Now, more than ever, we need to have conversations at all levels.
We need to hear what people are saying and, as leaders, to get insight as to where do we go. And yet, I find a lot of leaders being afraid to open up, perhaps to say that they don’t really know and to stop and listen. We need innovation, ideas, we need to learn.
Tune in and watch our discussion to get insight into some remarkable leadership lessons that will make a difference in the way you show up with your team, your colleagues and your clients.
0:00:08.6 S1: Welcome to Mindset Mondays. Hi, I’m Dr.Debra Dupree, the mindset doc. This program is designed to bring to you thought leaders throughout the world on their subject matters of expertise, bringing to you ideas and how you can learn, live and grow to make a difference in how you lead your life with your top executive, an advanced professional, or just wanting to know more about how you can show up differently. I’m delighted today to have with us Jennifer Thornton. Jennifer, welcome so much coming from Dallas, Texas. Thanks for having me. Thank you for being here, I really appreciate it. Let me tell our listeners and our viewers a little bit more about your background. Okay. Jennifer is an expert in talent strategy and leadership professional development. She spent over 20 years as an HR professional, human resources, leading international teams across Greater China, Mexico, the UK, and the United States on how to expand into new markets, managing franchise retailers and developing key strategic partnerships, all while exceeding business and financial results. You know, Jennifer, really brings to us a lot of expertise in many directions. One of the things that we’re gonna learn more about today is the rapid growth of her consulting firm called 304 coaching, and she has so unconventional approach, and so we’re intrigued to find out more about that unconventional approach, you know she builds innovative workforce development solutions, who are challenging breakthrough opportunities and how to accelerate hiring the right people. She’s much sought after specializing in startups and large value-based organizations, and she really focuses on building talent strategies that complement the business objectives so that they can really grow exponentially.
0:02:03.8 S1: So, Jennifer, thank you so much. You live in Texas, I hear it’s a little cold there today…
0:02:08.9 S2: It is. It’s oddly cold here, I actually turned my heater on for the first time in a very long time…
0:02:14.5 S1: Oh my goodness, I just stopped using my AC. ’cause it’s been very warm here in Southern Califonia. So I know that you enjoy reading and historic preservation, which is also a passion of mine, and you like the water… Right, ’cause I love the water.
0:02:28.9 S2: Yes, we love the water in this house or… Very avid late goers. Wonderful.
0:02:34.4 S1: Wonderful. I’m excited to, again, learn more about you, and I’m curious, there’s always a story behind someone’s background, and so particularly, I’m interested in a story about the name of your consulting practice, 304 Coaching. So tell us more about that.
0:02:54.7 S2: So it’s such a funny story, I had decided to leave my corporate position and open up my own consulting firm, and someone I had worked with previous and who I was going to do that, and so out of the blue, she gives me a call and she said, I need you at our office tomorrow to pitch to our CEO, and I was like, I haven’t left my company yet and I don’t have a name yet, and she goes, We should better. Fine one tonight. And I was like, Oh my gosh. And so I think when you are owning your own business, you just have to make decisions and just keep moving forward, and 304 is a combination of lucky… It’s really my lucky number, it’s a combination of dates that are important to me, and so I just went with my lucky number, and so far it’s been pretty lucky. Well.
0:03:37.8 S1: I guess so, if you’ve grown that quickly… That’s really remarkable. Yeah, and so I guess one of the things that you’d call yourself as a conversational intelligence certified coach, and so what’s that about?
0:03:51.6 S2: So conversation intelligence, it’s an incredible program that was designed by the late Judah Glacier, and she spent over 40 years studying the neuroscience of the mind, how it took in conversation and language in the workplace, and then how did that impact our business results. And I was so fortunate to be able to study underneath her for about a year and a half, and became one of her certified coaches, and I get to take her words and her… All of her research and carried it on for her, but what we do with conversation intelligence is we help leaders understand the neuroscience of the mind and how do they adapt their language so that they’re moving people from their permit brain of fear, ’cause fear does not do any good for us to their prefrontal cortex, and we can do that through language, and it’s where the good stuff happens. It’s for the thoughts and the innovation and the excitement, and so through conversation intelligence, we help leaders get people to the trust and collaboration piece of their brain so they can move through their business.
0:04:54.9 S1: Well, I’m always excited to learn a new approaches and new aspects to this, and certainly being the mindset doc, one of the reasons I called that is that it all starts of emotional intelligence, a lot of people just think they’re intellectual intelligences and what drives them, and certainly what we know and how much we know is very important, but there’s so much more to us than just our intellect, that prefrontal cortex, like you said, and really understanding just so online. How do I make that up? And so I love how you call the conversational intelligence because I focus a lot on our language-ing, and we had a conversation before we started a start, if you imagine using a different word here would have powerful difference that would make… It makes such a difference if it’s just such small words, changes or some of adaptations. And
0:05:43.8 S2: When you look at 20th century leaderships, the leadership that a lot of us grew up in, where the boss had to be right and boss had to know it all, and the boss had to be this and that, it actually… That language around the way we were taught to lead for so many years creates fear, and I love talking to someone who’s like, Well, I’ve just been harder and harder on them to get them to perform, and I was like, What… Think about that. Let’s see if that’s really gonna work out for you.
0:06:11.6 S1: Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, I just so too. And I oftentimes to say Is that today’s world, particularly in the covid 19 world, just demands a different form of leadership, a different way of interacting in… Our human needs are not reader than they’ve been before, but we’ve just much more cognizant of how our minds come together and some working from home, we don’t leave ourselves at home anymore ’cause we’re there at the time working, and so it’s like, how do we blend together and so how you communicate are so incredibly important, one of the things Jennifer or Jen, I know you like to be called Jen, that really attracted me to your work was this whole notion about the addiction to being right, and so… Again, talk more about that. I’ve got several questions for you, but I would like you to elaborate on this notion of addiction to being right.
0:07:04.9 S2: So it’s a very powerful addiction, and we don’t think about it as a true addiction when we think about… We know that person who always has to be right and it’s my way or the highway, but what’s happening with that person is they have an addiction, and when we are right, no matter who we are, we get a dopamine hit. And who doesn’t love a little dopamine hood? It feels good. Makes us happy. Same kind of dopamine hit we would get if we re-shopping for our therapy or if we use sugar or alcohol, and what we all can agree on around addiction is the more you go and seek out that dopamine hit, the more of it you need for that same baseline of happiness, being addicted to the right to being right is the exact same thing, so the same addiction, Euros go off in our brain, we get that dopamine hit and think about that person, ’cause we all have that person or life early in our career, they were collaborative and curious and open-minded, and really just achieving a lot and often… Right, so they were getting promoted quickly, and then 10 years later, there’s someone we don’t recognize anymore, you know, there’s command and not wanting to hear the truth, and likely it’s because they’ve gotten addicted to their own sense of being right, and if their challenge…
0:08:24.1 S2: That is removing their drug of choice and no one likes that.
0:08:29.1 S1: Very good. I like how you frame that. Then I do a lot of round communication styles, and so that need to be right to really come out of a certain communication style as well, and very much correlates to the work I did around the psychology of good bosses versus bad bosses, and so the parallels just keep going on as… How does this really develop… I have my own notions, but I know you’ve all studied in the subject as well, and so from your perspective, how does this addiction to being might develop over time? Where does that come from?
0:09:05.4 S2: So it comes from the addiction of that dopamine hit about what it looks like in the workplace is winning, maybe early in our career, or med management in our career, we were winning a lot, and we started getting rewarded for being right, and we started to be rewarded for our viewpoints, not collective viewpoints, or the ability to learn from others, we were being rewarded because us as an individual were right, and so that’s how we reward people is really important because it starts to set up how they want to continue to seek out that pleasure. And so if someone’s been awarded a lot for being right based on their thoughts and not bringing other viewpoints in or not collaborating, that’s where it starts, and it can start really early in their career or kind of mid-career, but then over time, that person starts to adapt the way they lead, where it’s my ideas, my viewpoints, and then they continue to be rewarded for those, and then the cycle just starts and it doesn’t happen overnight, but you kind of wake up to the realization of it overnight, because most people don’t notice it until it’s gotten really bad.
0:10:20.1 S2: Yeah.
0:10:20.7 S1: Yeah, absolutely. And so when you talk about this kind of evolution, I guess I’m curious, and particularly having worked with many, many people around bad bosses, having been a mediator for over 25 years, I see this Paton come up a lot in our mediations, and actually is my early experience in mediation, that really feel my direction that I took because it’s like, How can relatively nice people to see something seems so very different, and why is there this power imbalance and so what kinds of patterns would people around someone who’s addicted to being… Right. See, or you’ve mentioned a few of those things that say more about that.
0:11:03.1 S2: Yeah, so there’s some really clear patterns, and so one of the things I tell leader, so that I’m concerned that they may have an addiction. One of the first things I tell them to do is the next time you’re in front of your team, ask them a difficult question, watch how they respond, do they stay quiet and then look at you, or do they… Tell you everything’s fine. Do they tell you what you think you wanna hear, or are they telling you bad news, because if they’re not saying anything, then that tells you… They are waiting for you to tell them how they should be thinking. If they tell you only good news and you know there’s bad news, then likely they’ve been in trouble, you have punished them some way in the past for being honest with you, and those two are never good. If they are like, Hey, you know what, I’m glad you asked. We have to get really honest and they deliver tough news to you and tough feedback to you, then you’re probably okay, but oftentimes, it’s the first two situations, they either say nothing or they don’t tell you the truth, and they tell you Everything is fine, even when the cells are going down, down down.
0:12:06.6 S2: They’ll be like, Oh, it’s fine. Next month is fine. It’s the weather. It’s fine, it’s fine. When we all know that it’s not… And that’s one of the great ways I think leaders can kind of start to check themselves with this.
0:12:18.7 S1: Very interesting, and particularly for the first one that you described, who say nothing, then unfortunately, it only fuels the perception of the person who’s addicted to being right, that they’re okay, because no one’s telling me that anything is wrong, and so just keep marching on and more and more people stop saying anything. Yeah.
0:12:37.9 S2: Oftentimes all your leader say to me, my team never makes a decision or my team never think of new ideas. And I’m like, Well, let’s talk about why that is. And so often it’s because we have punished them for telling you their ideas, or We’ve punished them for making decisions because it’s never the right decision, so they stop making those decisions, and what we complain about when it comes to our team, we have to stop and say, How did we create the environment where people perform that way, did we hire the wrong person and give them the wrong work or because either that way, that was a mistake of ours, or are we leading them in a way that creates… Or performance, and then we blame that person versus looking at ourselves…
0:13:26.7 S1: Sounds familiar. So it does have the insight, the awareness for that they may be showing up with this addiction to being right, what are some steps that… Well, I guess before I go there, how does the team, the business actually suffer, I guess, as a result of this kind of performance…
0:13:56.0 S2: Yeah, it’s tragic. I have seen some very tragic situations when there is a leadership who has to be right, and they’ve created an environment where people can’t be honest with them or cannot be innovative, they’re leading in a way of fear, so even if people wanted to be collaborative and innovative they are in so much fear, they physically can’t, their mind won’t open up to it, when that is going on, it is a recipe for disaster. It is the first sign your company likely is going to start to fall, and there’s some really big examples that we kind of all know of out there, and I think of Kodak… Kodak in the 50, 60, 70s, maybe even 80s, they were a big deal. And no one… At me, everyone who knew who they were, you were printing your pictures without code, none of us would have memories, and then they actually had the first digital camera and their team… Their executive team killed the project because they thought no one would ever want a digital camera, that was silly, everyone would always want a print, and because they weren’t willing to hear where the world was going, they never moved forward with their digital camera project…
0:15:10.0 S2: Imagine where they would be today if they had listened to the designers on that project and had just said, You know what, let’s see where this will go, You know, coach could be in a whole different place today, and that’s a big example. But that type of stuff is happening in small businesses, large businesses, global businesses every single day where leaders are not willing to hear the truth, that’s
0:15:32.5 S1: An excellent… An example… Because yeah, everybody knows that. Click moment, right?
0:15:36.4 S2: Yeah, absolutely, and Blockbuster is another good example, is the new Opel would wanna stop renting DVDS, and Netflix was like… I think people might want… And in Blockbuster had an option to buy Netflix early on. But they just didn’t think it was a good concept. And unfortunately, blockbusters gone, and we all know Netflix is doing incredibly well. But it’s that ability to say, I don’t know, but I’m willing to hear and listen to not only my employees, but to my customers, and when we’re addicted to being right on, we don’t even really willing to listen to our customers sometimes… And that is a very scary position to be in…
0:16:13.2 S1: Absolutely, that’s a… Netflix and code, both extant examples like you’ve seen, curious if you’ve got another one or two, particularly, we’re an example where they… An organization has not listen to their customers is one thing to their employees, that when their customers are not being heard, then… What’s the implications of that? So
0:16:33.3 S2: Yeah, so when your customers aren’t being heard, you’re not positioning your product for them, you’re not making adjustments that would promote to the cell of it, and that’s our external customer, but I think we have to think about our internal customer too, I think this is one of the biggest impact on retention issues, and retention is incredibly costly to organizations, there’s not a more costly problem than retention issues, and when you’re addicted to being right and you’re not willing to listen to what your employees needs are, chances are they will go somewhere that someone will listen to them. And early in my HR career, I did recruiting, it was my first entry into the world of HR, and I can’t tell you how many people… When I said, Tell me why you’re looking for a change, they said, I just want someone to listen to me or my ideas don’t get heard, or I know how to move the business forward. But no one seems to care. And that was a lot of years ago, but I still think back to those voices and think if their leaders have listened to them, where could that business be and would they have lost that person or not…
0:17:40.7 S2: Yeah.
0:17:41.3 S1: Yeah, I mean, that’s what we tied into the whole motion employee engagement and culture organizations that have been really big in the last few years, I’m curious, given our current situation around covid 19 UWA, I hear a lot from people too is… A lot of studies are talking about this as well as the incredible need, more sonatas, not always been important, but more shelter, giving such unpredictability uncertainty that exists now rule right now, employees are really looking to be heard and included and cared for and understood and willing to leave if they’re not being heard even in uncertain times like this, and so, a few comments about that too…
0:18:27.7 S2: You’re absolutely right. I think that people… Covid was a great equalizer. There’s no organization and no human in the world, it wasn’t impacted in some way, so everyone had to change something, and when you think about how we had to lead early in covid, we led in crisis management as we should, buildings on fire, get out. It’s highly directive. There’s not a lot of thought. There’s not a lot is just get out buildings on fire, and that’s a crisis management, but what I’m seeing right now is people are getting in that habit, and they are crisis managing through the day-to-day of covid, not… Because the building’s on fire, they’ve just stayed there because they did it for so long early this year, and that’s incredibly dangerous because crisis management only works during crisis, and if we are in that habit… And I see it because of the fear that we have as business leaders with our unknown, everything we thought is gone, so now we are really living in the unknown, and so there’s just this habit I’m seeing right now of crisis management or form of crisis management, which means or the voice of our teams are not being heard, and that’s dangerous.
0:19:41.2 S2: So dangerous, it’s dangerous in whatever a normal year looks like, it is incredibly dangerous right now.
0:19:48.7 S1: Yeah, it isn’t certain it is unpredictable and things changed from day to day, and so that doesn’t mean we stop planning and having a vision for the future and how this could look, and I know I’ve been saying for the last several months… Now, more than ever, we need to have conversations at all levels to really hear what our people are saying and to help get insight into as leaders and as far as where do we go now? And yet, I find a lot of leaders being afraid, Italy, afraid to really open it up and to perhaps say that they don’t really know… Into hopeless. Yeah.
0:20:29.6 S2: And that fear that the leader is experience… We know that that fear keeps you in your permit brain, it’s that piece of your brain that makes sure that you stay alive, it’s its only job. Keep you alive. Stay in the cave. Don’t anything dangerous. Just be ketosis, stay scared, stay in the corner, but that leader has shut down their pre-frontal cortex, which is what they need, they need innovation, they need to learn, they need ideas, and so as a leader, we, I don’t think always recognize that we are in fear and we have to say, You know what, I’m in fear right now. But I’m going to set that aside, because if I don’t, then I’m not leading in a way that we’ll get us out of this, or I’m not leading in a way that will create a new normal or a new way we’re doing things going forward that will make sense for my business, but we have to be really honest with ourselves when we as leaders sat in fear and we will do it from time to time, we are humans, and that is a chemical biological reaction that you cannot stop whether you would want to or not, you cannot do it.
0:21:33.7 S2: So we just have to recognize when it goes off so that we can manage through it.
0:21:38.6 S1: Absolutely, I know a lot of people will talk about a lot and you need to control this or I need to control myself, he’s like, Well, that’s sort of a mistaken word there because there’s very little weak on control even within ourselves, but it’s really about how we manage ourselves in response to triggers, and so I’m curious then going back to a question I started earlier, and I realized I was ahead of myself. What do you suggest a leader do in terms of… Let’s say they’re listening to this podcast and they go, Oh gosh, maybe that’s me, and so how would you suggest the leader actually start to recognize, or what steps do you suggest that they start taking in order to get on top of this?
0:22:21.0 S2: The first thing is, is do the exercise, go ask a difficult question to a group of the people who work for you and watch how they respond. Okay, then the second thing to do is as you drive home or after you end your day, if you’re staying home after you in your day, really stop and ask yourself, What did I learn, what did I… What do I know right now that I didn’t know when I woke up this morning about my business, and if you can’t say anything, if you can’t say, Oh my gosh, you know, this one person, I had no idea that this was taking many steps, had no idea our customers are providing, if you aren’t learning at the end of the day, then you need… You need to stop and you need to get control of this because if you aren’t learning, you’re not an expert in every piece of your business, it’s impossible, so if you’re not learning from the experts on your team and you know that, then that is one of the ways you can identify your own addiction…
0:23:17.4 S1: Okay, that’s an excellent point. I know having taught a lot around the topic of emotional intelligence and different forms and fashions at different levels, I’ve had some leaders of organizations… Well, I’ve already studied that. I was like, Woah, that’s exactly who should be coming back to this class and because we never stop learning, and then if you think that you’ve learned enough about this topic… Every day we learn something new. I feel the neurosciences an area that continues to grow in terms of what we understand and how we can apply it to the difference that we can make in our lives and the lives of others. Yeah.
0:23:52.1 S2: I’ve spent the last several years studying language and how to change my language to get the most out of my team or to manage my own fear, and I mess it up every day. Every day I’ll say something and I’ll look back and go, Well, that was real smart, you probably just got exactly the opposite of what you were looking for in that… And this is what I do for a living. I read all kinds of nerdy stuff about the neuroscience of the mind, ’cause I’m fascinated by it, and I mess it up every day, and I can be honest with that, because then when I mess it up, I hope my team tell me, Hey, I didn’t like that or, I’m not sure what you’re asking. And so again, if you think you don’t need to develop that, you’ve been a leader for years and years, and you’ve made millions and billions, well, guess what? You’re human. You still gotta grow. Life is practice. We never get it right. Right, right, right. I
0:24:43.5 S1: Just say I learn with it and then grow it, you… Absolutely, so you take on something that I wanted to ask about them, because this is a question, an area that I primate in culture as well, you know, if you have the image some relationships along the way with this addiction to being right. How do you go about repairing that… What are your suggestions?
0:25:04.7 S2: Yeah, well, one of the things that I have people do is called, it’s called a crazy idea meeting, and if you wanna change your environment, you wanna open people up, you can’t, by the way, go into their offices and say, Hey, as of today, I’m really open to your feedback, so make sure you give it to me ’cause that doesn’t really work. So you have to do something that feels really different and you have to start to build upon it. So one of the things that I suggest people do is kind of shake it up is tell your team on this day at this time, meet me here, we’re gonna talk about product X and why it’s down 2% and how we’re gonna gain back the market share and that if you just say that we’ll put the fear of whatever into your team because they’re be like, Oh, we’re in trouble, products down, they wanna know why, but tell them that and then with that, then also say, and I want you to bring me your most ridiculous, impossible. Crazy ideas on how to do this, because then you’re going to be telling them that you want to hear some interesting things, you want to hear the impossible, then on top of that, you have to create new ways you reward…
0:26:15.6 S2: And so you say, in fact, I’m gonna give rewards to the people who come with the most ridiculous ideas, and so then people are like, Oh, well, wait a minute, I’m gonna get rewarded for these ideas, so then you go and you have… You go to the meeting, you let people tell you their ridiculous ideas, you don’t focus on if it’s possible, if it’s not possible, ’cause that is not the point, the point is to think big and to think different, then ask people, What was the ridiculous idea I wanted to fly something to Mars, get them. So they get the award, probably bragging rights, but whatever award you wanna give them, then after that, you look for the common themes because you may not be able to use that ridiculous idea, but what you’re gonna find across all of them are the clues that you really needed, and that’s a big piece of it, is you as a leader, you have to chase the clothes, but we can’t get those clues out of people if we’re not willing to push them in a new way
0:27:11.3 S1: That… I really like that crazy idea notion. I know, again, from a form of mediation that have done for years, the whole area our own brainstorming is oftentimes an area that is misapplied, great notion, but oftentimes fails because it’s not managed properly from the get-go, and that’s like your crazy idea concept as far as opening up an atmosphere and making it safe enough and knowing the rules and the boundary, so that people can feel comfortable enough to put their ideas out there and know that they’re not gonna be criticized, chastise or demean or disregarded for what they come up with, and so creating that, but psychologically safe environment becomes really important too.
0:27:55.6 S2: It does, and we also have to close those meetings up well, and so at the end of that, your team may be driving home and thinking, Oh gosh, I’m gonna be in trouble, I can’t believe I really gave that idea, and so then they’re building their fear back up, so what you have to do is you have to send an email that day or the next day and say, I loved all the ideas, keep them coming, you know, it was so fun to hear the impossible, but yet we found a few things we could do because then again, you’re rewarding them and you have to later in changing behaviors, and that’s kind of that first piece, like rewarding them for thinking big, rewarding them for telling you the truth, then they’re gonna be more honest the next time, and then reward them, and then they’ll be more honest the next time and just imagine as a CEO, if you had a team that was never scared to tell you the truth, where could your business be in a year?
0:28:48.1 S1: Crazy. Yes, yeah, and that really ties in to the importance and necessity of building trust along the way, and so elaborate… I can see the powder and like you were talking about, reward and encourage. Reward and encourage. And so what’s the effects of that kind of approach in terms of building teams.
0:29:09.6 S2: So it definitely builds trust over time, and then we have to manage just our daily conversations. And one of the examples I give people is, You’ll hire someone new and they’re so excited and they see everything with fresh eyes, and then they come to you a month in and they’ve got all these ideas, and you look at those ideas and you’re like, Oh, we’ve tried this before. They never worked. And so you say things like, Well, you know, I get it, I see your point, but we’ve done done that before here, it’s never worked, so don’t worry about it. And then that new hire is like, Oh, I thought you hired me because you wanted me to help, but clearly don’t… You just want things to be the way they are. So I learn my lesson, don’t give feedback, don’t tell the truth, and so just small things like, Hey, I agree with you, we failed in the past when we’ve tried it, but today is a new world, let’s look at one or two things we could try again and then that’s… Again, it’s not about it not being honest with feedback, it’s about being honest, but being honest in a way that encourages people to still be collaborative and innovative and truth tellers, and that builds the trust, but very small changes in our language either shuts down that trust or build that trust.
0:30:23.0 S1: And it really goes a long way in troubling a culture of inclusion or exclusion, where people might just show for the job because it’s a page, but they don’t really feel a sense of self-worth and self-contribution. Value being part of the team.
0:30:42.0 S2: You’re absolutely right, and you see it, it’s just so easy to say things that discourage people, if someone comes in and it really isn’t going to work, we can say, I’m sorry, this really isn’t going to work and not hear them out, or we could say, I don’t see it, but I’m open for you to change my mind, try to change my mind. Then you can hear what they have to say, you can help them think in a way that’s better for the business, or you may learn something and they may change your mind, but again, it’s about keeping that conversation going versus shutting them down…
0:31:16.6 S1: You touched on a couple of times, and I know we talked about it prior to starting the show as far as the language, and so what are some specific examples of language changes that leaders should entertain in terms of making a difference in how they move forward?
0:31:33.3 S2: So I think on top of the other examples, I would say, some of the ones I like are, oftentimes when things go wrong, you’re like, I’ll figure out what went wrong here instead of… ’cause then everyone’s like, Oh, a finger pointing and who’s in trouble, say, things clearly didn’t go well, and we need to figure this out so that we can do it better next time. As a team, let’s look at what went right and let’s look at where we went off course, why and when, so the next time we get it to where we need it, and that feels very different, then I’ll figure out what’s wrong here. I think another great one is around making sure that we are clear on value, so if you have someone do a project and you know it’s on the finest project, because there’s a lot of those… I do them, you do them. Everyone listening has a couple of those projects we don’t love, and if we’re signing a project that we know someone’s not gonna be totally in love with, instead of saying, Hey, I know this is a really yucky project, but I need you to do it anyhow, ’cause that’s probably what we would say, say something like, here’s the deal, here’s why I’ve chosen you.
0:32:39.5 S2: Here is the outcome, and though it may not be the most glamorous project, it is incredibly glamorous when it comes to success of our organization, and here’s how you’re contributing when you do this work, and here’s what I want you to learn from this work. And again, it’s a simple language change to that work that none of us wanna do because we all have it, but there’s just endless ways that we can think about changing our language to really get more out of our teams.
0:33:07.1 S1: Yeah, and I was just thinking about this yesterday, in fact, is really about reframing, redirecting and then refreshing because when we can do that, then okay, we sort do open up the mind space and create some opportunity to see things differently, how many of us haven’t had that Why didn’t I think of that before you just being in a different mind space, in a different time, even position can create… Is opening up the mind, and so I’m curious, I imagine in your work, you actually have seen people who have overcome their addiction to being right, and what’s that look like?
0:33:45.8 S2: You know, it’s a really beautiful process to watch, and it’s beautiful for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons I love watching it is because typically… By the time I get the phone call and I’m working with a team or a company or an individual. It’s gotten so bad that it’s this or the company may go down or the person may lose their job, and so it’s really powerful work to watch someone turn their organizations around, and so when you start to see people recognize that they don’t know… One of the exercises I have people do when we start out is starts it fast, get a list of questions about the business you’ve always wanted to know and have conversations and have people, and we start to rewire, so we start celebrating what we learned and not what we already knew, and as it goes through the progress, when I see an executive say, Oh my gosh, I’m so glad we’re having our session today, ’cause I can’t wait to tell you what I’ve learned about my business and how we change things and what that has meant to our bottom line is just like the top of the world, because this person is thrilled that they’re learning versus being so attached to their own views, and we were…
0:35:00.9 S2: When we are in addiction, no matter what it is, it’s miserable and we’re not happy, and sort of break that, we get happy plus not only at work are we improving relationships, but chances are, you need relationship improvement outside of work too, if you’re addicted to being right and we can start having better relationships at home, and I think that’s incredible to… That is powerful, nothing leveraging your mindset for health or half year and more possessive offense. Right, absolutely, and I think as leaders, we don’t realize our power, and one of the reasons I do what I do is obviously I love it, and I help businesses create their business goals and all that stuff that we check the box, but actually behind the scenes, I wanna make better communities. And when we lead in our team, our team member goes home and if he has had a bad day and feels bad about himself and is worried for his job, what his dinner with his kids look like that night, it doesn’t look good, dad’s quiet dad shut down dad’s thinking, dad’s nervous. And so then that kid’s like, Oh, what’s wrong, and now they’re in fear, then they have to go do their homework and fear go to school the next day in fear, but if we were leading our teams in a way that created…
0:36:13.5 S2: We celebrated failures, we celebrate and learning, and dad goes home excited and had a great day at work, and it’s joking and having fun with… Our kids are on the dinner table and then they help them with their homework, and then the kid goes off the next day, we impact people’s home lives, therefore we impact communities, and I just… I think that we don’t always realize our power as leaders…
0:36:32.7 S1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or influences, far reaching. And I would suggest the covid 19 world, they had even more so, more so as we begin to wrap up, I guess I would like to just ask you for a comment, you notice any differences between males and females in the motion?
0:36:51.8 S2: I do, I see a lot of difference between female leaders and male leaders, and some of the things that I noticed, it’s different… One of the ones that I always work with my female years on when the very first things we talk about is I ask them, What’s your currency? And they’re like, What? I’m like, What’s your currency? And they’re like, I have no idea, and I’m like, what that means is, what do you bring to the table? And what is that financially worth a company? Men are very good at that. Men are very good at saying, I do this, and this is the financial bottom line, women don’t naturally speak that way, and when a female leader starts to understand everything they bring to the table and the impact to the organization, and they start talking around their impact, the organization versus… Well, you know, she’s just a really good leader and she’s really nice, and you’re like, No, I’m a very good leader and I’m nice and I’m respectful, and I also run a department that’s been up double digits for the last five years, and really starting to talk about their… And I wrote an article recently on was based on a client story, she called and she was so excited because we’ve been working on her currency, she delivered a project that had immediate impact, the bottom lines.
0:38:10.9 S2: And when the Coos a great job, she said, Well, I’m here to make you look good. And I was like, No, you’re not. You’re not here to make him look good, you’re here to dry the business, and as a result, you’ll make him look good, but what if you had said to him… Thank you, I’m glad you noticed when I saw the opportunity to build this new cells report, I jumped on it with my team, and as of today, that’s impacted over a million dollars worth of cells, I’m so glad you noticed, it’s a really different way to respond to a
0:38:45.5 S1: Very different way to respond… Yes, yes. And even if that person had said, You know, I’m here to make you look by doing this in achieving this and bringing to the table this, that would have changed the story too, but I really do like how you’ve reframed and put the emphasis on the currency as you put it right up front.
0:39:03.1 S2: Yeah, and no man would look at his boss and say, I’m here to make you look good. Yeah.
0:39:07.3 S1: They wouldn’t. Absolutely obsolete. Well, Jon, just this has been the fasting conversation and poles costs in so many ways, where can our listeners and our viewers learn more about you get access to some of your work, your programs, and more.
0:39:23.7 S2: So you can go to our website, 304 Coaching. We do have a resource section and you can find the directions on how to have a crazy idea meeting if you wanna do that with your team, and there, you can also find some articles and podcasts, all types of resources we provide you, and you can also check out our programs, I love connecting on LinkedIn, you can find me at Jen Thornton ACC, and we can continue the conversation there. One-on-one.
0:39:49.8 S1: That’s wonderful Jen. Thank you for being such a passionate resource on this very important topic, looking at addictions in the whole new way and sterile looking at leadership in a very different kind of way, and so it’s really about making a difference as we move forward and making a difference in the lives of our employees, ourselves or communities, as you’ve said, and cuddly powerful. And so thank you so much, Jen, for joining me, the mindset, talk to Mindset Mondays. It was a really great time. And thank you for having me. Thank you, and for the person, viewers, you can listen to more podcasts online, set money, visiting www relationships at a work UX, tons of resources, podcasts on leadership, workplace, living and learning and growing and making a difference in the world, know how to leverage your mindset. So thank you so much, Dr. Debora dope, the mindset. Done.