Peter Haid

021: Peter Haid: Career can pull you too far

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.

Jim Rembach:    Thanks, Kimberly. Okay Fast Leader legion, I’m just really excited I’ve got to share with you the person who I have on the show with me today. Peter Haid is someone who I really just met recently but who has made a big impression on me for his demeanor, for his intelligence, for his focus on others and I’m glad to have him on the show today and I know you will so make sure you go to iTunes, download and subscribe, and rate and review our show so that more people can get to meet Peter.

As a kid, Peter could be found anywhere from the varsity, golf team, to building a potato launcher with his friends in the garage. Shaped by his older brother’s pulled towards adventure and his sisters pure heart for scholastics, Peter landed somewhere in the middle. He inherited his mother’s passion for helping others and his father’s business skills. Peter joined the corporate world as a data analyst at the age of 18 and then finished his degree at the University of Colorado, Denver taking night classes.

He’s launched several startups but he is most proud of the innovative volunteer-boosting platform nurtured out of his entrepreneurial MBA, CitizensPoints.org, which is a 501C3 nonprofit. His current focus is 50% family and 50% laser focused in on the customer experience strategy and executive coaching. He is honored to be considered a CX expert by the CXPA and drive momentum into the human side of business.

Peter has a personal mission and a message. His mission is to gratefully be a loving husband serving noble causes with integrity and never lose a spirit of adventure in this rehearsal life. His message for millennial’s looking to fast-track their leadership is “Pull your head out of your apps.” He currently resides in Broomfield, Colorado with his wife Rochelle and his sons Hudson and Hillis. Peter, I’ve given the Fast Leader legion a little bit about you, but can you share with us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you better?

Peter Haid:   Thank you, Jim. It’s a pleasure to be here with you today, and thanks for everything you do with this show. I enjoyed listening to it and I enjoy what this is all about. Yeah, my current passion is, honestly, it’s simply my family, first and foremost, and then customer experience is really what I’ve landed on, something I really enjoy and I think this is the space for me. I don’t think there’s any other career track that’s going to pull me away at this point. 

Jim Rembach:    I can say that from the opportunity that we have had together to respond to people’s questions as a member benefit for the Customers Experience Professionals Association, I’ve been very impressed by the responses that you’ve giving to some of these folks who are in need and some additional coaching and support. Now, I also know that you’ve been going through a little bit of a transition because you talked about being partly focused on family partly focused on customer experience but that balance that kind of a shift for you, how did you know that you needed to make some adjustments in order of write the ‘percentages’ so to speak. 

Peter Haid:   One of the best experience’s that ever happened to me, making some changes and some shifts. What happened is earlier this year, I was in a very good role, got a good company and I was on a great path in my career and I was slowly starting to notice that things at home were starting to slip away from having any sense of leadership in that realm. And to be a leader at home is actually a lot more challenging and it takes a lot of more attention than what you can do at work. There’s books about work, there’s formulas that work, the dynamic at home is different and I think, as I heard some of your other interviews, there are chapters in life and I iterate chapter in my life which required a whole different level of teamwork on the home front with two toddlers and different dynamics of schedules and I am so blessed to have a family that loves me and that I can care for but at the same time it required a new shift in my attention. And so, I put some of the other things on pause and I think that this is some of the ways that you learn the hard way about how career can pull you a little too far in one direction. 

Jim Rembach:   That’s a great point. One of the things that as we go through the different guest that we have on this show, is kind of what you just said, that we all learn life lessons. What we do hope for at the show is that others get the opportunity to listen to all the experiences from all of our guests and be able to make those adjustments a little bit sooner so that they didn’t have to go through so much pain. Because while failure is really the best way that we learn, the intensity of the failure if it turn down just a little bit would make our lives a heck of a lot easier. So, hopefully  people will get the opportunity to do just that, know if there percentages are getting out of whack much like you realize that they’ll make a step towards a different direction prior to that, so thanks for sharing.

Now, I know that when we do have the times were we feel overloaded or we’re just kind of down and need to get picked up, a lot of times we look for inspiration and leadership quotes, and they’re really important to us at the show, and really they are on social media. When you look at what people share on social media, I think the percentage of quotes that are shared to give people—that inspiration is massive. So, is there one that sticks out for you that picks you up and helps you move in that right direction? 

Peter Haid:    They’re so many good quotes that I refer to. The one that tends to move me most often is not something I can pen down to a single person who said it, but the one thing I say to myself and I’ve seen it other places is simply: “Leaders go first.” It’s so simple and yet it’s often something that we forget to remember. Whether you think you’re a leader or you want to be a leader, by definition a leader is in front, how do you translate that to real life? If you’re a husband, I think you’re going first to apologize, be an example of leadership, if you knew—iron something out, if you’re a friend maybe you’re the one that goes first to say something that your other friends are too scared to say. 

And if you’re a boss, maybe you go first by having an opinion and a vision and bringing other people into the fold with that. And if you’re an individual contributor maybe you go first by finding valuable work that you can do for your boss before he hears she has to come find and give that to you. There’s all kinds of ways in life that this comes true. The human side of everything going first to the smile is in fact leading in a lot of places, people don’t do that enough. And I think this is a critical time in our culture where smiling and positivity is so critical.

So, I think leaders go first and I think that that’s something I can lean on daily.

Jim Rembach:   I think that’s incredible. For me, that concept of going first and just the depth of it, it’s something I’ve eve use with my kids.  When they’re being nasty, I’m like, “Do you want people to be nasty to you?” and of course their response is, “No” and so then I say, “Well, then you have to show love if you want love,” and you know what, you got to go first. You’ve got to be the one that shows it first if you expect or wanted back in return. Don’t wait for it to be bestowed upon you, that’s just not the way things work.

Now, we talked a little bit, a moment ago, about some of the shifts that you had to make because of having that imbalance and that may be the hump that you would like to talk about, but we all have them. Again, here at the show we learn from others when they share those humps and our epiphanies that we come to, but is there a hump for you that kind of has redefined you and sent you in a much better direction than your heading? Can you share that with us please? 

Peter Haid:   I think the one that I’ve just sort of come on near the side of is a good example of—I had to make a choice. It was not that somebody was pushing me to make a choice. I had to make a choice because I could tell that my current path wasn’t sustainable for many people in my life including myself. And you’d come back to, “Why do you work so hard?” “What is that about?” Some people work hard because they have a passion for what they do. Some people work hard because they’re really into what they can do with the outcomes of that work, for resource reasons. And for me, I have such a love for what I do that it can become a big draw for me and almost to the point that other things fall by the wayside. I think having the attention and some good people in my life that can speak into my life and say, Hey—now’s a good time for you to see some of this other aspects and to make a move and to be bold about that and not be ashamed of having to do it. So, that’s a hump that I’ve certainly been through. I think, it’s been really good I’m more of a business-related one as well, if you’d like to hear.

So, one of the challenges I was in and I was facing, I’m training up an organization to do customer experience correctly. I was helping an engineer culture think about soft skills in a call center environment. This is a common problem in customer experience and one of the things that I saw was that there’s an opportunity to go around the country and train, we had four or five different call centers that were maybe 600 people in total, really large initiative that I was taking on and the hump was, how to I get everybody to listen to me? That’s always the challenge. 

And so, one of the things I did with this project, and I think this is something that carries into all the work I’ve done and for how I manage every situation is, give before you take. And when I went in to these different call centers to do training on soft skills for customer experience, before I ever took anybody in the classroom I would, first, when they are sitting at their desk during their job trying to manage all the systems that they’re navigating and basically giving them a voice and giving them credibility for how challenging it is to be customer centric in some of the dynamics they’re dealing with. So, then—one funny story, a woman put me on the phone, she was training me to do her job, she put me on the phone to take real calls and so not only did I totally fumble and mess up a lot of calls coming in I had a whole new appreciation for her job, and for how challenging it is to work across the silos and the company. And so, that was a real-life, sort of a shift moment for me, I need to give to these people and I need to earn trust in giving them a voice before I ever ask for credibility and a voice for myself. 

Jim Rembach:    That’s another good point because a lot of times especially in our task-strapped environment we often want to just do something that we should always refrain from doing and that is: “Let’s get do it.” People start the meeting, “Okay, let’s get do it”. No, that is not what you want to do. You want to do what you just said, you want to make sure that people have the opportunity to engage themselves and you create that environment, so that’s a great story and thanks for sharing it. Now, if you were to say cross that story and maybe even the one that you shared prior, is there a piece of advice that you feel our Fast Leader legion just really needs to hear? What would it be? 

Peter Haid:    Well, I have a piece of advice for millennial’s, to your opening and also something more broad. The first piece of advice is, millennials head out of your apps. Why is that so important? There is an artificial sense of relationship that is being created by our devices. What I mean by that is—I’ll give you very specific examples. If you talk to a millennial and you asked him about how they felt when someone defriended them on Facebook or if they found out that somebody was saying something on these social channels about them, that’s a channel that is creating real hardship and it’s something that some of the other generations know that is artificial. What I mean by that is, if you want to develop leadership skills knowing how to be human in a one-one real interactive way is very key. And in order to do so, you’ve got to remember that what you’re seeing on devices is artificial, it is not the true sense of what it means to be human. It’s a created interaction that is only as good as a few characters on the screen. There is nothing that you can replace for the one-on-one human interaction, like what you and I are doing right now.

So, I just see a lot of millennial’s in the work environment and in personal environment that I’m very concerned about. Our next generation of leaders and how we can work towards remembering that humans need one-on-one interaction and not an artificial one, I just don’t want us to lose sense of that. The other thing I would mention, just more broadly to everybody is that, there’s two things that you can really rely on in your career that will take you higher and higher. If you think of your career like an airplane, you have an engine on the right and engine on the left, and the engine on your right is largely the skills and niche that you learn when you went to college or your practice area. A lot of times we start our career and we start that engine going and we can get to maybe a thousand feet or 2000 feet with that, but the engine on the left fires up a little bit later, and that’s the relationship side.  

You can only get so high in your career or in your leadership levels if you’re only focused on your practice area and not relationships. And so the secondary message, and this is something I’ve learned probably a little bit late, but it’s so important to do networking to have strong relationships, there’s only good that can come of it and it all starts with giving before you take and that’s how you build those relationships. And so, I just that remembering that we have these two sides to our airplane and those that want to go faster in their career, you need to balance that out and try to focus on the relationships side especially those that are in the younger end of their career.

Jim Rembach:     That’s a great point. And what you’re talking about has been studied as far as career development and what they have found is that, what you’re referring to is the technical skill will elevate you to a certain point and then it has to shift over to your emotional intelligence. And the emotional intelligence is what was going to take you further on and maybe even, kind of, right the ship so to speak because the technical skill if that’s what you’re over relying on is that one engine it’s going to start taking you off path. 

Typically if you start looking at the blocks of years in our life and our career that happens about mid-forties for most people. And that’s whey they hit that altitude ceiling, so to speak, as far as being able to take it to the next level. And you have to be able to make that shift and turn on the emotional intelligence and have that start being your extra boost to take that technical skill on forward. So, that have been a great point and everybody that’s something that we just have to be more aware of is that emotional intelligence is what takes you to a higher altitude and the sooner you get to building those particular skills the more successful you’re going to be in a longer flight that you’re going to have. Thanks. 

Now, I know that with the shift that you’re making, you talked about some of the work a moment ago prior to when we started the show of some of the things that you’re working on,  but what right now is part of your work that’s giving you that excitement?

Peter Haid: I love that I am in right now. I’m in control of my future. I have a lot of great relationships and what excites me is I become somewhat of a connector of people. Generally my path right now when I work it’s on customer experience strategy and coaching and helping companies either start out reboot what they have for customer experience, what they think is customer experience, and it starts at the executive layer.

When I’m when working with these companies I love to bring in connections that are really helpful. What’s so good about that style is that if you do that without any expectation of anything in return it’s only a matter of time before, again that engine of your relationships, can carry you even further. And it just my passion, what I love to do, is hear about a need and think about who do I know that can help out with this need, cause I certainly can’t, and I go and I find the right person, I like to plug people together. And so, when I’m not doing customers experience and I’m not spending time with my family, I definitely love networking and I think my passion is connecting people and helping them find solutions together. 

Jim Rembach:   I definitely thank you for connecting the Fast Leader legion to you. We appreciate that and we wish you the very best. Alright, now it’s time to move on to the rapid part of our show and that’s the—Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Peter 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 and rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster.  Peter Haid, are you ready to hoedown? 

Peter Haid: I’m ready. Let’s do it. 

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

Peter Haid:   Hold me back would be, probably just day-to-day endurance. It’s one of those things where there’s only so many hours in a day and I wish I had a little bit more time to focus on everything I want to do.

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

Peter Haid:    My father said something to me that really stuck with me once. And I’m not sure if it’s leadership advice as much as just life advice. He told me once: “Never ever take away another man’s dignity.” Whether you’re in a business situation or personal situation I find that advice usually leads me to the high road on challenging situations.

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

Peter Haid:    I think one of the secrets is staying positive. I think it’s intentional to stay positive, think about how you can make progress on a daily basis. I’m kind of a list maker and I tend to rank my list and then I get through as much as I can but I do the hardest thing first. So, that’s one of the habits that has really helped me and I do those things in the morning when my brain is most fresh. 

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

Peter Haid:    I think the best resource for both life and business is a book in the Bible called Proverbs. Proverbs is a book that is just full of nuggets of wisdom. Whether or not you’re a spiritual or religious person there is so much goodness you can bring out Proverbs and just elevate a lot of different aspects of your life. 

Jim Rembach:    What would be one book that you would recommend to our listeners?

Peter Haid:    The best book I can recommend to anybody that’s looking at the growing faster in leadership and learning how to deal with challenges is the “Hard thing about Hard Things” by Ben Horowitz. It’s a book Ben’s challenges in life and it talks about being a CEO and a leader and it looks at all the challenging situations. His personal life was affected in some ways. I think it’s a really healthy book on bringing real pure advice, it’s something is not filtered in fact there’s all kinds of good examples of how he had a really hard time, there’s no easy answers it’s basically what it lands on. There’s no easy answers and you have to find the path that will help the most people or get your business moving without doing too much damage, and he had a very hard time with that, and so I recommend it. 

Jim Rembach:    Thanks for sharing that with us. Okay Fast Leader listeners, you can find links to that and other bonus material from our show by going to fastleader.net/Peter Haid. Okay, Peter this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you woke up tomorrow morning and you were 25 years old again and you were supposed to begin a new job as a manager of a team that is underperforming and disengaged but you have retained all the wisdom and skill that you currently have your task is to turn the team around. You get up, you get ready, you head out to work, what do you do now? 

Peter Haid:    The team that is under performing an unengaged is likely needs to be heard. They likely need someone to care and to listen and to—whether or not you can make all the changes that they need, they’re going to need some type of validation. The first step would be, either one-on-one or as a group I would be very intentional about making sure they are heard and making sure that I’m absorbing what challenges they have. I would also sprinkle a lot of positivity and I would do that through giving them nuggets of how they may be able to shape their day or shape their environment to huddle a lot healthier, positive vibes. I think that the first two steps is to help them be validated and help them find something positive that they can all agree on and [inaudible 24:41] 

Jim Rembach:   So, you’re going to build that good foundation first before you take a step, sound good. Peter is was an honor to spend time with you today. Can you please share with the Fast Leader listeners how they can connect with you? 

Peter Haid:    Sure thing. I have my own consultancy its TrifectaCX, so you can reach me at peter@trifectacx.com and you can also hit me up on Twitter@PeterHaid. And I enoy talking to you Jim, it has been fantastic. 

Jim Rembach:    Peter, 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.

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