Dianna Booher

132: Dianna Booher: I laid awake for two or three nights 

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.

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Jim Rembach:  Okay, Fast Leader legion today I’m excited because the guest that I have on the show today is a master educator in leadership communication. Diana Booher was born in Bynum, Texas a small farming town in Central Texas where she and her younger brother Keith were helping her dad and mom pick cotton and hoe corn before she was four years old. Fed up with farming, her dad got a job as a postmaster and the family later moved to Arlington, Texas where she attended her last two years of high school and by that time baby sister Angela had arrived to delight the family. Diana was the first of the extended family to go to college and also the go to receive her Master’s in English Literature. Growing up Diana was always involved in sports either playing basketball, volleyball or cheerleading for varsity football. Between sports and her many church youth activities she had the opportunity to interact with many great coaches and strong leaders who shaped her thinking and instilled a passion to help others. From those experiences it was a natural to want to influence the lives of others in some way to help young people learn decision-making skills and communication skills just as she’d learned at the feet of her parents, coaches, sponsors and church leaders. 

She started out full steam ahead finishing her undergraduate degree in three years and with a teaching certificate under her belt her first few years were spent in public school rooms she taught junior high, Spanish and English literature to seniors. But after three years in the classroom and dealing with a husband struggling with severe depression they eventually divorced and he’s now deceased she decided to stay home and care for their two preschoolers herself while she earned her master’s degree the big question how to continue to make a difference with the lives of youth the answer write articles and books.

She sent up her first article to a major magazine and an editor asked her to turn it into a book,  Simon and Schuster went on to publish the entire line of her books for young adults. After more than a dozen non-fiction books and novels for the youth and general adult market Booher turned her attention to the business market. When her first business book was released and her publisher sent her on a media tour Shell Oil and IBM called to say, come out and talk to us, thus, Booher Consultants, a communication and training firm began to grow into a multi-million dollar firm that has been in business for the past 37 years serving more than 1/3 of the Fortune 500. Diana has gone on to found another company Brewer Research Institute where she currently works and continues to write books on coaching, coach on executive presence, deliver keynotes and consult with organizations to help them communicate a clear message. Her latest release her 47th is, Communicate Like a Leader, connecting strategically to coach inspire and get things done. Diana currently lives and writes in Colleyville, Texas with her husband Vernon of 28 years. Diana Booher, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Dianna Booher:  I am.  It’s great to be with you.

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?

Dianna Booher:  It is writing, it’s always been writing since that that turning point.

Jim Rembach:  Talking about loving it—your 47th book. I have to sit here and say as someone who’s looking at putting everything together for their first book it’s how would I ever get to 47, how have you done that? 

Dianna Booher:  You’ve got to do something missing all those airplanes, sitting in the airport, sitting in those hotel rooms at midnight thinking I want to be home so you might as well write a book to take your mind off of those travel with terrible cancellations and those kind of things. 

Jim Rembach:  I can totally understand that and so for me I get a lot of my good reading at that time too. But when you start thinking about this particular book, how is this this one particularly different than the previous ones? 

Dianna Booher:  Basically it is a compilation of all the questions that I’ve been asked by people who’ve come to me for coaching. In these 3 decades when they’re getting ready they have all the fundamentals down but they think, here is the issues I’m struggling with and they finally come for coaching. Then these are these are the key questions that that are holding them back going to the next level I call it finishing touches that they need. And so I put them together I sit down I wrote a list here and I started with sixty chapters, nobody is going to read a book like that. But I call it down into what I considered the top 36 questions that I get. And then I put them into chapters, I thought, what ways do you interact when you’re a top leader? You’ve got basically six ways. You’ve got to write to people, you’ve got to talk with them, you got to negotiate, you just have to interact one on one, you keep your network alive and then you have to develop people that you work with—you hire, you give them feedback etc. and I group them that way and then viola! There’s the book.

Jim Rembach:  One of the things that I noticed too is you talk about all those chapters can usually be daunting but in fact what I think is that you made it a lot easier for me to go through it and I’m sure everybody else would experience the same because you could easily take and combine the first eight chapters into one. But I think it would overwhelm when you start talking about the different aspects and the different areas that are actually broken out so for me I found it easier read.

Dianna Booher:  Yeah, you can just look through the chapters and find whatever you’re struggling with. In fact, the titles of each of the chapters telling you what the point is. Nobody today has time to sit down and read through cover to cover the whole book and so you can just skim through it and say, oh I need to know more about that, oh, we waste time in meetings and you just go right to that chapter about how do you know how much a meeting cost you. Oh, I have trouble with people who dominate our meetings, how do you control those people? You just go right to that full section.

Jim Rembach:  One of the things that stood out to me very early on is the title of your second chapter which is, Have an answer ready for this one key question, always. So, what’s that question?

Dianna Booher:  Yes, we just get asked a lot of questions—is the merger happening? You have to work over the weekend but the one key question is, what are you working on? And most people plan, what’s not a big deal? I just tell them I’m working on this report or I’m trying to get this done or get that proposal out but that one key question, can either enhance your career and make you very visible and very vital or you just brush it off and you get no attention. And that one question has really three parts almost always that you need to use when you answer that question. The first part is you need to say, here’s the problem I’m working on solving and you can usually do that in one sentence. And the second part should be, and this is why it’s important to the organization we solve that problem. The third part of your answer should be and you have the benefits to solving that problem and here’s the outcomes, the physical things the advantages to solving that problem. And then depending on who asks you that question you might want to add, and here’s how it’s going to affect your timetable or your budget. So, if you put those three parts in your answer, and again it might not be three sentences you will answer it correctly and you will gain visibility for your answer.

Jim Rembach:  Going back to what you were talking about as far as people being able to move on to the next level being able to see be seen a little bit differently within an organization is oftentimes in their studies that have shown this is that people kind of hit that ceiling in their mid-40s. They have technical skill that’s gotten them to a certain point but they need to be able to flip and be able to—also well, yes, speak and communicate at a strategic level. But they also need to understand the human and the emotional side of the business and draw and make those connections. And so, can you confirm and see when people finally come to coaching that that’s about the age that it occurs or is it later or earlier?

Dianna Booher:  Well. I don’t know that it’s a certain age but it’s a certain position and generally it happens yes because they’ve been out of college, they’ve gone through a college program they’ve been on college about 15, 18, 20 years and they are through mid-management and even if they’re on their own entrepreneurial venture they’ve gone through and they’ve got it up and started and then they think what’s next plateaued? And they need to get to that executive leadership position. Are they wanting to get there? And they just plateau there and they think they’ve got to get more visibility they’ve got to get more polish and they need to get more strategic in their thinking and they need to stand out and that’s how they stand out. They need to start thinking in a broader way, what is the big picture not it’s (9:27) silo here but how does my work affect the whole organization and they need to start positioning their answers to position themselves for the whole organization and not focus on what am I doing right here in my little bubble but start thinking big picture communicating that way and connecting across all functionalized.

Jim Rembach:  And one of the things I noticed too and for me I when I started thinking about this on my own career and the progression and the stall the things that you basically just described is that I think someone who is even at the frontline per se at the introductory or entry level of an organization if they were actually being able to learn these types of skills and be able to improve those if they’re going to fast-track and they’re going to move up faster than anybody else.

Dianna Booher:  Absolutely. 

Jim Rembach:  So when I looked at this book to me I kind of saw like a self-assessment. 

Dianna Booher:  Yeah, that’s true. In fact, I had a client who came to me and he said, he was Vice-President of a large telecom and he said, my whole division just got laid off and I have hired now, he got venture capital together got two other partners and he said, we’ve just bought another small telecom and I went over and hired 40-45 mid-managers ahead of our old company and put them in leadership positions in my new telecom. And he said they’re brilliant, Diana, they’re brilliant at their technical jobs but now they need to think at a higher strategic level because they’re going to have to go out in the community and bring in business and sign contracts with our new clients and speak and bring in goodwill for our new organization and they need to connect at a more strategic level. And to do that they need to change the way they communicate they’re not just communicating with their colleagues here they need to think in a much broader way and then they need to communicate there. They have the fundamentals but it needs just be at a higher level that they know how to communicate to walk into a C-suite anywhere and communicate up and down the chain no matter where.

Jim Rembach:   Okay, I could be sitting here and saying, I have an advanced degree. I wouldn’t got an MBA and I’ve taken business communications class, what’s different with what you’re actually have on this book and what you’ve learned? How come those people who’ve gone through all those classes aren’t able to effectively apply it and move forward faster?

Dianna Booher:  I think that they are still thinking of people who are on the same plane. They’re thinking of connecting with a colleague in their same department. They’re still using the same jargon, they’re still thinking about the people who can almost read their mind. They can take shortcut words, shortcut phrases and they’re not thinking how does my work here communicate in a much broader way? For example, I know this is simplistic but you wouldn’t take the work that you do every day and explain it to your grandmother in the same way because she has much broader perspective on everything because she’s not only interested in your work she’s interested in what your brother does in another organization and she’s interested and understands from a perspective of 80 years maybe and she understands how the whole country works. It’s not that she doesn’t care about what you do but she just has a long-term perspective and she is thinking about how is this going to affect your grandkids she sees further down the road and she has a much broader interest so, don’t think about this person not understanding. That’s what a lot of times people think when they’re so educated in one area they are thinking deeply and I’m not saying don’t think deeply I’m saying you have to think broader and that’s what a c-suite officer is thinking. They’re saying I hired you to think deeply I need to think broadly and so you need to be both deep and broad that’s what the change or the difference. 

Jim Rembach:  That makes a lot of sense to me but I often would think that people would potentially discount it and say that—because here’s what I’ve seen happen people will do that and then if there isn’t that connection if they’re not able to communicate and see that they’ve gotten a response to connect with the person who they’re trying to convey the information to they’ll just say, well they just don’t get it. 

Dianna Booher:  The point is they’re saying, I need you to get it and I’m paying you to tell me what you think in other words to take a point. Let me give you an example, let’s say just in the field of making a presentation you’ll have somebody in their area and they’ll say I’ve research this and I’ve researched this and I know everything there is to know about this topic. And they come in to the c-suite and they say here’s a situation we need to make a decision about what kind of software or hardware we’re going to use in this area. Here are all the pros and cons and they start talking about it and the c-suite officer is saying, give me the bottom line and tell me what we should do here I don’t need to redo your thinking that’s what I paid you to do. And then that person in that area is thinking, yeah but there’s some drawbacks I don’t want to stick my neck out here but let me tell you the advantages and disadvantages and get your making mistake. And that executive is saying no I don’t want to redo your job because I have 25 other people who have an equally important decision and I don’t have time to redo all of their thinking I want you to stick your neck out and take a stand. And that’s what someone who’s forty-five years old for example who’s going in and saying, hear all of my thinking and rethink this with me. And they’re saying no, I don’t want to rethink it with you. 

Jim Rembach:   That’s a really interesting point. One of the things that I have—over the course of the past several years gotten into the practice of doing is when I put together a presentation deck that I have to use to communicate and convey. It used to be that, for example, I’d have  40 slides, what I do now is I have five slides and then 35 back up slides if I need them. 

Dianna Booher:  Yes, in case somebody has a question. So, what that executive is expecting you to do is to take a stand make a point, what is your attitude about it and then sell that point. Can you sell that point? Can you make it memorable? How effective are you and selling that idea across functional lines? Say at the mid-management level they’re checking your logic and making sure that you’ve got it right and you’re a logical thinker but once you’ve convinced them at that mid management level you’re a logical thinker then at the higher level you need to be a persuasive thinker to get buy-in, there’s a different skill there.

Jim Rembach:  Totally. And what I find and what I found myself doing is that it was TMI, it was too much information I was overloading people and I sold them in the first minute or two so to speak, and then I talked them out of it.

Dianna Booher:  Right, that’s the number one problem that CEOs tell me. When they send one of their, let’s say not an executive vice president maybe a junior vice president to me they’ll say they ramble they get down in the weeds and they get lost we ask them a question they have no authority they are wishy-washy. So, it’s that polish that they communicate like a leader that book goes through those issues that when somebody comes to me, that their boss has said this is the problem that’s what this chapters’ address.

Jim Rembach:  Without a doubt. When we’re starting to talk about this career progression, hitting these walls, going over these humps, there’s a lot of passion associated with it. And one of the things on the show that we like to do is focus on quotes in order to help us focus and go in the right direction. Is there a quote that you can share that will help us do that? 

Dianna Booher:  Yes, I like the quote by Marge Chang, he says without strategy execution is aimless. Without execution strategy is useless. And what that always says to me is, you can have a gazillion ideas but if you can’t execute them what good does it do. People today do talk about strategy all day but if you don’t carry it out then what good does it do? And then other people in their organization focuses on doing the same thing over and over and over but you can run around particularly on social media, you see people just run around on social media—this, this, this they’re on every platform but it’s just scatter approach, it’s just spray and it has no meaning so they have to go hand.

Jim Rembach:  Thanks for sharing that. When you said that I started thinking about something that is a problem for a lot of organizations and that is execution it is actually getting things done. I kind of see what you have in this book and really it’s kind of that tipping points to execution, okay, it’s strategy and then we put this in place and guess what we’ll finally move things forward. 

Dianna Booher:  Yeah, and what you have to keep focusing on the fundamentals you have to keep focusing on the ideas. Somebody tell me early in my career ideas are a dime a dozen. I know when I went to the to two friends who were businessmen one in ExxonMobil an engineer in ExxonMobil and the other was an was an engineer at Shell Oil and basically they got me started—you read my bio when my husband’s struggling with mental illness and he was hospitalized over and over and over and over and just could not overcome and I thought I’m going to have to make a living for myself I’m going to have to make a living for two toddlers what can I do? And I said, I like to write. And they said, we’ll introduce you into some companies, you write a book and we’ll introduce you. And when I started here they said, Diana, ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s not the idea you have to actually do something and that’s the issue that I’ve thought about over and over in my career, you have to learn how to have a skill, have a plan and actually execute on it. I have so many colleagues who it’s like an idea week, a sort of a plan a week and in that I’ve seen them come into business and fail, go into business and two years later they’re not in business anymore it is all about execution and that’s when somebody comes to me for coaching on how to build their business how to build a speaking business how to build a consulting business if it is actually following through. The same thing with communication on these skills as an individual if you don’t set some self-improvement goals to improve your communication you’re not going to improve it by just—I’ll do better, that’s not a plan.

Jim Rembach:  I tell me my 13-year old daughter that all the time—I’ll do better—okay, what’s your plan? What? I’ll just work harder. No, let’s get to some specifics here.

Dianna Booher:  Yeah, yeah and in it matters even if you’re giving feedback sometimes people have trouble giving feedback. Whether they’re trying to handle an apology situation with the customer or whether they’re trying to give feedback to an employee if you don’t know here are specific guidelines like in how to communicate like a leader here are five things you need to do when you apologize here, five things you need to do when you give feedback. If you don’t know what those five guidelines and you don’t go through them then chances are every time you sit down to get feedback it’s not going to get any better and you still frustrate people.

Jim Rembach:  That’s a great point. Everything that you’ve talked about as far your younger years and being able to make a living for two toddlers and starting the Institute and how you’ve gotten to the point where you’ve written you’re 47 book, Jesus, it’s amazing.  I know you’ve had a lot of humps to get over and we can learn from that. Can you share a story where we can you know learn from and helped us get over the hump faster?

Dianna Booher:  I think probably the most severe hump I had was learning to watch cash flow. When you are focused on doing everything yourself and you don’t have a background in particular area you need to find someone in your organization who watches what you don’t know get a complimentary employee who has the skills you don’t have and I when I start in business I just wanted to focus on writing and developing training programs to that work based on the content of my book which is how I’ve grown my business and I didn’t have a background in finance so I didn’t really know how to read a financial statement very well I depend on my accountants to do it and take in the books to the accountant let them read it. 

When there was a big oil crunch I had a lot of oil and gas companies were my clients the big one and all of a sudden there was a big bust and I think it was the mid 90’s and I looked at the cash flow and whoa! we’re going to have a problem here and it came down we have ten days of cash flow had some big projects coming in but am I going to have to lay off these trainers and I had poured two and three years into training them because they all have Master’s degree and they had to follow us around in the classroom for two or three years to be well trained and it was a huge investment to keep them on staff when they weren’t busy but it came down to I’m going to have to lay these people off. And I laid awake for two or three nights thinking what am I going to do but fortunately a big project came in and I didn’t have to make that layoff. But learning that what you don’t know and hiring the people to keep you on track for the skills that you don’t have and always keeping your eye on the cash flow is a huge issue.

Jim Rembach:  And as you were saying, thanks for sharing that and of course you came out the good side of it so that was awesome, but it goes back to kind of the thing that full circle pieces that as an individual you need to get a coach in order to help you with the things that you’re not all that great at that you need to be great at in order to further your career.

Dianna Booher:  Right. And hiring the right people that’s another thing. The two people who were coaching me as I started out my business they said Dinah the most difficult thing you’ll have in business is getting the right people and I thought, Hah, that’s not a big deal but I learned it is a big deal. I didn’t have experience in interview now I’ve learned in 30 years the questions and in fact I put those in my book there’s a chapter on hiring on core competency I put in the nine most important questions I think to ask to get at people’s character and to test their confidence. But I didn’t know that know that back then but I have come to agree that the single most important thing you can do to be successful in business is to get the right people not just people that you feel comfortable with not people that you like but the people who are in alignment with your character and your values. You can teach people skills, you can train them but you cannot teach them values and if they don’t share your values you’re going to be in trouble.

Jim Rembach:  It’s a great point. You have to maybe see what happens as far as how many more you have in you and I will be sitting here with your 67th book and having a discussion I don’t know. But I know you had a lot of things on your plate when you start looking at one of your goals, what is it?

Dianna Booher:  I would like to get back to writing novels. I’ve written novels in the back I’ve written a lot of Christian books and at the back with an inspirational message. I’ve also written a lot of business, probably as many business books and self-help as Christian books but I enjoy writing novels. For some reason when I did my Master’s degree thesis was novel and published five novels so I’d like to do both I’d like to keep both of those going. But one key goal right now although I’m still in the business arena and writing business books is to help other authors share their stories so I’m also helping coach other authors who want to get published to go through that process—you’re having to find an agent, you have not decide the best way to get published and looking at their pitch letters and proposals so that’s the key goal right now as well.

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 Fast Leader listeners it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. 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 are there going to help us move onward and upward faster, Dianna Booher, are you ready to hoedown?

Dianna Booher:  I am. 

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

Dianna Booher:  Time. Just too many ideas to accomplish.

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

Dianna Booher:  I think it’s watch your cash flow and get the best people even if you have to go without.

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

Dianna Booher:  Do it now and never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

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

Dianna Booher:  I think that would have to be my iPhone. I can take it anywhere and accomplish anything on that phone.

Jim Rembach:  What would be one book that you’d recommend to our listeners, it could be from any genre, of course we’re going to put a link to Communicate Like a Leader.

Dianna Booher:  Real Leadership by John Addison, I love that book.

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/Dianna Booher. Okay, Dianna, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question. Imagine you were given the opportunity go back to the age 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?

Dianna Booher:  I would take back the skill of being able to do projections. I’ve never been able to do a huge financial projection and I’ve learned that through the years but at the beginning I had no clue how to do that.

Jim Rembach:  Dianna it was not her to spend time with you today can you please share with Fast Leader listeners how they can connect with you?

Dianna Booher:  Yes, www.booherresearch.com

Jim Rembach:  Dianna Booher, thank 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 a fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

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