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“Give people something compelling & engaging that they want to own…” Lesley Lykins Click to Tweet
Get more and Listen on Lesley’s Show Notes Page
Art shares with us a hump he is trying to get over now! Art finds himself in certain situations that impact him personally, when he should not. He is trying to learn how to not let certain things that are said become burdens and frustrations that he should not be carrying. But Art’s deep passion to help others and do what’s best often times prevents him from letting go. While Art is struggling with this issue now, he shares with us some valuable lessons he has learned thus far. Join me as Art tells his story on how you can get over the hump with him.
Art Hall was born and raised in Staten Island, New York and is the son of Art and Diane Hall. Art’s father was one of the founders of the New York City Marathon back in the early 70’s when it was held in Central Park before expanding to the five boroughs in New York City.
Like his father, Art ran cross-country, indoor and outdoor track in high school and undergrad. Art graduated from Binghamton University and started his career as a legal law librarian at Dechert Price & Rhoads in New York City. Eventually, Art moved to Atlanta and continued in the legal profession by working at Kilpatrick Stockton Townsend before landing a career at First Data. It was at First Data where Art learned the art of leading a contact center operation.
Art has more than 19 years of industry and consulting experience and is currently a Director with Alvarez & Marsal in Atlanta and specializes in strategy and performance improvement for strategic buyers for corporates and private equity firms.
Prior to joining Alvarez & Marsal, Art was Vice President of Sales and Customer Care for NetBank managing and overseeing the online bank’s international contact center operations for dealer financial services, retail and small business banking, mortgage servicing and wealth management.
Art is also an ordained minister at a non-denominational church in Union City, Georgia called Resurrection House for All Nations pastored by Chika Onuzo. Art is also a husband and a father to four children: Justin, Christian, Benjamin and Kaitlin.
Check out @art_hall4 getting over the hump @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet
“Being a consultant has taken a black eye in certain areas.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
“Integrity means meeting your commitment.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
“Integrity means meeting your word.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
“Integrity means if you dropped the ball admit it.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
“Integrity means being open, honest and complete in your communication.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
“Charging a fair price is acting in integrity.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
“The question that you are hesitant to ask, that is the very question you should ask.”-Tom Elsenbrook Click to Tweet
“There’s a lot of smithing in consulting.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
“There’s a lot of questions I’d like to ask, but I can’t ask it the way it’s going on in my head.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
“I’m not only thinking about the question but I’m thinking about the best way to ask it.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
“When you need to deliver candid feedback, always ask permission.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
“You don’t need to respond to everything.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
“Humility is a big deal, but comes across in subtle ways.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
“Don’t think to highly of yourself.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
“Humility takes a lot of patience.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
“If you practice humility it will propel you farther than presumption.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
“Cross-fit is the biggest humility pill ever.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
“Leave your ego at the door.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
“Each problem has its own unique challenges and unique constraints.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
“I have learned not to slave drive a group, but to empower them.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
“Lead from the front.” Art Hall Click to Tweet
Art finds himself taking certain things that are said too personally. What he is learning thus far is that situational feedback and communication can be a tug-of-war that requires a higher level of Emotional Intelligence. Art is learning how to improve his Stress Hardiness, Tolerance, Emotional Self-Control, and Effective Confrontation skills. Art is currently focusing on how not to take things so personally and to not respond to everything, and be more humble. Listen to Art as he works to get over this hump and what big humility pill he has found.
Humility is key. The challenge is that it takes a lot of patience and is a long road traveled. But if you practice it will take you further than you could ever imaging.
Pride
Listen
His faith
Listening
The Economies of Rising Inequalities
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthall
Via email: ahall [at] alvarezandmarsal.com
54 Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Competencies List: Emotional Intelligence has proven to be the right kind of intelligence to have if you want to move onward and upward faster. Get your free list today.
Show Transcript:
[expand title=”Click to access edited transcript”]
Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligent practitioner, Jim Rembach.
Jim Rembach: Thanks Kimberly. Okay Fast Leader Legion, I am blessed because I get the opportunity to introduce to you Art Hall. No, not the game show host. Art Hall is a good friend of mine that I always look to for the right answer and being that image of class.
Art Hall was born and raised in Staten Island, New York. He’s the son of Art and Diane Hall. Art’s father was one of the founders of the New York City marathon back in the 1970’s when it was held still in Central Park before expanding to the five boroughs. Like his father, Art ran cross-country indoor and outdoor track in high school and undergrad.
He graduated from Binghamton University but his career started in the law profession for Dechert Price and Rhoads in New York City. He eventually moved to Atlanta where he found his way to First Data and got exposed to contact center operations and leading customer care.
Art has more than 19 years of industry experience and is currently the director at Alvarez and Marsal where he specializes in strategy and performance improvement. Prior to joining them he was with NetBank and that’s where I had the opportunity to meet Art. He was a part of one of the first financial institutions to be on the Internet.
Art is also an ordained minister at a non-denominational church in Union City, Georgia called Resurrection House for All Nations pastored by Chika Onuzo.
Art is also a husband and father to four kids Justin, Christian, Benjamin and Kaitlin.
Art Hall are you ready to help us get over the hump?
Art Hall: I’m ready to help everybody, even yourself and myself, over the hump.
Jim Rembach: Hey, I know I need them and I know our legion listeners do too, so thanks for being here. Now, I’ve given our listeners a brief introduction, but can you please tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you better?
Art Hall: Wow! I would say my current passion now is trying to restore the integrity of the trusted advisor to buyers. What I mean by that is, I think to some degree consulting with companies or being a consultant has taken a black eye in certain areas where the advisor who supposed to be trusted is perceived to be out to price couch a company or price couch a buyer. Or the advisor doesn’t necessarily tell the whole truth or doesn’t have the balls to tell the truth in a way that will help the buyer. My passion now really is to instore some integrity in the profession by being honest, by being open, by being complete with communication. By giving buyers options on what to do really thinking through crafting recommendations that would make sense for their culture versus shoving a recommendation down their throat or suggesting a recommendation that would be in our interests not necessarily in the client’s best interests, in short that’s really my passion now.
At first starting and consulting was a huge learning curve for me, given I’ve spent most of my years in industry, and so I think over the past 8 years I really found my footing but this particularly has been a main driving force of mine, probably for the past four years.
Jim Rembach: You know there’s a keyword for me that I often use that you had stated and that’s integrity. It’s interesting, I think they can kind of throw that word around and maybe don’t necessarily know what it means. I think they have a sense of what it means but what does it mean to you?
Art Hall: I think integrity means meeting your commitment, meeting your word when you say you’re going to meet you word. I think integrity means if you drop the ball admit that you drop the ball and how you will rectify the issue quickly, and again in the client’s bet interest. Integrity means being open, honest and complete in your communication. You could be open and honest but not necessary complete, you can withhold some things back if it’s going to maybe jeopardize a relationship or jeopardize the next deal or jeopardize the future relationship that you may have established with the company. So I think being open, honest and complete in your communication is part of the integrity factor. Charging a fair price I think is also acting in integrity. The good thing Jim is that I work for a company that’s—integrity is part of our core values so it’s natural for me to digest that personally and professionally and then make sure that when I’m serving clients that comes out in our relationship.
Jim Rembach: It’s nice to have that congruency as far as with what you’re feeling what the organization is wanting to deliver, thanks for sharing that with us. Now, here in the Fast Leader show we always are searching for inspiration to help us get over the hump. One of the ways that we do that is we look at quotes and passages that others kind of like. Can you share one of your favorites with us please?
Art Hall: When I first started at Alvarez and Marsal the CEO a business consultant, his name is Donaldson Brook, one of the things he told a large group—and I never forgot it—he said the question that you are hesitant to ask that is the very question you should ask, and that really stuck with me. Many times you can be in a situation, a client situation or even a personal situation, and there maybe thoughts or questions or comments that are going on in your head but for whatever reason and maybe some reticence or some fear in asking that very thing. But in any relationship, be it personal or be it professional, if you’re really trying to understand where the other person is coming from that question that you’re thinking about that you may be hesitant to ask that’s the very question that you need to ask to unpack or uncover another person’s perspective or another person’s side of things in order to get to some level of shared understanding, that’s what makes relationships and by extension leadership so important. So that’s one of the quotes or mentors that I live by.
Jim Rembach: That’s really good one. Now, I have found for myself that asking that question that question has become a lot easier when I essentially smit it before it comes out of my mouth.
Art Hall: [Laugh] There’s a lot of smiting in consulting. So, coming out of industry and depending on the environment you could just lay your cards out on the table and that’s fine but in consulting there’s a lot of smiting. You’re right, there’s a lot of questions I would like to ask but I can’t ask it the way that is going on in my head. I’m not only thinking of the question but I’m thinking of the best way to ask the question or say something that, the client depending on the circumstances and the situation, would be able to digest or appreciate the question or the comments. So, you’re absolutely right, smiting—it’s an art, like my name Art, not necessarily science.
Jim Rembach: For me it’s—like under my breath I almost have to say, “Okay, help me lord.”
Art Hall: [Laugh] I was saying that today and I wasn’t even in a conversation, “My god, you got to help me [inaudible 8:28] [Laughter]
Jim Rembach: Oh! That’s fantastic and thank you for sharing that with us Art. How do you think that you apply the meaning of that quote in your life?
Art Hall: I work a lot with people both personally and professionally. And because I have a lot of interaction with people it’s now had become very second nature to think something, it could be a very tense situation and I had to figure out how to smit it and get it across in the right way. I met with a guy that I consider a mentor he is a [inaudible 9:06] his name is Randy [inaudible]
Jim Rembach: He does now.
Art Hall: He knows now, hey, Randy. One thing Randy said to me about a month ago that I completely forgot is that when you need to deliver candid feedback and that feedback my rub the person the wrong way that the listener the wrong way, he reminded me to always ask permission like—may I have your permission to share this with you to share some candid feedback—and the moment they say yes, then you’ve already printed an agreement that you can now share very candid feedback that otherwise if you will just pointed it out would be very difficult for the recipient to receive. Now, even when getting that permission that doesn’t make conversation any easier but instead of digesting or suppressing that thing that’s going on in your head, at least you have an opportunity to get it out if you asked permission and they agree.
Personally, I have that—serving in the ministry—I have that working at A & M that depending on the circumstance or the situation or the culture, asking for permission before just presumptuously blurting out what you think should be blurted out. With the right guidance of coaching, that at least I learned and I share with others.
Jim Rembach: Thanks for doing that and sharing that because those are some of the things that we want to be able to bring to light at the Fast Leader show. It’s not a scenario trying to do things quickly and creating shortcuts per se, oftentimes, our life hacks just have to do with knowledge and knowing how to do it right.
Art Hall: Yeah. Exactly.
Jim Rembach: And so that means we often have humps that we have to get over and they become learning and teaching moments that guide who we are and what we do today that we wouldn’t necessarily want to ever repeat, right?
Art Hall: Yeah, right, right.
Jim Rembach: Can you think of a moment in your life where you had, that hump to get over, where it helped you be the person you are today. Could you share that story with us?
Art Hall: Yeah, I can. I have a hump that I’m trying to get over now and I can tell what that hump is and what I’m learning thus far. Many times I find myself in situations where I have to learn how to provide situational communication, situational feedback. A client is telling me something that they may not necessarily tell the project leader and they’re asking help for me to take what they’re sharing and share it back with a project leader that may or may not be too accepting of what the client says. And so I find myself in this tug-of-war with how do I provide situational communication to my leadership in a way that they would understand not only where I’m coming from with the particular perspective or where my client’s coming from.
And the hump that I’m trying to get over is in certain situations a project leader may do something that I take it really personal. In certain circumstances I’m still learning how to get over that, like not take it so personal. I was in the meeting yesterday and this situation had come up and the woman I was speaking with is much older than me and she said, “Art, I’m a lot older than you and let me tell you what I learn,” I’ve just learned that when those things come up you don’t have to always answer it just let it go even though the person may think that they are right just let the issue go. I think that’s what I have a hard time doing is that certain things just impact me in such a way that it’s hard for me to let it go. I’m trying to learn to not let those things bother me because it just creates unnecessary personal stress and personal fatigue and mental stress that you don’t need to carry around with you because you suppress all that and the moment that individual presses the wrong button then, Boom! This is huge explosion.
So learning your emotional intelligence and understanding what triggers certain reactions and how to manage your behavior in a way that is conducive depending on the environment or regardless of the environment that you’re working in, that’s a hump that I’m trying to get over. There’s areas where I’m getting over it successfully but there’s areas that I’m still struggling with. So I would say this situational communication thing is what’s really pressing me right now as we talk.
Jim Rembach: I would agree with you from the perspective of having that same issue. It is a continual struggle for me oftentimes too. I think it will be easier if it was always with the same person, you kind of learn their habits, you learn where their values and their intent and all these things are coming from instead of you having draw perceptions and some make assumptions based on that and also think that a person who just likes to demean and impact others.
The reality that I found is that very few people are really like. Oftentimes they get caught in the same situational moment too and the anxiety kicks over and the IQ drops and the EQ was already there to begin with and the impact or effect is both negative. Have you found one particular tactic that has seemed at this point to work for you a little bit better than others?
Art Hall: I’m still searching Jim.
Jim Rembach: Are you?
Art Hall: Yeah. I think what’s helping me now is just trying not to take it so personal. If it comes across via e-mail just delete it you don’t need to respond to everything. If the person’s opinions are really strong and they believe that they’re right they have that right to believe that they’re right. It’s not my job per se to try to change them to see things differently. I would say be humble that can’t really be humble. Humility is a big deal and it comes across in very subtle ways.
For example you could be right about something and you know that you’re right but for me I always have to remember there’s part of the story or part of the situation I just don’t know. And without that perspective you will not be able to learn other things or be exposed to other things. Don’t think too highly of yourself, I think that’s one aspect of humility. Yeah, humility is key particularly when you’re working with people in any dimension, whether it’s personal or on business or particular vocation, people pick up on it. The challenge with humility is that it takes a lot of patience and it seems like a long road travel. It feels like that you get stepped on and pushed to the side but I tell you if you practice it, it will certainly propel you farther than taking shortcuts or being presumptuous in behavior.
Jim Rembach: I think you’re really on to something there because humility has been something that we’ve seen more and more folks focus in on from a leadership perspective of—even of self. We start talking about mindset, a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset and all that leads in to that humility component and understanding that perfection could actually drive you absolutely crazy. And because you’re not going to reach perfection in everything that you do, you need to accept the fact that we were born to fail and you have to allow yourself to fail because that’s what they have found when we learn the best. We have to fail to learn, so think about that, you have to allow that to happen and that’s where humility kicks in.
Art Hall: I have one. I have a curve ball coming now. I’ve been doing cross fit, it’ll be eight years in August, and I could tell you that is the biggest humility pill ever in so many ways, ever. I mean we have something within cross fit community that they say that you want to leave your ego at the door. That’s very hard. If you’re type A, if you’re competitive, you could try to beat yourself or beat the other person but I’m telling you cross fit will teach you humility in a minute.
Jim Rembach: That’s a great piece of advice for some folks that are struggling with the humility piece, that find yourself in being a bullheaded person more than you need to be, get your hindy out there and do some cross fit.
Art Hall: Get you go.
Jim Rembach: Alright. Thanks Art, I appreciate that. I know that you talked about your work and having a passion and of course your family and your faith, however, what is one thing that’s really exciting you about the work that you’re doing today?
Art Hall: This is pretty nerdy, but I like the idea of solving problems, complex problems that’s what’s really exciting. I think that’s why I’ve accepted as not only a part of my own DNA but also my role as an employee at A&M is that there’s no client problems that’s the same each problem has its own unique challenges and so there are unique constraints. And being able to be parachuted in to any environment and then helping that client solve or navigate their way out of a problem is exciting to me. So, I would say problem solving.
Jim Rembach: That’s great. So, what goals do you have for the future?
Art Hall: One, my wife Katina is getting her third degree, I think, in Family and Marriage counseling. She got her Master’s in Public Policy from Georgia State back in 2000 and now she’s getting a Family, Marriage Therapy degree, she’s finishing in June, so I need to get her a new car, so that’s a goal—I’m sure she would like that.
I’m here doing this interview in Staten Island, New York and I would like to get my brother a new carpet throughout the apartment that we grew up in, that’s one. I think aspirational at A&M, I’m hoping that this is the year for my promotion to Senior Director, that’s kind of one. Ministerial-wise my goal is to preach like my pastor, I’m getting better but still not there yet to where he’s at—I think he’s awesome, that would be another goal.
Jim Rembach: The entire Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now it’s time to transition to the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay Art, the Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast. I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Art Hall, are you ready to hoedown?
Art Hall: I’m ready to hoedown.
Jim Rembach: Alright. What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?
Art Hall: Pride.
Jim Rembach: What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?
Art Hall: Listen.
Jim Rembach: What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?
Art Hall: My faith.
Jim Rembach: What do you feel is one of your best resources that helps lead in business or life?
Art Hall: Listening.
Jim Rembach: What would be one book you would recommend to our listeners?
Art Hall: Woo, Thomas…it’s a book on income inequality by Thomas [inaudible 21:41]
Jim Rembach: Okay Fast Leader listeners what we’re going to do is we’re going to provide a link to that and other bonus information from today’s show and you can find that on our show notes at astleader.net/arthall. Okay Art, you are efficient in that first lightning round that was awesome. For our last question: Imagine you woke up tomorrow morning and you were 25 years old again and you are supposed to begin a new job as a manager of a team of people that is underperforming and disengaged but you’re blessed because you could take all of the wisdom and skill that you currently have and take it with you. Your task is to turn this team around. You get up in the morning, you’re ready you head out to work, what do you do now?
Art Hall: I would hold a meeting with that group. I think the things that I’ve learned is not to slave drive a group but to really empower them, support them. And so, we need to—if I was placed in that situation now with what I’ve learned over the past 20 years—I think that the very first thing I would do is talk to each of them individually and collectively. Set some realistic goals and get in the fire with them. Not necessarily lead from behind but lead from the front.
Jim Rembach: Art, it was an honor to spend time with you today. Can you please share with Fast Leader listeners how they can connect with you?
Art Hall: Yes I can do that Jim. I could be reached by my mobile which is 404 759 9158. I’m on LinkedIn, Art Hall, you this African-American guy that looks very nice, there’s a nice suit, purple tie and a blue shirt, when you see that profile and that $100 smile, link in. And you can reach me by e-mail, my e-mail’s really long, so just go to LinkedIn and see that nice looking guy and that’s how you could find me.
Jim Rembach: Art Hall, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot Woot!
Thank you for joining on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over to the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.
END OF AUDIO
[/expand]
Diane was hitting the wall and leaving people behind. Her strategic skills were rendered ineffective because people were not connecting with her. While Diane was able to connect the dots quickly she was not connecting them for her team. Join me as Diane tells her story and shares much more about how to connect with people where they are.
Diane Magers has more than 20 years of building and growing CX focus. Currently with AT&T’s Office of the Customer, she is responsible for building and innovating customer and associate engagement.
Prior to AT&T, Diane launched Customer Experience Catalysts as a consultancy and thought leader for companies who were launching or progressing their CX frameworks. She also developed and led Customer Engagement at Sysco Corporation.
Today, she is laser focused on driving business results through improved customer experiences. In addition, she frequently presents at CX industry conferences and events and works with various CX associations on thought leadership content.
She holds an M.S. in Psychology and an M.B.A. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP), and Promoter Score (NPS), Voice of Customer (VoC) and Customer Experience Management (CEM) certified. Additional affiliations include CXPA (founding member), LUMA Institute, Board member for CXPA Certification and active volunteer for the Autism Society of American and Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. She resides in Dallas with her family.
Listen to @DianeMagers helping people get over the hump. Click to Tweet
“At the end of the day, have you made a difference?” -Diane Magers Click to Tweet
“It’s not about you.” -Diane Magers Click to Tweet
“Make it about the person you’re with.” -Diane Magers Click to Tweet
“They get satisfaction knowing that somebody understands me.” -Diane Magers Click to Tweet
“When you are in a tough spot and you’ve built rapport, they will follow you into the fire.” -Diane Magers Click to Tweet
“It’s not money that really drives people it’s about value, recognition, and their growth.” -Diane Magers Click to Tweet
“When I stopped focusing on milestones and looked at how I could move people, it all clicked.” -Diane Magers Click to Tweet
“It’s really critical to make that first move to open the door with people.” -Diane Magers Click to Tweet
“Where can I really get to the heart of that person?” -Diane Magers Click to Tweet
“We’ve got to care for people and pay attention to how they’re feeling.” -Diane Magers Click to Tweet
“Innovative sessions in the day can just pump people up.” -Diane Magers Click to Tweet
“Use moments where you know people hit the wall as times to innovate.” -Diane Magers Click to Tweet
“While I could see the big picture, I need to start where they are.” -Diane Magers Click to Tweet
“I had to go back and pick people up in the race and walk with them.” -Diane Magers Click to Tweet
“Making associations with everybody is critical because everyone is important.” -Diane Magers Click to Tweet
“Stop thinking about all the things that can go wrong, just go for it.” -Diane Magers Click to Tweet
Diane was going through an 80-hour week implementation project when the cross-functional team she was part of was totally exhausted. That’s when Diane knew an interruption to break the tension was needed. That’s when the focus and the energy of the team lit up and they got over the hump. From then on Diane began to make sure emotional conversion became part of her routine practice. Listen to the show to find out how Diane applies her knowledge in psychology so you can find your way faster.
You have to take risks and pay attention to where people are and help them to move from not feeling so great to I feel so much better.
Courage
It’s not about me, it’s about the people that I am with.
Asking the tough questions nobody else wants to ask.
The belief in the human spirit.
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianemag
Via email: dimagers [at] att.net
54 Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Competencies List: Emotional Intelligence has proven to be the right kind of intelligence to have if you want to move onward and upward faster. Get your free list today.
Show Transcript:
[expand title=”Click to access edited transcript”]
Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligent practitioner, Jim Rembach.
Jim Rembach: Thanks Kimberly. Alright Fast Leader legion, I have a major with us, no not in the military it’s Diane Magers. She has more than 20 years of experience helping to grow customer experience focused organizations. She is currently working with AT&T in the Office of the Customer. She’s responsible for building and innovating Customer and Associate Engagement, we know that one drives the other, so I’m excited that she’s playing both of those critical roles within the customer experience. Prior to AT&T, Diane had her own consultancy with the Customer Experience Catalyst. She helped lead organizations that were launching or progressing in their customer experience or costumer centric frameworks and strategies. And she develop and led customer experience for Sysco Corporation, another technology company—the food company.
Today she’s laser focused on driving business results to improve customer experiences. And she’s a mentor, a leader to a lot in the industry as well and sits on the panel of experts for the Customer Experience Professional Association. Diane holds a Masters in Psychology and also has an MBA. She’s certified in a whole slew at different things. But I think probably her most important role would be that she is a mom of four, three girls and a son, ages 14 to 22 so you can only imagine how crazy that house is. Another interesting point is that she has known her husband since kindergarten, I think that is just incredible. So, Diane Magers are you ready to help us get over the hump?
Diane Magers: I am, I am, let’s rock.
Jim Rembach: Oh! That’s awesome. There are so many things that I would just like to ask you and have you share but I really want to start with the things that inspire you. And I’m sure many of you who’ve had the opportunity to listen to our show we really focus in on leadership quotes and how they drive us. Diane is there something that stands out to you in the leadership quote that helps give you that extra drive when the day is long?
Diane Magers: Yeah. The CEO of the company that I worked for, he use to tell me at the end of the day have you made a difference and he also shared with me—it’s not about you. And those lessons that he taught me were really about making sure other people, that you’re moving them forward and you’re helping them, cause at the end of the day that’s what I find fascinating watching people grow and learn and watching those light bulbs come on and so for me those really resonated and that gives me such satisfaction as well, so I think it’s a great how things kind of work right, give and take. And so he really taught me a lot about that, those two quotes stick with me all the time.
Jim Rembach: And I would say too that knowing you for a few years, but not as long as I wish I have hopefully that will continue though, is that I do see that come out in you and that resonates in a lot of ways when you say that and how that drives you. You are one of those folks that I think when you start talking about transparency, authenticity, genuine, a lot of those words are trust building descriptors, values, fillers whatever you want to call them, there in you and I commend you for that. But I don’t think we all start at that point, I think we grow in to it and a lot of times others help us do that. Are there particular situations or something that occurred that you can recall that it helped you get in that right direction? We would love to hear, would you please share with us?
Diane Magers: Yeah, absolutely. I think along those lines with the two quotes that I gave you, I think one of the things that I’ve learned overtime is to make it about the person that you’re with. All of us come with our own insecurities and our needs and our wants and our emotional state, right? But very infrequently does somebody else care for those or listen and understand them and help uncover what’s happening. So that trust and authenticity that you want to build with yourself and with your team starts with being with other person and trying to understand them. So a lot of times people walk in a room and it’s like they want to [inaudible 4:36] about them, switching that around and being with them and understanding what they’re trying to get after will get you so much farther when you’re leading people and you’re developing people because they get satisfaction if somebody’s finally understanding me, right? And it makes them really want to follow you and understand what needs to be done. When were in a top spot—there’s been lots of those in my career—when you’re on top spot and built that rapport with folks they’re willing to follow you into the fire and I think that’s part of what you just have to be to build as a leader as you go through every single day, every single person you interact with, whether it’s the janitor, the CEO, to really understand where they are, what they’re doing and how they can help contribute, because everybody wants to, right? We all know, the stats show, that it’s not money that really drives people it’s about value, it’s about recognition, it’s about their growth.
And so really focusing on that whether the task at hand, really has gotten me I think to go out further than that, that was when [inaudible 5:34]. Midway in my career, when I was really trying to push, like most of us leaders do in setting goals and milestones, and when I stop paying attention to the milestones and look at individually how I can move people that’s when I really kind of click, and I really got some solid teams. Not that we didn’t have our issues, not that we didn’t have hard times but it’s really made it easier to communicate and really be open about what’s happening. So yes, you’re right I’m an open book and people would tell you that what you see is what you get.
Jim Rembach: Diane you mentioned something about people coming in to a room and not focusing on the other person because they wanted yourselves to shine, I don’t know about for me sometimes I walk into a room, it’s like, “Gosh, I hope I don’t mess up” and so my focus is one that’s more of fear instead of—to be fantastic. How do you address that?
Diane Magers: I think it’s one of those things we set such high expectations and we don’t want to be wrong about everything, we don’t want to risk or we’re not willing to put ourselves out there. So I think giving people permission to do that, like walking up to them and say, “Hey, how you doing? What’s going on? What do you [6:36 inaudible] for?” really letting, opening that door and saying, “What could possibly be standing in their way of letting them talk and share themselves?” And again back to being there. So I think when you recognize that in people and they have that look when they walk in the door like ‘I’m not sure where to go’ you can see it in their face, I think it’s really critical to make that first move and open that door up and walk up to him and share. I learned that just reaching and touching somebody on the shoulder helps them to feel like. ‘Okay, that human touch really gets me there’ so it’s not in a creepy way obviously. Just kind of touching somebody, you’re shaking their hand and holding on a second longer to let them know, ‘Hey we’re all human in this room.’ We are here to care for each other and I’m here to show you that, and that people just open up. It could part of psychologist in me but it could also be just people want to talk and they want to talk about things that are important to them and just opening that door is really critical. I think about that when I approach people, what doors can I open? Can I really get to the heart of that person?
Jim Rembach: Now, there’s three things as you are saying that kind of stood out to me as things I just kind of have to put in more on the forefront of my mind is that, be welcoming, be more approachable and touch somebody. It’s easy to shake a hand but not everybody wants necessarily do a handshake, so the do fist pump stuff, right in?
Diane Magers: Yeah. Or just grab them—if you’re taking them somewhere or you want to talk to him about something really important, just taking them by the elbow or touching their arm it opens up so much. I think people just were so afraid of that these days but I really find it to be just the physical connection, that people want that emotional connection, so it’s a good lead in. So, a little psychology tip there that I think people can use that really helps open up.
Jim Rembach: Thank you for sharing. Can you think about a specific situation, a story that you can tell us where those things and elements and those quotes fit in to?
Diane Magers: Yeah. I think we were going through a really intensive, 80hour a week implementation at one a companies. And the team the UpDev team, and the business team and all the folks in the room we have been working so hard and so diligently, it was like 10:30 at night. The team was just so tired, you can tell by everybody, they’re rubbing their eyes and they’re trying to stretch and just is a bad time, we have a couple of hours to go yet till—except they call. I remember whispering to somebody I said, somebody just crack a joke, and so one of the guys that was kind of our clown on our team got up and he just told his joke like out of the blue and hit his iPad that he had there, had a little speaker with it, right? And just started playing music and it change the whole focus of the room, like the energy change everybody lit up we got over that hump and got there but I think sometimes you have to take those risk that sometimes in business are hard to do and really recognize where people are and say, Wow, we really need to make something happen at our jobs. That was one time when it really resonates with me that we’ve got to care for people and pay attention to how they’re feeling and where they are and help them move, I call that emotional conversion. Help them move from not feeling so great to I feel so much better, in different ways obviously. That’s one that stands out that was a lot of fun, the trigger.
Jim Rembach: You know that is a good trigger. And now I was having a conversation with somebody the other day about an intentional interruption which was really interesting, I think we’re go in to that a little bit more on another show. Where you have to plan that those things need to happen instead of like what we have a tendency to do is say buckle down let’s work even harder and sometimes you need to interrupt.
Diane Magers: I call that the Girbo wheel. We all get in our car, drive to work without even knowing it. We get in, we do our work, we go home and I think that this disruption that just pause for a moment. Even if it’s a pause, or like what I just described, or even asking tough question and getting people to just think outside the box differently in a really innovative little sessions in the day can just pump people up. So those tactic and techniques really work to get people motivated when they don’t feel like I’m coming in and I’m going to Girbo wheel all day. We need life to mean more than that.
Jim Rembach: Yeah. And you said that making it more it more intentional. You talked about a story where you realized that you had to make that intentional break and do something crazy and then a guy getting up tell jokes on us, having some music. It probably would be best if we plan it ahead of time, right? With this intentional interruption right around here. I think more and more brain science is actually coming out and telling us that we need to do those things not just from a work perspective but also from a learning perspective. So much at the so many periods or lengths of time and you have to switch it up.
Diane Magers: Yeah, we use that time. One of the things that we did, we we’re kind of teaching techniques on innovations. Abstraction lathering and some of the things we—learning customer experience to engage employees. And we purposely put it at about one o’clock in the afternoon right up when we got back from lunch because we realize that was kind of a downtime for people and they really felt like time back in after being outside for lunch, and having this great lunch after work. So, using that what would be normally dead time to stimulate them and get them driving at a faster pace for the rest of the afternoon, really invigorate a lot. Use those moments where you know people are kind of hit the wall as times the you can kind of prod a little bit, but lead them to something that’s more innovative and different for them in that day.
Jim Rembach: A lot of times we have situations where we have this Aha moment about something that we’ve been working on trying to move forward and I call them epiphanies. Can you think of a time where you’ve had a pretty profound epiphany? Can you tell us about that?
Diane Magers: Yeah. I think when I was younger in my career, I’m very strategic you would see in my Gallup strengths, I’m strategic and ideation and all these great things. I like to say I’m a good helicopter kind of person, I can connect the dots pretty quickly. But I realized that I need to really be where people are and while I could see the big picture I needed to kind of start where they were and take them down that journey with me. Whether it’s kind of paint this big picture and the scene, you know, “Oh, my Gosh! that seems so far away.” So breaking it down and then realizing where people were and then how I can get them to see that bigger picture really change management 101. But I didn’t realize it until get running into that wall—I must stop resonating it just doesn’t making sense to me it’s perfectly clear. So I think for me as a leader that was that really becoming a leader trying to stand up front away the flag, I have to get back and pick people up in the race and really walk with them and help them understand what I understand so that they can see that bigger picture. So that was big aha for me. And once I learn that then it became much easier to gain consensus and make decision and drive people to better results. Real key.
Jim Rembach: Definitely key. We need everybody to come along with us instead of us just hanging out on the front, right? As in all alone.
Diane Magers: Yes, yes. And I disconnect between leadership and everybody else in the company. We feel that a lot of times like there’s this big gap between those and bridging that and, like I talk about earlier, making associations with everybody in the company for the janitor to CEO, it’s critical because everybody is important and plays their part.
Jim Rembach: And you know really a lot of these transposes into our personal life. If there’s some people in our life that are just critically important and a lot of times we’ll bring them along either.
Diane Magers: Yeah, that’s true.
Jim Rembach: We just become disassociated and isolated and confused not knowing why. So bring along, right?
Diane Magers: Yeah, we’re getting the habit. If you have read The Power of Habit, it’s a great book to kind of talk about. We just get in that routine Girbo wheel and we don’t stop and really think or look back or introspect.
Jim Rembach: I appreciate your sharing all that us. Now it’s time for us to move on to the fast pace of our show and that is the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay Diane, the Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So, I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Diane, are you ready to hoedown?
Diane Magers: Here we go.
Jim Rembach: Here we go. Alright. So what do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader?
Diane Magers: Courage. I think everybody just cease to have the liquid courage. And think about what they’re doing and just go for it. Stop thinking about all of the things that could go wrong, just go for it.
Jim Rembach: I love it. Let’s go for this next question. What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?
Diane I think we talked about that today but I think it’s not about you it’s about the people that you’re with they’re making that happen and making that real.
Jim Rembach: Awesome point. What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?
Diane Magers: I think asking the top tough questions nobody else wants to ask, the elephant in the room. I kind of notice the tough question lady, I think that’s okay once you’ve kind of garnered some respecting can do that, it’s what everybody else is thinking in their head they’re just not saying. So taking that risk, being courageous by asking those tough questions.
Jim Rembach: What do you feel is one of your best resources that helps you lead in business or life?
Diane Magers: Wow! I think my belief in the human spirit that believing the best in people. I grew up in the West and we trust until you’d prove otherwise. I think it just believe in people and pushing them as far as I can maybe sometimes to fall, I think that’s really important and people sense that.
Jim Rembach: What would be one book you would recommend to our listeners?
Diane Magers: Well, there you go I said it earlier the Power of Habit. I think it’s a great book. It talks about personal life all the way to corporate life and how the power of habit keeps us in what we’re doing and how we can and cannot grow.
Jim Rembach: Thank you for sharing all that. And we will have a link to that book and several other things on Diane’s show notes page and that will be at fast leader.net/dianemagers. Diane thank you. So our last question in the Hump Day Hoedown?
Imagine you woke tomorrow morning and you were 25 years old again, you are supposed to begin a new job as a manager of a team of people that is underperforming and disengaged but you have retained all the wisdom and skill that you currently have. Now your task, of course, is to take this team and turn them around. So you get up, you get ready and head out to work, what do you do now?
Diane Magers: I schedule meetings with every single person and get their interpretation of what’s gone right and what’s gone wrong, so far. So I have their by end, their understanding and what they’re looking to do and then accumulate all that and move forward with the plan with them right by my side.
Jim Rembach: Perfect. Diane it was an honor to spend time with you today. Can you please share with the Fast Leader listeners how they can connect with you?
Diane Magers: Absolutely. I’m in LinkedIn same Diane Magers or they can connect with me through email and that will be on your homepage as well.
Jim Rembach: Perfect. Diane thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom, the Fast Leader legion honors you and tanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot Woot!
Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader Show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over to fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.
END OF AUDIO
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Dan was identifying himself by others and as a people pleaser he eventually became lost with needing to define himself by others. Then Dan had an epiphany where things became clearer and he realized he had more in him and he began to turn to his strengths, talents and gifts. Listen to this episode and learn how Dan Rockwell transformed into the Leadership Freak.
Dan Rockwell is a farm-boy from Maine who lives in Central Pennsylvania with his wife of 39 years. He says she is the joy of his life.
He prefers country to city living. He thoroughly enjoys looking out the window and seeing deer in the field. He has three children and four grandchildren. He believes Grandchildren are one of life’s compensations.
Dan’s leadership career began with a leadership position in the nonprofit world at the age of nineteen. His experience, over thirty-five years, includes business ownership and fifteen years as a Workforce Development Consultant for a regional Penn State Special Affiliate.
Dan’s contribution to the leadership community includes writing the highly recognized Leadership Freak blog. Leadership Freak was the most socially shared leadership blog in the world 2012, 2013, and 2014. Leaders in every country on the globe gain encouragement and insight from his writing. Over 300,000 subscribers have opted into Dan’s social media channels.
The American Management Association lists Dan as one of the Top 30 Leaders in Business (2014). INC recognizes Dan as one of the top 50 Leadership and Management Experts in the English speaking world (2014). INC also recognizes Dan as a TOP 100 Leadership Speaker.
Currently, Dan coaches leaders, consults with organizations, and delivers corporate and community presentations.
Check out @LeadershipFreak sharing his story and fears on @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet
“The logical extension of Servant Leadership is being a coaching leader.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“There are some misconceptions about being a coach.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“Once you make a decision curiosity ends.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“A coach is a person who maximizes the talent and skill of another person.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“When you tell someone what to do you enhance their helplessness.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“You are going to maximize your performance and I am the person to help you.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“If you’re going to talk about it, do something about it.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“Don’t talk about it if you’re not going to do something about it.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“Are we moving toward action and behavior or are we just chasing our tail?” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“You are not the person to find the answer, they are.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“Wanting to please people is a good thing; needing it is not so healthy.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“Love people and serve people but don’t do it to gain their approval.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“When you are a deep people pleaser it’s hard to disagree.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“What you see now is a drive to matter.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“I made a lot of mistakes, so I have a lot to write about.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“I want to matter and I’m afraid I won’t.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“My word for this year is extend…my service to others.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“How can I find new ways to serve people?” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“Stay curious and open your heart.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“Seek other perspectives and be a learner.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“You got to pour more into yourself than you pour out.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“Success doesn’t depend on me, it depends on them.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“My performance is really about their performance.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
“When I was young I thought it was all about me, now I realize it’s all about them.” -Dan Rockwell Click to Tweet
Dan was identifying himself by others and as a people pleaser he eventually became lost with needing to define himself by others. Then had an epiphany where things became clearer and Dan realized he had more in him and he began to turn to his strengths, talents and gifts. Listen to this episode and learn how Dan Rockwell transformed into the Leadership Freak.
Needing to get approval and pleasing people is not so healthy. Wanting to please people is a good thing. Needing it is not.
Insecurity and the fear of failure, and the need to succeed.
If we do it your way we’ll end up with nobody. Stop cutting people out.
Being a learner. Pour more into yourself so you can pour more out.
Listening to others
The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations
Leadership Freak blog: https://leadershipfreak.wordpress.com
Via email: dan [at] leadershipfreak.com
54 Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Competencies List: Emotional Intelligence has proven to be the right kind of intelligence to have if you want to move onward and upward faster. Get your free list today.
Show Transcript:
[expand title=”Click to access edited transcript”]
Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligent practitioner, Jim Rembach.
Jim Rembach: Thanks Kimberly. Okay Fast Leader Legion you’re going to want make sure that you go to iTunes and that you subscribe, rave and review this episode so that everybody gets a chance to hear it. Because I’m going to introduce to you today a farm boy. Not just any ‘ole farm boy he’s a farm boy from Maine and lives in central Pennsylvania with his wife of 39 years, and he says that she is the joy of his life. He prefers country living than city living because there’s nothing like looking out the window and seeing a deer running in the field. He has three children and four grandchildren. And he says the grandchildren are one of his life’s compensations. When he’s not enjoying good books and his family he delivers keynotes, workshops, and coaches’ leaders and he writes—and man he writes a lot. I have Dan Rockwell on the show. That’s right the leadership freak himself.
Dan’s contribution to the leadership community includes writing a highly recognized leadership freak blog. Leadership Freak was the most socially shared leadership blog in the world, three years in a row. Leaders in every country around the globe gain encouragement and insight from his writing. Over 300,000 subscribers have opted in to Dan’s social media channels. The American Management Association list Dan as one of the top 30 leaders in business. INC recognizes Dan is one of the top 50 leadership and management experts in the English-speaking world. INC also recognizes Dan as a top 100 leadership speaker. Dan Rockwell, are you ready to help us get over the hump?
Dan Rockwell: Let’s rock ‘n roll.
Jim Rembach: I love it okay. So, I’ve given our listeners a brief introduction can you please tell us what is your current passion so that we can get to know you better?
Dan Rockwell: My current passion is developing coaching cultures in organizations. I believe in servant leadership. I believe that the logical extension of servant leadership is being a coaching leader and that means developing the organizations that are embracing a coaching culture where people understand what it means to be coached and what it means to coach.
Jim Rembach: It’s really interesting that you say that in the context that you say it because I think oftentimes as a society we get very confused between the difference of training, counseling, coaching, mentoring—for you when you say coaching, can you help us a little bit more to understand what that means?
Dan Rockwell: I think there’s some misconceptions about a coach. I’ll tell you a quick story. I coach my wife, and I used this story when I talk to people about how to coach. As soon as I say I coach my wife, the eyeballs roll the eyebrows go up it’s like, “Wow, that must be an interesting kind of experience.” And the reason our eyeballs roll and we go, “Oh, wow.” It’s because we still have this idea that a coach is a person who knows more than I do, a coach is a person who has all the answers and can tell me what to do, that’s not the case all. Think about Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods has a golf coach that golf coach is not a better golfer than Tiger Woods. So, when it comes to coaching I think about—a coach is a person who maximizes the talent and skill of another person, helps them find their strengths and helps them figure out what their path forward is to exceptional performance.
Jim Rembach: I think there’s some really important things for me that’s resonating when you’re talking about that. One is discovery, being able to discover. Interpretation being able to interpret. Encourage being able to do that and apply, four critical components right there when you start talking about coaching as you defined it. What else would you say?
Dan Rockwell: I think it’s important in a coaching culture that the people who are being coached understand the process. There’s a traditional view of what it means to be a leader. And so now here comes the coaching leader and the traditional view would be—‘Well, tell me what to do and I’ll go do it.” And so now if a leader comes and was the coach an employee through a process to find their maximum performance the person being coached is like, “What are you after? Why you asking me these questions? Why don’t you just tell me what you want me to do? We experienced this kind of resistance in organizations where we try to help develop the coaching culture because people want to be told what to do. But here’s the thing, when you tell someone what to do you really are enhancing their helplessness and their dependency. So what we want to do when we think about coaching is maximize your strength and focus on your abilities and put responsibility for performance in your lap, not in the leaders lap, not in the coach’s lap in the sense of you’re going to make the decisions you’re going to maximize your own performance I’m the person who was helping you do that.
Jim Rembach: That was fantastic advice thank you for sharing. Those insights are so valuable to help us get better definition of what is coaching and what isn’t. Now, Dan I have to say that I’m quite intimidated to ask somebody like you my next question but it’s something that’s important to us in the Fast Leader show because inspiration we all need it and we look to leadership quotes in order to help us.
Some people have passages or things like that, but I’m sure you’re volumes of things that you’ve read, because people who write a lot typically read a lot, is there something that stands out to you as a reminder that you always hear in your head and it replay’s like a song that never gets out that gives you inspiration and drives you from a leadership perspective? Can you share that with us please?
Dan Rockwell: Wow, that’s a tough question. The first thing that comes to mind, I’m not sure it’s a quote anywhere—if you’re going to talk about it do something about it or say it the other way, don’t talk about it if you’re not going to do something about it. I just get so frustrated with all this conversations that are not going nowhere and so that for me is a sort of a guiding principle, I keep that with me a lot. I’m listening to myself talk and I listen to conversations and I’m asking myself, are we moving toward action and behavior? Or are we just chasing her tail?
Jim Rembach: Oh, I love the quote. It resonates for me so much but I have to share with you and be transparent and say that that’s one of the frustrations that I have as a husband. I wonder if there’s a gender difference when it comes to that because my wife often tells, “Look, I don’t necessarily want to do anything about it, I just want to tell you about it.” And so, sometimes for me like I’m like, “Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know because I’m going to do something it.” Do you see that fall on gender lines or is it more of personality traits?
Dan Rockwell: Well, in building a relationship with my wife I know what you’re saying. I’m glad you brought it out because there is this bias to action that if you’re not careful it short-circuits just some of the necessary conversation that needs to happen. I would say this though, I think back to—I been married for almost 40 years now, I got married when I was 19—“it is by the way I hear you, let’s talk through, let’s just listen, let me just listen” and part of coaching my wife, she says she can tell when I’m trying to fix her and when I’m just listening, so there is some value there.
But I think also I love to ask the question, like say we have maybe a tense conversation, I love to ask a question toward the end of it well “what do you want? Let’s think about what you want?” and kind of put that in behavioral terms. So maybe the fixing thing is not so much she doesn’t want me to fix her but let’s work on what the relationship looks like behaviorally, but anyway I hear you it’s good thing to bring up.
Jim Rembach: I want that you brought up that coaching concept piece and the framework and all of that that kind of helps me a lot because I need to make sure that I’m putting that hat on sometimes and just really listen do a better job of active listening.
Dan Rockwell: I’ll give you a tip. It comes to me from John Stoker who wrote overcoming fake conversations, he’s a coach, and he taught me that the way to tell whether you’re trying to fix or whether you’re just listening and being a coach and helping someone else find their way forward is that sense of tension, anxiety or frustration you feel in your heart. As soon as that starts to bubble up you know you’re trying to fix.
Jim Rembach: Gosh, I feel that often. [Laughter]
Dan Rockwell: I know, and I’ve learned to just monitor my own emotions and as I see it start to heat up I realize breath let it go, you are not the person to find the answer, they are.
Jim Rembach: Again awesome, sage advice. Just to let you all know, we go through and we pull out a lot of the different tidbits of information and put them in quotes on our show notes page and Dan has already dropped so many, I wanted to make sure that you know that. You can find those on the show notes page which will be fastleader.net/Dan Rockwell. Okay Dan, life we know is not always a piece of cake. We often have humps that we have to get over and there’s so much teaching and learning and probably coaching that goes in those moments, can you think of a time where you’ve had that hump to get over and you found a situation where it kind of define you or help you set a new direction, can you share that story with us?
Dan Rockwell: I think the story of life is that we start off identifying ourselves by others. There comes a stage in life where you start to move away from that and start to define yourself by yourself and who you really are, that’s a long process. I’m a people pleaser and so a large part of my life has been spent pleasing people and identifying myself that way.
About five years ago I took a month off, or maybe six years now, I remember the day it was one of those midlife crisis moments—and I’ve had many midlife crisis I’m a huge fan of them we all have lots of them—and it was then that some things came clear I just said to myself “you have more in you” and I realize I was defining myself by others. And it was in that moment that I said, “You know what, I don’t need any of these. I don’t need any job that I have. I don’t need any of it.” It doesn’t mean that you turn mean and nasty, what it means is you turn to your strength, you turn to your talent, you turn to your gift and you begin to bring that authentically versus doing it to get approval and pleasing people. I still love to please people and so do you and it’s a good thing but needing it is not quite so healthy.
Jim Rembach: So, can you tell us about the situation as it occurred? What happened?
Dan Rockwell: I think our lives kind of drop in to ten-year segments, I think it’s more of a timing thing than a specific situation. For example, when you go off to college, 18, 19, 20, you’re going to have a crisis an identity crisis. And then somewhere around the 30’s probably got married and so there’s going to be some of that and then the kids come. Researchers showing that you really almost on the decade markers, and for me it started just before the 50’s or just around the 50’s and it was about a two or three-year period of frustration then it they finally boom it just came clear for me and then things changed.
Jim Rembach: So, what did you do differently?
Dan Rockwell: First of all there’s an attitudinal difference and that’s the biggest thing. You still love people and you still want to serve people but you don’t do it to just gain their approval and so there’s great freedom. I think there’s freedom to serve and there’s freedom to speak your own heart and mind kindly when you disagree, for example. When you’re deep pleaser it’s hard to disagree so you stuffed down some of things really think. So for me one of the changes is to kindly speak to have candor. I just talked to Jack Welch last week and he said his mom taught him to be authentic early on, he’s known for candor and I said, “Tell me is this the foundation for candor?” and he said, “Absolutely.” Just knowing who you are and sticking with that it allows you to be candid. So, anyway, one of the things that change for me is freedom and the kindness and candor that comes out and then I started writing Leadership Freak, I tie that to that experience as well so I started writing Leadership Freak and then rest is history.
Jim Rembach: So, that refocus and rededication—when you start talking about writing of Leadership Freak and the proliferation of it is just amazing to me how much volume and variability and in that content that you actually can generate. With that change did there also come a different sense of discipline, focus, habit that you can allude to being more concrete, structured then, ‘Hey, I just did something different?’
Dan Rockwell: Yeah. I’m a farm boy from Maine and so I know what it means to get up and work hard and I would get up before school and work and work has been part of my life all along. I get up very early to write the Leadership Freak blog and that’s a little bit of my nature but I think the thing that’s driving this proliferation, as you put it, is a need to matter. In those years, in those darker years the part of that is I felt like I could matter more and I was disappointed in how far I’ve come and so what you see now is the drive to matter. A lot of people don’t like to hear this but I’m just going to say it to you, people ask me, “Why are you writing so much?” First of all, I’ve made lots of mistakes and I got lots to write about because I made lots of mistakes, but I want to matter. I’m going to put it to you in the negative languages well, I’m afraid I won’t. And there is in my own life some of this fear that I won’t matter. Also sometimes when I think, ‘You know what, why don’t you just sleep today?’ and there’s that voice that says, ‘You know what, you bring it down there’. It’s not the noblest thing in the world but that’s part of the story.
Dan Rockwell: But is the human story. And that’s one of the things that we could go for and really pull out here on the Fast Leader show. For the longest time you and I had talked about this—leadership and leading, I think almost hijacked. And it was hijacked by folks that said that this is only for the elite, this is only for the high potential folks this is only for the people who are above this point within an organization or in this age group. I call hogwash on that. We all have the opportunity to lead if at least it’s ourselves and there’s no way we can ever have followers if we don’t do a good job of that. I think you shared through your story a lot about that self-leadership component which has allowed you to impact so many leaders and others.
Jim Rembach: I thank you for sharing that and really appreciate it. I know that all of the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the best. We want to know what your goals are for the future.
Dan Rockwell: In the short-term my word for this year is ‘Extend.’ I practiced a word for the year, there’s a book called One Word, I don’t really like the New Year’s resolution thing but I do practice one word, and this year my word is ‘Extend.’ I want to extend my service to others. I want to extend my speaking engagements, I’m becoming a little more cognizant of that type of thing. In the long haul, I’ve really enjoyed coaching and that’s important to me. I just look forward to opportunities to serve people that’s what extend means to me, how can I find new ways to serve people.
Jim Rembach: So, based on everything that you shared with us so far—extending and all that, what is one piece of advice you would give to our listeners?
Dan Rockwell: Stay curious. Open your heart. I think leaders can be quick to make decisions and once we make a decision curiosity ends and then we start defending that decision. I would encourage leaders, especially young leaders, to be curious. What that means is to bring the outsiders in, to seek other perspectives and be a learner.
Jim Rembach: So, when you start talking about part of the future and give them back there’s also a business side to it. What is one thing that really excites you about the work that you’re doing today? You mentioned the coaching, what else?
Dan Rockwell: The opportunity to do keynote work for an organization is a wonderful opportunity and is a good business opportunity as well because you get to learn about what they’re doing. The keynote obviously is not going to radically change an organization but a keynote presentation, you gave to align with where that organization is going and speak into it and feel that fire, so I do enjoy the keynote opportunities.
Jim Rembach: That’s fantastic, the entire Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Alright here we go Fast Leader listeners it’s time for the rapid part of our show, and that’s the, Hump Day Hoedown. Okay Dan, the Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast. I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Dan Rockwell, are you ready to hoedown?
Dan Rockwell: I’m ready to hoedown.
Jim Rembach: Alright. What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?
Dan Rockwell: Insecurity. The fear of failure and just the need to succeed.
Jim Rembach: What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?
Dan Rockwell: If we do it your way we’ll end up with nobody, it can be hard on people. I had a friend of mine look me in the eye and say, ‘You know what, you’ve got to stop cutting people out.
Jim Rembach: What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?
Dan Rockwell: Being a learner. The ideas is you’re going to pour more into yourself than you pour so keep pouring in yourself and then you have plenty to pour out.
Jim Rembach: What do you feel is one of your best resources that helps you lead in business or life?
Dan Rockwell: Listening to others.
Jim Rembach: What would be one book you would recommend to our listeners, and I know that’s tough, but give it a shot.
Dan Rockwell: The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner.
Jim Rembach: Thank you very much. Alright Fast Leader listeners you can find links to that information as well as to the Leadership Freak blog, if you haven’t subscribed already, and other bonus information by going to fastleader.net/Dan Rockwell. Okay Dan, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you woke up tomorrow morning and you were 25 years old again but you’ve been blessed you have all the knowledge and wisdom and you get to take it with you, now your job is to manage a team that is underperforming and disengaged. Now you get up in the morning you go to work, what you do now?
Dan Rockwell: I realize that success doesn’t depend on media it depends on them and that my performance is really about their performance. When I was young I thought it was all about me and now I realize it’s all about them.
Jim Rembach: Age does have something to do with that? But we’re hoping that at the Fast Leader show that are younger listeners can hear that sooner and it’ll click for them sooner and that’s really what the Fast Leader show is about—it isn’t about doing things quickly it’s about doing things right. Dan Rockwell It’s an honor to spend time with you today. Can you please share with the Fast Leader listeners how they can connect with you?
Dan Rockwell: If you go to Google and type in Leadership Freak you can’t miss me. And if you’d like to email you can e-mail Dan@leadershipfreak.com.
Jim Rembach: Dan Rockwell, thank you for sharing her knowledge and wisdom, the Fast Leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump.
Thank you for joining on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over to the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.
END OF AUDIO
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What Chuck believed when he was given the responsibility to drive customer satisfaction as high as possible was that the rest of the organization would pay attention to the customer results. Join me as Chuck tells the story of what he and his team decided to do when the organization decided to focus somewhere else. Learn how they moved forward and obtained success.
Chuck Udzinski was born the oldest of six children and from an early age was instilled with the responsibility to protect and care for his younger siblings, which he still is dedicated to doing today.
Chuck has been working since the age of 14. Other than that job, as a paper boy, Chuck has had a career of jobs where he was responsible for helping others run their business.
Chuck says his best job was working for a decade for a McDonald’s franchisee, because he was able to get the opportunity to experience all aspects of a business, from P&L management, people management, and technology and process.
He retired from Black & Decker but he’s not done. He is currently a client success manager with Oracle, helping customers of Oracle receive the most value from the application they purchase.
Chuck is most proud of the fact that he’s been part of raising a son and daughter that are positive contributors to society and being a Pop Pop to his grandsons Corbin and Aiden.
Listen to @ChuckUdzinski getting over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet
“We’re not saving babies here, it’s just stuff, let’s get to it.” Chuck Udzinski Click to Tweet
“If you’re through changing, you’re through.” Chuck Udzinski Click to Tweet
“If you don’t keep reinventing yourself you’ll fall to the wayside.” Chuck Udzinski Click to Tweet
“You must invest in yourself in order to keep moving forward.” Chuck Udzinski Click to Tweet
“It’s a constant evolving to make yourself marketable, in an ever changing marketplace.” Chuck Udzinski Click to Tweet
“Until you’re dead, you’re not done.” Jim Rembach Click to Tweet
“I put my elbows out this morning and they didn’t touch wood, so I got out of bed.” Chuck Udzinski Click to Tweet
“I really just want to feel like I’ve made a difference at the end of the day.” Chuck Udzinski Click to Tweet
“We cannot control what’s happening above us.” Chuck Udzinski Click to Tweet
“You must believe that the folks that work for you want to do a good job.” Chuck Udzinski Click to Tweet
“No one gets up in the morning to come to work to do a bad job.” Chuck Udzinski Click to Tweet
“I’m like a hair in a biscuit, you just can’t get it out of there.” Chuck Udzinski Click to Tweet
Chuck was the head of Customer Care for Black & Decker with a directive to drive customer satisfaction but was met with the challenge of trying to move the rest of the organization to be more customer-centric. After several attempts and mass frustration Chuck and his team decided to end the frustration of trying to control things that were outside of their control. That’s when Chuck and his team began to move onward and upward faster. Listen to the show to find out how Chuck and his team found a better way, so you can find your way faster.
We were going to focus on what we could control and that was the attitude of the folks that worked for me and we focused on the goals and opportunities that we could achieve on our own.
My ability to understand that I can’t change everything I think needs changing.
To stay focused, believe what you are doing, and don’t let the noise that surrounds you get in the way of reaching your goals.
I just cannot stand when someone says we can’t change that or we have always done it this way.
A Carrot a Day: A Daily Dose of Recognition for Your Employees
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/pub/chuck-udzinski/2/a67/765
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chuck.udzinski
Via email: cudzinski [at] gmail.com
54 Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Competencies List: Emotional Intelligence has proven to be the right kind of intelligence to have if you want to move onward and upward faster. Get your free list today.
Show Transcript:
[expand title=”Click to access edited transcript”]
Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we uncover the leadership like hat that help you to experience, breakout performance faster and rocket to success. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligent practitioner, Jim Rembach.
Jim Rembach: Thanks Kimberly. Okay Fast Leader legion, the person who you’re going to get a chance to meet today is somebody that, really we all wish we had in our circle of friends, or in our family, and we’d even more blessed if it was, that’s Chuck Udzinski. Chuck is one of those folks that you become instantly connected to. He was the oldest of six kids born and lived in the Baltimore area, pretty much all of his life, and grew up with a strong set of family members. As the oldest child he is instilled with taking care of others that he still really and really does today. He was a Maryland state duckpin champion which to me is one those fun family games that I can see how that connects when you start talking about Chuck and his life and his family.
He’s also Orioles and Ravens fan, but I’m not going to hold it against him. He’s working since he was 14, but all this job since that one which was being a paperboy, led to or was part of helping others run their businesses. He says that his best job was working for almost a decade for a McDonald’s franchisee because he got the opportunity to see all aspects of a business, everything from P&L management up to the people management to the technologies and all the processes. He retired from Black & Decker but he’s not done yet. He’s currently a client success manager with Oracle but what he’s most proud of is that fact that he’s been part of raising a son and daughter that are positive contributors to society. But he’s most proud of being a Pop Pop to Aiden and Corbin. Alright, Chuck are you ready to help us get over the hump?
Show Transcript:
Chuck Udinzki: I am ready to light this candle.
Jim Rembach: Alright. We’ve given our listeners a brief introduction but could you please tell us what your current passion is, and I may have given it away, but we want to get to know you better.
Chuck Udzinski: [Laugh] My current passion truly and the reason that I get up every day in the morning is to set a great example for my two children who are grown at this point, 37 and 35, but also sharing my values and my enthusiasm for life and hard work in general with my two grandsons.
Jim Rembach: They say and I aspire to get to that point Chuck ‘cause my kids are still young, I got 11, 9 and 6 at this moment. Everybody says, it’s awesome being a parent but it is even more special and fantastic to be a grandparent.
Chuck Udzinski: Well, that’s absolutely true. I tell love young parents all the time that being a parent it’s the greatest job in the world and the worst job in the world but once you get grandkids it’s a lot more fun it’s like being a father but without all the rules.
Jim Rembach: Well Chuck, you’re one of those people who I’ve always looked to for some inspiration. You and I, oftentimes, we get in the weeds about some stuff that frustrate us but we always kind of pick each other up. You’re one of those people that when you start talking about your career you’ve always help others, you help others in a lot of ways. I know there’s got to be some inspirational quotes or passages that kind of help keep you moving forward and redirect to yourself—get out of the weeds. Could you share one of your favorite with us please?
Chuck Udzinski: What I’m going to share to you Jim what I try to remind myself every day that I’m not Dr. Ben Carson doing complex brain surgeries on pediatric patient. I often tell folks, ‘Look, we’re not saving babies here, it’s just stuff let’s just roll our sleeves up and get to it, we’ll go to bed at night and get up tomorrow morning and go at it again.” The other one is—is one that I’m very fond of—if you’re through changing your through. And I try to remind myself that every day because I am of a certain age now that I’ve had to reinvent myself. I went from working for a manufacturing operation such as Black & Decker to working for a high-tech giant like Oracle, and believe me, every step along the way of my 40+ work history I’ve had to keep reinventing myself and if you don’t do that you’re just going to fall all the wayside.
Jim Rembach: Wow. You know, I think that is so true. When start talking about savings for example, people will tell you, you always tend to pay yourself first, right? The same applies with what you just said when you start talking about reinventing, when you start talking about learning new things you have to invest in yourself.
Chuck Udzinski: I couldn’t agree more. And whether that’s through formal education or reading or just associating and learning from other individuals with like-minded goals and values you must invest in yourself in order to keep moving forward.
Jim Rembach: So, for you when you start thinking about that reinvention and having to do that, I know you haven’t had many jobs per se in your career, you’ve been long tenured with a lot of the folks or organizations that you’ve worked with, but do you find yourself, kind of I guess you’d say maybe going through a process or a systematic approach to do that reinvention?
Chuck Udzinski: It’s a constant metamorphose. Let’s just take a look some of my examples. Ten years working for the McDonald’s franchisee that we mentioned earlier, my next position after that was in a manufacturing setting working in a factory that produced steel drums. I went in on a leadership side part of the management team. I have no experience in manufacturing and now I find myself working with individuals much older than me in a unionized environment and that was a total paradigm shift that I had to learn how to cope with.
I’ll give you another one. When I’m in Black & Decker I started as a call center agent and it became apparent to me that I was just woefully unprepared from an educational standpoint to move up if that’s what I wanted to do. So, at the age of 50 I went back to school. I went back part-time at night, it took me six years going part time, but I finally did get that piece of paper that said that I had successfully jumped through all the hoops and canal claimed to be college-educated. It’s just a constant investment as we mentioned earlier and constant evolving to make yourself marketable in an ever-changing marketplace.
Jim Rembach: As I listen to your talk Chuck there’s a quote that kind of stands out for me listening to you—and that is until you’re dead, you’re not done.
Chuck Udzinski: [Laugh] I couldn’t agree with that more. You talked about favorite sayings I tell folks—you always get a question, how you are doing? So I just tell them, ‘Well I put my elbows out this morning and it didn’t touch wood so I got out of bed.
Jim Rembach: What kind of reaction do you get from that? To me I think everybody can resonate with that—no elbows hit in the box I got to go.
Chuck Udzinski: I’ll tell you what, they pause for a second or two and then it dawns on them, Yeah, that’s right, let’s get going. The reaction is always fun to watch but it does resonate with everyone.
Jim Rembach: When you start looking at what you currently do today, what really excites you about the work that you’re doing?
Chuck Udzinski: I think it applies definitely to this job with Oracle, but it applies to every job that I’ve ever had in the past and possibly even those jobs that I’ll have in the future. I really just want to feel like I’ve made a difference at the end of the day. In my current role, I call on clients that have purchased Oracle applications and my job is to go in and make sure they’re getting value out of what they purchased. And if I can help them see that values through various actions that I take then I feel like I’ve made a difference for them and I’ve made a difference for Oracle. The money is great, we all need the money to take care of ourselves and our family but, the money, the titles, really don’t matter that much to me what I’m really striving to do is be able to say, I’ve made a difference.
Jim Rembach: What goals do you have for the future?
Chuck Udzinski: Well, goals for the future—I’m not sure I’m done yet, I’m definitely not dead. I still feel I have something to offer Oracle and if not Oracle then others out in the marketplace that are looking for someone with strong leadership ability and a sense of doing what’s right. Beyond that I’ve got my, again I’m of a certain age, that I’m starting if I squint real hard and possibly retirement down the road at some point. Even in retirement, I don’t know if that’s going to be a great fit, I fancy myself teaching, perhaps at some point maybe, just at the community college level or possibly in a university or college on a part-time basis. I am always looking to spend more time with my tools and woodworking equipment that I’ve amassed over these many years. And then there’s travel and travel would include taking my grandkids with me as well.
Jim Rembach: Well Chuck, the entire Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Chuck, you have such a positive outlook and attitude and you talk about constantly focusing and transitioning, however, there had to be a time where you had a hump to get over and getting over that hump to find who you were and who you are and those strong Udzinski family values, can you tell us about a time in your life when that occurred?
Chuck Udzinski: Well, I think those moments occur often throughout one’s life journey, whether they’re personal humps or perhaps career humps. I’ll talk about a career hump first and that would have occurred at Black & Decker. We were always trying to push the envelope in the contact center, by the way I mentioned I started as a contact center agent but evolved up to the position of leading that organization or the majority of my time working for that organization. The hump that was coming up at Black & Decker as the contact center leader was that—we had this directive to drive customer satisfaction as high as possible. We engaged with the company Customer Relationship Metrics to help us with that project, that was fine, that was good these guys were experts in that field definitely were the right partner for us but the hump was trying to get the rest of the organization and, as you might guess Black and Decker’s a global organization at that time 30,000 people strong, but trying to get the rest of the organization to pay attention to the results that we were seeing in the contact center. Quite frankly, the hump that I got over and the rest of my team got over was we said, “You know what, enough is enough we cannot control what’s happening above us.” So what we’re going to do is focus on making the change right here in the contact center. We’ll report the numbers up but were not going to be asking for direction, or opinion, we are going to focus on what we could control and that was the attitude of the folks who worked for me as well as the goals and opportunities that we could achieve on our own. I’m proud to say that we got over that hump but it was an Aha moment. Once we had that moment the road to success became ever clearer every day and we truly realize the value of our partners Customers Relationship Metrics.
Jim Rembach: Just be transparent to everybody, yes, I know Chuck because of my relationship and working for Customer Relationship Metrics, and Chuck thank you for that—the appreciation, and believe me, it’s mutual. It’s been a joy to get to know you and carry on, our relationship will be on your time or regardless of where we work I should say. Now when you start thinking about the advice that you would give to our Fast Leader Legion and that story, what advice would you give them?
Chuck Udinzki: The advice—the main thing, the main take away is, you must believe that the folks that are working for you want to do a good job. The big, big disconnect that I saw in my team at that time and since then in organizations that I’ve had the privilege to go in and out of in one capacity or another, is that most time the agents do not know what’s expected of them. And they have no way of figuring out what they have to do, to do a better job. It’s really about setting expectations and then holding them accountable to those expectations and leading them in a positive way to success.
I strongly believe that no one gets up in the morning gets ready for work, deals with the family issues in the morning as everyone’s trying to get out the door in our busy, busy work-a-day lives handles the commute whether you’re driving, walking, taking a bicycle, riding a train whatever it is you do to get to work, to come in sit down for eight hours and do a bad job, I don’t believe people are doing that by nature they want to do a good job. Once you understand that and then define what that good job means believe me your halfway home.
Jim Rembach: That’s great advice Chuck and thank you for sharing. Alright now it’s time to move to the fast part of our show and it’s the, Hump Day Hoedown. Okay Chuck, Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast. I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Chuck, are you ready to hoedown?
Chuck Udzinski: I am ready to hoedown. Let’s do it.
Jim Rembach: Alright. What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?
Chuck Udzinski: My ability to understand that I cannot change everything I think needs changing. That really does get in the way sometimes. It’s all about filtering out picking your battles and then going out them with a zest and commitment.
Jim Rembach: What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?
Chuck Udzinski: To stay focused, believe in what you’re doing and not let all the noise that surrounds us get in the way of reaching those goals, single-mindedness toward your ultimate goal.
Jim Rembach: What is one of your secret that you believe contributes to your success?
Chuck Udzinski: I’d say I’m like a hair in a biscuit, you just can’t get it out of there no matter what you do and I think that sums up how I approach things. I just cannot stand when someone says, “Oh, we can’t change that or we can’t do this or we’ve always done it this way,” if one thing doesn’t work then let’s drop back figure something else out and will go try that eventually will get it right.
Jim Rembach: So, for me what I heard was resilience.
Chuck Udzinski: Resilience is a great word.
Jim Rembach: What you feel is one of your best resources that helps you lead in business or life?
Chuck Udzinski: Publications by others. One of the ones that I’m particular fond of and I’ve always had it on my desk is a real fun read, it’s A Carrot a Day, a daily dose of recognition for your employees, it’s by a guy named Adrian Gostick.
Jim Rembach: Thanks for sharing that Chuck. What I will do is put a link to that book on our show notes page which you will find at fastleader.net/chuckudzinski. Alright Chuck that leads us to the final question in our Hump Day Hoedown. I want you to imagine that you woke up tomorrow morning and you were 25 years old all over again but you’ve been blessed to get to retain everything that you know, all the experiences come with you and you get to use that in order to manage a disengaged and underperforming team, now you get up, you go to work, what you do now?
Chuck Udzinski: Well, the first thing that I would need to do is to tap in to why they’re disengaged, I think I would be able to get to that point much quicker. Then I would look at what is defining a good job for them. Again I’ll come back to, most people don’t know the answer to this, and they had no ideas of the goals of the organization as a whole all the way down to the goals and objectives of the group or team that they’re working in.
Once that would be defined a process would be started to measure their performance on metrics that they control—I just have to elaborate a little bit Jim—again my background for the most part is the customer service and I can’t tell you the number of times I’ll go in and agents will be held accountable for things such as abandonment rate or average speed of answer or service-level attainment and when you think about those very, very common metrics, agents have little to nothing to do with that these are metrics that the management team is responsible for influencing not the agent.
Jim Rembach: Alright, Chuck it was an honor to spend time with you today, can you please share with the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you?
Chuck Udzinski: Oh, sure. You can reach out to me on Facebook, you can friend me on Facebook. I’m also on twitter@cudzinski and you can also e-mail me at cudzinski@gmail.com.
Jim Rembach: Chuck, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom that Fast Leader Legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot Woot!
Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fast leader.net so we can help you onward and upward faster.
END OF AUDIO
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What Carol perceived coming out of business school was that she needed to take a tuff stance. Join me as Carol shares her story of learning how to become a path paver for women and a transformation expert of organizations. Learn how Carol found herself with having no consideration at all with executives to having a seat at the executive table. Learn how Carol found out how to become a catalyst for change without the use of force.
Carol is a graduate of the marketing management program from the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT).
She has 31 years of experience telecommunications experience spanning three continents, Carol‘s career has taken her from TELUS in Canada to British Telecom (BT) in the U.K. to Bharti Airtel in India, and back.
Carol concluded her career at Telus as the Senior Vice President – Customers First Culture.
In this role Carol was a passionate advocate across TELUS for their Customers First in 2010 and was the driving force behind the evolution of TELUS’ corporate culture to deliver on the future is friendly® to clients.
Carol has held senior roles in sales, service and business unit management, and has successfully managed change through deregulation, labor relations, consolidations, acquisitions, and rapid technological innovation.
As the past Chair of the CCA (U.K.’s contact center association), Carol is a recognized expert in contact centers, customer service operations and customer experience leadership in complex, multi-channel environments.
In her career she has had responsibilities leading more than 50, 000 employees that has served well over 150 million customers.
She is currently writing a book about how to put customer first for profit and FUN, speaking internationally and working with like-minded organizations that believe the age of customer capitalism is now.
Listen to @cborghesi getting over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow http://goo.gl/eB393z #Leadership #diversity Click to Tweet
“Much has been done to create greater diversity, but we have a long way to go.” -Carol Borghesi Click to Tweet
“Customer Experience is a team sport.” -Carol Borghesi Click to Tweet
“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it! –Goethe Click to Tweet
“I continue to learn now at a greater pace than I ever did in my career.” -Carol Borghesi Click to Tweet
“I have dipped in and out of believing my own press.” -Carol Borghesi Click to Tweet
“It’s not okay to be right if you’re all by yourself.” -Carol Borghesi Click to Tweet
“Customer Service is the drip tray of the organization.” -Carol Borghesi Click to Tweet
“Nobody is exempt from the team sport of customer experience.” -Carol Borghesi Click to Tweet
“Individual responsibility is what builds the company responsibility.” -Carol Borghesi Click to Tweet
“Bring more of who you are to your work.” -Carol Borghesi Click to Tweet
“Armed with data, I would then go talk to everybody.”-Carol Borghesi Click to Tweet
“What people tell you that they do and what they actually do can often be different.” -Carol Borghesi Click to Tweet
Carol was the head of Customer Experience for a large telecommunications company with an enterprise change issue. Sitting in customer service she was in a position that had no seat at the table. After several attempts and years Carol finally got it. Customer experience, which includes customer service is a team sport and nobody is exempt from playing. That’s when she got traction. Listen to the show to find out how Carol learned how to become a path paver and catalyst for organizational change, so you can become one faster.
There is no darn way a company could be filled with such customer oriented executives and not be customer focused.
Bring more of yourself to work.
Voracious and eclectic reader. “I read economics book for pleasure.”
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Show Transcript:
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Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligent practitioner, Jim Rembach.
Jim Rembach: Alright Fast Leader Legion hold back on that camel, we’re going to have a great day today, Carol Borghesi’s with us. She has really a depth of knowledge that I hope I can continue to tap in to for the next decade or so while she still wants to have time with me. But I get to share her with you today and it’s going to be fun. Carol is actually a graduate of the Marketing and Management program from the British Columbia Institute of Technology. She has 31 years of experience in telecommunications spanning three continents. She concluded her career at TELLUS as the Senior Vice-President of their Customer First Culture. In Israel, Carol was a passionate advocate across TELLUS for their Customers First in 2010 and was the driving force behind evolution of TELLUS’s corporate culture to deliver on the future is friendly to clients.
Carol has held several senior roles in sales, service, business unit management and has successfully manage change through deregulation, labor relations, consolidations, acquisitions and rapid technological innovation. Carol is a recognized expert in contact centers, customer service operations and customer experience leadership in complex multi-channel environments. In her career she has had responsibilities leading more than 50,000 employees and has served well over 150 million customers. She’s currently writing a book about how to put customers first and profit for fun, hopefully we’ll get in to little bit fun piece. And she also speaks internationally and loves working with like-minded organizations that believe the age of customer capitalism is now. Carole Borghesi were glad to have you, are you ready to help us get over the hump?
Carol Borghesi: I have never been more ready for anything in my entire life. Buoyed by that Las Vegas show lounge kind of introduction, Jim, my gosh I’m exhausted listening to my own career [inaudible 2:21]
Jim Rembach: As you can see, you know why Carol and I love to have conversations, we have a good time it’s something that always leads to another interaction that’s going to be even better. Alright, Carol, I’ve given our listeners a brief introduction but can you please tell us what your current passion is so that we can actually get to know you a little bit better?
Carol Borghesi: Well, what I want to say actually, listening to the background on the career I’ve had there’s three things that I wanted to really call out to the listeners. One is that, given that I’ve been working for more than 30 years, I started at a very young age obviously, one of the things that I ran into Jim, was I was often the first women to be in a particular role. I was first women that was on manage reports and so I want to call that out because I think that that’s really important to today’s world of work as well. That much has been done in the past to create greater diversity and focus but we still got long way to go and I really benefited I think from being an early pioneer which really it sounds, interest me even more pioneers circle the wagon.
The second thing that really characterized my career for me, was transformation. I was in an industry that has transformed beyond recognition going from monopoly to a very, very competitive and I tell you, I got the bug around managing change, managing change respectfully. Pretty up early on in my career, it’s something that continues to excite me and invigorate me, and I would add to that that I am so excited by the developments that I’ve seen in social media, as well as the why’s and rise of the millennial generation. I think that people coming up in world of worker or just [inaudible 4:10]
The third thing is that, I have been really lucky because I’ve worked in sales, marketing and service and those are the kind of the usual suspects when it comes to the work that I do, which is around customer experience. And I’m thrilled to tell you that I think a lot of the customer experience as a team’s sport which involves the entire organization need be on those three functional areas is really coming to its own right now, and that’s what getting me excited and passionate about running Customer First Culture, the little company that I founded and the principle core.
Jim Rembach: I almost have to say to myself, Carol is turning back the clock a little bit ‘cause we definitely need you as that path paver for many other women. You really were a pioneer. I know you were in the wagon, you’re not that old. However, you have been one of those who’ve been on the forefront in a lot of ways and that’s why I’m so glad to have you on the show so that you can continue to do just that, help pave the path runners, teach us how we can get ahead faster by learning from you.
With that we often find in the Fast Leader show where we need some inspiration, we like looking to leadership quotes in order to get some of that inspiration. Now I know you are an avid reader, you always seek to move things forward and you probably have had a lot of influences in your life. But is there one quote that kind of stands out to you as a driving force, a kind of always plays over in your head that know you enjoy, could you share that with us?
Carol Borghesi: I certainly can. I did a little bit of research on a quote that I’ve got to say has guided and probably influenced my career and approach to work many, many years ago and that is, whatever we can do or dream you can do begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it and that was back in the olden days attributed to Goethe, which is Johann Goethe, a famous and very, very prolific as well as terrific, writer, philosopher and poet but it actually was coined by W. H. Murray who works as spots man and it was in connection with mountain climbing which is what his particular passion was.
I think that its relevant today, certainly in the pace that I am in my career, as it was when I was a young [inaudible 6:48] getting started. It is action focused. I love that it reflects boldness. I love that it opens, went out to the possibilities. I know the feeling of being the only one in the room that can see it where you can get a mirage or you can see it but no one else can. And sometimes that’s kind of lonely but I’ve going to say that it’s immensely rewarding. It has also spurred me on to learn and continue to dream and to grow. I may have been a path finder for women back in that day but I can say that with absolute clarity and conviction that I continue to learn at a greater pace now than I’ve ever been in my career, probably because I know now what I don’t know.
Jim Rembach: That’s a really interesting point that you have made there as far as the velocity of the learning. What would you necessarily attribute that to, is there something that kind of stands out to you that says: “Ah, that’s one of the reasons why it is that way, is it just because we’ve had so much information or is it something else?
Carol Borghesi: I think that it’s certainly reflection of the society, the advents of the Internet, the explosion of the information society that we’re in but I also actually think it’s personal. Some people are life-long learners and I think however, when you get to be the age that I am, I am so old I think they’ve discontinued my blood type for crying out loud, but it is almost a life stage kind of thing where I now realize that there’s so much happening and so much to learn from. I’d see there’s humility in that Jim and I can’t always frame that I was the most humble leader. I have occasionally victim in out of believing my own crust [Laughter] and that’s generally what’s prevented me from creaking out my ears and learning from others.
Jim Rembach: I think we’ve all had a taste of that to some degree, I don’t think there’d be any forward movement if we didn’t experience that. There’s a lot of humps that we all have to get over, we call them humps here in the Fast Leader Show, as I chat with you before our mission is kind of redefining what leadership is and what it means. I think you just in telling your story at this point have really made it very clear that a lot of it entails leading yourself and if you think about it just from that perspective, we’re all leaders. The nature of work today requires that we all become better at that. The individual who’s sitting there out on a proverbial island having to take care of certain responsibilities for organization has to do a lot of leading. Leading of self, leading of project timelines, leading of their own career advancement. A lot of times I had talked to employees and the like, ‘what are going to give me as an employee/as a company to help me get ahead?’ And I’m like, ‘First of all, you need to fix your mindset and think, what do I need to do? And stuck handed to you, you have to take your own initiative take your own strength from that and move forward, so, that’s an important point. I know there’s a lot of humps and you talked about path paving, you talked about a lot of different things within your career, but is there a particular story that kind of stands out that was a defining moment that you could share with us?
Carlo Borghesi: Yeah. I did learn early and often that it’s not right that you’re all by yourself. To say that I had a very excited opinion of my own intellect would be characteristic of one of my wonder years, let me say, but that the hump that I really wanted to share with you today is—I spend a lot of times working in customer service. Customer service as I’ve said to you Jim before is the drip tray of the organization. It ain’t somewhere that you got a lot of credit or kudos. Your mom and dad didn’t say, ”Gee, I hope he goes to school and becomes a customer service professional.” And I puzzled over that for the longest time. I really, finally kind of realize that I can spend all day long trying to yell ever louder at a customer service organization and wouldn’t get anywhere, kind of like how you raise your voice volume when you’re trying to somebody who doesn’t speak English as though that’s the problem. So it dawned on me that I had an enterprise changes here on my hands and that’s really daunting because seating in customer service your particular function in the organization, not necessarily always at the table and it wasn’t until I reach the last company that I worked with that I really saw the way through to overcome the issue.
First and foremost, I wanted to say that when I finally got it, that customer experience which includes customer service is a team’s sport that was when I really started to get some traction. And I took an approach which said that nobody is exempt from the team’s sport of customer experience and I seriously mean that, I don’t care if you’re an internal audit or the security guard you can’t find your way back to customer experience in the way that you impact that.
The second thing that I realize and was able to work on, was that the frontline of an organization has as much to contribute to the executives of an organization as the other way around. The other thing about executives being the liberators of those that work in jobs that are closer to the customer and generally not a [inaudible 12:33] What I saw was really understanding that, instead of trying to get the executive to preach to the frontline, I brought the executive to the frontline and actually let them teach the executive a thing or two about the reality of what’s it’s like to be with customers when you don’t have all the tools and information that you need.
The third thing that happened was kind of strengthen that conviction. I’ve worked with an extremely talented guy on a framework called Likelihood to recommend and I talked to you about this Jim before, you remember that. But the reason I wanted to bring this up is because I got a lot of stick over the Likelihood to recommend framework which is incredibly a simple notion. It’s based on the fact that Likelihood to recommend is kind of the highest order intermingling the customer and a company’s brand so that if I’m going to recommend you that’s really putting my reputation on the line as well. The problem arose when dealing with a lot of ingenuity finance traits that they now let me put it that way, behind the framework that I’d created, was honestly subject to what could be amounts to ridicule.
I’d walked through that and stand my ground it was really helpful. I’ve learned a lot about being able to manage information that was performance base as well as customer information and employee information. The good news is that singular focus of Likelihood to recommend and understanding what drives, like we have to work then, really did carry the day.
And the last thing and the most interesting thing, once I realize that there’s a big difference between how we perceive others, which we generally perceive by their behaviors, which is how we perceive ourselves, which is generally by our intentions. One of the things that I learned first-hand was that in asking this group of executives to spend some time with frontline, after they’ve had that experience ask them two questions. The first questions was, to what degree do you think our company puts customers first? About 41% of the executives, remembering these are the guys that run the place, said 42%, so I thought that’s not really good, less than half. But when I ask them to what degree do you personally put customers first? A whacking 82% claimed that they in fact put customers first. Big moment because that really helped everybody understand, there’s no darn way that a company could be filled with such customer oriented executives and not be customer focused. So that individual responsibility is what builds the company responsibility and that was an incredibly exciting breakthrough that I got with the last company with it.
Jim Rembach: Now, I know that force is not something that a woman who’s sitting there with probably a bunch of old telecom engineers running a business and trying to talk to them about customer service is something that would work. So how were you able to essentially ‘crack the nut’, get over the hump with them? How did you actually move things forward? What did you do specifically as a person, as an individual? What things did you learn throughout the course of your working on different continents that you had to do or do differently in order to really have that impact and effect?
Carol Borghesi: For listeners of my vintage, I’m sure they won’t be surprised to know that I did try the ‘force approach’. What I perceive coming out of business school was kind of a touch down and so on. Since I’m often referred to them as the man my parents wanted me to marry, I guess it’s not totally surprising I take on the male approach. I got over that, but you know, what really worked in the end, was I realized that the CEO of an organization is a really critical player and they often look to the CEO to provide direction. What I notice is that CEO’s are not waiting for their teams to take up the goblet particularly of customer’s experience. And I learned that understanding and meeting the uncertainties and concerns that the CEO’s or the [inaudible16:59] had, was really important. That led to, believe it or not, critical mess and I think that that in the end is what I’ve learned is that critical mess—you got a momentum Jim that starts to turn the tide in an organization. Does it helps to have the CEO on site? Absolutely. But in the end you don’t need force you need to tap into what arguably is a very popular concept with people right across any organization and to really start to make that a tipping point. You don’t need to force anything. I suppose in that too you realize that anyone person really isn’t going to make anything happen in any organization through [inaudible 7:43] however much we’d like to think of it that way.
And when you see that bringing people on and giving them the opportunity to express their views and create that informal network in an organization, Bingo! that’s what made the difference.
Jim Rembach: You have mentioned something about the current work that you’re doing, can you share a little bit about that with us?
Carol Borghesi: My next assignment is really, really terrific it’s in the U.K. I’m going to be working on developing a customer contact operation for a business that represents 23 manufacturers and 74 dealers in the automotive industry. It’s a juicy lemon in a sense there’s a lot of complexity in trying to manage various staff and many stakeholders who have varying degrees of customer relationship management system. Everything from back of a cocktail napkin to a very sophisticated but equally a way territorial and protective of customer information. I think that I’ll be spending a little bit of the spring and summer in the U.K.
Jim Rembach: Oh, there could be things that are a lot worse than that. We wish you the best and we hope that goes well for you. Now we transition to the rapid part of our show and that is Hump Day Hoedown. Okay Carol Borghesi, the Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us a good insights fast. I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us a robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Carol, are you ready the hoedown?
Carol Borghesi: I am ready to hoedown.
Jim Rembach: Alright. What do you think is holding you back from being yet an even better leader today?
Carol Borghesi: This may be considered oversharing ladies and gentlemen but the absolute honest truth—procrastination. It is something that is a personal trait of mine, 2015 is about working on procrastination for me.
Jim Rembach: There you go, onward and upward faster, right? Okay, what’s the best leadership advice you have ever received?
Carol Borghesi: Bring more of who you are to your work.
Jim Rembach: What is one of your secret that you believe that contributes to your success?
Carol Borghesi: I am, as you mentioned earlier a voracious and eclectic reader. I read across a very broad spectrum of topics, my family despairs because I read the economics book for pleasure. I do have the usual suspects, the Economist, the Harper Business Review, novels and pretty weighty Thomason, neuroscience—it’s pretty broad.
Jim Rembach: Well, we don’t want to necessarily constrict you to one particular John Roe or topic type, but is there a book that you would recommend to our listeners?
Carol Borghesi: Yes there is. This was very easy for me to think of but it’s very difficult for me to convey because we have a family show. The book that I want to recommend to your readers has an extremely rude word in it. The book is by Robert Sutton. He’s an organization behaviorist professor and quite prolific. He wrote a book called ‘The No A rule’ and so you can fill in the gap there. The reason that I think that’s the best business book that I ever read is it calls oath categorically the definition of a person that couldn’t, frankly, earned that secular title and the reality is that according to Robert Sutton when you’re in the presence of one of those, you come away from that interaction feeling somehow diminished. I love that definition. I strive not to be labelled in that itinerant way but it may be pretty savvy for spotting those that are in the organizations and dealing with them accordingly.
Jim Rembach: Unless of course you’re one of my three brothers and then that was my nickname growing up. [Laughter] Alright. Thank you very much Carol I appreciate that. We’re going to give links to that book and a couple of others on our show notes page. If you want to find out where that is, I’ll give it to you its right here. It’s at fastleader.net/carolborghesi. Alright Carol, now we come to the last question on our Hump day Hoedown.
Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you are 25 years old again, and there’s no more wagons, and you were supposed to begin a new job as a manager of a team that is underperforming and disengaged but you have retained all the knowledge and skill that you currently have, your job of course, is to turn them around. So, you get up, you head out to work, what you do now?
Carol Borghesi: Well, there’s three things that I would do. The first of which is to look at the operational data of the team that I’m responsible for. You may think that’s not very people-ly but I tell you that three areas that I would look up for operation information is the performance data of the function, what we do and what’s our output and what’s the costing.
The second would be the customer feedback whether that’s an internal team or external facing team. And the third would be any engagements information that I can clean. Armed with that data I would go up and talk to people. I would talk to absolutely everybody. And I would take the time to do it probably as one of the most important skills that I learn which is to listen carefully and openly. Having the data in my head and in my hands means I can ask some interesting questions to start to understand why we’re maybe be having the issues that we’re having in teams performance. And then the last thing I would do, is I would observe. I’m going to walk my business, I would look up what’s going in. And the reason that I would that is because what people tell you that they do, and what they actually do can often be different. So with those three elements together I can put one the first few days of my time with my meeting.
Jim Rembach: I think all of those contribute to what…you even mentioned that you were a voracious one, and that’s reading. You’re reading the business, you’re reading the information before you take an action. Carol Borghesi it was an honor spending time with you today. Can you please share with Fast Leader listeners how they can connect with you?
Carol Borghesi: You certainly can. I am available at clborghesi.gmail.com and I’ll even give my mobile number that’s okay, 771-778-86690, I’m also on Linkedin and would love to hear from your listeners.
Jim Rembach: That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom. The Fast Leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump.
Thank you for joining me on the Fast leader Show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe—if you haven’t already, head on over to fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.
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