Jessica Hartung

   221:  Jessica Hartung:  Change the way we think about work

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.

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Jim Rembach:    Okay Fast Leader Legion today I’m excited because I have somebody on the show today who’s absolutely going to be able to help us all as well as individually move forward faster. Jessica Hartung was born and raised in Downers Grove, Illinois which is a suburb of Chicago. She had a very small immediate family, one older brother and no cousins. Her parents were both very active in the Community. Jessica’s mother was a teacher’s aide in an elementary school and later worked at the Downers Grove Public Library and still visits every library in towns where she travels just for fun. Her father was a scientist at Argonne National Lab and became an activist for the environment and engaged in urban planning to preserve the Lyman woods and other irreplaceable natural habitats. 

In order to protect the environment and enact energy saving policies, he taught himself about the law, grassroots, organizing and public policy so he could testify before the necessary Commission’s to bring about water conservation and environmental protections he was honored as citizen of the Year by the Downers Grove Chamber of Commerce. As a clear example of a conscious professional who learned what he needed to create positive change he’s been an inspiration to Jessica on her path. As a child Jessica raised money for the neighborhood Park District as a way to show how important it was to protect the wild spaces. Jessica grew up spending time by herself in nature with a creeks, trees and critters as friends as well as humans. Intending to become a high school teacher Jessica studied education at the University of Michigan. After a conflict with her professor she got a job working in a local startup technology business. 

Shortly thereafter she began a small consulting business and began applying her desire to grow and develop the skills needed to create productive and enjoyable work environments. Her first business machine teach was a Macintosh training and computer consulting firm that worked with nonprofits and small businesses. It was through working with the local Girl Scout Council as a computer consultant that she began to study leadership and learn about Frances Hesselbein, Peter Drucker and other leadership thinkers. Today Jessica inspires people to see the purpose of work as learning and development and for us all to discover better ways of working that enrich our lives as well as create a positive impact. She’s the author of, “The Conscious Professional: Transform Your Life at Work” and founder of Integrated Work, a leadership development firm that works exclusively with mission driven organizations and serves as a learning laboratory about progressive work practices. Jessica is on a mission to build more self-aware ethical leaders and is encouraged by increasingly widespread movement to use business as a force for good. Based in Boulder, Colorado for the last 24 years, she has raised two children a 16 year old son and 21-year old daughter and lives with her husband astrophysicist, Stephen Hartung. Most early morning she can be found walking around the Twin Lakes open space taking in the scenery watching for owls, kingfisher, osprey and the great blue heron. Jessica Hartung, are you ready to help us get over the hump? 

Jessica Hartung:     Absolutely, my pleasure. 

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

Jessica Hartung:         Absolutely. I really appreciate the introduction and the way that you chose to focus on the whole person. One of my passions right now is how do we bring who we really are to what we do. And the reason that I’m interested in that is because when we bring the things that we value that which is important to us into our workplace we find that there’s all kinds of opportunities we didn’t realize ways in which we can add our signature approach we can use our values we can follow our interests we can follow the things that really matter to us, and you know the reverse is also true. I was working actually today on planning an event for the New Year’s and we’re using the same project management technologies and ideas and concepts that we use in workplace in in our home life. And so there is a mutual beneficial relationship between work and life when we bring who we are to what we do and we actually sort of wake ourselves up a bit more so that we’re paying attention and we’re actually being deliberate in how we go about learning at work learning from work and bringing those back and forth between our personal and our professional lives. 

Jim Rembach:    When you’re here start talking about that, of course, I have to reflect upon my own experiences and I’m like, well, gosh for me it took age and a whole lot of knees and elbows skinned in order to kind of come to those conclusions. And I would say for me a lot of that as far as conclusion aspects of in AHA’s whatever we want to call them, really didn’t start happening within the last decade, and I just turned 50 this year so I think there’s an opportunity for us to do a better job of mentoring others teaching others and I would also dare to say that there’s a lot that go through their entire career and never figure it out. One of the things, in your book, that I really liked which is very simple but yet pretty powerful is the AWS cycle. 

Jessica Hartung:     Yes, I would love to. Jim, I’m really glad you raised that. As I was exploring how do people make deliberate change? Let’s say there’s an area that you want to improve or maybe you just generally want to get better at whatever your craft or your work is. Whether it’s leadership or management and you want to get better you want to first figure out where or what is it that needs to improve. What I find is that as a manager sometimes my role is to help people illuminate that and see, oh, this was an area they weren’t even aware could be improved or they weren’t aware of the impact they were having on others. All development that’s conscious, deliberate, intentional development starts with an awareness. Sometimes that awareness comes from ourselves internally sometimes it comes from information that we receive, a 360 degree feedback for instance, or a conversation with a colleague or even reading an article and realizing, oh, there’s something more possible or listening to a podcast that opens our minds a little bit more. So we go from awareness into willingness and not everything were willing to do. Which is actually a good idea because we want to focus on—there’s a phrase that says, if you can’t say no your yeses mean nothing. If you don’t actually really have choice then you’re not wholly into it you’re not actually choosing this. So willingness is really important because it’s where we put our values into action. That’s where we decide, are we going to take this on or not? And there are times when there’s developmental opportunities that we need to say no to because we’re focused elsewhere or we’re working on something that requires our full attention. But when we say yes and we are willing to grow in a specific area then we start to actually practice and that’s where we get into the development of skills. And that’s where, maybe we’re not very good at it at first, but that ability to get started and practice that’s what we do on a daily basis at work where we’re riding right on that developmental edge of our capability we might not really know how to do it yet. And so that’s where–there’s a lot of research now about deliberate practice and how people learn to be great athletes how they learn to be great musicians. The how you learn to be a great leader or a great whatever it is that you would like to be and work on that’s how you do it, by practicing. 

And so what I find is that people are constantly going through this awareness-willingness skill cycle in different areas of their work. Sometimes we’re building our awareness based on having done the work. So for instance writing a book, I had not done that before, and I thought I knew a lot more about it than I actually did. Once I started getting into it working with editors, oh, my word there’s a whole world, I just had no idea about. And so my awareness increased and I really had a commitment that I feel the executive, the leadership, development I’ve been doing with folks and individual conversations or in group conversations where there is an organization that wants to hire a professional development expert that’s too small of a group. I think this there’s no reason why excellent quality professional development shouldn’t be available for everybody who wants to engage in it we have the technology we can do this. 

So my willingness to put myself in an area where I don’t yet know how to do a great job and amplify my commitment that really spoke to my values of having an impact. I needed to write this book in order to improve the impact I have. And so then I build my skills and as I did, now I’m thinking about how the next book is going to be different because I’ve built more awareness. So we’re constantly going through that cycle of awareness willingness and skill and knowing that it makes everything make a lot more sense. Because when people are not aware of course they’re not willing. When they’re not aware of course they’re not working on it they’re not building their skills. And if you are a manager or a leader and you realize that someone’s aware but they’re not working on it it’s probably a willingness issue. So it gives you a chance to kind of diagnose where we are in the cycle and that gives us a lot more control.

Jim Rembach:    Gosh, as you were talking there are so many things that I started thinking about. First of all you actually have a diagram talking about the developmental edge, I want to talk about that in a moment, but then you also said something to me that resonated so heavily because it’s really why I developed call center coach is that we think that there’s a trickle-down effect that happens with leadership skills, development and competencies. Like, hey, if we give it—the investment and all the money to those folks at the senior level it’ll matriculate its way down to the frontline and that’s not what happens. 

Jessica Hartung:     I don’t think it’s a good bet. 

Jim Rembach:    It’s not, so we had this massive gap and we have this massive leadership crisis and we have a lot of leaders who are significantly worried about the bench strength of the leadership of their organization. 

Jessica Hartung:     Yes. 

Jim Rembach:    And so we got to be able to take it down to the frontline otherwise the crisis is just going to get worse. 

Jessica Hartung:     And that is something I would like to comment on, it is my practice and belief that we have leaders at every level of the organization. In my organization our administrative assistant receptionist who is working, she has such power in the organization as a leader that she either takes on or she doesn’t. One of the great things about being in a small business is that I’ve been able to build the culture of my organization with that in mind. In really helping to encourage her leadership she sets up people’s calendars and all in a billable environment everything is orchestrated around that. There’s tremendous leadership and how clients are received in how they’re actually acknowledged and her ability to influence our logistical side of our business is tremendous. In many organizations she would not be considered a leader because she doesn’t have direct reports. I think about leadership in a different way. I think about it as how we create the future together because you really know a leader is working together with you when you are together thinking about what kind of future are we trying to create? Oh, a stress-free, productive help, when we’re both orienting towards that, that’s leadership. So what kind of future you’re trying to create and how you go about creating it and does it, is that kind of future that includes other people and it is of advantage to other people as well as the organization those kinds of leaders are people, people want to follow. They’re excited to be a part of their team they’re inspirational because everybody wants to be working together to create that future that benefits them and those around them. That that’s really the kind of leadership that I think all of us want to be a part of and want to exhibit when it’s our turn to lead.

Jim Rembach:    There’s a really important point that you are talking about there that was heavily written about within the book and that is being able to develop within the current position that you are in. Because for the longest time I have always fought against people thinking that position of greater responsibility becoming someone who is a leader authority means that I have to climb some rung in some ladder. Sometimes it’s being the expert right where you are and being able to find gratification and appreciation within that you talk about that.

Jessica Hartung:     Yes. The thing that I’m really passionate about that part is that, why wait? If we were going to be, let’s say—telemarketing is my job when I was in college and I took that job because that professor in my education class was so bad that I had to tell him so and he asked me not to come back to class. And so I went and got a job in a business and part of the thing that was so exciting for me was that if you apply the idea of experimenting and testing and let’s try this and let’s work together to figure this out right where we are, because no one else in the company knew how to do telemarketing, and I realized that and I thought, oh well then I guess I need to learn. And that moment changed my life because it made me realize that whatever job we have whether our managers are looking out for our learning or not we don’t have to outsource that it’s actually something we can take on ourselves and own our own learning. And we can own our learning not related to our job related to what kind of future we want for ourselves. So I always had an interest in making sure that my jobs served my strategic line-of-sight as well as the organization’s and that really promotes that kind of learning where you’re saying, well I know some point in my future I’m probably going to need to influence people. So I took a job in sales. I thought if I need to know how to influence people at least better have some experience with this. 

And so while I was working in that job, selling computers that was actually how I started my first company was I was selling computers, what I realized is people would buy the computers but they still couldn’t get done what they bought the computer for they needed somebody to help them with that so I found a need and I filled it. And that idea of creating my own learning so that I could be in the position I wanted to be in that’s was transformative and it’s been something that’s made a huge difference for clients that have taken that on for themselves. 

Jim Rembach:    Gosh, you talked about the line-of-sight and that’s something I wanted to talk about as well but I also don’t want to leave the fact that I had mentioned something about this developmental edge. For me the illustration that you have in the book about it really for me a kind of allowed me to get an understanding of different levels of this that I really didn’t consciously think about but really ring true. And so when you start talking about those different levels—first of all in the center you’re talking about mastery, when I’m doing my role, my responsibility and then we have a comfort zone and then we have a necessary stretch and then you had mentioned the developmental edge. So tell us a little bit about how you came about this and in addition this whole fear factor and willingness thing. I start thinking about this developmental edge, is like, I’m not going out there because I may fall off. 

Jessica Hartung:     It’s so true. I think fear and doubt and uncertainty to kind of constrain our world if we allow them to. In a zone of mastery you have some areas in your work and in your life where you feel really like you know what you know you have expertise and you are good at it, and that’s a zone of mastery. Now sometimes the zone of mastery will last a lifetime. I used to be a masterful desktop publisher, well that does not last a lifetime because unless you continue to renew those skills the world moved beyond my mastery set. When you are in a zone of mastery it’s not just that you’re good at it it’s that you feel a sense of flow and connection it’s the where you like to work. Now in your job you can also work in other areas. Areas that you’re comfortable in and would be in your comfort zone. It’s not hard for you, you can do it but it’s not necessarily your smaller zone of mastery where you’re really excellent in the comfort zone it’s a wider sphere. 

Now when we get into workplace challenges we often have to stretch. We might have to do public speaking we might have a difficult conversation with someone or in other ways stretch ourselves to be a little bit more capable than we might otherwise feel we had the ability to do and it’s that’s necessary stretch that actually as an entrepreneur has been a huge part of my experience. I did not know how to do cash flow statements I did not know how to do it via government contractor I had to learn those things they were all necessary stretches. And then sometimes your necessary stretch takes you out on the very edge the limits of your capability and your capacity and your competence and you’re hanging on to that edge saying, okay, there’s got to be a way to learn my way forward. You’re absolutely right and a lot of reasons why people don’t do that is because their fear of not being good enough. Yet how do we learn how to be good? We practice. Yeah, we practice. And as we practice especially in the areas where we can be paying attention and be aware of the fact –we don’t yet know how to do this. 

An example might be when I had first started writing proposals for contracting work and consulting work. I hadn’t had a whole lot of consultant proposals that I’d seen so I didn’t have a whole lot of models I had to figure something out and do something. And then I got feedback and some clients hired me, some clients didn’t some people said, oh, this was really helpful or that, and so I gradually learned. Of course, I wasn’t great at all of them and some of them failed and that was part of that process. And then my playing field expanded, I actually now can write much more sophisticated much more involved proposals and in fact at this point I’m not actually writing those proposals I am training people to write those proposals. So it transitions, your developmental edge changes as you grow in your profession. 

Jim Rembach:    You said it many times within the book that willingness piece is for me I think that’s a critical tipping point. I even have this struggle with, especially, my oldest son on the difference between can’t do and won’t do he’ll turn a lot of his won’t do’s and I can’t do that. I’m like, ahh, you didn’t try again meaning that you won’t do that. 

Jessica Hartung:     You know the distinction that I’d like to make there that I think would be helpful is it may be a different framing or a different way. For instance, talking about children, my daughter who’s in college, she’s always been interested in animal genetics. Well, that’s not a class that you can take in college. She wants to figure out where she’s going to go to graduate school and she started fostering kittens from the Humane Society as a way for herself to understand, do I really like working with animals? She could say, I can’t go and I have that interview or I’m not willing to go have that interview with the professor at such-and-such a university because I’m nervous and I’m scared and it’s beyond my necessary stretch I’m falling off the edge there I’m not doing it. But instead what she said is, I’m actually not willing to do that. But what am I willing to do? And I think that’s jujitsu sort of move there is that we can turn willingness into can’t but we can also turn can’t into what are we willing to do? To start to find creative solutions where we can take a step forward maybe it’s just not the step that someone else had outlined for us. 

Jim Rembach:    That’s a great point, such person that creative thinking has to kick in. Okay, so you talked a moment ago about the strategic line-of-sight. For me again it seems one of those pretty simplistic but has a lot of significance and depth to it, if you can kind of walk us through that I think that would be very valuable.

Jessica Hartung:     I would love to. One of the things I’ve noticed, I work a lot with executives and people in leadership team who are working on a board and getting strategic thinking rolling even at that level takes a little bit of work. They might be actually formulating the strategy and looking at the priorities and so it’s part of their work to do that and still we have to translate if our strategy is this how does that relate over here and how does that relate over here. Well, once again why wait do not wait, do not wait until you’re on the board or at the C level to have those kinds of strategic thinking happening in your work. When you look at an area of your work and you say, all right am I responsible for let’s say customer service numbers or I’m responsible for a particular type of organizational fulfillment, how does that relate to our strategy? Where is the strategic line of sight between this piece of work that I’m doing and what’s really important to the organization? 

And the reason why you want to know what that strategic line-of-sight is because that development along that path you will get support from your organization for. Because if you’re developing the things that are already important to the organization and working on that and improving things in that way you know that that’s what people are looking for. I think it also works personally. When you say, what’s the strategic line-of-sight with what I really care about? If I had a personal strategic plan what would be my goals? What would be my priorities? How can the work that I’m doing today relate to that? Like I was saying about having a sales job that was really intimidating very scary I didn’t know if I wanted to do it but it was a great opportunity for me to say I can see how this relates I’m going to need to know how to influence people I’m going to need to understand the finances behind things I’m going to need to know this, this, this in my future. And so whether it’s project management, budgeting, communications, these are skills that you can learn in many, many jobs. And you’re looking for transferable skills that can be learned, honed and grown right where you are. So that it helps you in fulfilling your strategic objectives.

Jim Rembach:    I think what you’re talking about is—I mean for us is one of the competencies that we have in our model for those emerging leaders in customer care and contact centers and existing supervisors. We’ve identified six competencies, and one of the things that I keep saying is that they will help you grow beyond this role because business acumen is what you were talking about having that competency knowing and understanding that whole strategic line, the strategic side, how things connect how and what you do every single day impacts that and being able to convey that with those that are on your team why and how you’re important and how it connects.

Jessica Hartung:     Yeah. And Jim, one of the things that’s been happening for me lately as I’ve been talking to folks is seeing the bridge in between the personal and the professional. Someone I was speaking with recently has raised six children, okay, you learn a few things about project management if you learn a few things about managing resources and so I think that there are transferable skills between our personal and professional lives as well as transferable skills between multiple professional roles and when we’re investing in ourselves and choosing to own our learning and do it deliberately what happens is we have a lot more control over where our careers head and what opportunities come to us next. Because we’re actually creating those opportunities we’re making those opportunities by preparing our self because we can see that strategic line-of-sight. What would someone in the job you most want need to know? What would they need to be able to do? Let’s get started on learning it right now because there’s nothing stopping you. 

Jim Rembach:    That’s great point. You have the consultancy, you just wrote your first book, and you even mentioned something about the next one, you have the kids and I think you’re getting close to being that empty-nester but you got a lot of things going on, so if we talked about all of that and you have one goal, what is that one goal?

Jessica Hartung:     Hmm, I think my work in life has been oriented towards the idea of building more mission driven deliberate leaders. The reason I think that’s so important is when you look in our communities and I see the school board, I see the County Commission for this, I see the Neighborhood Association, I see the things that are happening in our communities that are the fabric of our lives, they are sometimes being led by amazing leaders but more often they are led by people who are self-interested and don’t have a very healthy relationship with power and have not built these skills and our institutions and our communities are suffering as a result. 

So what’s really been important to me is that we change the way we think about work. Work is the place where we grow leaders at every level. And this is where we practice our capabilities so that we can lead in our lives so that we can lead our families forward so that we can lead our communities forward our communities of faith our government institutions that require citizens participation it’s our turn to lead it’s our turn to lead regardless of what our job title is. But when we start to see work as that developmental opportunity for building transferable skills an actual like a second job that we have where we learn, I find that that enriches our job. We actually are more engaged. All the things that employers want employee engagement, employee satisfaction, retention those things all increase when folks are actually using work as a learning experience to benefit themselves and so everybody wins. That’s why I’ve really been working so hard to create a book and a business and as a team and getting out there because I believe that this is transformative for us as a society.

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:     Alright, here we go Fast Leader Legion it’s time for the Hump day Hoedown. Okay, Jessica, the Hump day Hoedown is a 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. Jessica Hartung, are you ready to hoedown? 

Jessica Hartung:     Yes. 

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

Jessica Hartung:     I think the thing that’s holding me back is making sure that I make time in the mornings to really connect to myself and have that meditative, contemplative time. When I do that my leadership is so much better. So changing my schedule so that that is something that is a non-negotiable every day that’s going to move my leadership forward and the lack of it holds me back.

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

Jessica Hartung:     If you’re going to go into business with people go into business with people with integrity. If you they don’t have integrity nothing else matters.

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

Jessica Hartung:     Bringing what really matters to you to each interaction makes you feel like you actually are a whole person. Like who you are is who you are wherever you are and that sense of integration is very fulfilling. 

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

Jessica Hartung:     Now I have to pick a different one besides awareness, willingness, skill because that’s a pretty good one. But I think the other tool that is very helpful to me is the ability to focus on what’s happening with the other person. I think through contemplation and meditation you focus on what’s going on with you but what that does is allows you to have greater capacity to identify and an outward mindset. What’s happening around you? What’s happening with others? And when you can do that you can develop solutions that are transformative.

Jim Rembach:         What would be one book that you’d recommend to our Legion, and it could be from any genre, and of course we’re going to put a link to—The Conscious Professional, on your show notes page as well. 

Jim Rembach:    Thank you. There are so many wonderful, excellent books, right now I’m reading, Terah Moore’s—Playing Big, which is about that area of self-criticism and concerns that people have about how do we deal with our fears. So I’d recommend, Playing Big by Terah Moore as a great way to address that practically epidemic fear that people are having around, I’m not perfect therefore I can’t do it which then really limits the ability for you to play big.

Jim Rembach:     Okay Fast Leader Legion you could find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/jessicahartung. Okay, Jessica, this is my last hump day hoedown question. Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you can take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but 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?

Jessica Hartung:     I have been facilitating professionally for the last 20 years and during that time I’ve learned how to have conversations that people are excited to participate in and that create great results. If I could bring one skill back in time it would be facilitation skills, group facilitation to create an alignment and to create an understanding of what really matters and how do we move it forward. That’s something I’ve developed over time and boy bringing that back with me at 25 it would have changed a lot of things.

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

Jessica Hartung:     Absolutely. If you were to go to consciousprofessional.com you’d find out more about the book and current work that we’re doing there, jessicahartung.com also has some additional resources including some free downloads for strategies to help move your career forward. I’m happy to connect on LinkedIn as well as jessicahartung author Facebook page. 

Jim Rembach:    Jessica Hartung, 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 says 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.

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