely an obstacle that many people have to overcome with strategy is knowing that it may not be accepted by all. But I wanna ask you one more question about your business as a workplace expert, knowing that you do go into organizations and help them. What are some of your favorite challenges to help them solve?
Liz Kislik:
I deal a lot with conflict. With interdepartmental conflict, with conflict within an executive or leadership team, with the kinds of problems that have been around a while and people don’t know what to do to fix them. And that really floats my boat because I get to be really curious about what’s going on. And so I get to ask everybody all kinds of questions and they tell me their answers. And then in a way I’m working with the same facts that anybody could have worked with. But as an outsider, I can see them differently. I can reframe the issues. And so often that means the log jam starts to adjust people, see what really could be changed and we get to make the work and the workplaces more satisfying for people.
Jenn DeWall:
Yes. Which I love. I am so passionate, and I really do believe that we can create a culture for everyone to thrive to, you know like there are still going to be some people that won’t like it. But I think just even how we treat people, how we resolve our conflict, how we actually support one another, we can create those things. And I have to believe that you all have that same vision that like we can actually create workplaces. People want to work at.
Liz Kislik:
It really is true. I, I think we have to give up the idea, first of all, that it’s natural and will happen automatically. Yeah. Because it doesn’t matter how good the people are. We all want slightly different things. We all have different styles. So it’s kind of unfair to assume things would just fall into a place that would be personally thrilling. You know, it all needs work.
Jenn DeWall:
Yes. I love that. That’s a perfect segue into our conversation about strategy. Because it has to start with that intention that we just can’t, you know, there, we have to be intentional about putting a plan or actions into place to be able to achieve a different result. It’s not just going to happen by accident. Well, it can, but it may not be the outcome that you always want. So let’s dive into our topic today. How to make strategies stick. Liz, from your perspective, what goes wrong in planning strategy?
Liz Kislik:
There are so many ways to answer this question again. OK. So the first thing that I’ll say is, people actually disagree about what strategy is, but don’t necessarily know that they disagree. Oh, tell me more. So I can’t tell you how many people I’ve worked with who think that strategy means ideas, that if they have thoughts about something we should do or how things could work, they assume that that strategy as if strategy occurs by thinking. And since it’s not, that means a lot goes wrong. Because strategy needs to focus on particular kinds of goals, their outcomes that need to be stated. It takes into account the actual real-world conditions, not just made-up stuff, not just the way you want it to be. It has to face what is really true. And, and maybe this is really the most challenging thing– it has to do that when you know, you don’t know everything. That the likelihood of being wrong is actually high because your strategy is pointing toward the future. I had a wonderful conversation with Rita McGrath, who’s a professor at Columbia law school and wrote this book called Seeing Around Corners about strategy. And this premise strategy is about taking us into the future. But when we plan, we’re mostly planning based on what we’ve done in the past. So there’s a big disconnect right at the beginning.
Jenn DeWall:
Yeah. I love that. Well, yeah, so many people, and I know we teach a class at cross com on innovation and our subject matter expert. And this quote always sticks with me. His name is Steven Shapiro, “expertise is the enemy of innovation.” I’m sure someone’s already, like, I heard her say that before, but it’s not my quote, but it is his. And I think that really shows the foundation of where strategy can go around is that we’ve got all of this past historical data that we’re using to make decisions that may or may not be relevant to get you to where you want to be. But yet, we don’t throw out the bad data.
Liz Kislik:
Not even that we, we don’t even know. I mean, think about every prospectus you’ve ever seen. If, if you’ve ever considered an investment, it says past performance is not indicative of what’s gonna happen in the future. So when there’s actual liability involved, they know to write that down. Yes. Well, it’s true for the rest of us.
Jenn DeWall:
Yes, I, no. I love that. The other things that come to mind as you were sharing, where does it kind of go awry? People think it’s the idea. This is so exciting. It’s that shiny object, but then there’s no follow-through. And that’s what you’re talking about with the goals, with having small actions. We just think that the idea is fancy and exciting. So everyone else will follow suit. And I like that idea as well.
“Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast”— Peter Drucker
Liz Kislik:
Is it Drucker who said culture eats strategy for breakfast? I can’t remember.
Jenn DeWall:
I’m not sure. I don’t remember, but that might be him.
Liz Kislik:
And I would say that there is a gap in the middle of those things. So if strategy is the big idea, and let’s say it’s a good, big idea. You need a lot of plans to get you from the big idea to anything real that’s going to happen in the world. The strategy doesn’t make itself happen. And the question is, how does that get translated from, say, the boardroom to the desk level? And what are the various highways and byways in between where the vision, the big intention get communicated clearly, concretely– or as is much too often the case– vaguely or not at all? Sometimes all that happens is anybody’s manager is telling them what to do on a given Tuesday. That is just like what they did the Tuesday before. And there is actually no connection to the future. Look whatsoever. It’s as if we’re only living in an ever-present present.
Jenn DeWall:
My gosh, I can picture that just in the sense of even in earlier roles throughout an organization where you’re kind of just given the task, but your head down do the task, but you don’t understand how the task supporting that larger, larger vision, whether it’s supporting the larger vision because sometimes that’s not even clear. Right. And I think I had a little bit more ego in my twenties. And so, I wanted to connect to that vision. And so if I felt like my work wasn’t, then I’m like, well, this isn’t fun because it’s not visible. Right? I’m not gonna get the recognition! I had, I had an ego.
Liz Kislik:
But no, no, no! That’s even without wanting to be recognized. And there’s nothing wrong with that! First of all, it’s a huge motivator. Yeah. For people who don’t care about being recognized, it’s actually harder to know what will work for them. This goes back to the thing we talked about at the beginning, trying to make everybody happy. What people need is to know they are connected to something that is important, that has value. And if they don’t have the connection to the strategy, then all they have is task after task. And then it feels like anybody could do that. You don’t need them. You don’t need their level of speciaLization, expertise, dedication, et cetera. It could be a drone. So it’s quite remarkable how often, say, a CEO holds a town hall meeting and announces the strategy, and people get excited because it sounds good. And they think about what this might mean for them, but then they go back to their work and they don’t hear about it from their boss.
So what does that mean? Does that mean it’s another flavor of the month? You know, we change this stuff all the time. People complain about that so often. Does it mean the strategy is happening, but their boss is not on board, so they’re not allowed to connect to it? Does it mean somebody in the middle wanted something different and is actually directing troops in a completely different way from where the CEO wanted to go? I have worked in workplaces where every single one of these things happens.
Jenn DeWall:
Yes. I love that. Well, the permafrost of middle management, right? Like that, or that’s how I guess how I’ve recently heard it described is that, you know, that idea comes down that strategy, the plan, and then people aren’t bought-in at the midlevel and then it doesn’t go anywhere because heck if they, you know, and I think there’s that accountability piece that you were talking about earlier. Its having the plan, but you, yes. I feel like I’ve seen that one. And the other one that keeps coming up is, is burnout by way of competing priorities and initiatives of having too much going on. I don’t know, from, from where that sits, like, I don’t know if there’s a magic number for the amount of strategies or if it’s so much that makes sure that you categorize them as this is a high priority, mid-level priority. So then people know that this is actually still where we want you to focus your efforts on. And these ones down here are nice to have, but not need to have, like, I don’t. How do you, how would you even start, I guess if you were going into an organization and they were like, we want Liz to come help us with strategy and your perspective as a workplace expert, how we, you even start?
Liz Kislik:
So every place is different because they do have a history, and you have to take it into account. For what you’re talking about, this idea of too many strategies, it can often help to think that there is a strategy that matches the vision and the huge thing we want to accomplish, which might be being number one in our marketplace for thus and so. Or it might be changing the lives of children in regard to whatever the thing is that we work on, then those things happen because there are a variety of initiatives, and this is the first place that stuff goes haywire because the initiatives belong to different people in the organization.
Do all the initiatives actually roll up to the major strategy. Do they all contribute to the strategy? Has anybody at the executive level thought deeply about it? Are we making sure that the initiatives aren’t cannibaLizing each other, you know, those kinds of things, this stuff all takes so much effort and energy? It’s not surprising that it doesn’t get carried through end to end. Right. But if the initiatives are clear and say there’s a committee or a board or an executive team, or, you know, the CEO owner, whoever’s at the top, if somebody blesses this, this is a strategy. These are the initiatives. Then theoretically, there should be some kind of check-in process with the next level that happens periodically, not once. And then again, when you’re doing strategic planning for the next year, which is a big flaw in a lot of how strategy is conducted. You never hear about it again until, you know, the fourth quarter when we do the next one.
Jenn DeWall:
Right. So I’m laughing because it’s just, I’ve sat at the town hall. I’ve also watched it go from, ‘this is so exciting’ to ‘Oh, did we even do anything on that?’
Liz Kislik:
Right! So there are a couple of metaphors that can be helpful. One that I like is Sherwood Forest, where Robin Hood was because Robin Hood would tell his Lieutenant, and they would spread out, and each had a group of villagers that they talked to, who then talked to other people. It’s true. The downside of this is the game of telephone, but if you do it well, this idea of many of us grew up with there was a class parent who would call certain people to communicate the news of the class. When we were in second grade, it actually works if it’s followed well and if the content is clear. So if you think of Sherwood Forest and how you make sure that your network of communication is actually robust and consistent, and you’re checking for breaks in the network, that can be a really helpful thing.
Another helpful metaphor comes from the military, and it’s called commander’s intent. And this goes back to the idea of how do you choose which priorities. So theoretically, whatever the commander’s intent is, it is so well understood by every single soldier, every foot soldier, that if it came to it, and there was only one soldier alive, that soldier would know what their job would be to come the closest to meeting commander’s intent. That’s why you hear of these things where some heroic person in the military tries to take a hill by themselves. It’s because they are following the intent. They may be the last person standing, but they are going to try to carry out the mission as best they understand it.
And when you believe you know what the mission is, then it’s sometimes easier to sort through those priorities. Does it actually serve the mission directly or not? And if it doesn’t serve the mission, who do you bring it to adjudicate? Should we be putting our resources, our time, energy, attention, focus, any of those things into this now? Or do we need to hold back because we need to serve the mission?
Jenn DeWall:
Yeah. I, the commander’s intent. I very much like that because if you’re listening to this, it’s having the high-level objective. What are you trying to accomplish? But I think it does get confusing. When you can tell that the commander’s intent is unclear or maybe it’s too complicated, that I can’t even understand it, which means I’m not gonna see how I’m gonna help you. But it also, I think you’re speaking to me in the sense that I’ve sat in rooms where we’re doing a strategy, but then there’s the next strategy and they’re not connected. And so then it adds this piece of, well a what? One’s more important, but B why are we doing this one? Why are we deviating from what we know to incorporate this? Is it because it supports our, our intent? Or is it because it’s what everyone else is doing? And if that’s the case, we’re probably not gonna follow through on it. Yep. But yet I’ve sat in multiple boardrooms where we have this vision, we’ve got a strategy to get there. And then somehow there’s this straggler that gets added in that has nothing to do with that one. And I, that’s a point of, I guess it’s just a challenge for me because then how do you articulate that? Right? Because when it comes down to strategy, I think I am a pretty direct person. You might probably know how I feel about something, but yet in those moments where you notice that other people in the room aren’t challenging that, it does become easy to be vulnerable to groupthink and being like, I guess this is fine. You know, I guess this is what we’re doing. I don’t wanna challenge it. I want to be mindful of our rank. And so, yeah. Then I’m just going to follow suit. I don’t know what you’re like. I’m sure you see that all the time, people just disengaging or not offering their point of view because they don’t even think, you know, why bother? Or this could be worse for me if I bring it up and everyone else is saying it. So again, why bother.
Liz Kislik:
Right? Why make myself unsafe? Yes. Yes. OK. You’ve put a whole load in there. Let me think about how I wanna break that out. So there’s a kind of phase zero that comes before the situation you’re talking about. And this goes back to Drucker’s point about culture, no matter how good the strategy is, if by the time it gets to any individual decision-maker or someone who carries out decisions, if they don’t feel that they can ask a question about it safely, you are in a place where you’re actually paying for groupthink.
Jenn DeWall:
Ooh, I like that perspective. You’re paying for groupthink. Do you wanna pay for that?
Liz Kislik:
You are paying for people to keep themselves safe because what all try to do that one way or another, right? Some people will speak up because they fear the lack of safety that will come six months down the road if they feel that what they’re doing has diverged from the strategy. So some people will actually speak up, but it’s very frightening if everybody’s going along in a meeting where all that ever happens is rubber stamping. Very frightening to say something that is different from the mainstream. If you are in a situation like that, how do you ask about those things? One of the things that you do, is, first of all, you never give up. You know, as long as you come back to work the next day, you always have another opportunity to figure something out.
So you develop a relationship with your boss, where you can ask confusing but curious questions in a nonthreatening way, if at all possible. And if you can’t develop that with your boss, you look for opportunities based on project assignments, based on the monthly birthday parties, whatever it is, you look for opportunities to have relationships with other leaders, because a marker of somebody who wants to accomplish more in an organization is somebody who is curious, why are we working on this? Explain to me how this thing happens. I’m so interested in why we decided that thing. Can you tell me more about the background. If you’re approaching it from, but I thought we said this other thing last time, that puts people on the defensive. Sure. But I’m so interested that says not only I wanna know, but I’m asking you because I care about your opinion. And people are much more likely to answer it even in tricky situations. So try to think about it with a, almost a kind of beginner’s mind. And as if you are a guest somewhere or you’re taking a tour in a museum and you’re asking how it came to be a certain way, as opposed to why questions that seem to be about what was the motive for this. Or judgment, isn’t this wrong. If we said the other thing, those why questions can be very tricky.
Jenn DeWall:
Yes, I, you know, and I dislike a lot of why questions for that same reason. It puts people on the defense and you want to be, you know, depending on the tone that’s added with that why, it can change the trajectory of any conversation.
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Jenn DeWall:
I like that you talk so much about being intentional with your communication as it relates to strategy. Like it is very important to be curious, but it’s also very important to choose your words wisely, to make sure because if I go back to, you know, my example. I was at this organization for almost a decade and it was a large organization, different silos, different perspectives and different, I guess, microcultures of how they handled those types of questions. And in my last position there, I was in a part where my boss was great, loved him. I could ask him anything, his boss, his boss’s boss, if you ask them anything that sounded like it was threatening their strategy– blackball– you were done. And I wish I could say that wasn’t the truth, but it was. And it’s anyone that kind of asked that, but now I’m thinking I’m like, I wonder how I asked those questions 15, 20 years ago. Like I wonder how I did because what piece of that do I own where maybe, you know, I could have showed up and not asked the why question or I could have been more curious. I was still new. I was, I would still say I was new. I should have embraced the newness and then like help me understand, like I’m just new, I’m a beginner. Could you help me understand this?
Liz Kislik:
I give you a lot of credit for looking at your place in that, Jenn because so often we don’t recognize how we come across. Yeah. On the other hand, looking back at who those people were, something I try to explain to leaders is if the people who are asking the questions were in the position to craft the strategy themselves, they wouldn’t have the questions. So it’s your job to explain how it connects. And one of the ways I would encourage people lower down in the organization to ask about it is to say, it helps me do my job better when I have the context. It juices me up to know where this fits in the big picture, because then I feel like I’m serving our customer segment or I’m accomplishing this thing in the world. And not just that I’m completing certain forms. And that’s so valuable to me. I would love to know.
Jenn DeWall:
I love that expression. Like I would love to, you know, it gets me excited. Well, and, and that is the piece for me because I, if I think of my individual style and I’m sure there are other people like me, my career success is a big part of who I am. Not saying that’s the right way, but that’s who, how I am. I’m very career and success-oriented, but I’m also a fast learner sometimes, but I’m actually a learner that needs to like see everything before I actually can understand what to do. That’s just how I process. And so when I ask questions, it’s not to undermine, but it’s more to help me understand. But yeah. Yes. Going back to it. I guarantee there are many times I did not ask that question in the right way.
Liz Kislik:
Say it in the best way possible for the listener.
Jenn DeWall:
Yes. Yes. And that’s OK. Like, I mean, you and I, both, we live in, we live, eat, sleep, breathe leadership. I mean, we are all perfectly imperfect, but we also just have to learn. Mistakes are gonna make, be made. We might communicate something wrong, but what are you gonna do differently? Right. I mean, I, you know, we’re humans and I love tearning, but I don’t think I ever knew what emotional intelligence was when I was 22. Like, I don’t think I knew what that was. Yeah. You know, and that’s a big part part of strategy, but going back to that, like, so I love even the language of how you can, no matter what level you’re at that even if you are or feeling like maybe I don’t wanna ask this in the wrong way. I don’t want to be perceived as blank. To use it as, Hey, I get really excited when I understand how this fits into the big picture. Like, I would love to know a little bit more about this and it is interesting. So then what would be your advice to, let’s say someone asked it the wrong way. Like I did, let’s just, just say my, I probably didn’t ask it the wrong way. What would be your advice to that leader if someone’s asking questions and in that way, and you’re like, mm, what would your advice to the leader and how to respond to that?
Liz Kislik:
So it really depends on not just who the person is as in what’s their role in the organization, although that’s very important, but you know, there are people who play out different kinds of stylistic roles in organizations. So there might be somebody who is constantly the questioner. All right. So the first thing is getting kind of squared away in your role as a leader, that part of your job is to connect more tightly with the people who are carrying out the work. Because if they feel connected to you, they will approach the work with more vigor. You can get them to be involved in new things when you want it. And they will give you a pass from time to time as the leader, even when something goes wrong. So that’s just so valuable, just seems worth the investment to me. Right? So if somebody comes flying at me with a, well, why are you doing this in a way that sounds like, why are you doing this stupid thing? I’m making it worse than what you would’ve said.
Jenn DeWall:
I don’t know. I probably did it that way! I don’t remember.
Liz Kislik:
No, no, but that is the way people might take it. Sure. So a leader might think this person is asking me why I would do a stupid thing. Don’t they trust my judgment? Don’t they think I deserve to be here depending on who the leader is and how they’re constructed? They can get personally defensive. Yes. That’s hard. That’s why I’m suggesting all this careful language, but a good leader will think, oh, something about the communication has challenged this person. What do I want from this person in the long term? What do I want them to understand? How do I want them to feel about me and the organization? So the first thing I would say back is, oh, it sounds like you didn’t like it very much. I would acknowledge the implied slap. Because then the person coming at me actually knows they’ve been heard.
Yeah. OK. So now I’m with you. Oh, you didn’t like that much, huh? No. OK. I wanna hear more about why you don’t like it. And then the leader has to choose in this situation. Is it better to find out why they don’t like it upfront and tailor my remarks to that, or to just talk about our logic, our purpose and then look for ways to tie it back to who the employee is and what they care about? And they are both equally valid, and it helps to know the people.
Jenn DeWall:
Yes. I love the acknowledgment and validation at the beginning of I hear you, or it sounds like from what, where I’m sitting, it, it sounds like this may not be, you know, a strategy that you, you feel comfortable with. Or tell me more about that. You know, and asking! Curiosity, I wonder if curiosity could solve so many leadership challenges. Assuming positive intent and all.
Liz Kislik:
Oh my goodness! So, Jenn, it wouldn’t solve them, but it would get you on the path. It would say we are in this together. Tell me more, one of the best phrases, another one I noticed, or I notice, I noticed that every time we have a meeting about strategy 42, you, you really seem uncomfortable and hang back in a way you don’t on any of the others. Can you tell me a little about what’s going on? I wanna know.
Jenn DeWall:
Yeah. You know, and it’s interesting that you say that because I do feel like leaders typically are aware of how people are responding to it. And that data is right there. But rarely, I shouldn’t say rarely, but I know that there are people that obviously know the discomfort or the discontent is there, but yet still are like, they don’t address it.
Liz Kislik:
There’s an old market research saw about not asking any question you can’t afford to have the answer to. And if leaders feel there’s nothing they can do about it, if they feel like I can’t ever make this person happy, it’s almost the reverse of what you were saying before of the lower-level person. If I can’t actively change the situation, why should I bother opening this can of worms? I’ll just avoid it. That is a common response. I’m sorry to say.
Jenn DeWall:
And sometimes it’s the necessary response too. Like it is it’s we, because it goes back to not everyone is going to like every single strategy and it doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t make the leadership team, a bad person. There’s often just more opportunities going back to communication. So as we’re closing out, I’m curious, like what would be any final tips that you would have on how to make strategies stick?
Liz Kislik:
I think in a way it’s, it’s like caveats or warnings. When you are in a conference room planning strategy, recognize that you have been through ideation, drafting, and revision with whatever group of people you’re doing this with. When you make your communications outward, they’re only hearing your finished product. They don’t know all the thinking that went into it, right? So it’s important to bring some of that thinking forward, not the things you rejected, but the context for why. This is where, why is important. The purpose really needs to be brought forward, not just the fact of what we’re doing. So that’s one major communication piece, making sure your network down to the desk level is sound is absolutely crucial. And being willing to answer questions and take on all comers as a way, not only to bring people closer, to understanding the value of the strategy and therefore getting them to commit to it.
But it’s like research for when you revise the strategy, what are the things about operations that you don’t know because you’re not in operations. What are the things about customer conflicts that you don’t know because they didn’t happen to your customer? We can’t know everything and be in every place. So trusting the network to be able to bring the message out and learning from the network to get the responses in about what this means to people in the company, both of those are really crucial.
Jenn DeWall:
Oh my gosh, I love that. I’m going to throw out a random thing. Why don’t we just always talk about strategy and change management together? Like that is the other piece of like, when I think about pitfalls it’s because we talk about a strategy, not as a change, like why can’t we do that?
Liz Kislik:
Right. Right. And sometimes even saying that it’s change management. That sounds like something we’re going to do to you.
Jenn DeWall:
Right. Oh my gosh, that’s a good perspective.
Liz Kislik:
I don’t actually talk about change management much anymore, except as a conceptual thing, because too many people feel that they’re being done to. What’s our work? What’s our purpose? Let’s talk about that together.
Jenn DeWall:
Yes. I love that because we know that it let’s call it iteration. If it’s not changed, like evolution is always essential to stay one step ahead of the competition to serve your customers, whatever that might be and how can we continue to iterate and how do we make sure everyone understands the why. The why we need to do this? I think I love that your emphasis on really it’s how are we showing up in the communication? How are we making sure that we’re going all the way down to the desk level, that people truly understand why this is needed and how they are needed. As it relates to our strategy. I love that Liz I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. If our audience ever wanted to get in touch with you, Liz, how would they get in contact with you?
Liz Kislik:
Oh, the best place is to go to my website where also Jenn, if they want it, there’s 10 years of weekly writing on all kinds of leadership and workplace topics. And there’s actually a free e-book there of anybody in your audience who wants it about the interpersonal aspects of conflict at work and newsletters and, oh, there’s just so much stuff there. Or, of course, on LinkedIn, they can find me on Twitter.
Jenn DeWall:
Oh my gosh. Perfect. I love all the resources that you just offered to our audience. Liz, thank you so much for showing up with your passion and your eloquence. I love your metaphors and stories. It was truly great to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for giving your time to develop the leaders around the world on the leadership habit.
Liz Kislik:
I really enjoyed it, Jenn. Thank you.
Jenn DeWall:
Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of a leadership habit podcast with Liz Kislik. I loved the conversations, loved her metaphors and the perspective that she gave on how to approach strategy, as Liz shared at the end of our podcast, if you would like to get a free copy of her e-book , How to Resolve Interpersonal Conflicts in the Workplace, head on over to LizKislik.com. There you can find multiple resources of content, including her newsletter and blog, but don’t forget. You can also connect with Liz on LinkedIn and Twitter. And if you know someone that could benefit from hearing this podcast, share it with them. And of course, if you’ve enjoyed it, don’t forget to leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming service until next time.
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