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156: Kimberly Davis: I really melted down

Kimberly Davis Show Notes Page

Kimberly Davis had an anxiety attack. Days before she was to give a TEDx talk about being brave she lost her brave. She began to fear the spotlight, failing to connect to her audience and missing out on capturing her opportunity. But Kimberly knew what do to squash her own anxiety. She retrieved her brave.

Kimberly’s life on the stage has taken many forms. From small-town beginnings, having grown-up on a ranch in NW Montana singing to the cows in below zero temperatures – to the international stage.

Guided by the winds of happenstance, Kimberly found her way to the theatre – acting on stages across the country and throughout Germany – misplacing, testing, and ultimately discovering her brave.

Eventually she left the theatre and, after a very circuitous path, found her way into the world of training and development, where the hundreds of Fortune 500 participants became her education. She’d secretly study them and, much to her surprise, she discovered that the theatre world and the business world aren’t that different after all.

For the past 15 years Kimberly has taken that discovery and helped thousands of leaders and emerging leaders, from every different industry imaginable, perform authentically and powerfully on the high stakes stage that is work. In her program OnStage Leadership, in her TEDx talk, through her work at Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business’ Executive Education Program, and now in her new book, Brave Leadership, Kimberly has dedicated her life to cultivating brave authentic leaders who know how to connect powerfully to get powerful results.

Still a small-town girl at heart, Kimberly has crafted a life for herself, with her husband Tim and son Jeremy (and feisty cat, Sulley Magee) in the gorgeous hill country surrounding Austin, TX, where she fights every day to bring her best, most authentic and powerful self – what she calls brave – to every situation she faces. Sometimes she succeeds, sometimes she doesn’t. But she’s committed to the fight.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @OnStageKimberly to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet  

“I want to democratize what it means to be brave.” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet

“So many people think that they can’t be brave.” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet 

“We are all far more brave than we know.” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet 

“Every single one of use has an impact we can make here in this world.” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet 

“I need a way to crystalize what I stand for.” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet 

“I can hold myself up to my own standard; am I living this or am I not?” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet 

“If you can say, this is what I’m aiming for, you’re more likely to hit it.” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet 

“Your super objective is your purpose and action.” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet 

“We all as individuals have our super objective that is unique to you.” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet 

“In order for people to experience you as authentic, they need to experience you as genuine, worthy of trust, reliance and belief from their perspective.” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet 

“If you’re imposing, you’re never going to get the buy-in or their emotional energy.” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet 

“If you’re going to ask exponentially more of people then you’re going to have to connect to their hearts.” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet 

“If you’re really clear about what you stand for then you know where you hit the mark and where you didn’t.” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet 

“So many people haven’t even asked themselves the question, why do I care.” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet 

“You do what you do for the sake of what?” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet 

“Where am I getting in my own way of having the impact I want to have?” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet 

“Brave leadership is not going to make your life easier, it’s going to make your life harder, but it’s going to make your life richer and your results better.” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet 

“There are no simple five steps, there’s one situation at a time.” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet 

“Brave, is not an all or nothing thing.” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet 

“Every situation that you face, how can you refocus your attention to get back into the game.” -Kimberly Davis Click to Tweet 

Hump to Get Over

Kimberly Davis had an anxiety attack. Days before she was to give a TEDx talk about being brave she lost her brave. She began to fear the spotlight, failing to connect to her audience and missing out on capturing her opportunity. But Kimberly knew what do to squash her own anxiety. She retrieved her brave.

Advice for others

Trust yourself. Move forward anyway.

Holding her back from being an even better leader

Second guessing myself.

Best Leadership Advice

Be yourself.

Secret to Success

I connect deeply with people because I care deeply for people.

Best tools that helps in Business or Life

Being able to focus outside myself and get myself back on track when I need to.

Recommended Reading

Brave Leadership: Unleash Your Most Confident, Powerful, and Authentic Self to Get the Results You Need

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Crunch Time: How to Be Your Best When It Matters Most

Contacting Kimberly Davis

website: http://www.braveleadershipbook.com/

website: https://onstageleadership.com/blog/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/OnStageKimberly

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OnStageLeadership/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberlydavisonstage/

Resources and Show Mentions

Developing a Better Place to Work

Increase Employee Engagement and Workplace Culture

Empathy Mapping

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: 

Click to access edited transcript

156: Kimberly Davis: I really melted down

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 intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

The number one thing that contributes to customer loyalty is emotions. So move onward and upward faster by gaining significantly deeper insight and understanding of your customer journey and personas with emotional intelligence. With your empathy mapping workshop you’ll learn how to evoke and influence the right customer emotions that generate improve customer loyalty and reduce your cost to operate. Get over your emotional hump now by going to empathymapping.com to 

 

Jim Rembach:   Okay, Fast Leader legion, today I’m excited because I have somebody on the show today who is going to really help with a couple things and one primary thing being a good sense of direction. Kimberly Davis’s life on stage has taken many forms. From small-town beginnings having grown up on a ranch in Northwestern Montana singing to the cows in below zero temperatures to the international stage. Guided by the whims of happenstance Kimberly found her way to the theatre acting on stage across the country and throughout Germany misplacing, testing and ultimately discovering her brave. Eventually she left the theater and after a very circuitous path found her way into the world of training and development where the hundreds of fortune 00 participants became her education. She’d secretly studied them and much to her surprise she discovered that the theater world and the business world aren’t that different at all.

 

For the past 1 years Kimberly has taken that discovery and helped thousands of leaders and emerging leaders from every different industry imaginable perform authentically and powerfully on the high stakes stage that is work. In her program on stage leadership in her TEDx talk through her work at Southern Methodist University Cox School of Business’s Executive Education Program and now in her new book, Brave Leadership. Kimberly has dedicated her life to cultivating, brave, authentic leaders who know how to connect powerfully and get results. Still a small-town girl at heart Kimberly has crafted a life for herself with her husband Tim and son Jeremy and feisty cat Sully McGee in the gorgeous hills surrounding Austin Texas where fights every day to bring her best most authentic and powerful self what she calls brave to every situation she faces sometimes she succeeds sometimes she does it but she’s committed to the 

Fight. Kimberly Davis are you ready to help us get over the hump? 

 

Kimberly Davis:   I so am ready to help people get over the hump, Jim. Thank you for having me here.

 

Jim Rembach:   I’m glad you’re here. Now I’ve given our listeners a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better. 

 

Kimberly Davis:   Jim, right now what I’m really most passionate about is creating a brave movement. I really want to democratize what it means to be brave because so many people think that they can’t be brave and they don’t realize that we are all far braver than we know. So, I really want to help as many people as I possibly can really connect to the fact that every single one of us has an impact that we can make here in this world.

 

Jim Rembach:   It is true and I think through the course of our lives a lot of times that gets dampened. And so for me when I was actually looking through the book and just a just to kind

of give a little bit of insight about me, I’m left-handed so a lot of times I grab a book and I actually look at it from the back to the front and so for you looking at this book I came across immediately which is in the back of the book the leadership manifesto. And then as I started going towards the front of the book and then coming back from left to right like normal I started seeing all these things start fitting and coming together. But for you when you start thinking about the leadership manifesto, how did that come about? 

 

Kimberly Davis:   Well, I went the opposite direction, Jim, I’ve been teaching this content for probably a good 15 years some iteration of it. So, I been having these conversations with myself and with others for a really long time and what I realized is I need a way to crystallize what is it I stand for. Every day, and we’ll talk a little bit later about what is it I stand for as an individual and we’ll talk a little later about that, but every day I can hold myself up to my own standard, am I living this or am I not? Because if you can say this is what I’m aiming for then you’re more likely to hit it.

 

Jim Rembach:   That’s a really interesting point. When you started talking I started thinking about—even a conversation I had with my daughter the other day about compromising her principles, compromising what she believes is the right behavior and action. This weekend she’s getting ready to go on a trip away from mom and dad and going to a place where there’s going to be a lot of things that she’s going to get exposed to that’s going to potentially question her judgment. I said look, don’t bend and be part of something because you feel like you’re going to get cut out or they won’t ask you back. And I said, instead you need to influence them and say, you know what? I don’t think that’s the right thing to do. So, don’t compromise.

 

Kimberly Davis:   That’s right. I think so many organizations have their vision, mission, values—this is what we stand for but oftentimes they’re just lovely things that marketing has put together that lives on a mug or lives on a poster. And so if we can say, no these are the actions we’re seeing in the hallways in our conversations with each other in our meetings in our client in our client conversations that this is who we are then it changes everything.

 

Jim Rembach:   It does. Another thing that really stood out to me talking about that who we are thing as I was going through the book which to me I think I’m going to as soon as we get done here I might start working on my own because oftentimes if we don’t have it we’ll end up wandering in different places and get off-track and not even realize it you have is that you have something in here called uncover your super objective, tell us about that? 

 

Kimberly Davis:   A super—let me back up a little bit. I borrowed the super objective from the theater, I did theater for many, many, many years and there was a fantastic tool in the theater called the super objective that was clarified at the turn of the century by this guy named Konstantin Stanislavski.  What the super objective is essentially—if you can get crystal clear about what drives you from that internal space or from a purpose perspective and you could focus all of your attention to achieve that purpose in whatever situation it is you face to have an impact outside yourself then that essentially will allow you to be brave. So, your super objective is essentially your purpose in action. What is it you stand for? What is the impact that you want to have outside yourself?

 

Jim Rembach:   I would dare to say that when you start thinking about other than maybe the theater and maybe even so in the theater when you start thinking about the different qualities and capabilities of certain actors is that not a lot of people actually go through and find what that is. Do you find yourself oftentimes having to start with that or do you have to start somewhere else and then ultimately get to that for folks? 

 

Kimberly Davis:   Yeah, we’re all into it we all start at different places and we’ve all had different journeys and have learned different things. It all begins with some very, very basic questions. The first question is to really understand why you care for real. Now, why do you care not based on a paycheck not because your boss says you should care about this or your mom says you should care about this but why do you personally care about this. And then then as you build on that you start asking herself, what’s the impact I want to have? What’s the impact I want to have on my employees? What’s the impact I want to have on my clients? What’s the impact I want to have on my listeners? In your case. Or the community or the industry or the world or that my patients or students whatever it is for you specifically—in addition to that get really clear on who or what do you care about most, who and what do you want to impact the most.  

 

In your case Jim, you teach, you run a podcast and you write and you consult and you coach and you do all of these different things who or what do you care about most? Because if you can get really clear about that then the byproduct that is going to affect everything else. So for me personally—I’m a belly button to belly button kind of person I care about the individuals but I have specifically chosen to work with leaders because I know that leaders if I help them uncover their most authentic powerful sells then the byproduct of that is there’s going to have a tremendous ripple effect and it’s going to change the world. So, yes, it’s a big picture but the way I go about it is individual to individual. I care about making a difference in one individual’s life and then another individual’s life. Some people care about growing their team it’s all about the team. Some people it’s all about the culture, If you can get really clear on what it is that you care about and then what’s the impact you want to have on that person or that group of people then that will lead you down an active path to making the impact you want to have. 

 

Jim Rembach:   As you’re talking I started thinking too about the potential risks associated with that if I’m not aware. One of the risks being is that I start discovering these things for myself I get excited because I found that connection but then I start taking that same thing that I’ve identified myself and try to put it upon others. And so when you start talking about for example customer centricity and creating a customer centric organization while I may be totally customer centric and I do need other people within the organization and matter of fact the entire organization if I can accomplish it to be more customer centric as well because that’s how we all can benefit. But right do I run the risk of trying to do something on to others instead of helping them to learn and discover that within themselves? 

 

Kimberly Davis:   There’s such a huge insight. Here’s the deal we all as individuals have our super objective that’s unique to you so for you to impose your super objective on other people it’s not going to have the same impact. In order for people to experience you as authentic they need to experience use genuine worthy of trust, reliance, and belief from their perspective. You have to make sure you’re standing firmly in their shoes, what do they need from you to experience you as genuine, worthy of trust, reliance and belief? And then why do they personally care? I remember I was leading a program for a group of directors of operations for a large casual dining chain at one point and they were going through a tremendous amount of change and after the first day of the session, it’s a two-day program, after the first day I met with it the SVP who had hired me and I said, look, here’s the problem they don’t understand why they should care about this change. And he looks at me and he says, Kimberly I’ll tell him why they should care. I’m like, well, yeah, that’s the problem they’ve each got to understand from an individual perspective why do they personally care and that’s going to really help them harness their own values and their own strengths to do something about it. But if you’re imposing something on it you’re never going to get the buy in, you’re never going to get their emotional energy around the change or whatever needs to be done. 

 

Jim Rembach:   I’m glad you said that because often times I have to explain what the Fast Leader show really means. It’s not about shortcuts the shortcut would be let me tell you why you need to believe in this and why you need to engage in this and why we need to accomplish these goals. But the fact is that particular tactic may be easy to say it creates the most friction. 

 

Kimberly Davis:   Absolutely. It’ll get you a quick result it’s not going to get you a lasting a result and you’re going to have a by-product that it’s not going to be what you want.

 

Jim Rembach:   Absolutely. And I think that we often see that happening in a customer environment very much where we’ll create a process flow that we want them to go through but if we force it upon them that’s going to create a lot of friction.

 

Kimberly Davis:   Yeah, it’s never going to work, it’s never going to work. 

 

Jim Rembach:   It might accomplish your short-term goal, like you say, we get more transactions taken but now we’ve basically made everybody upset. 

 

Kimberly Davis:   Yeah. Well, and especially now because the workforce has changed so dramatically in the last 10 15 years, that we are asking exponentially more of the people that work for us. Ten years ago you ago you never expected someone to answer an email in their pajamas at 10 o’clock at night and now that’s a normal thing. You never expected people to jump on a conference call in the middle of the night or during the dinner hour but now that’s a normal thing. So if you’re going to ask people ask exponentially more people then you’re going to have to connect to their hearts instead of their heads because if they don’t want to do it you’re not going to get that extra energy. 

 

And the reality is those things take time and they take tactics and they take tools they take the manifesto to be to the forefront of your mind. And even when I was looking at Manifesto I started thinking, and I know you don’t necessarily mean it this way, but for me it’s kind of like a checklist saying that, okay, where can I focus? Or where should I focus? Where am I doing okay with? What am I not doing okay with? How can I use it as a way to get feedback from others to see where I need to focus? To me it could almost be used as a development tool in a lot of different ways. Well, it holds your feet to the fire. The manifesto is we as an organization this is what we believe. We believe these things and then you’ve got your super objective which is your individual, what do I stand for? For me personally my super objective is to connect people to the best of who they are. That’s what I stand for and sometimes I do that and sometimes I don’t but I gets a chance to hold my feet to the fire. Did I do that in this conversation? Did I do it in this meeting? Did I do it in this message that I just sent? Did I do it when I was frustrated and everything—I didn’t have time to deal with it? No, I didn’t so I have to clean it up. So if you’re really clear about what you stand for then you know where you hit the mark more and you didn’t so you can go back and clean up the mistakes. 

 

Jim Rembach:   Okay, so going through and thinking about this as far as a pathway is concerned I started thinking about those folks that are not like me, meaning that I’m always trying to seek out a different way. I may pivot because of a new piece of information meaning that I want to focus and help other people develop and for me really that’s one of my motivators behind why I develop myself so that I can help people be more successful. It isn’t about me grabbing and gaining the success it’s about—

 

Kimberly Davis:   So your model in development for other people and the way that you do that is you have to grow yourself because if you don’t grow yourself you can’t you can’t actually model.

 

Jim Rembach:      That’s right. 

 

Kimberly Davis:   Exactly.

 

Jim Rembach:   But not everybody’s like that I mean there’s some people who aren’t focused in on that and so they are the people when you start thinking about making a bigger impact for themselves in the business they’re maybe not proactive in seeking out those opportunities but yet we need them to grow and develop. How do you approach those people that just seem so difficult to be able to take to the next level?

 

Kimberly Davis:   Well, so many people haven’t even asked themselves the question why do I care? And so if they think they’re doing it for somebody else they think they’re doing it because of their boss if they think they’re doing it for all of these other reasons then they’re it’s going to be hard for them to take any initiative and to get on board and to really get behind it from an emotional perspective which is where you get that extra energy. So if you can get the people that work for you to really get clear, and this is the impact, I personally want to have then they will automatically drive themselves. I don’t know if you’ve read, Dan Pink’s book, Drive? You probably remember in his book he talks about three key things in order for motive motivation to happen in this new work environment that we face in the last 10 15 years. He talks about autonomy. Are you able to make choices about how you do what it is you do? Mastery, do you have a chance to experience yourself getting better and better and better and raising your own bar and purpose? Are you doing something for a purpose greater than yourself? Well essentially, if you can identify your super objective, this is what I stand for. And you take action consistently around your super objective in every situation you face you achieve all three things. You achieve autonomy because nobody’s going to tell you, this is how you need to achieve your super objective today. No, you get to choose that all day long. Mastery, it’s going to force mastery because every human being you come into contact with it’s going to have a different set of needs. And for you to have an impact that you want to have you have to pay attention to those unique needs in front of you in order for you to have the impact so it’s going to force you to get better and better and better and raise your own bar and purpose. So, you’re super objective is essentially is purpose and action. So, the key to getting those people that don’t seem to be engaged and don’t seem to be taking any initiative and doing it for themselves is to help them start to get clear on what’s the impact you want to have. Why do you care for real? You do what you do for the sake of what? Not a paycheck. Why do you care about it? And then they can emotionally drive themselves.

 

Jim Rembach:   I think what you’re really just talking about right there is why we have this significant emergence right now in coaching within organizations. Whether it’s them being able to do it internally, which is not quite possible for most organizations because they’re so thin, there are no internal coaches they’re very few and far between and so they’re seeking a lot of outside assistance for coaching. But I think that’s one reason why they’re focusing in on it in one way or another.

 

Kimberly Davis:   Yeah, coaching is so incredibly important because here’s the deal we came off of the—we used to scale everything we treated people like widgets and in this humanistic movement we’re moving into, you cannot scale how people behave you cannot scale these things. We talked earlier about the challenges in call centers how call centers say like their scripts and everybody should do it the same way, but you know what? If you want that person on the phone to bring their emotional energy and to really serve that customer and listen to them they have to understand why they personally care about listening to their customers. They have to have a coach that helps them get that clarity around what matters most to them. 

 

Jim Rembach:   That’s a great point. Everything that we’re talking about here and you’ve even said the word several times and it’s all wrapped in all kinds of different emotions positive and negative. When we start thinking about that emotion on the show we love to look at quotes. Your book is full of different quotes and there’s some new ones I haven’t seen, so I’m looking forward to reading through the rest of the book. But is there a quote or two that you can share that you like?

 

Kimberly Davis:   Oh, my gosh, well okay so my book is right in front of me and the one that I just turned to, I love them all because I put them in my book, but the one I loved it’s at the very back of the book is Diane Nyad, she’s the woman that swam from Florida to Cuba, she’s an amazing woman, I think she was like 70 years old when she did this. Her quote is, “This journey has always been about reaching your own other shore no matter what it is and that dream.” So to get really clear on what it is that lights you up and so you can start making that impact and smart making choices around that and also start taking responsibility for that. And I think this is where people get really messed up where they think purpose is all about hearts and rainbows and sunshine but it’s all about responsibility. Because if this is the impact that you are here to make you have to hold your feet to the fire. Did I have that impact? What actions am I taking? Where am I getting in my own way of having the impact that I want to have? And from an emotional intelligence perspective am I really clear that I’m having the impact that I want to make in the world on this person, on my team, on my culture? So it forces you to really step into another’s shoes and see from their perspective.

 

Jim Rembach:   What you are talking about right there that can be painful. 

Kimberly Davis:   You know what? This is exactly what you said earlier, you and I are such kindred spirits around this stuff is that, I tell people look, brave leadership is not going make your life easier it’s going to make your like harder but it’s going to make your life richer and it’s going to make your results better. If we’re looking for the fast way of doing things there is no magic pill there’s going to be a lot of people out there they’re going to tell you follow my five steps and we you will be brilliant and be successful beyond measure. But that that’s not true there is no simple five steps there’s one situation at a time. Did you have the impact you wanted to have yes or no?  If not what action can you take to get yourself closer? How do you grow yourself to be better? 

 

Jim Rembach:   Exactly right. So, part of that growth is that we have to go through experiences where we’ve made me falling down or had a hump that we couldn’t get over. Is there a time where you’ve gotten over the hump where you actually learned more and you can share with us? 

 

Kimberly Davis:   Every single day, every single day, Jim. So, let me think of a very specific time. I talked about in my book actually when I went to speak for TEDx. I had a bit of an anxiety attack right before I spoke at TEDx and really it came out of thin air for me because here I teach about connecting and showing up powerfully and being brave and you know when you talk about being brave and you’re not feeling very brave you’re really up against your own stuff. The day before I went in to speak to TEDx I really melted down and I had to teacher teach thy self I had to go back and use my tools. What’s the impact I’m here to have? This is not about me. I focus my attention outside myself, what’s the impact I want to have on these individuals? And I had a suspicion that I might get some kind of emotional push back for myself. 

 

And so I packed photographs of all of these participants that I have worked with for the last 10 15 years, some of my most beloved people that had I’ve really seen take themselves from not believing in themselves to really risking owning their brave. And I went into my hotel room and I spread these pictures out all over the room and I gave my TED talk by myself to these people in this room but I focused on them—and this is the impact I want to have on you Gary, and this is the impact I want to have on you, and I connected individual to individual based on these amazing human beings that I knew they were and got myself back into recognizing, you know what? If I’m focused on what people think about me and if I’m focused on making a mistake and I’m focused on this going viral and me looking stupid these are the things I’m focusing on I can’t have the impact that I’m there to have . So, I had to find a way to push through all of that. Let it go. I talked about pushing through your lines the messages that you’re bumping up against and focus outside myself to really connect and have an impact.

 

Jim Rembach:   Thanks for sharing that story. We have to learn how we as individuals can hijack our own anxieties and feelings of pressure so that we can do actually what you ended up doing. 

 

Kimberly Davis:   So funny people think—I think this is something that the media perpetuates, people think that you’re either brave or you’re not you’ve either figured it out or you haven’t. And brave is not an all-or-nothing thing it’s not like, okay I figured it out I’ve got great tools I’ve got it dialed in and every single time now I feel brave. No, the truth is there are so many times in my life I feel afraid and there are so many times that I don’t trust myself and I’m uncertain and I’m overwhelmed and all of this I feel vulnerable and all of those things because that’s what it means to be human and to think that you’re not going to feel those things is fantasy. But the key is every situation that you face how can you refocus your attention to get back into the game and let your brave unfold one situation at a time.

 

Jim Rembach:   There was a really good book written called Crunch Time, by one of our guests who’s been on the Fast Leaders show, that talks about that talking about that refocusing piece talking about how you can really reflect upon the fact that you have put in the work you have had some success and how can you bring that to this moment right here right now so that you can accomplish what you’ve set out to do. We talked about a lot of the things that you’re doing.
We talked about—you still do any work in the theater? 

 

Kimberly Davis:   I’ve got a 13-year old son, so I’m not doing the theater anymore. But I have to tell you the work that I do it lights me up more than the theater did. Although I did see the Greatest Showman the other day and I now am addicted to the soundtrack and so it kind of reignited this passion for theater but—no I’m not doing any theater right now. 

 

Jim Rembach:   Well you’ve still been on a big stage the main stage been on stage as you said so that’s great. And you also have this new book and you’re promoting it and you have a lot of things going on but if you think about one thing that’s a goal, what would it be?

 

Kimberly Davis:   A one thing that is a goal…the one thing is that—this brave conversation gets out there in a way that is going to make a difference. My husband wishes I were driven a little bit more by money, I think we’re wired similarly this way, but that doesn’t really show up on my radar at all. What drives me is feeling like that someone in Sacramento, California and someone in Phoenix, Arizona and someone in Kalispell, Montana they can pick up this book and they can find themselves and they can be excited about who they are. And seeing people get excited about who they are and what they can do to me is the most amazing thing in the world so I want that to happen for as many people as can possibly happen.

 

Jim Rembach:   I can definitely connect with you on that because we talked about that off mic and I would say that getting paid isn’t always a monetary thing. 

 

Kimberly Davis:   Right, oh, absolutely, absolutely.

 

Jim Rembach:   And the Fast Leader legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor.

 

An even better place to work is an easy-to-use solution that improves the empathy and emotional intelligence skills in everyone. It provides a continuous diagnostic on employee engagement and provides integrated activities that will improve the leadership and collaboration skills in everyone. This award winning solution’s guarantee to create motivated, productive, and higher performing employees that have great working relationships with their colleagues and your customers. To learn more about an even better place to work visit beyondmorale.com/better. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Alright, here we go Fast Leader legion it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Kimberly, the Hump Day Hoedown is a 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 a robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Kimberly Davis, are you ready to hoedown?

 

Kimberly Davis:   Oh, yes, I think. 

 

Jim Rembach:   Growing up on a ranch and living in Austin, Texas you have to be ready to hoedown. Alright, what do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

 

Kimberly Davis:   What’s holding me back from being an even better leader today is second-guessing myself. 

 

Jim Rembach:   What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

 

Kimberly Davis:   The best leadership advice I’ve ever received is to be yourself. 

 

Jim Rembach:   What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

 

Kimberly Davis:   That I connect deeply with people because I care deeply for people.

 

Jim Rembach:   What do you feel is one of the best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

 

Kimberly Davis:   My super objective being able to focus outside myself and get myself back on track when I need to. 

 

Jim Rembach:   What would be one book that you’d recommend to our listeners they could be from any genre, of course we’re going to a link to your Show Brave Leadership—Unleash your most Confident Powerful and Authentic Self To Get the Results you Need, on your show notes page as well. 

 

Kimberly Davis:   Well, thank you but I Daniel Pink’s book, Drive, I been using it in my work for the last ten years. I think it changed the landscape of what it means to be a leader. 

 

Jim Rembach:   Okay, Fast Leader listeners you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going too fastleader.net/Kimberly Davis. Okay, Kimberly, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question. Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25. And you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything back you can only choose one. What skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

 

Kimberly Davis:   I would tell myself to trust yourself. I think at 25 I second-guess myself all the time and I stopped myself and so if I could just know, trust yourself you’ve got this move forward anyway move forward even in the face of that not knowing I think that would have changed a lot for me.

 

Jim Rembach:   Kimberly 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? 

Kimberly Davis:   So, you can connect me through my website www.braveleadershipbook.com or onstageleadership.com. I’m also very active on Twitter and LinkedIn I’ve got an onstage leadership Facebook, it’s under Kimberly, you look under onstage leadership or Kimberly Davis author. And I hope to connect with you because I love connecting with people. 

 

Jim Rembach:   Kimberly Davis, 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 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 fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.

 

END OF AUDIO

 

 

118: Dov Baron: I needed to fall and get smashed to pieces

Dov Baron Show Notes

Dov Baron was at the top of his career. After a long speaking tour he took a few days off and decided to go hiking with a friend. Instead of hiking, they decided to go free climbing. At 120 feet Dov reached for a rock that dislodged a bigger rock which knocked him down and sent him crashing to the bottom. But it wasn’t the fall that changed his life. Listen to Dov and learn how to move onward and upward faster.

Dov was born in the UK. He is the eldest of nine children. His mother and father divorced when he was 7 years old so some are half siblings. Growing up – while other kids were watching cartoons, Dov describes himself as a weird kid. He was fascinated by documentaries, politics, and what made people do what they do.

Dov has always been an entrepreneur (started his own business at 15). But being entrepreneurial was born of his inability to follow rules that didn’t make sense or were outdated to me as a high creative, high stimulus individual.

Dov is currently the President of Authentic Paragon Alliance, a strategic leadership consulting firm. He is a bestselling author of several books. His latest book is Fiercely Loyal; How High Performing Companies Develop and Retain Top Talent.

Dov Baron has been speaking internationally for over 30 years, he’s the man with a finger on the pulse of the evolving world of NextGen leadership. One of Inc. Magazine’s Top 100 Leadership Speakers to hire, Dov Baron is a master storyteller! Considered by many as the leading authority on Authentic Leadership, and the founder of Full Monty Leadership and The Authentic Speaker Academy for Leadership. Outside of his speaking and training Dov works with multi-disciplinary leaders and executive teams to build the bonds that create organizational cultures that become Fiercely Loyal.

He also writes for and has been featured in many industry magazines including being featured on CNN, CBS Small Business Pulse, SHRM, Yahoo Finance, Boston Globe, Business in Vancouver, USA today, CEO, Entrepreneur and many more.

Dov currently lives in Vancouver with his beautiful wife – his queen, Renuka and has 3 children: a daughter age 40, and two sons ages 29 and 30. He also is blessed with four grandkids.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @TheDovBaron to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“Most people that get to a leadership position have some wrong wiring.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet

“A lot of leaders tend to see things as – my way is the only way.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“What you’ve already got is magnificent, now let’s polish that.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“Your rough edges were there to protect you but may be no longer necessary.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet

“If you don’t work on emotional intelligence skills you’re going to fall flat on your face.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“We’ve been trained that vulnerability is a weakness. It’s actually the most powerful strength you can have.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“When you reveal it all, it actually bonds people to you.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“A trusted friend has seen who you are beneath the mask.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“The number one challenge facing organizations is the ability to keep people loyal.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“If people don’t feel an emotional bond to you they’re going to take off.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“You have to invest in order to get gains.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“People want the payout without doing the investment.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“The root of any business is your people.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“When we invest in them, they will invest in engagement in the company.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“Active global engagement is only at 13%.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“Move your employee engagement numbers up because it can make you go bankrupt.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“You can’t be vulnerable if you’re not safe.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“Emotional safety is needed for innovation to take place.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“If millennials don’t feel connected to you as a human being, they will walk away.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“If you want to get to the top, you will need the soft skills.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“Hard skills may get you there, but soft skills will keep you at the top.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“There is a voice within you; it’s telling you what your purpose is.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“What I’m doing is not about the direct impact in the moment, it’s the ripple effect.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

“You’ve got to live your purpose even if you don’t see the results immediately.” -Dov Baron Click to Tweet 

Hump to Get Over

Dov Baron was at the top of his career. After a long speaking tour he took a few days off and decided to go hiking with a friend. Instead of hiking, they decided to go free climbing. At 120 feet Dov reached for a rock that dislodged a bigger rock which knocked him down and sent him crashing to the bottom. But it wasn’t the fall that changed his life. Listen to Dov and learn how to move onward and upward faster.

Advice for others

Listen to that little whisper inside of you telling you what your purpose is.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

Stepping further into courage.

Best Leadership Advice Received

Who’s on your team?

Secret to Success

Compassion

Best tools that helps in Business or Life

The willingness to see the greatness in others.

Recommended Reading

Fiercely Loyal

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t

Contacting Dov

Website: http://fullmontyleadership.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dovbaron/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDovBaron

Resources and Show Mentions

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: 

Click to access edited transcript

118: Dov Baron: I needed to fall and get smashed to pieces

Intro Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we uncover the leadership like hat that help you to experience, break out performance faster and rocket to success. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

Need a powerful and entertaining way to ignite your next conference, retreat or team-building session? My keynote don’t include magic but they do have the power to help your attendees take a leap forward by putting emotional intelligence into their employee engagement, customer engagement and customer centric leadership practices. So bring the infotainment creativity the Fast Leader show to your next event and I’ll help your attendees get over the hump now. Go to beyondmorale.com/speaking to learn more.

 

Jim Rembach:     Okay, Fast Leader Legion, today I’m excited because I have one of those folks that is just very dynamic, great speaker, great thought leader and you’re going to have fun. Dov Baron was born in the UK. He is the eldest of nine children. His mother and father divorced when he was seven years old so some of his siblings are half-siblings. But growing up while other kids were watching cartoons, Dov describes himself as being a weird kid. He was fascinated by documentaries, politics and what made people do the things that they. Dov has always been an entrepreneur started his own business at the age of Dov, But being entrepreneurial was born of his inability to follow rules that didn’t make sense or were outdated to him as a high creative, high stimulus, individual. Dov is currently the President of Authentic Paragon Alliance, a strategic leadership consulting firm. He is a best-selling author of several books. His latest book is Fiercely Loyal, how high-performing companies develop and retain top talent.

 

Dov has been speaking internationally for over 30 years. Outside of his speaking and training Dov works with multidisciplinary leaders and executive teams to build the bonds that create organizational cultures that become fiercely loyal. He also writes for and has been published in many industry magazines including being featured on CNN, CBS small business pulse, Yahoo Finance, Boston Globe, USA Today, CEO, entrepreneur and many more. 

 

Dov currently lives in Vancouver with his beautiful wife his queen, Renuka and has three children a daughter age 40 and two sons, ages 29 and 30. He’s also blessed to have four grandkids. Dov are you ready to help us get over the hump? 

 

Dov Baron :     I am ready. Let’s do that hump. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Alright now I’ve given our Legion a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we get to know you even better? 

 

Dov Baron :     My passion is as always leadership. But the specifics of that leadership is giving—if you really want to look at what’s going to make the great leaders of today and tomorrow it is actually the sub-skills the very thing that we push towards the side is the thing we need to bring back. And so we’re very focused on and passionate about is bringing leaders to connect with their own purpose and then having the emotional intelligence to lead with purpose so they create fierce loyalty about between the people around them and all of their team members and their customers.

 

Jim Rembach:     Thanks for sharing that. I’m certified in emotional intelligence myself and I’ve been following this track and trying to become more aware and be better at being that one that does the connection and creates the rapport as a better awareness of self but let me tell you, growing up with three brothers in an area in Chicago that’s kind of rough I had some tendencies and behaviors that you weren’t necessarily high in emotional intelligence. I didn’t develop those early it didn’t come till later in life. So how do you actually help leaders that have had some early hardwiring in the wrong direction kind of redo themselves? 

 

Dov Baron :     It’s a great question Jim and the answer to it is actually right back to what you just said. In my experience most of the people who get to a leadership position have had some of wrong wiring. The positive side of it is that it’s created a drive in them that’s allowed them to move into a leadership position but they’ve got some rough edges around that and a lot of leaders tend to see things as this is the way, it’s the only way, it’s my way, and if you don’t do it my way it won’t work. Today’s leaders can’t do that anymore you can’t lead millennials who are now 38% of the workforce in that way/ So, one of the things that we do is we say, what you’ve already got is magnificent now let’s polish that let’s polish the diamond and bring forward the other skills that are waiting underneath because those rough edges is there to protect you they were appropriate at one point in time but they may no longer be necessary.

 

Jim Rembach:     Thanks for putting it the way that you did it makes total sense. We also talked about folks when you think about career progression they will hit a ceiling if they don’t exercise this different area within there within their potential skill sets if it hasn’t been developed in order to get into that next level and it typically happens about, you know your mid-40. So your technical skill and ability and knowledge of the particular business that you’re in or the job that you’re doing will help you get to a position of authority but you’re going to get smacked in the head if you don’t now switch and actually become better at those emotional intelligence skills. 

 

Dov Baron :     Absolutely right Jim. Of course if you’re going to be good at what you do then you have to be technically good at what you do there’s no doubt about that you’ve got to have the skill set to do it. But at some point in time you’re going to have to interact with others and if you’re going to lead you’re going to have to lead others. And if you don’t have the emotional intelligence skill set, if you’ve not worked on understanding how to have compassion and empathy and communication skills if you’ve not worked on some of those things, if you don’t have self-awareness and you don’t have awareness of others you’re going to fall very flat your face very quickly.

 

Jim Rembach:     So, for me one of the things that attracted me to you initially without even getting any exposure to your particular work was this whole concept of Full Monty leadership. To me I don’t know if you have the copyright infringement or anything on that area but I think to me it’s just totally brilliant to put it into that context. How did you come up with that and share with people what it is? 

 

Dov Baron :     I’d love to share that. Actually it came out it in a conversation with one of my mentors. We were talking about a marketing guy working for me who constantly struggled with how to best say what it is that I do. This mentor and I was having a chat and we were talking about the movie Full Monty and if you’ve seen the movie you know it’s about a bunch of financially struggling northern English guys who decide to compete with the Chippendales who are these young hot guys. And so these guys are also going to take their clothes up because they figure, well a lot of people show up give money. Well of course they’re in awful shape and they don’t look great they can’t dance so nobody showing up. So they’re looking for this queen of differentiation that will make them stand out. And what is the point of differentiation? Well they take everything off they go Full Monty which is a British term, they go Full Monty they take it all off. And when we were discussing the point of differentiation in the work that I do with leaders is showing them the value the impact of vulnerability, how powerful that is for bonding people to you. That vulnerabilities we’ve been trained to believe that it’s a weakness but it’s actually the most powerful strength you can have. And that when you reveal it all, again you do so with the sermon but when you reveal it all it actually bonds people to you rather than pushing them away from you. And I get that it’s an extremely scary thought for many old school leaders. 

 

Let me give you a little way to play with this for a moment so you can grasp it. I want you for a moment to think about somebody who is a trusted friend, somebody who is a really loyal trusted friend on one side, put them in your mind on one side and on the other side of your mind let somebody else you’ve known equal amount of time are just an acquaintance. What is the difference between those two people? You can’t say its time anymore because you’ve known them as long as each other. So what is the difference? And the answer is that a trusted friend has seen beneath the covers. You have revealed to them who you are beneath the mask. You’ve stripped away and reveal the weaknesses, the struggles, the challenges and they’ve done the same with you. And that’s what has actually created the bond between you. That is what you want with your leadership team. That’s what you want with the people that you are leading and guiding is you want to do that because today more than ever the number one challenge facing major organizations and small business alike is the ability to keep people loyal to them. If they don’t feel an emotional bond to you they’re going to take off pretty damn fast.

 

Jim Rembach:     I think that’s a great point. I was actually having a conversation with somebody the other day about employee engagement and she was wearing the badge of lean operation on her chest like it was something great but yet we’re talking about an employee engagement problem and the way that she was wearing that badge is when I started talking to her about some of the activities that I was referring to in order to help them improve engagement. She says, well is that going to require them to take time to do that? I’m like, “well yes.” And she says, “but we’re in lean operation” and I’m like, “and you have an employee engagement problem, if you don’t give your people the opportunity to interact and engage become vulnerable share those things you’re never going to overcome your engagement problem.

 

Dov Baron :     It’s very interesting isn’t it? Because you’ve just pointed out the great paradox which is we want a lean mean operation that it’s not high cost and we want employee engagement. And I got news for you, it’s a simple rule of Finance, you have to invest in order to get gains. And what people want in many organizations is they want to get a payout without doing the investment and the root of any business, I don’t care what business you’re in it’s not relevant just take a look the root of any business is your people. 

For decades we’ve said, my most important asset is my people, yet you don’t treat them that way as a leader this is so often the case. We need to step back and recognize that our people are our greatest asset and we need to invest in that asset because when we invest in them they will invest in engagement with the company. And remember disengagement are around 73% and what does that mean it mean? It means actually that active full engagement is actually globally only at 13%. That means that 13 out of a 100 people who work for you are actively engaged with your company the rest are either disengaged or actively disengaged which means poisoning people against your company. You better move those numbers up because it can make you go bankrupt.

 

Jim Rembach:     And I think too it puts in a context to where what we’re talking about a moment ago is that in order for the Full Monty and people get to the point to where they do the Full Monty it doesn’t happen quickly so you know you have to create the mood and the environment for them to get vulnerable and be able to share and make those connections and that’s an investment too. 

 

Dov Baron :     Well you know you just said that is really important it’s a progression and what does that mean? We have a model that we show it’s a (11:45 inaudible) model. And one of the central pieces around there is something called safety, this is the boundary that holds things together you can’t be vulnerable if you’re not safe. We all understand in order for you to succeed in business today you have to be incredibly innovative. You’re now seeing on everybody’s mission statement, we strive to innovate blah, blah, blah, but you know what? If you don’t create an environment for innovation, it won’t take place. What is an environment for innovation? It’s safety, its emotional safety. I’m going to know that I’m not going to get dumped on because you don’t like my idea. I got to know that it’s emotionally safe for me to show up and make a mistake. I got to know that it’s allowable for me to show my humanity and that you’ll show me yours as a result and that creates an environment, that creates innovation, growth and engagement. 

 

Jim Rembach:     I think that’s so true and I don’t think people really see how those are interrelated and interconnected and that if you want greater innovation you have to allow your people to be able to connect with one another. Because we all know—I don’t care it’s beyond intuitive we all know that when we work in collaboration and in concert with one the output is significantly greater than when we are working by ourselves. 

 

Dov Baron :     You got it. 

 

Jim Rembach:     So, how do we get to that point? It is the vulnerability piece. It is the no discovery piece. It is the safety of being able to fail piece it’s all those particular components. 

 

Dov Baron :     And we got to be willing to embrace that. And again I understand that it’s difficult for somebody who is a baby boomer even a gen X’er, Millennials though as I said they are 38% of the workforce, you’ve got to understand that’s what they want. So, whether you’re comfortable with it or not, I’m sorry I don’t mean to be rude, but nobody cares it’s not even relevant. If you want to be in business and if you want to lead you’ve got to learn to get comfortable with this. Because Millennials have the greatest bullshit meter in the world and if they don’t feel connected to you as a human being, they feel like you’re all about your title they will walk away. 

 

When I entered into the workforce I was asked, what do I want to do? That was a 20 to 40-year question. When Millennials enter the workforce, when they’re thinking about their career it’s a 4-year question ten times less, four years, they’re looking to change careers. If you can’t keep them in your company you’re not getting the ROI on the training and development and you’re going to spend between 1.5 and 2 times the annual salary of every individual on their training and development. What does that mean? It means if you don’t keep them for 1.5 to 2 years you don’t have any ROI. So, the part of the work that we risk is getting the people to stay for four years doubles your investment. And if you can bond them to you they will also become evangelical and that’s what you want, you want your people to become evangelical so they’ll bring other good people into the company as well. So you’ve always got these great pool of high talent, top talent people working with you, working for you and becoming evangelical for what it is that you do because they believe in you the leader because they get to know you the human being. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Yeah, and I think what you just did right there is put in a very tangible metric upon emotions. And a lot of people will say that, “well, that’s all the soft stuff there’s no hard figures and my reply to that is that it’s because you don’t know how to calculate it.” 

 

Dov Baron :     You know what Jim that’s a great point. So, a big piece of our work, central basin in this model, the central pin is purpose. And people go, “Well you know that’s really nice concept. I really actually quite like it but I just don’t see how it will impact my business.” So, as an example we’re talking about looking at the numbers and looking at the matrix, let’s think about a book you’re probably familiar with it which is called, Good to Great. Good to Great is a book that was written by Jim Collins and his partner back in ’94, not last week not last year ’94 and they were particularly fascinated by this idea that what is it that takes a company to be top in the Fortune 500? How do they get that? In that research what they discovered was that 83% of the companies that make it to Fortune 500 drop off into irrelevance within 15 years. They were fascinated by what is it? What’s the difference? What is it that gets the company knowing that it just got to the top but to stay there when others fall away. And guess what? They found that the companies that made it to the top and stayed there for multiple generations were all valued based, purpose driven organizations. What does that mean? They were all focused on the soft skills. So when you’re looking at the matrix, the measurement of that, that’s something you really want to pay attention to. If you want to get to the top you will need the soft skills. Like you said earlier at some point in time you’re going to hit the wall because your hard skills won’t be enough. 

 

Jim Rembach:     It just going to happen it’s inevitable. One of the things when we’re starting to talk about all of this is that it could be filled with a lot of emotion and inspiration. And we look at quotes on the Fast Leader show to help us move onward and upward faster, is there a quote or two that you can share?

 

Dov Baron :     There’s a ton of quotes, if it’s okay I’d actually like to share one of mine because I think it just brings this home and what we’re saying. I don’t want to sound egoically but it’s not meant that way and it’s just this, “Hard skills may get you there but it’s the soft skills that will keep you at the top and make sure that when you get to the top you’re not there alone.” And I think that that’s something that I just want to drill into every leader’s brain. You’ve got to do that. Branson said, I can’t remember the exact quote but Branson said, “The companies of the future that are going to outshine and outdo their competitors are the purpose driven organizations.”

 

Jim Rembach:     And without a doubt. You’re talking about that younger generation they’re looking for purpose first not pay. 

 

Dov Baron :     Well, we as baby boomers look at that next generation. We think that we want to give them a rise, give them more money, give them a corner office, they don’t give a crap about those things what they care about is meaningful work. What is meaningful work? Working for a company who is purpose –driven so that they can align their purpose where it’s meaningful, that matters. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Absolutely. You and I have had the opportunity to chat previously and we’re kindred spirits in a lot of ways as I jokingly say, I think we’re brothers from another mother. And so like me I’m sure you’ve had a lot of humps to get over, is there time that you can share with us when you’ve had to get over the hump and it made a difference for you?

 

Dov Baron :     Hump? Now that would be a gross understatement. Jim, 1990 I was at the top of my career. I’ve been speaking for six years at that point in time and in June, 1990 I came back from a speaking, so I was pretty exhausted. My speaking managers told me that she’d given me four days off and I went up to a place called Whistler, which many of you might be familiar with it was home of the Winter Olympics in 2010. My buddy and I went up there it had been a really wet spring but it was a gorgeous day. We spent that late morning and early afternoon sunbathing by the lake and in the afternoon decided we were going to go for hike to a place called Brandywine Falls, which is this majestic place it’s amazing, glacial water rushes off the glacier down this twisting river and then plummets off the edge of a 200-foot drop cliff onto the boulders below, it’s stunning.  We hike down the bottom, being a bit of a lunatic as I was a bit of an adrenaline junkie, I challenge my buddy to go behind the waterfall to hiking face the spray 70-miles an hour get behind that we did it. I came on the other side I felt like I was Superman, I could do absolutely anything. And so I challenge my buddy, I said, “Why don’t we—you said a hike, let’s free climb. Now some of your listeners may be familiar with mountain climbing, it involves ropes and safety harnesses and all kinds of those kinds of good stuff and some people think it’s crazy, well, maybe not. Free climbing on the other hand is climbing without any of that stuff but at least you have the right shoes and the right clothing and chalk. 

 

If you want to take that into the go from the moderately insane to the fully completely nuts, you could try to free climb in wet clothing and wet shoes, that’s what we began to do. For those of you watching, listening you probably have lived in a high-rise or gone to a high-rise and you may have come to the 6th floor. Imagine yourself walking out onto the balcony of 6th floor and there’s no railing looking over the edge, if you’ve got problem with heights your legs might get a little bit wobbly, if you don’t have problem with heights you think it’s okay but you wouldn’t want to land from that. So now let’s take it from 6th to 7 to 8 to 10  to 12 foot stories up, 120 feet looking over that edge that’s the height I was at as I reach for a rock that dislodged the bigger rock and knock me down sending me hurtling to the boulders below and smashed me to pieces. Khalil Gibran, one of my favorite poets and philosophers said, “Your pain is the cracking of the shell of your understanding.” And on that day my understanding got shattered and that send me backwards in every possible way you can imagine. From being at the top of my career to nothing, to being literally shattered to pieces. So, yeah, there was a little bit of a hump. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Dov, the question is how did you survive and then what is survival even look like in those first few months? 

 

Dov Baron :     You know it’s interesting because there are two dominant questions. Every time I tell the story there’s always two questions that comes up in one form another. One is, what was it like to fall? I don’t know. Because as I reach for a rock 120 feet it dislodge a bigger rock and knocked me unconscious, may have saved my life. Second question is, people say, what did you learn? Or how did it change you? Some version of that question seems to be universal because we all get it at a deep level that there’s something we know that if you have a life-threatening event something about you changes you’re brought back to something. That recovery physically was brutal as you can imagine but emotionally it was far tougher because I looked okay, about ten reconstructive surgeries, I looked okay probably within five, six, seven months but the emotional recovery was far longer it was brutal. And all the time I remember, I’m a tough kid from the ghetto I’m a leader so I’m not going to show anybody. I’ve got a bull this whole idea of never showing any vulnerability so I hide all that. You ask me, how are you doing? I’m great, I’m coming back.  

 

There is no back, you can’t come back you have to recreate. It was about 18 months that I fell on the floor in a heat and I found myself in the fetal position, bawling feeling devastated, feeling like I’ve lost everything at a soulful level and it brought me back to that place. And I would challenge each of you to remember this there is a voice within you it is very often a whisper but it’s telling you what your purpose is. It has your question and that thing you’re doing is right and makes logical sense but there’s something underneath that goes, you know what you’re a little bit off this just a tweak you’ve got a turn and it’s the call to your greatness. And that I needed to fall and get smashed to pieces to actually shut the heck up and listen, that’s what it did for me that was the turning point of my life. Not the fall, 18 months later in listening. 

 

Jim Rembach:     I’m glad you’re able to get your way up and out of that because you’ve definitely made a significant impact and I think just you sharing that story and the way that you shared and the way that you drew us in is a reason why you survived. 

 

Dov Baron :     Thank you so much. Thank you.

 

Jim Rembach:     I know you got a lot of things going on, grand kids, travel, of course your work and I know you’re still quite active from an athletic perspective you still like to do things as far as taxing your personal body. But what are some your goals?

 

Dov Baron :     My goals in a grand sense or in the little sense? In the little sense, we’ve got things that we’re releasing like we’ve got a new leadership course coming out, our goal is to get out there and to get a certain number of people to go through that and experience it. Of course, those kinds of goals. But my goal is always the same which is around my purpose. My purpose is to facilitate the purpose of others to allow them to bring up forward so they can really have rich, successful, and fulfilling lives having impact on others. I give you the goal as it came to me in clarity. Many years ago, for many years I owned a personal development company seminar company, and at the end of these five-day events which were 16 hours long people were very gracious they’d thank me. 

 

And we would say thank you and I would always answer with one simple question, for what? Because people like to be general and I want to make them specific because that allows them to get it. This one lady stood in front of me she said, “I want to thank you” and I said, “For what?” She took a pause, and I said, “Okay,” and she said, “For my grandchildren.” And I said, “For your grandchildren? That’s interesting, what do you mean? Your grandchildren are not here” she goes, “No, my daughter is here and you’ve changed my relationship with her and she’s pregnant and you will inevitably by virtue of what I’ve learned changed the relationship with my grandchild.” And it was at that moment that I got what I’m doing and what I’m doing is not about the direct impact in the moment but the ripple effect. So as you listen to this, I hope that you’ve been shifted in some way and brought closer to your own purpose and as a result of that that will impact the lives of the people you lead and your family and that is my goal.

 

Jim Rembach:     And the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor.

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Jim Rembach:    All right, here we go Fast Leader Legion it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Dov, the Hump Day Hoedown is a 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, Dov Baron, are you ready to go hoedown? 

 

Dov Baron : I’m ready. 

 

Jim Rembach:    What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today? 

 

Dov Baron :    What’s holding me back personally? Just stepping further into courage. It’s all about courage, even more courage.

 

Jim Rembach:    What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

 

Dov Baron :    Tony Robbins said to me, “Who’s on your team? I said, I don’t know what that means? And he really explained to me that I needed a team and he was damn right.

 

Jim Rembach:    What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

 

Dov Baron : One of my secrets without doubt is compassion.

 

Jim Rembach:    What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life? 

 

Dov Baron :    The willingness to see the greatness in others. 

 

Jim Rembach:    What would be one book that you’d recommend to our listeners, and it could be from any genre and of course we’ll put a link to your book on the show notes page?  

 

Dov Baron :    Thank you for (28:08 inaudible) which is mine, but the book I would recommend is the one we spoke about which is of course Good to Great by Jim Collins. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay, Fast Leader listeners you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going too fastleader.net/dovbaron. Okay Dov, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything back you can only choose one, so what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

 

Dov Baron :    I would take back the knowledge that it’s not always about the direct impact it’s about noises have to be forced, that ripple effect. Because the reason why is because I would often get deflated and I would lose my juice when I wouldn’t get the impact right away what I would actually get was—maybe even some negativity and I began to realize that the real shift is not always right in that moment but the people who went out to say thank you that’s wonderful but there are people who left the room whose names I will never know whose lives got changed and that’s what’s important. That was whatever to remind myself, it’s what would give me the foundation to stay. You’ve got to live your purpose even if you don’t see the results immediately. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Dov, it was an honor to spend time with you today.  Can you please share it the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you?

 

Dov Baron :    Thank you my friend, I sincerely appreciate that. You can connect with me in all kinds of ways, Twitter @TheDovBaron, Facebook DovBaron Leadership and of course LinkedIn. You can also go to our main site which is fullmontyleadership.com and you can also find me on iTunes-Dov Baron Leadership loyalty tips—in you YouTube and a whole bunch of other places. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Dov Baron, 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 the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.

 

END OF AUDIO 

 

 

102: Michael Beck: I saw the impact of caring about people

Michael Beck Show Notes

Michael Beck was the executive director of a 500-person law firm. But his operating philosophy of listening to people’s concerns and eliciting their input was not matched by the attorney’s in the firm. After butting heads with the micro-managing and dictatorship, Michael decided he could make a greater impact in a different way.

Michael grew up on Long Island in Oyster Bay, New York, along with his two younger sisters. He had two loving and supportive parents. But although his father was successful, he wasn’t a good communicator and wasn’t very good with people. Because of that, Michael really didn’t learn to communicate well, nor did he understand people very well. It really held him back in his career and his effectiveness as he entered the business world.

After graduating high school, he attended college at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering, a Master’s in Structural Engineering, and an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School. He then began his quest to find fulfillment and success!

But things didn’t exactly go as planned. Although he was smart and well-educated, his limited people skills caused problems and limited his success. He was a pretty poor leader.

Then he started working for an entrepreneur in the restaurant business and they soon became partners. His partner seemed to be able to talk with people effortlessly and Michael began learning how to be a better communicator. Michael studied Social Styles and soon gained the ability to “read” people, changing how he communicated to better connect with just about anyone. After many years of working with numbers as an engineer and then a financial executive, he discovered he liked working with people more than he liked working with numbers. He considers himself a “Recovering Analytical”!

He found that he enjoyed understanding people and helping them succeed. He worked for a number of poor leaders and observed what they did to upset people and cause discontent. By learning what not to do and honing his own people skills, Michael became a much more effective leader.

He also discovered that he saw things differently than most people. For a long time in his early career, he tried to fit in, but ultimately discovered the power of thinking differently and being his own person. He discovered the importance of being true to one’s self.

Michael finally became an executive coach about 17 years ago, where he found his passion, his fulfillment, and his success. He’s continued to improve his communication skills, his ability to persuade others, and his passion for making a difference in the world. He’s become a student of human nature and human dynamics. It enables him to help his clients be better leaders and to treat people better.

Along the way, Michael has earned a Black Belt in self-defense, ranked 118th in the world in a rowing competition, and has become a competitive dart player!

Michael currently lives in Portland, OR where he enjoys the great Pacific Northwest. He enjoys being out in nature, and likes to hike and camp. Besides his work and his outdoor interests, Michael regularly pursues his other passion – cooking! He hosts an international cooking group where each month everyone brings a dish they’ve prepared from the featured country.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @Michael_Beck to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“Unless you practice it, you can’t get better at it.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet

“You have a choice to imitate poor leaders or resolving not to.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet 

“I don’t care how smart somebody is, everyone has blind spots.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet 

“Many times we can’t actually see what we are doing wrong.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet 

“As long as you recognized you screwed it up, you’re making progress.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet 

“Embody what you really want to be.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet 

“Analytical people, by their nature, don’t reveal much about themselves.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet 

“Allowing people to get to know the real you makes you far more effective as a leader.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet 

“Revealing a bit about yourself, people respond to you much more.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet 

“Good leaders bring out the best in people.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet 

“Bringing out the best in people drives results.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet 

“The main job of a leader is to bring out the best in people.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet 

“A great leader brings out the best in folks.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet 

“Great leaders don’t produce much; it’s everyone else that does.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet 

“When you hire somebody, they’re highly engaged.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet 

“The brunt of engagement falls on the shoulders of the leader.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet 

“The ability to grow professionally and personally drives engagement.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet 

“Eliciting excellence is the essence of exceptional leadership.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet 

“People respond best when you allow them to be professional and responsible.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet 

“Appreciate the importance of treating people like people.” -Michael Beck Click to Tweet 

Hump to Get Over

Michael Beck was the executive director of a 500-person law firm. But his operating philosophy of listening to people’s concerns and eliciting their input was not matched by the attorney’s in the firm. After butting heads with the micro-managing and dictatorship, Michael decided he could make a greater impact in a different way.

Advice for others

Appreciate the importance of treating people like people.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

Moving from being solo to a team of sharp experienced professionals.

Best Leadership Advice Received

People respond best when you allow them to be professional and responsible.

Secret to Success

My ability to see other’s perspectives and change other people’s perspectives.

Recommended Reading

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box

Eliciting Excellence: Bringing Out the Best in People

Contacting Michael

Website: http://www.michaeljbeck.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjbeck

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Michael_Beck

Resources and Show Mentions

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: 

Click to access edited transcript

102: Michael Beck: I saw the impact of caring about people

 Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we uncover the leadership like hat that help you to experience, break out performance faster and rocket to success. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

Need a powerful and entertaining way to ignite your next conference, retreat or team-building session? My keynote don’t include magic but they do have the power to help your attendees take a leap forward by putting emotional intelligence into their employee engagement, customer engagement and customer centric leadership practices. So bring the infotainment creativity the Fast Leader show to your next event and I’ll help your attendees get over the hump now. Go to beyondmorale.com/speaking to learn more.

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay, Fast Leader Legion today I’m excited because I have somebody on the show today that I resonated so much with his pain. Michael back grew up on Long Island in Oyster Bay, New York along with his two younger sisters. He had two loving and supportive parents. But although his father was successful he wasn’t a good communicator and wasn’t very good with people. Because of that Michael really didn’t learn to communicate well not did he understand people very well. It really held him back in his career and his effectiveness as he entered the business world. After graduating high school he attended college at the University of Pennsylvania where he earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering a Masters in structural engineering and an MBA in Finance from Wharton school. 

 

He then began his quest to find fulfillment and success, but things didn’t exactly go as planned. Although he was smart and well-educated his limited people skills cause problems and limiting his success, he was a pretty poor leader. Then he started working for an entrepreneur in the restaurant business and they soon became partners. His partner seemed to be able to talk with people effortlessly and Michael began learning how to be a better communicator. Michael studied social styles and soon gain the ability to read people, changing how he communicated to better connect with just about anyone. 

 

After many years of working with numbers as an engineer and then a financial executive he discovered he liked working with people more than he liked working with numbers. He considered himself recovering analytical.  He found that he enjoyed understanding people and help them succeed. Michael finally became an executive coach about 17 years ago where he found his passion, his fulfilment and his success. He continue to improve his communication skills, his ability to persuade others, his passion for making a difference in the world. Along the way Michael has earned a black belt in self-defense. Rate a 118th in the world in a rowing competition. And has become a competitive dart player. Michael currently lives Portland, Oregon where he enjoy the great Pacific Northwest. He enjoys being out in nature and likes to hike and camp. Besides his work and his outdoor interest, Michael bravely pursues his other passion, cooking. He host an international cooking group where each month everyone brings a dish they prepared from the featured country. Michael Beck, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

 

Michael Beck:    You bet. Thanks so much, Jim.

 

Jim Rembach:    I’m glad you’re here. Now I’ve given our listeners a little bit about, but can you what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better? 

 

Michael Beck:    Wow! You know, I think it’s really important to be passionate about things. Like you just explained I have a passion for cooking, it’s a great creative outlet you show people you care. I’m actually passionate about the work that I do. You know, a lot of folks do work and they find it draining, I find it energizing, and so, I’m passionate about it.  I’m passionate about helping people understand people, and be better communicators. And you know, I like helping people do what I did which is learn to be better with people. 

 

Jim Rembach:    And I’ve mentioned it a moment ago that you’re story resonated with me because I—as I was reading and learning more about you it was too easy to reflect upon myself going through and being what you had said clueless.

 

Michael Beck:    I didn’t even know that I was being poor that was the sad part, right? And people would say some things to me and I’d be in complete shock like, why are you so angry all the time? Or if you care about people, and that wasn’t my nature at all but that’s how I was coming across. Looking back, frankly, I’m a little ashamed by it. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Yeah, I could say that for me too I’ve had people say to me, I even have to be very careful even today that I don’t come across in the ways that I don’t want to be perceived. And unfortunately our eyes point outward and we often don’t see those things and we do need people around us that can be our confidant and who can tell us the truth and that we can take and hopefully do something with it. But in today’s society there’s something that is been really seen as a very negative light and if you look up the definition of it it really talks about innocence and that is the word ignorant. If you look up the word ignorant it talks about innocent, unknowing, however, in this society that we have today it has been seen as a very bad thing to either call somebody ignorant or to say that yourself you are ignorant about something, it’s a weakness instead of being a potential opportunity to build strength.

 

Michael Beck:    Well, you’re absolutely right. I think whenever anyone in this day and age the term ignorant is absolutely a negative connotation and not an opportunity at all. Frankly, it’s just the reflection that some mores over time change their meaning. So, where ignorant may have been, let’s say a neutral term right now, not so much. And I think we’re about to change that just cause we have a new insight at least the origins of the word. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Now that’s a good point. I was also reading your book, you had mentioned something that to me was really important point that I think we need to discuss and that is—as you were going to your transformation process you talked about reading a lot and observing a lot I think to me the real differentiator is you talked about practicing. 

 

Michael Beck:    Well, It’s good you brought that up because I talk and I see and I meet so many people who they’ll buy books and they’ll read and they’ll go to programs and courses but  practicing they never actually put it into play, they never implement any of it unless you practice it you can’t get better. Over my career I’ve worked for a lot of poor leaders and you have the choice of either using them as a model and then imitating them or observing what they’re doing and resolving not to do that, not to be that kind of leader. So, I think for the first years I mirrored them and then after I realized I didn’t feel good about any of that and felt that there had to be a better, more positive, more expansive way to lead and decided that what they were doing was ineffective and it turned out I was right. 

 

Jim Rembach:    So when you start talking about going through and practicing something that you either read about or you experience about, how did you go to the practicing process?

 

Michael Beck:    Part of it, it kind of relates back to something you said a few minutes ago and I wanted to comment on that cause it’s a good fit with what we’re talking about now. I don’t care how smart somebody is, how much education they’ve had, how many years of experience they’ve had everyone has blind spots. It can’t always see what you’re not getting. So one of the challenges with practicing better leadership is typically it’s about breaking old habits and starting new ones but many times you can actually see what we’re doing wrong, right. Like you and I talked about earlier our careers were clueless we didn’t even know we needed a change and that’s part of the problem. But if you can become aware of the habits you want to change, cause I do this with clients all the time, is when you have a new perspective and you want to develop a new habit you have to be mindful of the kinds of interactions and opportunities that arise where that’s pertinent. And then even if you screwed up, as we typically do cause we do it habitually, as long as you recognize that you screwed it up your making progress, as long as we don’t recognize it then nothing happens. So, when you recognize that we haven’t done something quite right we can either, and I’ve done this I stopped right in the middle of a sentence and say, “You know what, I have to apologize. I keep doing this and I don’t want to that’s not me.” And then I begin down the path of the habit that I really want to reflect. The other is even if I’ve done it wrong out of habit and then after the person leaves, I go “I did it again.” I will actually go back after and I’ll say, “Look, I’ve got to apologize. This is the habit I’m trying to break. I’ve done it this way and here’s how I really feel and think it should be done, so I want to apologize to you.” And that’s a good way to start building a new habit, you will embody what you really want to be.

 

Jim Rembach:    Thanks for sharing that. I started thinking about as you were describing that a very important word that has come up with a different folks that I’ve had the opportunity to meet with over the course of the past couple years just doing the fast leader show and that is intent and being able to convey and communicate openly what your actual intent is because otherwise people are making their own interpretations on your behalf.

 

Michael Beck:    Well, I need to talk about that a little bit because it’s a brilliant observation. In your intro you referred to my term as a recovering analytical. An analytical people by their nature tend to be very close to the vest. They don’t reveal much about themselves, they don’t pry in to other of other folks and I learned over the years that actually allowing people to get to know the real you makes you far more effective as a leader than putting this suit of armor on keeping everybody out. So, I’ve learned that revealing a bit about ourselves allows us to be real and relatable and people respond to us much more than if we pretend that were perfect.

 

Jim Rembach:    You talk about eliciting excellence in others, how do you actually do that?

 

Michael Beck:    So, years ago I got reflecting on leadership. You read a lot of books about how to be a better leader and promoting better leadership but I never actually read anything about why better leadership does make a difference so I thought about it for a long time and to me good leaders, what makes them good leaders, what makes the difference is that they bring out the best in people and it’s that that drives results and therefore the leader becomes a great leader. So, I use the term eliciting excellence it’s bringing out the best in people. I think that’s one of the main jobs of a leader. Yes, there are other aspects to leadership like good strategy in the decisions but a great leader brings out the best in folks. If you think about the whole corporate structure leaders don’t do much work they don’t produce much it’s everyone else it does and therefore the only way the work gets done is when people do great work, so, eliciting excellence. So you ask, how does that happen? it’s really very interesting, when you hire somebody, have you ever hired people in your career?

 

Jim Rembach:    Oh, yes. 

 

Michael Beck:    Alright.  So, you know this when you hire somebody if you hired and done a good job they’re enthused, they’re excited to be there and you’re thinking about what used to make a difference, they’re fully engaged. You don’t need to do anything to those folks to get them engaged, they’re highly engaged. So, what happens then is leaders screwed that up and people become disillusioned or unhappy. There’s that saying that “People join companies but they quit bosses” that’s true, and so that’s what happens. So the leaders responsible for the engagement, yeah, each of the individual workers have their personal responsibility for staying engaged being engaged, but I think the brunt of it falls on the shoulders of the leaders. So how do you elicit excellence? You become a great leader. When you think about how people respond to leaders, a good way to start is actually thinking about what causes disengagement, what causes people to become disillusioned. Typically the things like being disrespected, being treated like a child, being micromanaged, not being valued in other words not being asked for their opinion about anything, those are the things that start making people feel disillusioned and unhappy unappreciated. So, the opposite is true, the way you keep people engaged the way you bring out the best in folks is to respect them and value their input and their insights and treat adults like adults and treat people like people instead of like things and show them appreciation. So when a leader does that it brings out the best in folks. 

 

Jim Rembach:    And so for me listening to you talk and reading of the book on Eliciting Excellence, I found myself kind of understanding that a leader is really most effective when they protect the actual engagement that is just inherently there when somebody starts their new role. So I need to have two things come together I need to protect their engagement that currently exist there and then have them build some of the skills and competencies so that they’re making an impact and in getting that reward as well. And so I see that really being aware and mindful of that energy that already exists is really the best place to start to elicit excellence in people. 

 

Michael Beck:    I agree. I think it’s a great point, Jim, and also I think it ties in really tightly with the idea of treating adults like adults. In other words, to me one of the ways you treat an adult like an adult is to give them autonomy to expect them to be a responsible and professional and when you do that you get to hold them more accountable. And when you do that you can get people full rein, be professional, and learn better skills come up with better ideas, if you don’t know something ask. It allows people to flourish. One of the things that really drives engagement, after all the other basics are met, is the ability to grow professionally and personally and that’s kind of also you’re talking about is allowing people to grow and attain new skill sets.

 

Jim Rembach:    Really what we’re talking about here—obviously because of the transformations that you went through and even for myself there’s a lot of energy and passion in all of this, one of the things that we focus on the show is quotes to help with that energy and passion. Is there a quote or two that gives you a lot of extra energy?

Well, the quote that I always keep in mind and it seems to be, whether it’s intentional or unintentional seems to be echoed throughout all my work is that eliciting excellence is the essence of exceptional leadership. It’s about bringing out the best in people. I’m always thinking how can I bring them up to be their best? It’s not about pounding on folks commenting about how I work with my clients. It’s not about belittling them or driving them or holding them accountable, none of that’s necessary, if I can help them aspire to be the best they can be, they’ll be rock stars.

 

Michael Beck:    We talked about our own transformation, we don’t always do a good job of these things and we have humps that we have to get over to really help elicit excellence in others as well as ourselves. Is there a time that you can remember where you’ve learned that valuable lesson and it helped you move onward and upward faster that you can share? 

 

Jim Rembach:    There are probably several examples but the one that came to mind when you ask that was—I’ve had (16:37 inaudible)career and one of my lifetimes I was executive director of a large law firm, 500 personnel law firm, and the way the firm typically runs is that the attorneys sort of regard the administrative staff as purely support function and that the rock stars were all the attorneys. I was in charge of the administrative end of things and what I did naturally, I mean I did it naturally for myself, I manage by waking around, so I walked around quite a bit talk to folks, try to engaged them more solicit their input and hear what they had to say and what their concerns were and no one had really ever done that before, and the response I got was pretty strong and consistent, in the time I was there I get voice mails and emails from people thinking me, but the attorney’s still didn’t operate that way. And oddly enough at the end of the day, and that was one of the things that ended my tenure there is difference in operating philosophies, and so that was a hump that I, I don’t know if you call it a hump but it was an aha moment, where I really saw the impact of caring about people and treating people like people as opposed to treating them like things.

 

Michael Beck:      So I dare to say that you probably had, during your tenure there, where you bump into folks that were responsible for the lawyer behavior, whether specific lawyers or the partner in charge of all of those folks and you tried to voice and communicate that particular issue. What happened in that conversation? 

 

Michael Beck:    You know that was a good insight on your part. They like to micromanage everything. They were at the top of the heap in their mind and so we butted heads still they wanted to dictate however thing was done and didn’t want to relinquish any authority at all and so ultimately that was the demise of the relationship, that’s what happened. And it was one of the factors that started driving me towards becoming an executive coach because I felt I could make a greater impact from outside of an organization. 

 

Now not meaning to be petty in any way but I know for me I often reflect back and I’m like, “Oh, what happened with that organization and those people?” So, what happened?  

 

Michael Beck:    I actually have the highest regard for that law firm, they’re great law firm and I have no ill feelings towards them, it’s sort of that culture that’s ingrained I think in the high-powered attorneys and I haven’t followed the careers I know the managing partner who had moved in there actually passed away so things have changed somewhat but as far as I know they’ve grown as an organization, as law firm. It’s so funny because they have lots of people that work for them under that scenario, under that culture, it wasn’t a good fit for me that’s all I know. 

 

Jim Rembach:    I think that’s a really good point but it takes a while for us to come to that realization.

 

Michael Beck:    It does. 

 

Jim Rembach:    You talked about working with a lot of clients, and you talked about a lot of these passions everything from the rowing, the professional dart—competitive dart throwing, when you start looking at all these things that you have going, what’s one of your goals?

 

Michael Beck:    Well, my passion is my business as opposed to an additional hobbies. And of late I just have made a decision to move from being a successful solopreneur to building a larger company. And so that’s what’s going on right now and it’s about to take off, things are coming together really nicely. So, it’s very exciting time in my business.

 

Jim Rembach:    And the  in the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move let’s get a quick word from our sponsor.

 

An even better place to work is an easiest solution that gives you a continuous diagnostic on employee engagement along with integrated activities that will improve employee engagement unleash of skills in everyone. Using the award-winning solutions guarantee to create motivated, productive and loyal employees who have great work relationships with their colleagues and your customers. To learn more about an even better place to work, visit beyondmorale.com/better.

 

Jim Rembach:    Alright here we go Fast Leader Legion, it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Michael, 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 us a robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Michael Beck are you ready to hoedown?

 

Michael Beck:    As long as I don’t have to talk as fast as you. 

 

Jim Rembach:    What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

 

Michael Beck:    Good question. Like I spoke of a minute ago, moving from being a solo to team of sharp experienced professionals. And the challenges that it requires me to allow them to be the smarter person.

 

Jim Rembach:    What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

 

Michael Beck:    Well I think it comes from the book, Drive, and people respond best when you allow them to be professional and responsible. In other words, giving them autonomy, treating adults like adults.

 

Jim Rembach:    What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

 

Michael Beck:    Well, I think it’s my ability to see others’ perspectives and my ability to change people’s perspectives accordingly.

 

Jim Rembach:    What would be one book, and it could be from any genre, that you recommend to our listeners?

 

Michael Beck:    Can I  recommend more than one?

Jim Rembach:    You sure can. We’re also going to put a link to your book, Eliciting Excellence, on the show notes page as well. 

 

Thank you. So one of the books I strongly recommend is called, Leadership and Self-Deception it’s by D’Arbinger Institute, that’s where I got the insight of treating people like people. The other book I just mentioned is, Drive by Daniel Pink which is what I called treating adults like adults giving autonomy. And then the third book would be my book, Eliciting Excellence.

 

Okay Fast Leader listeners, you can find links to that and other bonus information from today show by going to fastleader.net/Michael Beck. Okay Michael this my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25. And you have been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything back you can only choose one, what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why? 

 

Michael Beck:     I think that the answers probably one you might guess. Remember I spoke about back then I really treated people poorly as a leader back then. And so if I had to take just one skill back that I have now, I’ll take back take back my appreciation for the importance of treating people like people. And it makes a difference because people respond to that instead of being regarded as things that can be discarded.

 

Jim Rembach:     Michael 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? 

 

Michael Beck:    Oh, absolutely. I’d love for them to visit our website. My website is michaeljbeck.com. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Michael Beck, that you 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 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 fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

 

END OF AUDIO

 

 

078: Bob Anderson: It meant bigger changes than I was up for

Bob Anderson Show Notes

Bob Anderson started his career in the family business making hog food and dog food. One evening, while cleaning out a rail car full of feed ingredients, Bob said something out loud that sent him on a life long journey. Listen to Bob tell his story of how he got over the hump.

Bob was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio where he was born into a leadership context.  His grandfather, uncles, one aunt, and father started a business—The Andersons (now a Fortune 500 company) with interests in grain, plant nutrients, ethanol, rail, and retail.

On Bob’s other side of the family, his maternal grandfather was President of the American Medical Association and his uncle was a renowned Jesuit Moral Theologian.  Bob often reflects and marvels at the perfection of the family into which he was born.

Throughout his life, Bob has been passionate about one thing—the deep ground of being from which human greatness springs and from which great leadership emerges.  This passion led him to study leadership, and his book Mastering Leadership is an integration and summary of his life’s work.

For Bob, authenticity is the most influential human quality.  He believes that the hardest thing to do is to tell the truth blamelessly and compassionately. This same challenge is one that he also knows can be very rewarding.

Bob is the Founder, Chairman, and Chief Development Officer of The Leadership Circle. He is also the Co-founder and Chairman of Full Circle Group. Additionally, he is the creator of The Leadership Circle Profile, an integrated and innovative leadership assessment tool.

Bob also serves as adjunct faculty for the Executive Education Center at the University of Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business. There he assists diverse groups of leaders in navigating their own leadership transformations. In 2005, Bob received the Partner in Innovation faculty award.

Bob still resides in Toledo with his wife of 33 years, with whom he loves to travel the globe. He has three grown children.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @LeadershipCir and get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“The inner game runs the outer game.” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet

“We tend to ignore the inner work that’s required to mature into great leadership.” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“Go into yourself and search for the reason that bids you right.” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“What must I be about with my life in order for it to be the life I came to live.” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“If you’re on purpose, all of the doors will open.” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“There’s no safe way to be great.” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“Our natural tendency is we want to find a safe path and there isn’t one.” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“Do you love more than you fear?” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“The basic hidden deal we make when we go to work is patriarchal.” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“Fear and caution in organizations is very high.” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“Greatness isn’t great unless you’re rowing against the stream.” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“If we’re waiting for circumstances to line up to be great, it’s a long wait.” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“What matters enough to risk for, you have to be clear about that.” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“You have to get under the illusion underneath your fear.” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“I’m making up most of the fear I feel.” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“It’s a house of cards when you’re in a play not to lose game.” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“What’s underneath how I get in my own way?” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“How do I engage with both challenge and support?” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“Leadership and development is at every level.” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“This question of purpose and vision never let’s go of you.” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“The leadership challenges in the world are going to take highly conscious leaders.” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

“How do we evolve conscious leadership to steward the planet?” -Bob Anderson Click to Tweet 

Hump to Get Over

Bob Anderson started his career in the family business making hog food and dog food. One evening, while cleaning out a rail car full of feed ingredients, Bob said something out loud that sent him on a life long journey. Listen to Bob tell his story of how he got over the hump.

Advice for others

See through the illusion of trying to be liked and thought highly of.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

My own fear.

Best Leadership Advice Received

Jump

Secret to Success

Courage to move forward in the face of not knowing how.

Best tools that helps in business or Life

Heart

Recommended Reading

The Empowered Manager: Positive Political Skills at Work

Contacting Bob

Website: https://leadershipcircle.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-anderson-a6b1673

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LeadershipCir

Resources

Empathy Mapping

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: 

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 intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

 

Need a powerful and entertaining way to ignite your next conference, retreat or team-building session? My keynote don’t include magic but they do have the power to help your attendees take a leap forward by putting emotional intelligence into their employee engagement, customer engagement and customer centric leadership practices. So bring the infotainment creativity the Fast Leader show to your next event and I’ll help your attendees get over the hump now. Go to beyondmorale.com/speaking to learn more.

 

Okay, Fast Leader Legion today I have excitement and anxiety for the guest that I have on the show today because their skill and knowledge about leadership is so wide and deep that I almost feel like I’m not worthy, but I’m ready to get over that hump. Robert Anderson was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio where he was born into a leadership context. His grandfather, uncles, one aunt, and father started the business, the Anderson’s, now Fortune 500 companies with interesting grain, plant nutrients, ethanol, rail and retail. On Bob’s other side of the family his maternal grandfather was the president of the American Medical Association and his uncle was a renowned Jesuit Moral Theologian. Bob often reflects and marvels at the perfection of the family into which he was born. Throughout his life Bob has been passionate about one thing, the deep ground of being from which human greatness springs and from which great leadership emerges. 

 

This passion led him to study leadership and his book Mastering Leadership is an integration and summary of his life’s work. For Bob authenticity is the most influential human quality, he believes that the hardest thing to do is to tell the truth blamelessly and compassionately this same challenge is one that he also knows can be very rewarding. Bob is the founder chairman and chief development officer of the Leadership Circle. He is also the co-founder and chairman of full Circle group. Additionally he is the creator of the leadership circle profile and integrated and innovative leadership assessment tool. Bob also serves as adjunct faculty for the Executive Education Center at the University Of Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business. 

 

In 2005, Bob received the partner in innovation faculty award. Bob’s still reside in Toledo, Ohio with his wife of 33 years with whom he loves to travel the globe and has three grown children. Bob Anderson are you ready to help us get over the hump?

 

Bob Anderson:    Gladly. 

 

Jim Rembach:    I’m glad you’re here. I’ve given our listeners a little bit about you, but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better.

 

Bob Anderson:    Well, my current passion is helping leaders develop from the inside out. The book we just wrote is really about the tendency—when we think about developing leaders to focus on the outer game, skills, competencies, knowledge, experience and so that’s all very important and it’s only half the game or maybe even less  than half the game. So the inner game runs the outer game and we tend to ignore the inner work that’s required to really mature into great leadership. So, my passion is helping people with that.

 

Jim Rembach:    You bring up some very interesting points for me. As I was going through and I can tell you that—the book Mastering Leadership that we’re talking about mostly today is that—man, the depth, the knowledge I started going through and I was like, whoa this is heavy material. When it’s mastery in the cover, mastery is absolutely inside. But there’s something that stood out very much for me and it was called the predictable stages of consciousness. What does that mean?

 

Jim Rembach:    First of all, the book is dense it’s just the way building that right. Somebody wants, just like this week said, “It’s all meat no fat” and he put that away. The field of adult development were started with childhood development, PIJ you said, here the various stages. And when we see children we watch them just more from one level of mind to the next level of mind to the next level of mind, turns out adults can do the same thing and they do so if they evolve, and that’s a big if, predictably. They move out of adolescence into what Bob Kegan at Harvard called socialized mind, where you take on the surround and the surrounding expectations and so on and you’ve make yourself successful within them. And then most of the adults would live then you can move into what we call creative mind or self-authoring mind which is where leadership, all the big descriptions of great leadership or what it takes to be effective leader describing creative mind not very many adults are operating from that operating system. 

 

Creative minds is focused on your own vision, your own values, your own deep sense of purpose and you’re about trying to create your life and your leadership as an expression of that. And then it can go further on and very few are operating from what we call integral or self-transforming minds but Kegan call it (inaudible 5:12). And these stages develop progressively, you can’t skip steps and you’ll develop in one and then if you evolve further you differentiate from that and develop into the next stage and our data suggest that development is highly correlated to effectiveness in leadership. 

 

Jim Rembach:   One of the  things that we talk about on the fast leader show is really learning from others so that we can do some of that next stage development faster. Somebody once said that the experiences that we have are much greater teachers than anything we may read or sessions or training that we may take, it’s those experiences, now the beauty about stories that we can use the experience of others to help with our development. So, if you think about today and that many organizations, they’re running so lean and when you look at even the peripherian, and outer bands of an organizations we need everybody to improve their leadership skills regardless of their age and we don’t have entire lifetime to get these people to move up to that next level. So, when I start thinking about predictable stages of consciousness I needed to move faster, how can I do that?

 

Bob Anderson:    Well, it’s very interesting. We’ve outlined the book 6 practices that we think will reliably boot up creative mind from reactive mind. One of them is discerned purpose. You talk about getting over the hump as focus that was getting over the hump experience. For me, when I started my career I was working in a family business I was on a feed manufacturing plant. So I started my career making some hog food and dog food and one night the plant was down, it was a new plant so we’re in start-ups which means nothing works, so the plant was down and we needed to get it back on that means customers to fill in the morning and so in the middle of the night I’m out there unloading railroad cars full of feed ingredients and I get inside the car to sweep it out at one point about 2:30 in the morning when I’m exhausted and I just prop my feet up inside the half bottom of that car when I’m done catch my breath and I got my dust mask on and I’m just sitting there for just a few seconds and out of my mouth out loud said, I’m not becoming  who I am, out loud. And literally I’ll be shock, I’m like who said that word? Where did that came from? I knew it was true and I knew I had to pay attention to it. And so I just noticed that and then within a couple of week somebody gave me a book called, Letters to a Young Poet, by Rilke a great poet German poet, and in that the aspiring poet is saying to Rilke, “Hey take a look at my work what do you think should I be a poet? Am I good enough? And Rilke writes back and says wrong questions, you’re looking outward and above all you should not do that now, go in to yourself and search for the reason that bids you right find out if it’s spreading out the truth in the deepest places of your heart. And then at one point he says, ask you yourselves in the stillest out of the night, must I write? Ahhh, that’s the question. What must I be about with my life in order for it to be the life I came here to live and not someone else’s.

 

And I took that really seriously. I went home that night, working late and started a list, not a bucket list, a must list, this is who I think I am and what I’m here to do with this life. And I wrote about 30 pages progressively over a period of time on that and then I put it away and I realized, six months later, I hadn’t done anything with it and when I drop into that I realized I was scared. Has it meant bigger change than I felt I was up for at that time? And I didn’t know how to do it I have no idea where this is going to take me. So I went on made a retreat, made an eight day retreat, silent retreat, I came back and started making notes. Fifteen years later I pull that journal that I’d written, that must journal out of the closet I read it and I wept because everything I’d written there, which I had no idea how to do was actually happening in ways that I never could’ve imagined. I didn’t even know about this profession that I’m in at the time wrote that stuff, I was running a feed plant just come out of business school, so, that was a hump getting over and really taking seriously. Who am I? What am I here for? And moving through the fear of stepping out not knowing how not having a clue, actually. And things have unfolded in ways that Joseph Campbell says, follow your bliss, and then he says, “If you do that all the doors open, if you’re un-purpose all the doors open, if you’re not they all remain close. So, my experience of life was spend a lot of opening doors that looking back it’s kind of (inaudible 10:40) 

 

Jim Rembach:    Definitely is, and  thanks for sharing that story. When you start thinking about the Fast Leader show, I think you just summed up a lot of the things that we try to have come out with the guest that we interview and hopefully that when people are done listening they have now had the opportunity to reflect and hopefully make some adjustments and changes so that they can move onward and upward faster. And looking through Mastering Leadership book I see there’s just so much research that’s been done on the different principles, philosophies, it just runs this huge gambit and I know that you had some very significant influences in a lot of different ways throughout the course of your life including your own family. And we look at leadership quotes as one of the things that causes us to do some mindfulness, some energy building and the whole reflection. So, is there a quote or two that you can share with us that helps ground you, energize you that you can share?

 

Bob Anderson:    One of my early mentors was Peter Black. Peter had written a number of books, he’s an astounding human being, and I got this from him I’m not sure he originated it but—there’s  no say for you’ll be great, and that actually is a huge quote, because it gets that tension between the desire for greatness or the desire to really live into who you are or what’s really matters to you, create what matters and a natural the tendency in all us as we want to find the safe path and there isn’t one.  So, the search for safety is always in tension with the search for purpose, vision, creating what matters. Fear comes up and so, no say for you to be great and do you love more than you fear. 

 

Jim Rembach:    As you been talking there’s something that has come to my mind especially in today’s society when you start talking about how we view others, it could be perceived that—and people decide that that word greatness is something that were trying to get other people to bestow upon us. But listening to you talk it doesn’t sound like that’s really the meaning of it. 

 

Bob Anderson:    That’s part of the wish for safety. And in some ways and that what we call reactive or structured mind where most adults are, the basic deal we make when we go to work, hidden deal is patriarchal. So, I’ll submit if you take care of me and provide me a future. And as soon as we make that exchange were into a play not to lose game or trying to not fall from grace with higher-ups because they hold the key to our future and so on and so on. And so you see fear and caution in organizations very, very high. If you start to talk you mention my favorite value is authenticity. If you start to really work with people in the middle of the pyramid around telling the truth, especially telling the truth to the power, if I do that I get shot. That’s the first, there’s no way I can do that and survive, and so you run right into caution. So much of the work of really becoming great, I’m not sure I really the word ‘great’ in a sense of that can be a very egotistical thing I’m trying to talk about it in a different way. The thing about greatness is it isn’t great unless you’re rowing against the stream.

 

And so, if waiting for circumstances to line up, right boss, right organizational culture, mixed messages to go away, political risk and so on, if we’re waiting for that to line up to give us permission to be great, it’s a long way and the courage required is to do it anyway and run the inherent risk that is leadership. There’s no safe way to be great and so what matters enough to risk for you have to be clear about that and then that’s your work and then you have to get underneath your fear. Generally,q more often than not the illusion that’s underneath my fear, I’m making up most of the fear that I feel and it’s a house of cards and until you see that you act as if it’s true when you’re playing not to lose game. So, that work, what do I want? And what’s underneath how I get in my own way? Is actually how you create the life you came here to live, I think that is the kind of transformative term that evolves us, and nobody can do that for you, you can’t be bestowed. 

 

Jim Rembach:    As you were talking, I started thinking about many people may take what we’re talking about here and flip it into that, “Hey, I need to be a rebel.” And I don’t think that that’s the positive path that we would want people to take.

 

Bob Anderson:    No it isn’t rebellion at all.  The rebel is a childlike response it’s counter dependent I’m angry at you because of not generally my own lack of power and so I rebel. And so, there’s two options, you can play the victim or you can play the rebel, neither one work neither was constructed but they come out of the same powerlessness they’re just different reactions. So, the more mature responses, how do I engage with both challenge and support? How do I support what’s trying to happen here and the value of what’s in the current culture? And how do I stay and dialogue to evolve it. 

 

Jim Rembach:    That’s one thing that I read in a book and it was talking about how—and it really referred to senior leaders, how senior leaders need to invest in themselves to improve their skills and knowledge associated with leading and I really talked about that being a commitment from the top. But for me I see that really needing would be a commitment regardless of where you are in the organization. 

 

Bob Anderson:    Yes. Leadership at every level and development is at every level, and frankly to be an empowered follower you need everything we’ve just been talking about, you need (inaudible 17:48). I don’t distinguish it by level, argument we’re making in the book is, if your strength could create a cultural transformation in the organization and it’s not and leadership is at the core of that, how you individually and collectively especially collectively are showing up as a leadership team in the organization that defines a culture, that defines a lot, everything really. And so our book is written to create an argument for here’s the kind of depth, strategic and systemic focus it takes to really develop leadership in the organization and if you don’t do that your change efforts are in jeopardy. So we are making a very specific argument but not to suggest that this kind of leadership isn’t needed all the way through in the development agenda is the same at every level. 

 

Jim Rembach:    And I think from a an individual perspective, and even if you start looking at how much companies or organizations will invest in their folks in regards to developing them as leaders I don’t think you can rely or wait on that to happen, nor going back that rebellion and complain and whine about is that you need to build your own pathway to doing it.

 

Bob Anderson:    Yes. Nobody is going to do it for you. And waiting is a long way so get on with it. 

 

Jim Rembach:    When you start looking at a lot of things that you’re doing, of course writing, speaking, assessments, wife traveling, grown kids—we didn’t talk about any grandkids there, not yet? I know that’s a joy for many, but when you start thinking about all these things, what are some of your goals?

 

Bob Anderson:    That’s a very interesting question, I’m  60 now , just worse of your goals but that’s a very interesting question at 16 now just published a book 30 years of lifework poured into that book so  worth of lifework so I’m actually in a transition and it’s a, what do I want to do with my career life? When you’re 60 you start to go, okay if not now when? And so, I’m actually working that right now. This question of purpose and vision never lets go of you. What would I say is my personal goals? This work is a passion for me and it’s my creative response to what a world I think in need. Our world is in pretty serious trouble, you look at some of the population trends, climate trends, and water and so on and so on, oceans and we don’t have a lot of time to really make a difference on the trajectory or some of those trends. 

 

So, the leadership challenges not only in corporate that where it’s becoming more and more complex but especially when you look at the leadership challenges in the world, our going to take very highly conscious leaders if not enlightened leadership, servant leadership and so on, various names we put on. And so our work on how we evolve conscious leadership to steward the planet that’s our mission statement. We exist to evolve, the conscious practice of leadership to steward the planet and to awaken us all to our inherent unity. So, what happens if leader starts to function from the truth of we are all one family, there’s an inherent unity here and our job is to steward the planet. That kind of conscious leadership that’s going to take to do that is what we as an organization are trying impact. My goal for the next 10 years would be how to make consciousness best practice in business. 

 

Jim Rembach:    And the Fast Leader legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor.

 

The number one thing that contributes to customer loyalty is emotions, so move onward and upward faster by gaining significantly deeper insight and understanding of your customer journey and personas with emotional intelligence. With your entity mapping workshop you learn how to evoke and influence the right customer emotions that generate improve customer loyalty and reduce your cost to operate. Get over your emotional hump now by going to empathymapping.com to learn more.

 

All right, here we go Fast Leader legion it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Bob, 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. Bob Anderson, are you ready to hoedown? 

 

Bob Anderson:    I didn’t know this was coming, here we go. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay, Bob, what you think is@ holding you back from being even better leader today?

 

Bob Anderson:    My own fear.

 

Jim Rembach:    What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

 

Bob Anderson:    Jump.

 

Jim Rembach:    What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

 

Bob Anderson:    Courage. Courage to move forward in the face of not knowing how and fear.

 

Jim Rembach:    What you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

 

Bob Anderson:    Heart.

 

Jim Rembach:    What would be one book that you’d recommend to our listeners, it could be from any genre?

 

Bob Anderson:    Peter Black wrote a book called, The Empowered Manager, it’s one of my all-time favorites.

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay Fast Leader listeners you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/Bob Anderson. Okay, Bob this my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity go back to the age of 25 and you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything you can only choose one, so what skills or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

 

Bob Anderson:    At 25 I didn’t know that much of me was run on autopilot. My need to be liked, to be always thought highly of was running me in ways I didn’t know and it cost me a lot, I’d like to take that back and see what would unfold, saw through the through the illusion of that fear.

 

Jim Rembach:    Bob was an honor to spend time with you today, can you please share with Fast Leader listeners how they can connect with you?

 

Bob Anderson:    theleadershipcircle.com all, one word. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Bob Anderson, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom, 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 fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.

 

END OF AUDIO 

 

 

 

075: Nate Brown: I didn’t have to buy into that narrative

Nate Brown Show Notes

Nate Brown and his wife moved to Nashville for a job. Placing a lot of his identity in his job, Nate felt like he lost everything when he was removed from the business. Some of the words that were used when he was terminated hurt deeper than anything he could imagine. Listen to Nate tell his story of how he was able to get over the hump.

Nate was raised in Seattle, Washington, but has lived all over the South East since then.  Growing up, Nate specialized in sports that no other kids thought were cool.

These included golf, tennis, badminton, and ping-pong.  Most of his afternoons were spent kicking around a golf course, followed by evenings in the game room.  The pinnacle of his youth came when he won a talent show by reenacting Disney’s “The Lion King” on rollerblades.

Once the country club dream faded into real life, Nate has been slightly more ambitious.  He began working for a safety technology company soon after attending Toccoa Falls College, and has been working to make workplaces safer ever since.

He has held a variety of roles in the services department of UL Workplace Health and Safety including Customer Service Representative, Migration Consultant, Training Manager, and Support Manager.

More recently Nate has been participating in the larger support community through blogging and speaking.  He has led sessions on Customer Effort Score and Gamification at the 2015 ICMI Conference and Expo and looks forward to speaking at both ICMI and HDI conferences in 2016.  He is also the author and founder of the blog CustomerCentricSupport.com.

More personally Nate has two daughters and wife who capture most of his attention and time.  He finds his home in Nashville, Tennessee where he enjoys disc golfing, fishing, photography and serving in his local church.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @CustomerIsFirst to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“Photography has helped me to just see what’s there and to find it beautiful.” -Nate Brown Click to Tweet

“There’s always going to be a situation where you can feel like you’re the victim.” -Nate Brown Click to Tweet 

“You always have the ability to choose in a way that’s going to edify people.” -Nate Brown Click to Tweet 

“Telling everybody but that one person about a problem] ruins your credibility.” -Nate Brown Click to Tweet 

“We make so many commitments in our mind; sometimes that needs to flow through our hand.” -Nate Brown Click to Tweet 

“What is behind that leader that’s causing them to act and behave that way?” -Nate Brown Click to Tweet 

“Great leaders apply their skills to benefit the people that are around them.” -Nate Brown Click to Tweet 

“When I see a leader that I aspire to be it’s that person leading with authenticity.” -Nate Brown Click to Tweet 

“A true leader is committed to the betterment of the group.” -Nate Brown Click to Tweet 

“I can change the narrative in my own mind and make a new legacy.” -Nate Brown Click to Tweet 

“The goal is to always to get better and there’s no finish line.” -Nate Brown Click to Tweet 

“I try to look at me through everyone else’s eyes.” -Nate Brown Click to Tweet 

“I’m there to further the causes that I believe in.” -Nate Brown Click to Tweet 

“Live in the moment and be satisfied to make those around you happier.” -Nate Brown Click to Tweet   

Hump to Get Over

Nate Brown and his wife moved to Nashville for a job. Placing a lot of his identity in his job, Nate felt like he lost everything when he was removed from the business. Some of the words that were used when he was terminated hurt deeper than anything he could imagine. Listen to Nate tell his story of how he was able to get over the hump.

Advice for others

The goal is to always to get better and there’s no finish line.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

Fear

Best Leadership Advice Received

Find laser focus.

Secret to Success

Authenticity

Best tools that helps in business or Life

Interpersonal communication skills

Recommended Reading

Leading Change, With a New Preface by the Author

Contacting Nate

Website: http://customercentricsupport.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tfcdawg

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CustomerIsFirst

Resources

Customer Grade the Call

Creating an even better place to work

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:

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 intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

 

How do you get higher contacts center agent performance it’s when customers grade the call and their ratings and comments are used to motivate and coach agents, uncover hidden secrets and replicate your best agent with the real-time insights from the award-winning external quality monitoring program from customer relationship metrics. Move onward and upward by going to customersgradethecall.com/fast and getting a $7500 rapid results package for free. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay Fast Leader Legion I’m excited today because I am sharing somebody who really resonated with me in an article that they wrote called The Promise of Positivity. Nate Brown was raised in Seattle, Washington but has lived all over the southeast since then. Growing up Nate specialized in sports that no other kids thought were cool, these included golf, tennis, badminton, and ping-pong. Most of his afternoons were spent kicking around a golf course followed by innings in the game room. The pinnacle of his youth came when he won a talent show by re-enacting Disney’s the Lion King on rollerblades. Once the country club dream faded into real life, Nate has been slightly more ambitious. He began working for a safety technology company soon after attending Toccoa Falls College and has been working to make workplaces safer ever since. He has held a variety roles in the services department of UL workplace, health, and safety including customer service representative, migration consultant training manager, and support manager. As a practitioner, Nate is a sought after speaker and participates in a larger support community through blogging. He recently led a session on customer effort score and gamification at the I CMI conference and expo and is slated to do even more. Nate currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee where he enjoys disc golfing, fishing, photography, and serving at his local church and spending the most of his valuable time with his two daughters Aubrey, Kennedy, and his wife Crystal. Nate Brown are you ready to help us get over the hump?

 

Nate Brown:    Jim I’m ready, I’m excited.

 

Jim Rembach:    So am I, I can’t wait to talk about this promise of positivity but for now I’ve given our listeners a little bit about you but can you share what your current passion is so that we get to know you even better.

 

Nate Brown:    Yeah. It really has been photography. The last year, I feel like it open up a whole new side of my brain, I’ve never been an artistic person but as soon as I got a couple pieces of equipment it’s like I see light and the whole color and just everything differently, I love it.

 

Jim Rembach:    Now that’s really interesting that you say that, for those who don’t know Nate and I are actually looking via video so that we can make a better experience for you as a listener but if I was able to turn the video camera Nate would be able to see my video studio that I do some video as well and dabbled in photography so I look forward to that, but when you start talking about seeing things a little bit different and opening up a different side of your brain what specifically are you referring to?

 

Nate Brown:    Yeah, just the artistic quality of everything. I really feel like I get caught up in what’s next and what do people expect me to do next and what am I going to do in an hour, what am I going to do in two days and I definitely struggle to live in the now and to be content in my current situation and photography has help me to just see what there and just to find it beautiful.

 

Jim Rembach:    So that’s really interesting. So as you were saying that I started thinking about—it’s making you more mindful. 

 

Nate Brown:    True, that’s a good way to put it.

 

Jim Rembach:    And also when you started talking about that and what you just shared and thanks for doing that, it really connected me back to that whole promise of positivity that I read on your blog, and so I don’t think I even mentioned that but you’re the founder and author of the blog customer centric support.com, on that on that post you had talked about five different things in this promise of positivity book but there’s was one phrase, and to me it’s really a quote and it’s pretty powerful, you said: “Your reaction is the variable” what do you mean by that?

 

Nate Brown:    Well, I mean there’s so many dynamic things that happen in our offices and in our working relationships and I feel like there’s always going to be a situation where you can feel like you’re the victim but you do not have to do that and you always have the ability to choose and to choose in a way that’s going to edify people and that’s going to help people and that is the variable that’s there in any situation.

 

Jim Rembach:    So when you start talking about those five components and for me, I kind of chuckle with number five and number five was, I will not harm my coworkers through  conversation that tears them down whether they’re there or not.

 

Nate Brown:    Bingo! It’s whether they’re there or not. Like it’s one thing to be direct with somebody and have robust communication to their face, it’s another thing to I guess have the cowardice of not being able to approach the person when there’s something that you know that they can do better or something that frustrates you, you’ve got to deal with that individual. I mean if you’re telling everybody but that one person you’re doing them a huge disservice and you’re ruining your own credibility and I just don’t want to be about that.

 

Jim Rembach:    That’s a really good point there was a quote that I heard and gosh now I can’t think at the top of my head where the source was but it was essentially that you’re not a loser until you start blaming other people.

 

Nate Brown:    That’s excellent, very true.

 

Jim Rembach:    It is true and so that’s one of the things I keep trying to instill within my kids who are at the moment 12, 10, and 7

 

Nate Brown:    Nice

 

Jim Rembach:    Even at the dinner table last night when my 12-year-old daughter started talking about an athletic situation and talking about one of her teammates in a way that was not positive and I was like you need to stop right there, okay just stop, and she was like why I need to tell you this and I’m like no you don’t, you’re done.

 

Nate Brown:    That’s good.

 

Jim Rembach:    So when you start, there’s a mentor of mine who also said or one of his phrases is that you need to create a no moan zone.

 

Nate Brown:    Oh wow, okay. `Catchy.

 

Jim Rembach:    It is very catchy. And so a no moan zone includes a little bit more than just talking about the coworkers it’s just the overall workplace theme, culture attack, all of those different things. So when you start thinking about creating this positivity component, this positivity culture. How does one start?

 

Nate Brown:   It’s definitely in your own mind. I mean for me this was a commitment to myself that I was going to be a different person and I that was going to stop the games that I play with myself and that I was playing with my coworkers. It was definitely an evolution, it did not happen overnight but for me not only doing that for myself but putting it out there publicly, and I had a lot of great response from that post. I had a lot of people that were saying that they were rooting for me and that they were making their own commitments to positivity as well and that could look different for everybody. But that brings in a communal accountability that really help me to know that it was real and this was a commitment that was going to stick. I wrote that post a while ago and it really has, am I perfect? No,` but I can definitely notice a distinct difference between the person I was before writing that and the person that I am today.

 

Jim Rembach:    One of the things you also mention is signing a contract.

 

Nate Brown:    Yeah. In our day and age if you don’t put your John Hancock on a piece of paper we make so many commitments to our self and in our mind but sometimes that needs to flow through your hand and if for nobody else for yourself that way you can go back and you can see it. We have this organization that they partners with UL, it’s called Patrick Coaching and one of the techniques that they do that’s so powerful is when they do an executive session with you, they have you make a commitment, that’s not even specific to business it’s a commitment that you’re making to better yourself and then ultimately better every aspect of your life including business. They have you put that down on a postcard and sign it and they actually mail that to you three months later with just a question at the front, how are you doing? And it’s just such a powerful accountability knowing that you’re going to get that postcard and you’re going to have to look yourself in the eye and answer that question.

 

Jim Rembach:    That is definitely, talking about that accountability piece and also it’s very inspiring. One of the things that we focus on the show is leadership quotes because it can do just that. Do you have a quote or two that kind of stands out for you that inspires you that you can share?

 

Nate Brown:    Yeah I do. And this is a John C. Maxwell quote and I love this and I’ll get into why, “It’s true leadership must be for the benefit of the followers not to enrich the leader.” And the reason that I love this quote so much is because you see these great leaders, and I’ve been fortunate to be around a lot of them, but the first question that I ask when I see somebody with leadership qualities is, what is their motive is? What is behind that individual that is causing them act and behave the way that they are behaving? Because I feel like I’ve seen and I’ve been a part of a lot of people with leadership skill that have ultimately proven to be very self-serving and for me that’s a very sad moment of truth that I found with certain individuals or I come to understand that they have these great skills and that they’re not being applied in a way that’s ultimately going to benefit the people around them. And when I see a leader that I aspire to be it’s not necessarily that person with all the charisma and all the communication skill and that everybody’s just rallying behind, it’s that person that’s leading with authenticity and that’s leading because they’re not doing it for themselves they are actually there committed to the betterment of whatever it is that that group is trying to accomplish. And that’s the person that I start to see now as a true leader rather than the flashy folks that I used to really honor and respect before.

 

Jim Rembach:    Thanks for sharing that and one of the things that stood out to me was a discussion that I had with the previous guest who’s actually in the Nashville area as well, Jerry Barber

 

Nate Brown:    Oh yeah, I know Jerry, amazing.

 

Jim Rembach:    Jerry talked about kind of not leaving that component to the people to be able to figure out as a leader you need to actually share what your intent is, share what your objectives and beliefs are so that it doesn’t come into question or misinterpretation or being presumptuous in a different way. And to me that was something that just has carried with me and I’ve recommended Jerry’s episodes to a lot of folks who are trying to find their way and excel and move onward and upward faster in regards to leading is concern. So thanks for sharing that.

 

Nate Brown:    No that’s really interesting Jerry Barber is absolutely a mentor of mine we served together on a nonprofit board for the HCI counsel and he’s been fantastic.

 

Jim Rembach:    Yeah good guy. So thanks for sharing that. Okay, so you talked about several different things in regards to the things that you’ve learned, what you were in customer service and support you went into training, helping a lot of different organizations, doing the public speaking, well in order to be able to gain that type of experience and wisdom we have humps to get over because they really teach us some very valuable lessons that we can hopefully share with others.

 

Nate Brown:    Very true

 

Jim Rembach:    Yeah, is there a time that you can remember and share with us when you’ve had to get over the hump?

 

Nate Brown:    Yeah I might have struggled for this a little bit and it was definitely a difficult time. It was when me and my wife had first moved to Nashville. We actually moved here for a job and have no family here, no support structure that was here it was literally just this job. I was essentially fresh out of college and I really thought that it was a great place and if I was  going very well and it’s actually where I learned that I love customer service and I love being on the customer facing aspect of an organization. Well, as it turned out it was not going as well as I thought with a certain individual who was my direct manager and for several months he had been building a case against me that ultimately had removed from the business and it was an incredibly vulnerable time for me and young wife. We were there and just looking around and trying to figure out should we even stay in Nashville? Should we be here? What is going on? And as a provider to my family, as a person who really find a lot of identity right or wrong in my job I just felt like I have lost everything. I never expected that to happen to me and my wife where I was removed out of a position without me actually initiating that. 

 

Some of the things that they said when they were terminating me still stick with me and it was definitely the hump. And basically what they were articulating to me is that I was not special enough and that I was not good enough at the job and that I was only average and that they could not sustain average people in their organization. It wasn’t like something that I did wrong that I knew was a mistake or like just something that went really poorly it just something about what they articulated to me was just such an undermining thing because they were basically telling me that I was no good and that I wasn’t worth a paycheck to them and that hurt deeper than anything that I could’ve imagined at that time. So there was many months after that where I was definitely in a little bit of state of depression and luckily I had a best friend Jim Rich who I said, “Jim you got help me just get my mind right and get out of this, will you come out with me into the woods and lets just hit the Appalachian Trail for a few days and just help me hit the reset button?” And he was gracious enough to do that and just being out there in God’s creation and just have that clarity of mind out there I realized some of the lies that I’ve been told and I realized that I did not have to buy into that narrative and that I could go ahead and move forward.

And so after that time I’ve got the call from what would later become UL and they asked if I would come in an interview for the most front-line customer service position possible, I mean just on the phone, just being with customers and remembering that I had realized even in that other job that ultimately end up being very bad thing that I still love the customer, I love customer service and that I was good at that and I wanted to prove that to myself and prove that to those around me. And so I went in and I was interviewed and absolutely love the culture, the organization that I saw there immediately. We have people like Allison Everett who went to my rival high school and wore a leather jacket from my rival high school for my interview and just some amazing people that were there and I knew that there was a better place and there was a different place than what I had moved to Nashville for and that company that I was with was not necessarily a representation of all corporate America.

 

And so, I had confidence in that moment I could come in and that I could change the narrative in my own mind and that I could make something different I could make a new legacy that was there. I just dove into that job and I just loved the technology, I love the people, I love the customer and through the process of doing that job and doing it well I got my confidence back and I started to really excel in that role  and just to win. I mean win for the customer be that voice of the customer, be somebody that people that were in the organization as an internal stake holder enjoyed working with because they knew that I was out to make the customer experience better and that they could trust me and that I was credible for them. And it was only five or six months into the job where I had a very different reputation that I had at the other organization and that’s something that I’ve been building on ever since. But for me that was the hump that moment where I was told that I was not good enough and I bought into that lie and luckily I was able to make a different narrative.

 

Jim Rembach:    Wow! Thanks for sharing that story and I can tell you for me personally there’s several things that I connected with cause I kind of went through a similar scenario more than once unfortunately but it took me, gosh I can remember the blues whether it  was depression or not clinically speaking, I don’t know but you start questioning worth, value, abilities all those things and I can say thank you to Jim and all of those Jims out there who will do what he did because that’s awesome we need more like that.

 

Nate Brown:    Amen

 

Jim Rembach:    So I know you talked about photography, you talked about the of course the progression UL, your public speaking, your writing and your children, your wife, all of those things also the work that you’re doing at your church you’ve got a lot of things on your plate, but if you say that you had one goal, what would it be?

 

Nate Brown:    To narrow it down to one goal it would be to further God’s kingdom, to make a legacy that ultimately he will be proud of even beyond my family which would be the second one that’s what’s most important to me.

 

Jim Rembach:    I appreciate you sharing that. So I know that you had mentioned something about this commitment and this promise of positivity and the response that you got from that and how positive it was, do you have a goal for that?

 

Nate Brown:    Any goal to come out of that?

 

Jim Rembach:    Yes.

 

Nate Brown:    Well that’s kind of a tricky question because that is a never-ending evolution of maturity for me. I mean the goal is just to always get better and that that is the goal, I don’t think there’s a finish line to that goal but I do want to consistently reassess how am I doing? How am I maturing? And to raise that bar for myself on a consistent basis.  And one of the things I do for myself to make sure that that is happening is I try to get out on at least a couple times a year where I get back out in the woods, get out in creation and I have an opportunity to think through to the winds of everybody except myself. What am I doing? What are the type of relationships that I have right now? Are they edifying? Are they helpful? Am I turning people away? Am I being too selfish? The very best that I can I try to look at me through everyone else’s eyes and I look and see if I’m accomplishing the objective of being that leader that John Maxwell’s talking about, the one that’s not there to further me but I’m there to further the causes that I believe in and I’ve got several as you just mentioned. I honestly believe that my organization has an incredible mission to keep people safe and nobody does that like you well and I’ve bought into that and I am trying to make that happen in my own special way.

 

Jim Rembach:    And the Fast leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get quick word from our sponsor.

 

An even better place to work is an easiest solution that gives you a continuous diagnostic on employee engagement along with integrated activities that will improve employee engagement and leadership skills in everyone. Using this award-winning solutions guaranteed to create motivated, productive and loyal employees who have great work relationships with their colleagues and your customers. To learn more about an even better place to work visit beyondmorale.com/better. 

 

Alright here we go Fast Leader Legion it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Nate, 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 us robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Nate Brown, are you ready to hoedown?

 

Nate Brown:    I am

 

Jim Rembach:    Alright. So what do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today? 

 

Nate Brown:    Fear, absolutely, fear.

 

Jim Rembach:    What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

 

Nate Brown:    Find laser focus.

 

Jim Rembach:    What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

 

Nate Brown:    I would say authenticity.

 

Jim Rembach:    What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

 

Nate Brown:    Inter personal and communication skill. 

 

Jim Rembach:    What would be one book, and it could be from any genre, that you’d recommend to our listeners. 

 

Nate Brown:    “Leading Change” by John Kotter.

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay, Fast Leader listeners you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/Nate Brown. Okay Nate, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25. And you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything you can only choose one, so what one skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

 

Nate Brown:    That’s a great question. I think that I would choose contentment and I have great answer of why other than, I mean if you can live in that moment and be satisfied with the life and the opportunities you’ve been given then you’re going to make things work out and you’re ultimately going to make yourself and those around you happier.

 

Jim Rembach:    Nate, 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?

 

Nate Brown:    Yeah, I would love to connect with everybody on Twitter. My handle is @customerisfirst on twitter and if you connect with me on Instagram my photography, one of my projects I’m doing right now is trying to creatively document silly holidays so my Instagram is @tfcdawg and I find ways to celebrate silly holidays, so you can find me on Instagram or Twitter.

 

Jim Rembach:    Nate Brown, 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 me on the Fast Leader legion today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.

 

END OF AUDIO 

 

 

037: Desirree Madison-Biggs: The fight wasn’t worth it anymore

Desirree Madison-Biggs Show Notes

Desirree Madison-Biggs had to make some serious decisions around how she was going to react after a program she worked on for 10 years was cancelled. While she had no control of the cancellation she did have control over how she would react and support her team through the transition. Listen to Desirree’s emotional story and how she fought and what finally happened for her to get over the hump.

Desirree is a fifth generation Californian and Bay Area native, with roots that go back to the mid-1800s when her mother’s Portuguese family settled in Half Moon Bay as ranchers.

It was in high school that she had her first experiences in leadership through student government and sports.  She began to learn that if you build strong relationships, have a vision of what ‘could be,’ care about what you do and for those you do it with, plus have a sense of humor, you have a majority of what you need to lead.

Since her graduation from college, she has allowed her passions to provide the primary direction for her career.  She began as a group home counselor for delinquent boys, then moved to the business world for both start-ups and Fortune 100 companies, working in Human Resources, Sales and Account Management, and finally finding her true calling in Customer Experience where she has worked for the past fifteen years.

She currently leads the NPS and VoC programs for Airbnb in San Francisco.  When she is not working, she spends time her time with her family and serving on the board of a non-profit organization for kids with disabilities and the Customer Experience Professional’s Association.  For fun she enjoys archery, boogie boards, travels, cooks for friends and reads anything she can get her hands on.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen and Desirree will help you get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow –Click to Tweet

“The things I love to do at work, coaching…are things I love to do with my daughter.” -Desirree Click to Tweet

“I never totally understood how people can leave their work at the office.” -Desirree Click to Tweet 

“I can bring the best of myself from work at home.” -Desirree Click to Tweet 

“My home life supplies me with what I need to be the best that I can be at work.” -Desirree Click to Tweet 

“We’re here on this planet for a purpose and we have to define that for ourselves.” -Desirree Click to Tweet 

“Being a person was really more important than towing the company line.” -Desirree Click to Tweet 

“By being yourself you contribute so much more to the whole.” -Desirree Click to Tweet 

“Having the courage to be as authentic as you can possibly be is crucial.” -Desirree Click to Tweet 

“It is okay not to have a linear progression in your life all planned out.” -Desirree Click to Tweet 

“If you follow your heart, life will carry you on an adventure you really can’t image.” -Desirree Click to Tweet 

“If you can’t see that end destination, it’s okay, it’s going to all be fine.” -Desirree Click to Tweet 

Hump to Get Over

Desirree Madison-Biggs had to make some serious decisions around how she was going to react after a program she worked on for 10 years was cancelled. While she had no control of the cancellation she did have control over how she would react and support her team through the transition. Listen to Desirree’s emotional story and how she fought and what finally happened for her to get over the hump.

Advice for others

Have the courage to be as authentic as you can be.

Holding her back from being an even better leader

Having enough courage to embrace what I don’t know.

Best Leadership Advice Received

Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Secret to Success

Really caring about the people I work with; listening and collaborating, rather than trying to rule over and make things happen.

Best tools that helps in business or Life

The types of books that I read and the amount of different types of books that I read. It helps me to think differently.

Recommended Reading

The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization

Contacting Desirree

Email: desirree [at] gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/feedbackdiva

Resources

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: 

Click to access edited transcript

037: Desirree Madison-Biggs: The fight wasn’t worth it anymore

 

Intro: Welcome to the Fast leader podcast where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead ad move forward faster by becoming a better leader, and now here’s your host customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner Jim Rembach.

Jim Rembach:    

 

Developing your company’s talent and leadership pipeline can be an overwhelming task but your burden is over with Result pal you can use the power of practice to develop more leader’s faster move onward and upward by going through Resultpal.com/fasts and getting a $750 performance package for free.”

 

Okay Fast leader Legion, today were going to have a great time with somebody who I just think is one of those great people in the world, she just makes you feel warm, she just makes you feel like you’re part of the family. Her name is Desirree Madison Biggs, and she’s a fifth-generation Californian and Bay Area native with roots that go back to the mid 1800’s when her mother’s Portuguese family settled in Half Moon Bay as ranchers. It was in high school that she had her first experiences in leadership through student government and sports. She began to learn that if you build strong relationships, have a vision of what could be, care about what you do and for those who do it with, plus have a sense of humor, you have a majority of what you need to lead. 

 

Since her graduation from college she has allowed her passions to provide the primary direction for her career. She began as a group home counselor for delinquent boys and then moved to the business world for both startups and Fortune 100 companies working in human resources, sales, and account management and finally finding her true calling in customer experience where she has worked for the past 15 years. She currently leads the net promoter score and voice of the customer programs for air B&B in San Francisco. When she is not working she spends her time with her family in serving on the board of a nonprofit organization for kids with disabilities and the Customer Experience Professional Association. For fun, she enjoys archery, boogie boarding, traveling, cooking for friends, and reading anything she can get her hands-on. Desirree Madison Biggs, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    I absolutely am Jim. It’s good to be here.

 

Jim Rembach:    Thanks for being here. I’ve given our legion a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is, so that we get to know you better.

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    My current passion is my teenage daughter. Well she’s always been my passion outside of the things that I do for work and for the community but I’m just having a blast having a 17 year old daughter.

 

Jim Rembach:    I have a 12-year-old myself and sometimes it really is exciting and sometimes it isn’t so exciting. So for you, when you start talking about that excitement, what is it about that relationship in that time and you both of your lives that’s really doing that for you?

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    So one things that I love about being a grown-up is the opportunity to have an impact on other people’s lives and there’s nothing more poignant than having a kid that you’re responsible for growing into human. So all of the things I love to do at work like coaching, being alongside, influencing and helping to grow skills are things that I do with my daughter, she’s at appoint in her life where she’s making some serious decisions about the next couple of steps and it’s just great to be there with her as she goes through it.

 

Jim Rembach:    You know, I think you bring up a really important point that we often miss and we always hear the phrase of “don’t take your work home and don’t take your home to work” but the fact is, is that those lines they are so blurred in today’s world because we have to do a lot of the things that you’re talking about both at work as well as at home. And you talked about the development and helping others and doing all of that, I mean to me I’ve seen more of a connection to that occurring today than I’ve ever seen it before. What are your thoughts on that?

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    I think it’s absolutely true Jim. I’ve never totally understood how people could leave their work at the office and vice versa with the home front. I found that I can bring the best of myself from work at home and ensuring that my home life supplies me with what I need to be the best I can be at work, doesn’t always work out that way but for the most part when it’s intentional it does.

 

Jim Rembach:    You know, I think for me just even the way I described you and then the way that you make me feel, I could imagine that being on your team, would allow me, in the way  that you are, would allow me to do more and give more because you make people feel so welcome.

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    Thank you. I feel like we’re here on this planet for a purpose and we have to each define that for ourselves and we get to create it which is kind of exciting, kind of scary at the same time. But I really found that the axiom of leaving the world a better place and doing that every time you meet with somebody, at least if I’m trying to do that something good might come up a bit. I want people to feel better after they leave, not worse.

 

Jim Rembach:   I know for folks that have that type of value system and that type of passions for the human condition and human growth and development that there driven a lot by quotes and we share them a lot on our show. Is there a quote or two that kind of gives you that energy to continue to do that, to help others?

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    There are actually two that come to mind. One is a quote and the other one is more of a mantra. The quote is one that I came across in my 20’s. so back when I was starting my career in the business world, and it was when I’ve seen people use frequently, it’s from Margaret Mead and it’s “Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world for indeed that’s all who ever have” and I found that to be a nice of linchpin for whatever I’m doing or touchdown, I’d rather say, because it really doesn’t take a huge amount of effort to get people together that care about a specific topic and generate the kind of impetus you need to make things different. And then the other one is one that I’ve come across recently, I don’t know if you’ve read anything by Brene Brown, Jim, but she’s written a number of books and she’s a social worker professor down at the University of Houston and she does all of her work on shame and vulnerability which I think is an amazing body of work that has direct impact on how we lead. She has this mantra that I’ve taken up and so as my daughter and that is “Don’t shrink, don’t puff up, just stand your sacred ground” and that has just really meant a lot to me as I go in to different meetings, as I’ve built different relationships at a new company, it’s about being authentic and being myself which is kind of scary sometimes.

 

Jim Rembach:    I know that with all that you have learned don’t it. I don’t want to date you, but you obviously are a very wise person and that’s another thing that for me, kind of just adds to your warmth is that we have humps to get over our life and I know that we’ve all had them, and can you please share one and with the Legion?

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    The story I want to tell you about happened a couple of years ago and it was point, it was more like a crucible where everything I was, was laid out flat and I had to make some serious decisions about how I was going to act, how was I going to behave, how I was going to true to which value and then make some decision and follow through, so that’s the story I want to tell you.

 

Jim Rembach:    Please do.

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    So a couple years ago I worked for a fortune 100 company that was going through tremendous radical change and I had a program that I had been running for almost 10 years there and I absolutely loved it, I had built a team that I was passionate about and we had gone through lots of changes through the overarching company changes but there came a point where I had to make some decisions around the cancellation of my program that I’d spent 10 years building, actually that decisions wasn’t made, that was made for me, I had to choose how I was going to react to that and then manage my team through it and I eventually having to lay off most of team and it was very, very difficult. I had to decide each step of the how I was going to behave, what words I was going to use and to whom I was going to be true and I hadn’t been tested like that probably I don’t know ever really. 

 

So I think the crux of it really came down to when I had to make decisions about how hard I was going to fight with whom for what I believed in and  that’s where I really found myself being tested and so I had to fight and fight and fight until I decided that the fight wasn’t worth it anymore became career limiting and this was at the highest point to the company with a lot of new folks coming in everybody jostling for power for getting their agendas moved forward and me just kind of being in the crosshairs. So having crucial conversations that would promote what I believe in, in terms of customer experience overall for the company and then how we were going to go about pulling that program together and how it’s going to change, so I had to manage through that and then eventually lost and that was a tough blow because I had been used to having a very comfortable and respected position in the company and suddenly I was nothing. That was really hard on me personally and I had to make some crucial decisions about how it was going to take that and then once I sorted through, what was really important, how to decouple myself from what I was producing, what I had to accomplish and really just being myself and bringing that to the table that was really hard but I got through that work and then I found myself having to make some decisions about people that had work with for 6, 7 years about their lives and how I was going to handle that, managing my responsibility to the company and then managing myself to the relationships that I had built and so having those kinds of conversations kind of Breaking the rules in some forms not in an illegal way but kind of going off the ranch a little bit, I felt like being a person was really more important than telling the company line so helping my team manage through was really important to me.

 

Jim Rembach:    That reminds me of a time for myself this were—there was a situation much like you were referring to, there was a change in senior management and they decided to close the operation, part of the business that I was working in. Essentially in 90 days we had the responsibility to tell 800 people that we were letting them go essentially and we didn’t do it that way. What the company decided to do was say “Hey we have jobs for you over here and so you could just move over there.” However those were the jobs that people didn’t want. They didn’t come and become part of the company to work where they were told that they needed to go now. So, what happened is, this people said, “No, that’s not what I wanted, it’s not what I’m going to do? I may do it for a little while but—so they left.” Really what they did is they gave 700 of those people the opportunity to leave, that’s what they did. They didn’t actually terminate them, lay them off or anything like that, they said, “You have jobs, they’re just over there.” And for me, that was one of the hardest things to be able to go through and see people struggle on how they were going to proceed. And for me, being someone who—I just love to help people, I don’t want to see people hurt it just tore me up and I didn’t survive it. And so for me, I’m like you know what, “If this is the way that people are ultimately going to be treated at this organization, I’ve got to go, I just can’t live like that.” So I mean, for me what happened, I test in to think and, how did you get through that and where did you—obviously you’re not with that organization anymore, how did that occur? How did that transition happen?

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    It happened like one day at a time, sometimes one minute at a time. And ultimately I had to decide each day how I was going to be and it was over an extended period of time, like you said decisions are made but man the implementation of the decisions oftentimes take weeks or months. And so, it was really about being a person first and a manager second, so I did my best to make sure that people landed either outside the company or inside the company in new positions, worked overtime on that. And then the people that I had to package out, I made sure they had all the benefits that they could possibly have and then help them find places outside the company as I could help, so that was helpful. 

 

And then I had to manage everything inside with the team that was left and then kind of cobbling together a whole new program, adjust into a new Vice-President that had a completely different idea, it was an exciting idea but nevertheless it was all new, after having been very comfortable for 10 years with what I had built before, it’s like being in a whole new company. So, again being who I was first was super important, it was very, very difficult, I didn’t have any crutches to lean on and just had to be myself.

 

Jim Rembach:    Now that I reflect back as well, like you’re saying I think for me the one thing that allowed me to really take it day to day at a time and keep going for the next day was that I had the opportunity to focus on others and their well-being before I had the opportunity to think on my own and when that occurred that’s when the decision really became easy.

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    Yeah that make sense.

 

Jim Rembach:    So if you start talking about that story, the things that you have referred to in your youth that you had learned, if you had one piece of advice to give the Fast leader legion, what would it be?

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    This is going to sound really trite but I think it is just absolutely crucial and it’s something that I’ve wrestled is, being myself. Sometimes yourself is comprised of a temperament, values and other characteristics that really don’t fit into a typical, or you might perceive that they don’t fit into the broader culture and so being a little bit out of the mainstream can be uncomfortable but buying being yourself you contribute so much more to the whole. And so I think having the courage to be as authentic as you can possibly be is crucial and that’s the one thing I would advise my daughter, I advised, I have other young people in my life, two, three other organizations and it’s really about discovering and loving who you are so that you can make the biggest impact going forward and just staying true to that self. 

 

Jim Rembach:    That’s a good grounding, thank you for sharing that. Okay so, I know you had a lot of things going on and your passionate about a lot of things including the giveback thing that we had mention within your bios as well as with the Association of the CX PA, but if you start thinking about one thing that’s really exciting you right now, what is it?

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    I think what’s exciting me right now is thinking about my future. I feel like again I’m at a crossroads with my daughter about ready to go off into college. I’m at a very exciting company and I’m involved in a number of different organizations and so I feel like there’s this whole maelstrom of events that are happening that could catapult me into something altogether different. And I’m trying to go into that whole effort being mindful of again who I am, what I want to be when I grow up cause I still feel like I’m growing up despite my tenure place in the world, but what’s really exciting me right now is to think about what my future might hold, and where I could contribute best. 

 

Jim Rembach:    And the Fast leader legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor. 

 

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Alright! Here we go listeners, it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay Desirree, 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 us robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster.  Desirree Madison-Biggs are you ready to Hoedown? 

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    I am Jim.

 

Jim Rembach:    Alright. So what do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    I think that having enough courage to embrace what I don’t know holds me back sometimes, I get scared.

 

Jim Rembach:    What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    I think it was “Don’t be afraid to ask for help it’s a sign of strength and not a weakness”.

 

Jim Rembach:    What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    Really caring about the people that I work with. Listening and collaborating rather than trying to rule over and make things happen.

 

Jim Rembach:    What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    I think the types of books that I read and the amount of a different types of books that I read really helps me. I find myself bringing even fiction into the work that I do it always keeps me inspired and thinking about things differently.

 

Jim Rembach:    What would be one book that you would recommend to our listeners, and it doesn’t have to be a business book?

  

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    Well, in this case it actually happens to be, “The Fifth Discipline” by Peter Senge, many of your Fast leader legion has probably heard of him, if not read this but the learning organization is really crucial in one of my secret passions, creating that in my team and the field handbook, is something that I go back to over and over again for the tools to do certain aspects of my job.

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay Fast Leader legion, you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to the show notes page which you’ll be able to find at Fastleader.net/DesirreeMadisonBiggs. Okay Desirree, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you’ve given been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything, you can only choose one, so what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    Okay, so, the one thing that I would take back with me is the knowledge that it is okay not to have a linear progression in your life all planned out. That used to give me a huge amount of ‘anx’ that was completely unnecessary, that everything is going to be okay, if you follow your heart and you are able to be educated and get those basics under your belt, that life will carry you on an adventure that you really can’t imagine, and if you can’t see that end destination it’s okay, it’s going to all be fine.

 

Jim Rembach:    Just keep moving forward.

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    Just keep swimming. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Desirree 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?

 

Desirree Madison-Biggs:    Sure! I have a really easy my e-mail address is desirree@gmail.com 

 

Jim Rembach:    Desirree, 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 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 Fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.