Welcome to Episode 249 of the Today’s Leader Podcast. Our special guest today is JENNIFER THORNTON, A.C.C., FOUNDER and it was a great conversation. As Jen says, running a high-performance team always boils down to two things, Adopting a “perfect fit” hiring process and developing each hire according to his or her own individual and job-specific talent gaps.
She is a bundle of energy and knowledge, forsaking a wonderful international career in people, and forging out on her own path. As she described in the interview, she had an INSTAGRAM perfect career but chose to follow her purpose.
Who gets really excited about messing up? One of the key aspects of the work Jen does and what she spoke about, was the trading fear for innovation and that is so important for leaders.
Hey there, it’s Coach Curl here and welcome to Episode 249 of The Today’s Leader podcast. It’s my pleasure today to share an amazing conversation that I had with Jennifer. Jennifer is a leadership coach, specializing in the power of teams. Now, as Jen says, running a high performance team always boils down to two things, adopting a perfect fit hiring process and developing each hire according to their own individual and job-specific talent gaps. She’s a bundle of knowledge and a bundle of energy for taking a wonderful international career in people and forging out on her own path, as she describes in the interview, she had an Instagram perfect career, but she chose to follow her purpose, Jennifer developed her expertise in talent strategy and leadership development over her exciting 20 plus year as a HR professional.
01:55 S1: She led international teams across Greater China, Mexico, the UK and the US to expand into new markets, managed brands and franchise businesses. Now, there is a stage in the conversation where I share a story about a retired surfer, and didn’t mention his name now his name, he’s Freddy potash, and sincere apologies for that slip, and now, after a word from one of our partners, it’s my pleasure to bring you Jennifer thought in
02:25 S2: The podcast is brought to you by thinking grow business, the home of the Think and Grow Business Mastermind. If you’re serious about growing your business, get serious and join a mastermind group today. Find out more at thinking growth business dot com-U.
02:42 S1: It’s my pleasure to welcome Jen than to the Today’s leader podcast. Welcome, Jen.
02:49 S2: Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here today. Tell
02:52 S1: Me a little bit about the Gen fantasy.
02:57 S2: Oh gosh, so I won’t go back too far, but most of my entire life I spent in retail, believe it or not, I… Young in my life was like, I can’t wait to work in a mall, I really love to shop, so why would you not want to work in them? All right. And so I spent a good portion of my career in retail, and the first half of it was in the operations side, and I did actually work in the mall, dreams do come true, and I started as a store manager like a million years ago, but as I progressed through retail, I learned that I got my results different than my peers, my peers were highly competitive and they wanted to win because they wanted to be number one, I was typically number one because I built great teams, and so then I moved over into the HR side of things and took a turn… All different pieces of that HR portfolio. There’s lots of different ways to do that. And then by the time I left corporate America, I was the head of International HR for a large global retailer and God. To have great teams in Hong Kong and Shanghai in London and Mexico.
04:04 S2: Just amazing experience of what a… Yeah, it was so great and so much fun. I learned a ton on my gosh, I could write volumes of everything I learned doing international work, but it got to a place where I wanted to do something that was mine, and I wanted to get really specific and help people in a way that I knew I could… And so about four years ago, I started 304 coaching, and today we help organizations create talent strategies that match their business strategies, so that that business strategy that you want to come to life actually does because you have people in the right places to do it.
04:38 S1: Absolutely, I’m intrigued by the name 304.coaching. Where did that come from?
04:44 S2: So I get a call before I even left my Corporate America job because a friend who I was going out on my own, and she said, I need you to come in tomorrow to talk to our CEO and pitched to him, and I was like, I don’t even have a name yet for my company, and she said, You better find one tonight. And I was like, Oh my goodness, what am I gonna do? And so three or four is a combination of dates that were important to me, and so it was kind of my lucky number, so I went with 304 and it’s been lucky ever since.
05:11 S1: Awesome, that’s great too. And it’s interesting, my background’s retail as well, in retail, that competitive nature that you spoke about is certainly evident with any retail leader, but the leaders that get the best results, so usually the ones that have built and created the best team.
05:31 S2: Yeah, and I think what a lot of people don’t realize is retailers are running businesses, you might walk into your local store, but realizing that team of people are running multi-million dollar businesses and making hiring decisions and deployment decisions and all types of stuff to make that experience come to life when you walk into that location.
05:52 S1: Absolutely. It’s their own little profit center, and so many people to disregard in some respects, the quality of leader that we have in retail space, so understanding that drive that you had to go from an operational leadership in dude, like a people leadership in HR. Is that what compelled you to dive into your own coaching practice, or was there other research or learnings or lessons that you had that compelled Judas go out on your own? You
06:26 S2: Know, over the last probably maybe eight years when I was still working in a corporate environment, I realized really soon that we only succeeded when we had the right people and we learned how to really think about our deployment of people on how we work together, and every time we had a project fell 100%, it was about the people, and when we went internationally, and I dealt with international executives and setting at the table, you know, it’s hard enough to get a group of executives to align when they speak the same language, and are living in the same time zone, and when I start, started to see the difficulties of alignment with the executives across language, across culture, was just… We failed over and over again because our executives couldn’t be in alignment, and I was like, Man, what if organizations could do this, could really think about it, and I just… I got really into understanding why does the mind kind of fight that alignment and how do we get kind of caught up in our own ideas, and I just grew this huge passion of figuring out how to align the talent to make the business come true
07:37 S1: In so many ways, businesses, from what my experience has been, is that we operate with this sense that there’s a cost of doing business in relation to the people, and that we’ll never get perfect alignment that will never… Everyone’s competitive, everyone wants to get the best results for themselves, and the companies and the businesses that I see that invest in the team dynamic space for one of another word, are the ones that ultimately win… In fact, one of my other podcasts, gas made a very simple case, he said The team, sorry, the business world, the best team will win like I was a very, very definitive statement. And I just love that because so many people miss that…
08:19 S2: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And they look at people as disposable or the right person for this time, or they don’t think you can have both the profit and the human aspect, and they chase profit over humanity, and I’m like, You can have both, I promise, and you’ll probably have more profit long term, if you invest in the humanity of your company and it becomes a focus for you to be excited about your team and excited to see them grow and get excited when they fail because they’re learning something, and when we really start to think of the humanity of the team, the profit follows.
08:57 S1: So how do you use what you do with a company, what would be a typical client journey that you take them on?
09:05 S2: So what we do when we work with clients is we really start to talk about not necessarily their pain points, a lot of people start there, but I always say, Where are we going? That’s the first thing I wanna understand what the organization… Not where we are, ’cause it doesn’t matter because that’s already history within the minute, but where do you wanna take this organization and what does that look like? Three, five, 10 years and dream Ridiculously big. I like people to have ridiculous thoughts like, we could take this company and deploy it to Morris crazy as we can get… Then I always say, Okay, then how do we get there through the talent… And so we don’t get caught up in the past, we get caught up in the movement of the future, what does that culture need to look like, what are the development programs that need to be brought in? How do we need to change the way we look at processes, scalability, and so it really just starts with where we are going…
09:57 S1: Excellent, excellent. Or is it about recruiting the right thing, or is it about developing the right time…
10:05 S2: I think they go hand in hand, you have to. And I think the things that’s missing from that is what’s the right work for that job, and so really aligning the work and understanding what job needs to be out there and what will that Job do? One of the things I find a lot of organizations doing is they… They’re looking for unicorns, and so they have this job description that’s really three different, completely different jobs and different skill sets, and then they’re surprised everyone they hire false. I don’t know why we’re surprised here ’cause you can’t… There are completely different skill sets. And so the first thing is getting crystal clear on the work and how might it get done and who needs to do it, then really good hiring decisions, then how do we onboard that person, make them feel part of that organization, then do we… How do we develop them for the future.
10:52 S1: Excellent, I’m intrigued by some of the areas that you work in, so help me understand a little bit… Tell me a little bit about how you work with a company in relation to innovation culture, now, you’ve got a bit of a catch private you trade fear for innovation. So walk me through what that looks like for an organization…
11:15 S2: So one of the programs that we teach as conversation intelligence, and that is understanding the neuroscience of the mind and how our conversations either move us to our permit brain and create fear, and when that happens to shuts down our prefrontal cortex, so no new ideas. No learning, no collaboration, like everything you need just went away, or how do you use your language to open up that prefrontal cortex because that’s where innovation happens, and when we walk in and we say to someone, Hey, meet me in the board room, we’re gonna talk about why? We’ve lost market share. And product X, Y, Z. Everyone’s like, Oh, that’s all fear. And that’s all like, I’m in trouble. We’re gonna have to explain it. If I tell the truth, I’m gonna get in trouble and no one likes my ideas, so we basically… When we ask people to innovate, we create fear, which makes it almost impossible to use the parts of our brain that does create innovation.
12:13 S1: So is it a concept that we continually innovate… We continue that part, like you hear the stories around Google and whatnot, then having it as part of their framework that a certain percentage and their time must be spent on an innovative or a research project. How does an organization implement innovation or that culture of innovation when it hasn’t been present…
12:37 S2: So one of the things is really understanding how we talk to each other and creating that culture, that language that keeps people in a collaborative state, and so innovation is a by-product of collaboration and trust and all of those good things. So you do have to start to build those foundations, and it’s really simple, like many people I work with are like, Well, I just can’t be nice to everyone, I’m like, I’m not asking you to lie and tell people things are great when they’re not… I’m asking you to think about how you tell the truth. And simple things like saying, That’s never work, we’ve tried that before, it doesn’t work, and you tell that to a brand new person that’s on your team that’s excited about something they wanna make a difference in, and so from the early onboard stage, you tell them, I have no interest in your new ideas.
13:24 S1: And you’ve just set the culture by sanitary
13:28 S2: So simple, but yeah, they totally just take that person, take all the window of their cell…
13:34 S1: It’s such an interesting space and whole concept of personality profiling, trying to get people to work better with people, I had a lead of the just recently in Sino me. Why is it me that’s always got to adapt to people to my team… Why is it me that’s always gonna make the allowances to get the best out of them, and I said It’s because you got the lead, you want to get the best out of them. Yeah.
14:01 S2: I think that sometimes we don’t want to adapt or we don’t want to… We think that for the boss, everyone should be changed their personality to adapt to us, but then what you’re doing is you’re saying I hired you because of your skills, but yet when you show up, I don’t want you to use them. I want you to do it the way I want and ladies to treat everyone the same, the ones that are just what I would call Ali-ineffective later because they’re not adapting.
14:27 S1: Sometimes you need a TAP Paton the back, and other times you need a boot up the back side, and a good leader understands that with their people, what that… What is it that they need right now to keep them going. So Jen, who’s inspired you in your leadership journey…
14:43 S2: Oh my gosh. That list is really long. So many different people in so many different pieces of my life, I think one of my mentors that I really… She changed my life, and that is Judas Glacier. And she is the woman who developed the concept of conversation intelligence, she spent over 40 years setting the neuroscience of the mind and the chemicals release and conversations, and how does that drive business results, and after studying underneath her, I was like, Dang it, why didn’t I know all of this all these years ago, who knows where I’d be, I could be run in the world, who knows? But her quest and her desire to really understand how to positively impact humans in the workplace and then business results was a huge inspiration, and I just… I learned so much from her.
15:34 S1: Yeah, it’s all part of that, Jane, isn’t it? We pick things up when we’re ready to pick them up, so there have been so many times I’ve had a feeling like yourself, Why didn’t I know this earlier, or why couldn’t I have been more mature at this particular point of my leadership journey? But that’s part of the journey. We don’t start out as perfect leaders, and each and every day… What’s the leadership? Because daily… Not in a day, which is a John Maxwell quit. And because it is, we develop ourselves as leaders each and every day, and we try and we file and we fall over and we get back up, so how do you deal with the… Sorry, how do you deal with the inevitable failure is that you’ve… Obviously, everyone’s had them during their career, how have you dealt with… For
16:23 S2: How I have dealt with in the past and how I deal with them today look really different, in the past, I set in the, Oh, I’m in trouble. And everyone thinks I’m not smart enough, or you know, gosh, I should have known every little tiny detail of this huge project and really beat myself up, and what I know now today is that that doesn’t provide me space to learn, and so where I try to be today is really, really excited about messing up, I’m like, Wow… When my team and I, we talk about it all the time, we’re like, I totally screw this up. Look at this, and then we get really excited about it and we’re all like, Wow, that was fantastic, and Oh my gosh, because you did that, I learned this, and we actually have made messing up or failures a really exciting piece of our journey because it’s an opportunity and for us to learn and they’re going to happen, so why get all mad and take away the opportunity to do better in the future, so… Yeah, so we’ve gotten to a place where we celebrate when we mess up and ’cause it’s just going to happen.
17:34 S1: What a great lesson there for everyone listening to be able to celebrate your failures in a lot of our leaders that we have on the podcast, talk about learning from our failures or taking the lessons and driving it forward, using it as motivation, but celebrating our failures, and I guess it’s just so much benefit in that for people because it’s our relationship with value that counts, and you may have mentioned before that you used to think that you’re in trouble. Or that was the mindset. Sometimes we try to avoid failure by not doing anything you are exciting or even attempting anything great because of that fear that we’re gonna file. So for a lot of people, it’s so much easier for him just to say, Well, if I don’t do anything, I won’t file and I… I get in trouble. Yeah, how would you work with a leader who’s got that mindset…
18:31 S2: Yeah, so that’s again, trading fear for innovation, it’s how we do it, and so if I as a leader went to my team and I was like, I can’t believe you did not tick this little tiny thing, and how did you not know that? And you should have known exactly what would have been great on social media in the year 2020, it… You should totally known and beat someone up, then I have created fear and I have created a space where they cannot be innovative and where I’ve kept them small and where I’ve kept them safe, but if I can get them to fill trust and I’m excited when they fail, and I’m excited for them to tell me and they start telling you earlier when the failing starts, they start telling you earlier, they don’t try to hide it, you don’t try to fix it behind your back, because if you open up that space where failure is celebrated you learn about it really early in the game, and that is important as a leader, you need to know when things are going south. And so we created innovation from being excited about failure, and that then creates a space where people will try to push harder and harder, I always…
19:35 S2: When someone asks me a question like, I hired you as an expert. As an expert, what do you want to do about this? And they’re like, Oh, I think we should do this. Fantastic, and if I have a different opinion, I’ll share that, but I always remind them, I hired you for your expertise. What does your expertise tell you right now
19:51 S1: That takes on… That really does help people understand the way I say it, done man, the late is that I had a really good relationship when moved into a new role, and there was a celebrated CEO that came into that particular organization, so I asked him, I said, What’s it like? Working with so and so, such and such, and he said to me, he said, he’s got this really un-Kenny knack of being able to employ really great people and then trying to do their job for us, which is an incredibly deflating experience when you are a Senior experience or an energetic, enthusiastic later, having your boss over your shoulder, making sure that you’re doing what they want you to do as opposed to utilizing your own experience, you know, if you’re a really strong leader, you can’t be an expert in everything, so if you’re playing the expert in every department in your organization, then you yourself that you’ve hired to do the job, one, you’re wasting a lot of payroll knows you’re actually hired, and two, you’re not doing a good job because you can’t be good at everything, and if you wanna hire smart people, let them do what they’re really good at the moment, I’ve been reading a fair bit of research around CEO burn out during this covid crisis series, a lot of born out in senior executive ranks, and I think that that’s being driven obviously by the uncertainty that they’re facing and their ability to continue to lead by example, so when it comes to things like burn out and just being able to apply energy into your role, what are some of the tips and strategies that you’ve used in the past, potentially with leaders that you’ve worked with, to help smooth that process or…
21:40 S1: My gosh, there’s a couple of things, one, I think that people walk in to burnout because they’re in decision fatigue, and that is exhausting. It’s so exhausting, and a lot of that stems from not either A, knowing what the work needs to be, hiring the right person, and then developing and deploying, and
21:59 S2: So really what is that core reason that burnout is… There is a decision fatigue, is it… You’ve just been beat up because of some failures and you’ve gotta kinda get your mojo back ’cause those failures took away your confidence, and so you’d rather just take your toys and go home and not playing anymore, because I hear that happens. That happens a lot with the executives. Then we gotta get excited again about failure, or is it this place where you’re just struggling to get your culture so that can create all this that you want. So I think when you are in burn out, get really honest with what the cause of that burnout is, ’cause it’ll be unique to you and then take it on head on, you just put your hills in the ground and say, You know what, I’m stronger than this burn out and I can figure out how to turn the ship around.
22:47 S1: Excellent decision fatigue. That’s another thing that I work with in respect, with a lot of ladies, their inability to make a decision there in their ability and their amazing ability to procrastinate and try and get more information than what’s required, and I’ll often share a story. Now, I’m sure I read this in one minute, manager going back about 20 years about a leader that would make very firm, quick decisions, and when asked about it, he actually said, Well, every morning before I leave the house, I put X amount of… I just grab a handful of it and I think it was coughing beans. I’m still not quite sure of the details, but I’m sure you said Coffee Beans, but I don’t know why you would put coffee beans in your pocket, but anyway, this… And whenever his team would come to even with the decision, he’d just put his hand in his pocket unbeknownst to everyone else, grab a handful, and if he grabbed an odd number, the answer was Yes, if he grabbed an even number, the answer was No, and people… And that was the decision. And people would say, Well, that’s ridiculous. What was he actually doing it…
24:00 S1: So what he was actually doing was talking about, Well, is the decision making, the decision is acting more important than the decision, because if the decision was blight ally wrong, he’s got a team there that’s gonna say… Hang on. That’s just wrong. And if the decision was, well, the one that you’re going to, you then start to manage the decision, so it was a really interesting way to look at it because the people waiting on the decision are the ones that actually need the decision.
24:28 S2: So whatever that decision is make the decision and then we manage that decision on a daily basis. It’s really interesting. So what are you currently reading, Jen, at this moment in time? So I am an avid reader and book collector, and one of the things I’ve actually been reading a lot and looking at it in a different way, this may seem totally in the left field, but I love historic fiction, and when you re historic fiction and you start to think about how decisions were made at one point and what’s that long-term effect on it, I start to kind of imagine things differently, so just something simple. I just finished the lions of Fifth Avenue, and it’s a story about this lost book and the big New York City Public Library. But it was interesting because it was over three generations, and so you could see how decisions start to impact and how a decision you make can really affect three generations down underneath you, and I think about organizations as generations, and so you have those fresh out of college people you hire, you have your first time managers, you have your early directors, you have your executives and their generations of leaders that you’re developing, and so I know that probably seems out of the left fill, but I really think about this generation living and think about generations in the workplace, those oricon helps me kind of put that into perspective.
26:03 S1: And this way you get your inspiration from obviously, I wouldn’t personally find historical fiction, one of those things that would rock my boat, but then… But it’s where you find the inspiration, like I see, and I’ve got a whole list of surfing analogies where you get into trouble or have a great day on the board, and how will it quite back to something in a leadership or a business world. So it’s about where you find that integration and how you can share those stories because storytelling is so relevant in the occupations that were in…
26:40 S2: My favorite leaders I ever had had a surfing analogy. So funny, you bring that up. He always said As a surfer, you don’t take every wave, you take the right wave, and you used to always talk about that. So it’s interesting you bring up surfing ’cause he was a great leader, and I learned a ton from him, but he’s really taught me, you don’t take every way if you pick your way… Absolutely.
27:00 S1: And one of the best things that in relation to surfing is that you’ve got a cop a couple of ways on the head before you can get out of the back, and if you can get out of the back, you’re not gonna catch away. So the reality is, there’s a lot of energy that’s provided that you’ve got to give out to work through the white wash, you can get out the back, so there’s so much the right way, if I like that, and one of my favorite serving quite was actually there’s a gentleman was retiring and they interviewed him, and he said that along the lines of so many people will have said that I’ve given up on my dream, that the reality is… ’cause he never made World Champion, which is what everyone in the proofing ranks wants to do. So he said, some people will say, I’m giving up on my dream, I say, I’ve been living my dream, and to me, that is so relevant because for him, the journey of trying to reach the goal with the dream, and so many people once again, lose sight of that the joy is in the journey.
28:04 S1: The joy isn’t in the achievement, the achievement takes over, and He has you’re a bit of a neuro science and like myself, and as we know that achievement passes really quickly, and then all of a undergoing or what’s next? So the joy has to come from the journey, so what books had the biggest impact on you?
28:26 S2: Gosh, so I think that there’s a few conversation intelligence that Judas was a big one, but one of the very first leadership book I ever had was Jack Canfield, and its success factors in… It’s fantastically written. It’s like 52 principles. If you follow them all, you’ll be rich, beautiful and famous kind of thing. Right, and I’m like 52 Halliwell, I ever remember all of this, but I remember reading it young, I was probably in my 20s, but one of the very first pieces of this book was, you can’t be responsible for what happens to you, but you could only be responsible for what? How you respond. Yeah. And so that really hit home with me. And then each little principle is like this great nugget and you kinda can pick all those up, but it was around controlling how you respond, taking opportunity, but it’s just a great book, but it was like my first leadership book that made me fall in love with him and I went from there with them, but yeah, it’s a fun one, and he’s at dated at several times over the years, and he’s great.
29:36 S1: And it’s still 52, so one success factor a week for a year, it seems like. Oh, yeah.
29:43 S2: But I remember thinking I was gonna remember them all in one week, and I know that didn’t happen, but I still remember them.
29:49 S1: Well, we talk about maturity as a later… I did leadership Gold is my very first book, and that’s a book bunch on Maxwell, which has got 26, so at least he thought about one factor of four nights, but once again, it was like I couldn’t put it down and then I couldn’t understand why things weren’t getting better for me because it’s one thing to read, it’s another thing altogether to apply what we’ve learned. And I talk about maturity of leadership quite often because you might have the right intention, but if you haven’t got that level of maturity to actually say, Okay, well, this is how I can apply that, it’s only ever gonna be a little piece of knowledge that sits in the back and mine. So
30:35 S2: Yeah, and talking… Have you read talking with strangers that by Malcolm collide? Well, it is fascinating, and I highly recommend it on audio because he has the actual recordings of people he’s talked to as part of their research or what… Fascinating, but basically, it goes through several stories that you might have a perception on, or it has to do with Larry Nash who went to prison for sexual abuse towards young gymnasts women, and how did that go on for 20 years without anyone thinking or believing it. It’s got several different examples of that, but it talks about how our brains don’t do a great job of reading people, and how our brains tell us really good stuff about people because it’d be horrible to live in this world where you thought everyone was a con-artist, and how we think we can read people’s facial expressions, and he did some research on the show friends, it’s fascinating. ’cause it really makes you stop and think, I don’t know people the way I do, I have to have conversations to get to know that person, I can’t make a judgment by their body language, and people talk about leadership and read body language, I tell the opposite, I go body language as a lie, now I can put a smile on my face and be thinking horrible things about someone, and so it’s a really fascinating read about how the mind takes in body language.
32:02 S1: And then we haven’t thought about… They haven’t even mentioned, sorry, the people that understand the dynamics of how people are making judgements about us and manipulate what it is that they’re doing to give you potentially a bit of a false impression, so snake old salesman come to mind. So with yourself, what’s the vision going forward?
32:27 S2: Oh gosh, what a good, big question. I think for my… What my vision is going forward is I really wanna create a platform that provides people opportunity to be the best leader they can, and not because of business results, because let’s face it, we all get paid for results, and that’s why people bring me in for the business results, but I look at it as, how can I impact communities? And when leaders treat their teams well, those adults go home and they treat their friends and family and their community better, if you’ve had a bad day at work and you go home and have dinner with your son, you’re probably not the best you… And then your son has to go home, go and do his homework, or get up the next day and go to work and be like, Oh, but if you had an amazing day at work and you just feel great about yourself and you go home and you treat people and you make them feel better about themselves, and communities get better, and for me, it’s about community and it’s about creating leaders for… Yes, check the box business results, but at the end of the day, I know I can help create better communities too.
33:34 S1: That’s so powerful. That’s really cool. And our circle of influence is just sitting there. Absolutely, so a leader at work probably has many leaders at work will probably have very little understanding of what you just spoke about, the fact that someone being mistreated now treated at work will then potentially go him and do exactly the same thing with their family is… Which is something that I challenge all our listeners to think about if you are in that leadership position, what sort of legacy are you leaving to? Or I’ll use the word legacy. It’s not quite right, but what sort of behaviors are you leading or RAM modeling that and then picked up by other people had side of the work plan, so… That’s a powerful vision. I love that one. So out of everything that you’ve accomplished over the last couple of years, what are you most proud of?
34:37 S2: I am the most proud of starting a viable business, I started working in corporate America, I was always the person who was part of the new idea or the new brand or the new country, and I worked really, really hard and I never thought I could do it on my own, and I came to a crossroads where I just… I didn’t really know why, but I just knew in my heart that I had no other choice but to do it on my own. And I can’t tell you how many people said I was crazy. I mean, my life was fantastic on Facebook and Instagram, flying around the world, and visiting amazing place that it was in the most incredible job and I just… My heart said, You can no longer do this. You have to do something else. And so to create something that pays your bills, it’s exciting, and I just love that I get to do it my way, and I get to be often in Lyme every day, and that’s a lot of fun.
35:35 S1: Yeah, and that’s an accomplishment in itself, being able to be who we’re designed to be, I think it’s just powerful. So Jen, is there anything that I haven’t asked you yet that I should have asked you? And I guess this is your opportunity to jump on a soapbox, was the banner wave the flag, whatever it is, is there anything that you’d like to use your soapbox space full.
35:58 S2: Oh my gosh. So what I think I share today is ’cause I’m all about implementation, it’s one thing to talk, but let’s actually do something, and so if you wanna create more innovation in your team, you have to think about How do you verbally set that up because again, body language doesn’t count, we’re really bad at reading into it, so how do we use our language, and if you wanna create innovation, there is a great tool I have on my website that teaches you how to have crazy idea meetings, and so they’re fun to set up… You don’t say We’re gonna go brainstorm at 2 o’clock in the room, you say, Hey, on this date, we’re going to talk about how to increase our profit by X person on this product, it really specific… Then you tell people, I want you to bring your most ridiculous ideas to me, and in fact, I’m gonna give out rewards for the most ridiculous ideas, and so you really get people to open up because they’re now gonna get rewarded for thinking incredibly big instead of being in fear of thinking small, and it’s just so much fun when you go into those meetings and you host them in a way where everyone just gets excited about the ideas, and you can find great themes, and you can find that you can find the solutions to your company, by doing that.
37:09 S1: And then from the implementation side, from sin craze IDS meeting, how do you then walk that came through, how do you then take the ridiculous idea and make it real?
37:22 S2: Yeah, and so you put them all up on the board without judgment and you ask people to build on them, and then once you’ve kind of exhausted it all, you then talk about who in awards because then collectively you get the awards out there, but then you start to look at common themes. So if you have 20 ideas out there, but all of them are related to maybe the brand positioning, maybe we positioned it to the wrong person, and you’re like, Wow, all of these ideas have this common theme, now let’s dive in and actually do something with that common theme, and that’s the piece of it, is finding the common themes that you can then do something with because they will be in there.
38:01 S1: So you’ve got to invest in the process. So a lot of leaders, I’d imagine, would be saying, what’s the point of the crazy ideas, meaning it’s a waste of time, nothing’s gonna happen, all I’m gonna hear is an inverted commas stupid stuff, but ultimately it’s about looking and investing in the process to try and find a theme which we can then dive into and actually make something real out of…
38:26 S2: Yeah, and the long-term benefits of it is you’ve celebrated innovation, you’ve celebrated thinking in a way without judgment, and the first time you do it, you’ll get the needle to move a little bit, but then everyone will realize that no one lost their job, it was… Okay, you met what you said, you were gonna celebrate ideas and then the next time it gets bigger and bigger, and when you think about moving a culture from fear to innovation, you have to do some activities that do that other than walking into someone’s office and saying no longer be in fear of me start being innovative, that didn’t work.
38:58 S1: But I know that’s like you’ve gotta start thinking positively, so that doesn’t work. That there’s a process, and I really like that process. So, sophistication, UE, until morale improves.
39:13 S2: Absolutely, you’ve got it. So Jen, this has been a wonderful conversation. How can people connect with you? So I’d love to connect with you on LinkedIn, you can find me at Gen Thornton-ACC, or you can connect with me on my website at 304 coaching dot-com.
39:29 S1: Excellent, Jen’s been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. I’m gonna look up some of those books, I’m really intrigued by that conversation intelligence, I really wanna dive into that myself, and I understand that one of the biggest book that impacted me was a book called Crucial Conversations by carrying partisan and… And it just continually comes up when I’m working with leaders into helping them communicate so much better, so anything that can build for the knowledge and application for myself is always appreciated as… I’m sure it will be for the listeners. So thank you very much for your time today, and I look forward to our continuing connection.
40:13 S2: Thank you so much. It was a ton of fun. Join the group of people impacted by seriously simple stuff to get you on stack the first book by Tony Coach Cal available at Amazon. Tiny simple staff provides the tool for people to master your life and aspirations, 20% of every book sold supports Cares cause anatomical and jcpenney, these routes that inpatient, the bicentenary came up on an India… No, oh, I think it was the cousin Cunard Weldon Antanas 20% and proven vindication, Black Friday and people in Jennings Petco
41:08 S1: Now who gets really excited about missing up now, one of the key aspects of the work, the genders, and what you spoke about during our conversation, was trading fear for innovation, and this is so important for leaders. Unfortunately, many leaders stifle innovation, so whether it’s through sticking with the tried and tested, having a belief or an attitude of… That’s not the way we do things around here. The culture they create is of stifled innovation, and often they do this unknowingly and unwittingly, but for others, for other leaders out there, they are intentionally stifling innovation, and also this is maybe to keep people in check and in control. So for a leader, innovation and continuous progress is so important today, and if you don’t have a process to embrace brainstorming or generation or any process that can generate creative ideas, you seriously behind the A-ball. Now, as Jen mentioned, you can contact Jen on LinkedIn or at the 34 coaching website, Bost links are in the show notes. In today’s disruptive, well, good leadership skills will always stand you in good said. If you are looking to build better leadership skills, check out the today’s lead a website at today’s leader dot com, and Don you our website, showcases our podcast and our magazine, and we are now pleased to say that the masterminds…
42:51 S1: I’m now available from the today’s Le website, these are being supported by our network sites, and today’s later is now a platform, it’s a collective mindset for the leaders and entrepreneurs of today forging the path of success for tomorrow. The mindset to make a difference, the ability to create an impact, thinking or business who sounds leader, masterminds, thinking, go business where we focus on personal, professional and business growth. Book your free 30-minute discovery call right now, and thinking grains dot com donau. Don’t forget our online academy, the Coach Cal Academy has over 708 programmes, which help build a better you now join forges 1 for the first 30 days. The academy equips you enhances mindset, your leadership and your business skills and knowledge, check it out at the coach Coakley, don’t come. Don’t forget you are standing stronger, braver. And why is at and whatever you do wherever you are, don’t forget the golden Rollo, know what that is. Just don’t be in a… All see you next week. A team, mobile has been building America’s largest 5G network for this epic 5G moment. Introducing the new iPhone 12 Pro. Now at T-Mobile, the leader in 5G coverage down loan uploading game at 5G speed in more places, Unleashed the Power of ion 12 Pro with team-capable device required Coverage, not available in some areas.
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