Tiffany Adams has spent most of her professional life working in a corporate setting dealing with human capital management; both before and after they’re hired. She’s previously worked for companies like IBM and is currently the Director of Client Solutions with the Ken Blanchard Companies.
What I love about Tiffany and is that she does this work with a servant-leadership attitude.
In this episode, Tiffany and I discuss what she does for her company and clients, what servant leadership and situational leadership looks like, why the idea and practice of servant leadership means so much to her, what it’s like working for someone who truly believes every single person matters, how servant leadership can help with selling your services and products, the main rule she uses when selling anything, why you shouldn’t be afraid to ask for feedback from clients on the work you’re doing, and more!
Take a listen to the episode below!
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Transcript
Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!
Today my guest is Tiffany Adams. I’m so excited to have Tiffany with us today because, first of all, she’s just an absolute joy and you’re going to love her. And the other thing is that she has so much knowledge and experience around sales and human capital but the first part of this all is with the servant leadership kind of attitude. So we’re going to learn more about that from Tiffany.
But let me tell you a little bit about Tiffany to give you some context. When she first started out she was not interested in sales, whatsoever, and yet the very first job she had was as a defense contractor in sales.
Since then she spent the majority of her time in corporate with kind of dealing with human capital management before and after people are hired just helping with the talent. And that’s most notably in IBM and now with the Ken Blanchard Company. She’s going to tell us a little more about that.
Andrea: So Tiffany, good to have you on the Voice of Influence podcast.
Tiffany Adams: Thank you!
Andrea: Another kind of fun tidbit about Tiffany is that she grew up in my hometown. So we’ve actually known each other forever. She and my sister were really great friends growing up.
So Tiffany, it’s just really, truly fun to have you here especially knowing, you know kind of having seen the arc of your career and seen where you are now, it’s just really fun. I’m excited to talk to you about what you’re doing. So can you tell us a little bit what you’re doing with the Ken Blanchard Company?
Tiffany Adams: Yeah, thank you. I was just thinking about this last night, Andrea, on the plane home about our journey from being the really annoying little sister’s friend that were always naturally trying to kind of annoy you and sort of get in what you and your friends were doing to where we are now. It’s pretty fun.
So yes, I am a director of client solutions with the Ken Blanchard Companies, which is a really fancy name for doing two things really well. How do I take care of our clients that we have and make sure we’re adding value and we’re serving them, and how do I work to spread the message of Ken Blanchard and what we do and be able to help our business grow?
And most importantly for anyone, a new client, how do I wrap my arms around what their person goals are and help them achieve those?
Andrea: Those are really touchy feely kind of ways and talking about this, I love that. So tell us a little bit what the company does?
Tiffany Adams: Yeah. So Ken Blanchard Companies started 40 years ago. I mean, you may have heard of Ken as being the one minute manager.
Andrea: The one minute manager?
Tiffany Adams: The One Minute Manager is a book that was published 40 years ago and just re-released last year. It really is what took him from being a professor and he was well known within academia for some of the textbooks he had written. He just said, you know, we’ve got to make it relevant to people.
So he connected with Spencer Johnson who was actually a children’s book author and said how do we take this message of leadership and management and make it really relevant in the simple truth and how do we communicate that in a way where people can grasp it, act on it, and live it. And from there, he just kind of kept doing that and that’s what we do still today. Anyone can be a great leader, anyone can be a great manager and that’s what we’re known for.
Andrea: And I know that there are a couple of programs in specifically around servant leadership or at least concepts around servant leadership and situational leadership. Do you want to tell us a little bit about those to give us an idea?
Tiffany Adams: Yes. So servant leadership is something near and dear to my heart and always has been. It’s really the culmination of who Ken is when you think about that. He had a book published earlier this year called Servant Leadership in Action where he collaborated and invited some amazing people across all walks of life to share what is servant leadership actually looks like in your organization.
What do we do, because it’s kind of this you know when you said touchy feely about this ethereal topic and people talk about it a lot. But how do we really wrap our arms around it and figure out? “OK, what do we do about that? How do we build the culture of servant leadership and then how do we build servant leaders?”
With that book, we’ve been touring right now, putting an event in multiple cities and to talk about what it does look like. At the core of servant leadership in our minds is becoming what we call situational leader, which if you think about at a very high level, you’ve heard the term different strokes for the different folks, right? We can just treat everyone the same. Well, it’s really about different strokes for the same folks, so we lead and we’re responsive based on what people need in their development level for a particular task.
So there’s a lot more when you think about it but when you think about those two things servant leadership and how it connects with what we call situational leadership too that would be the cracks of it. But you know we really talk about what is servant leadership mean for ourselves. We have to start with ourselves first because if we don’t take care of ourselves then we can’t take care of anyone and then in a one-on-one relationship or management team and organizational level.
Andrea: You’re kind of getting behind Ken’s message. You seemed to have adapted it and you believe in it and now you’re out there promoting it, why does it matter to you personally?
Tiffany Adams: Great question. So when I think about this and why it connects with me at such an emotional kind of spiritual level for me, growing up, when I look at my major influencers in life, they were very different people, very different experiences, very different platforms and completely different from each other, honestly. Their personalities and how they approach life and maybe even the choices they made in life, you know the colorful versus non-colorful language. But there’s a common thread that I so lived out in each of them and it was that people matter.
So whether it was my grand dad who was a pastor for 40 years in small towns in Western Nebraska, people mattered. Or whether it was another major influencer in my life that he is travelling the world, speaking to people, building schools, you know, has educated many thousands of kids in Haiti or trained some of internationals top executive leaders all over the globe, people matter. Or whether it’s somebody that I love very dearly that was a huge part of our national security and I will never actually know all of the details of that. Why did he do that, because people matter?
So being able to connect with an organization that that’s their mission, vision and goal was such a natural fit for me.
Andrea: So when you say that people matter, how did they demonstrate that to you, like what did that practically look like?
Tiffany Adams: Different ways through different people. So I would say with my grand dad, I remember watching him in a small town build relationships with people that just blatantly didn’t believe what he believed and were very vocal about it. And while he completely believed in his overarching message obviously, being a pastor, he never let that stop the relationship. Does that make sense?
So for him, it was just more about people knowing that in his eyes, whether you disagreed with him, whether you agreed with him, whether he could get you to church because he’d always going to ask you to get ready you know. You could tell him no a million times and he would still going to love you and respect you and want to be there for you.
When his heart was feeling, you know, getting out of the house at 20 degree below weather to get to you, to get you what you needed. So that was a huge, I guess, just part of my life that I watched play out from the time I was a little girl. Caleb Lucien is the founder of Hosean International Ministries. And when he was first starting this ministry, and we talked about this multiple times, he had offers and opportunities from some of the largest pastors that has some of the biggest budgets and influence here today.
I could tell you some of their names and you know you’d be like “Wow, how would you turn that down?” There are times when were so struggling to make sure we can pay our teachers within Hosean. But he turned it down and continues to turn down some opportunities that would make personally his life a little bit easier because he will not take his own paycheck for his own family, with two kids in college, to be able to make sure his teachers get paid. He could do that but he was just like “Tiff, no I mean God has called me to Haiti. I had to build schools here and bring electricity and how do we build the economy and how do we make sure people can build something of their own legacy here.”
So he did that because people mattered. I mean, that’s the _____ that have made such a big impact to my life. You know, Ken is one of the most amazing people because you would think he could command crowds of thousands and draw that. But he will start telling us stories about flying and spending time with a company and a CEO of an organization with 50 people.
So while he could command so much money and probably make so much money speaking to huge audiences, he’ll take so much time to go sit down with a leader of 50 people, 5 people, 10 people and invest just as much time and energy into them because he knows they’re making an impact on people and it doesn’t matter if it’s a smaller number of people. That matters.
Andrea: So every single one of them, every single person matters.
Tiffany Adams: Yeah, yeah and he doesn’t always need to be onstage kind of preaching that even though he can and he can influence thousands at a time. That’s not the only thing that drives him.
Andrea: And it sounds like he lives it out even in conversation with like one-on-one conversation.
Tiffany Adams: Yeah, he really does and he could speak with anyone.
Andrea: You mentioned before we’re actually recording that he just gives you all his attention. Can you tell us what that looks like when you’re the person that he’s talking to? What does that feel like?
Tiffany Adams: Yeah. So long before I came to work in this role, in this capacity, I’ve had the opportunity to spend time with him and his family and it really does go across his family. But they’re the certain people where we would be surrounded by a crowd. And whether he was talking to me or whether he was talking to someone else, you were the most important thing in the world at that moment. His attention is on you. He is asking questions. He’s listening. He’s not just listening where he’s hearing you; he’s hearing what’s just behind your words. If that make sense you know and then he does something about it and you walk away feeling like “Oh my gosh, I matter. I mattered to him in that moment.”
Even at a conference surrounded by hundreds of people trying to get his autograph, he’ll just take even a few precious seconds and make you know that you’re really important, that he cares. There’s been a very few people that I think have the ability to pull that off. I don’t think I do a great job of that and that is something that, personally, I’ve been working to be more intentional about, whether it’s with my own kids or somebody that is giving me their time on a phone call to just shut everything else down and focus solely in what they’re saying and what they need from me.
Andrea: Yeah, there’s something really valuable about feeling like that you have been given attention that someone’s full attention is on you. It’s rare, like you said. It doesn’t happen that often.
Tiffany Adams: It’s rare and when you follow that up with somebody who is definitely not prefect but still pure of heart and they’re not listening to you for their own gain. They’re not trying to get something out of the _____.
Andrea: Yeah. They don’t have their own agenda.
Tiffany Adams: No. They’re not thinking three steps ahead of you, they’re just 100% there and they’re there for you like there’s something really powerful in that.
Andrea: Oh my goodness, you’re so right, there is. I know that part of your job is and has been in the past that you’ve had a lot of experience at least with sales. And I really want to try these two concepts together because I know that most of us feel like sales people or salesy people are that three steps ahead of you. You feel like you’re going to be had or something like that.
So when you think about sales, when you’re actually in the middle of talking to somebody about promoting a product that they might buy, which is sales, how did these things interact for you, how do you tie in this idea of servant leadership you know given somebody your full attention that people matter more than the sale maybe. I don’t know how does this work for you? What do you think of?
Tiffany Adams: Well, I think I’ve been really blessed, first of all, to have had some incredible experiences and be able to build relationships with clients throughout my career no matter what I was doing. So when I was a defense contractor, it was a fairly simple message. But I started to realize that the people that I was serving, they were trusting me, they were my clients, and they were being able to get purchase orders for what I was selling because I was fulfilling a need that they had.
But then beyond that I got wedding gifts sent to the office from individuals and they were sharing with me information about their kids and about these vacations that they were taking.
Andrea: These were people that you’re selling to?
Tiffany Adams: Yes and I’m like “OK, we’ve transcended. I have something I want to sell you and I need you to buy it from me.” It wasn’t “I’ve got to take care of you because I know more about you. I’ve now become emotionally invested in your life and you know sometimes you’re there for a season and sometimes you’re not. It didn’t matter that I know your wife runs the daycare and at the Olympics and somebody that I ran with in college is competing.” And so “I know that your kids need the special signs in your wife’s daycare, they somebody that they can connect with and care for.” You know things like that. Is it really going to impact your life down the road, maybe or maybe not?
We do have this common _____ humanity. For example, have clients that I’ve work with for years and none of us are the same organization any longer but I consider them my friends. I consider them my mentors. I’m just constantly checking in with them and them with me on life in what are you trying to achieve and where do you want to go because we have this history of helping each other that doesn’t stop because of contract they signed.
So for me, yes, we’re trying to build a business and yes, you Mr. and Mrs. Customer, you’re also trying to build a business so if I can help you achieve your personal goal, your team goals and your organizational goals, I’ve done my job. But if I can’t, you still have those and there’s probably somebody that I know and I really enjoy being a connector because selling is teaching. And if you can teach someone and learn from someone, I think that’s a great foundation of a relationship that builds trust and build respect. And if there’s a way to help each other out, we have that opportunity.
If we don’t, that’s OK because we’re all in this life together. I know this is just so touchy feely but it’s just how I approach sales because I think it’s very relational.
Andrea: Yeah, totally.
Tiffany Adams: And it’s OK. If I can’t help you then let’s not in any way _____ then great.
Andrea: OK, we have to go back to something you’ve said just a minute ago, sales is teaching, explain what you mean by that.
Tiffany Adams: Well, I would always ask my team, “Who’ve you taught this week?” Because it doesn’t matter what you’re trying to sell somebody, for us it maybe sometimes technology or more the behavioral sciences aspect people but there’s just more than the sale. There’s more than a contract. There’s more than a demonstration.
No matter what we’re doing is there something that we know about the job market? Is there something that we know about why people are attracted to one organization versus another? Is there something that somebody else might be doing within their organization that I know about that I can connect them with their own colleague because it’s going to impact their lives?
It’s hard for me to sell somebody something if I can’t both teach them something that’s of value to their lives and their jobs and if I can’t learn it from them. I have a hard time with that because it’s too transactional. There are definitely those sales and I engage in them all the time. We all do and it’s necessary and it’s vital and some people are just really good at that and _____. It’s just not the kind of role I’ve ever had so I don’t have that much experience talking about it.
But if we’re not the one teaching our clients some things, somebody else will be and not just naturally build trust. And if people don’t trust you, they’re not going to buy from you because what we do impacts people and their organization but it also impacts their future career path and what they’re trying to achieve.
Andrea: Yeah and if you don’t believe in your product enough, you don’t believe in your service enough that it’s going to help people, you don’t believe it enough to say “I can actually help you” then why would you be selling it?
Tiffany Adams: Yeah, I personally would have a hard time. Other people don’t and they’re great at it you know and that’s OK. My natural style is exactly the way you just described.
Andrea: Yeah, and I think that that’s the listener too. I mean, listener at home wherever you’re listening, I know that you care about people that’s why you’re listening. So I realized that the idea of selling something; an idea, a product, or a service, you don’t want to be that salesy person but you’re listening to Tiffany and you’re saying to yourself “Maybe, I don’t have to be that person, I could be Tiffany.”
I can incorporate this attitude of people matter and I’m here to serve and lead in this conversation by offering content, by offering teaching or connection or whatever in order to see things go through. And you don’t have to blush when you tell somebody that you’re offering them a product, you’re offering to sell them something. I think that’s what so powerful about this is that you’re not apologetic about actually selling them.
Tiffany Adams: No, I’m not. And especially with what I do now if we can teach someone something that helps them have more effective communication with their team or if they’re managing up with their leader, they’re serving both themselves and their leader in doing that, like “Can we work better together and more efficiently and more effectively to serve each other and serve our clients?” Everybody had these jobs where they’re not fulfilled. They’re not engaged. They feel rejected and it’s a weight.
No matter how much we try to shed that weight before we come home at night, it’s still there and it impacts our relationships outside of work. So if there’s anything that we can do to positively impact that or influence that, I think that’s a beautiful thing because you’re not just a better colleague or a better employee, you can be a better friend or spouse or aunt or uncle, parent or grandparent or a corporate citizen.
I’m just so blessed in the work that I’ve been able to do because it is all about people whether that’s the technology that surrounds it or like what I’m doing now with training, I’m in leadership that really goes beyond the walls of just an organization.
Andrea: Alright, so we’ve talked about this internal positioning of your own heart and mind knowing that “OK, what I have to sell is important and it can help people but then also people matter and so I’m here to do this, you know, serve through selling essentially and teach and connect through selling.”
Would you bring us down to a really tangible level for us and tell us maybe two or three things that you practically do in the process of selling, maybe just a few tips that would help us to kind of wrap our minds around it, maybe some actionable things that we can even try.
Tiffany Adams: Hmm good question. So can you clarify for me or give me a scenario of, are you just building a business? Do you have a book of business that you’re trying to increase?
Andrea: So let’s say, we’re talking to somebody who has something like that to offer but they’re not really sure, you know, what are some practical things that they could do in terms of building those relationships and not being afraid of actually putting themselves out there to sell?
Tiffany Adams: Yeah. I would say at a very foundational level, I have a personal role that if anyone should ask for anything, let’s say I’ve been pushing my message out there and somebody comes back with a question, if it’s all possible, I try to make sure they know I’ve received their message and they get somebody reach out them in two hours.
Andrea: OK!
Tiffany Adams: So that is what I attempt to do. Now, what’s non-negotiable for me is that I’ll be 24-hour responsible. If somebody asks me to do something or get something for them, and what’s really cool, this is actually an internal norm at the Ken Blanchard companies, and I didn’t know that until I actually started. So talk about lining up with my own values. If I can’t get somebody an answer in 24 hours, I’m continually like communicating with them about what I have found out or what my next steps are to try to serve them with that, right?
We can’t figure out the world’s problems or answer and get the answer that we might be looking for always within 24 hours because people have client meetings, or there’s travel there, or they’re on vacation with their family. But I can still communicate with my clients or prospects who are always referred to as my clients in my mind and what I’m doing to help them. I have received feedbacks from multiple clients in the past that I get one deal just based on that alone.
Andrea: Just because you were in consistent contact with them, letting them know your process and where you’re at.
Tiffany Adams: Yeah, I was responsive to them and I was proactive. You know one client that I ended up working with for years and years told me probably like a year and a half after “You know why you got our business, don’t you?” And I was like “Yeah, because we’re the best ones for it.” And they’re like “Well, yeah, I mean not, but it’s because you two responded so quickly. When you ask you a question, you either got us the answer or told us you’re working on it and kept us updated. So we were able to get five, six, seven pieces of data for you that we needed to make a decision before we had heard back from the other company on the first question.”
So that’s getting into the _____ of what we do in selling but I get really passionate about that and I took your assessment.
Andrea: Yeah, the Fascinate Assessment.
Tiffany Adams: Yes, the Fascinate Assessment and it really did line up with my personality. So I’ve used a lot of emotional language today because that’s the value that I have and I think you have to have your heart engaged to be as passionate about what you do as you can. But I’m very much process-oriented and I know there are thousand things that need it done and done well for me to actually achieve the end goal.
So I’ve got ton of things and I can actually dive into “How are we gonna do this.” The other thing too is I’m constantly asking my colleagues and even former colleagues that are still great friends, “Hey, what are you doing that’s working? What have you learned?” What helped the clients that I could incorporate because it can always get better?” And I just learned that from some pretty amazing coaches that I had through high school and college growing up that you can always get better.
Andrea: And don’t be afraid to ask that’s great.
Tiffany Adams: Don’t be afraid to ask. Feedback is the breakfast of champions, so I want to know what I’m doing well so I can keep doing that but also what I can change. I was in Minneapolis yesterday; we have that servant leadership live in _____ of events and afterwards there was a colleague of mine and he said, “Can I give you some feedback?” I’m like “Yes, you can.” He was like “Thank you.”
And we just had this great conversation and I said “Thanks so much for sharing that because I actually was thinking about that point exactly when I walked back into this room and you validated that and you’re totally right and I can change that next week when I get to deliver the same kind of presentation for Denver event.” I get to do that and he made me better and I appreciate that.
Andrea: So don’t be afraid of feedback, feedback that might help you get better. Don’t let your ego get in the way.
Tiffany Adams: Yeah, I’m always afraid of feedback. I hate it.
Andrea: I love that you just said that.
Tiffany Adams: I get nervous.
Andrea: I love that you just said that.
Tiffany Adams: Yeah, I was sitting down with my boss yesterday and she had taken notes about it and there were like six really positive things about what I did, but I was still nervous _____ because she’s just amazing individual, an amazing leader. But it’s just funny because it’s such a natural human response to be nervous when you’re getting feedback like we don’t have to like it. We’ve still just have to ask for it because we know it makes us better.
Andrea: Hmmm yeah. So feedback is the breakfast of champions. It doesn’t mean that it’s the donut of champions. It’s the oatmeal, it’s the…
Tiffany Adams: Right.
Andrea: That is so great. I love that. Tiffany this has been such a delight. I love this example. I love sharing you as an example of what it can look like to really care about people and value people, say that people matter and live that out through the process of your work when you have to be selling and get to sell, get to share these things with other people.
So I really appreciate you bring this to our audience because I think that it’s something that people tend to be a little more apathetic and sensitive maybe, which I think a lot of my audience an tend to be. We have a harder time diving into that because we’re so worried about what other people saying that we’re going to like I said come off as salesy.
Thank you so much for being such a great example for us and for sharing your expertise around this area. I really appreciate it.
Tiffany: Yeah. You’re so welcome. You know if I can leave you with one thing as you’re building your business and I love you do this and I love it when I look at what you share. You really take what you have learned about a particular topic or some insight you just had and you want to share that with others into teaching not selling that help build your voice.
Andrea: Exactly. Yeah, content marketing is what we call it in online world. Yeah, so keep doing that and thank you to the listeners and thank you to you for being here. Would you like to share with us if people are interested in looking into connecting with the Ken Blanchard Company and servant leadership and all that, do you want tell us anything about that?
Tiffany Adams: Yeah absolutely! So you can do a couple of things, just go to www.kenblanchard.com that’s the really easy way to get connected with us and we’ll get you in touch with the right person. I love connecting with people on LinkedIn. I can certainly get you connected to the right person that can answer all of your questions as well or just share our own personal stories.
Andrea: Awesome! Well, thank you so much Tiffany, I appreciate you and your voice of influence.
Tiffany Adams: Yeah. Have a great week!