Chris Malone is the Founder and Managing Partner of the research-based consulting firm, Fidelum Partners, and has previously held senior marketing positions at leading organizations such as Choice Hotels, ARAMARK, Coca- Cola, the National Basketball Association, and Procter & Gamble and has consulted to a broad range of Fortune 500 companies.
Chris is co-author of the award-winning book, The HUMAN Brand: How We Relate to People, Products & Companies. He is also a frequent guest and contributor to CNBC, FOX Business, Bloomberg TV, Wall Street Journal Live, Forbes and Businessweek.
In this episode, Chris talks about the work he does with his current company, what the warmth and competence human perception model is, what led Chris to study this model and write his book, what we can do to ensure others perceive warmth in us, the role confidence plays in both warmth and competence, how his work relates to customer service, and more!
Stan Phelps is a Forbes contributor, TEDx speaker, and IBM Futurist who focuses on customer experience and employee engagement that can drive differentiation, increase loyalty, and create word of mouth in business. He holds a JD/MBA from Villanova University and a certificate for Achieving Breakthrough Service from Harvard Business School. In this episode, we discuss how Stan became interested in the field of customer service, how he believes marketing should focus more on the customer’s experience with your company or product, why he feels you either exceed someone’s expectations or you fall short, why he wrote his “Goldfish” book series and what they cover, the two sides of the customer experience coin, what he hopes those attending his presentation at the Smart Customer Service Conference will walk away with, and more!
Play here (the red triangle below), oniTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio(Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Transcript
Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast! I know you really want you and your organization to have a voice of influence, and I recognized that you’re highly focused on doing the best for the people that you serve. Well, I’ll be speaking at the Smart Customer Service Conference in Washington, DC on April 29th through May 1st 2019. If you’re listening to this episode before that conference, we highly recommend you attend. But over the next few weeks, we’re going to be featuring interviews with experts who will be speaking at that conference. And each interview will feature insights related to different aspect of customer service. So you can find out more about the Smart Customer Service Conference at smartcustomerservice.com and in our show notes at voiceofinfluence.net. Well, today, we have with us Stan Phelps. Stan Phelps is a Forbes Contributor, TEDx Speaker, and IBM Futurist focusing on customer experience and employee engagement that can drive differentiation, increase loyalty, and create word of mouth in business. He holds a JD/MBA from Villanova University and a Certificate in Achieving Breakthrough Service, which I’m curious about that, from Harvard Business School. He lives in Cary, North Carolina with his wife Jennifer and two boys, Thomas and James.
Andrea: Welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast, Stan.
Stan Phelps: Thank you for having me, Andrea.
Andrea: Well, let me just ask what’s in your bio. What is this Achieving Breakthrough Service?
Stan Phelps: Yeah, it’s a certificate that Harvard does. They offer it a couple of times a year. You get a chance to spend a week on campus with some of their top professors talking about how the ins and outs of how to achieve service that kind of catch through the noise and creates differentiation.
Andrea: Which is exactly what your area of expertise is in, I realized that. So why don’t you tell us just a little bit about what you do?
Stan Phelps: So yeah, I don’t do much.
Andrea: I believe that.
Stan Phelps: I am an author and a speaker, so I spend my time kind of looking at the future of both customer experience and employee engagement. And I’ve been fortunate enough and speaking in 16 different countries. I spend my time travelling either doing keynotes or workshops on the different areas that I write about.
Andrea: How did you get interested in this particular topic? Were you involved in customer service before?
Stan Phelps: You know, really, it’s interesting. I studied both law and business. But undergrad, I was a marketing major. I was always intrigued by marketing. And that was my first two decades working on both the agency and the brand side doing marketing. I just realized that the type of marketing that I was doing kind of the traditional tell and sell interruption marketing, I didn’t think it was going to be the marketing of the future. All I knew from my days of being a brand marketer was I was not part of the solution; I was just a huge part of the problem. Andrea, I didn’t really know that fast forward and back about 10 years ago, back in 2009, I spent about a year writing about every element of marketing trying to search for this kind of key aspects. I had, what I call my moment of truth and, decided that marketing should be more about the experience that you provide and how you do that in a very specific way that gets people to come back but also gets them talking about the experience.
Andrea: We absolutely agree with you here. So I am curious what was the actual story of your moment of truth? How did you figured that out or how did you come to that moment?
Stan Phelps: Well, I used to live in Connecticut and I was working for an agency that was a New York agency. And I happen to be in Manhattan about to go in that working event with one of my colleagues and we were in one of these rooftop bars in Manhattan. It was summer time, beautiful, and I joked, I was enjoying as you only can in Manhattan a $15 beer, if you can even enjoy that. But it was a crowded place and we’re waiting for a couple of people to show up and I noticed this older gentleman sitting right across from me. He was by himself, and everyone _____ scanned the room like he was looking for someone and, it becomes obvious to me that he was waiting for someone to show up. And like a half hour goes by and no one has showed up for this guy, so I just started a conversation with him. He started talking about the _____ you know waiting and being on time. And this guy, Andrea, told me something that changed my life. He looked at me in the eye and he said, “No one in life is ever on time.” Wait a second, I been on time before, not often, but I’ve been on time. He raised his finger to me, and you can’t see it but it gave me a kind of Dikembe finger wave and he said “No.” He goes, “In fact, on time is a myth.” He said “People in life are either early or they’re late.” I took the train home that night to Connecticut and I thought to myself I said, “That same reasoning applies in marketing in business with the customers that we serve every day. No one in business simply just meets the expectations of a customer that they serve.” In fact, I think if the only goal that you have is satisfaction or meeting expectations, I think that’s a losing battle. So people, you know, and brands in life you either exceeds someone’s expectations or you fall short. And literally, I went on a mission that next week to say, I’m going to purposely look for brands that aside to do a little something extra to go above and beyond just the transaction, to stand out and differentiate themselves. And that was the start of the journey.
Andrea: Hmmm. So when you were back in marketing and you noticed this issue of being an interruption marketing kind of a situation and you said that you realized that you were contributing to the problems instead of helping solve it, was there something about that felt personal to you? What drives you about this, like why did you end up going in this direction do you think?
Stan Phelps: Yeah, I mean, like the old school thinking was how you measure effectiveness in marketing was through the concept of impressions. How frequently did you get your brand in someone? How were you able to tell that message? Did you get any earned media? Did you look at owned media, paid media? And I just realized that “Hey, your brand is no longer what you tell people it is.” It just isn’t. It’s what somebody experiences. It’s what they feel and most importantly, it’s what they tell other people about you. I just thought that marketing, the paradigm needed to shift and I just realized that I had something to add to that conversation. And my goal was, Andrea, at the end of the day to get brands to think at least as much about the customer that they serve rather than the prospect that they’re chasing. I think, we’re so concerned with getting people in the “funnel” that we fail to understand that the best marketing that we do is the experience that we provide to the customer that we serve.
Andrea: Yeah, yeah. That’s so good. OK, so you obviously have this quality, and I’m talking about you personally, of being a thought leader. You’re somebody who sees the problem and wants to help solve it from what I can tell. I mean, that’s everything that you’ve said so far. Is that a quality that you think you’ve always held? Have you always have that desire to contribute to the bigger conversation to help solve these problems and that sort of thing? Is that been something that you’ve always experienced?
Stan Phelps: Yes and no. I think I’ve always looked to see what the issue is or where I think thing should go and to try to be part of that change. But to be honest, if I learned anything through my legal education was, to be able to look at a set of facts, to be able to spot any issue, to be able to understand what maybe the overarching rule or current practice was, and to be able to maybe look at a different way going forward. But I think you’re probably giving me too much credit as a thought leader. I saw what I thought was a problem and I wanted to be just part of what I thought the solution could be.
Andrea: Well, I think maybe thought leadership is a lofty term. But at the same time when you’re a writer and a speaker, you’re certainly somebody who is contributing to that dialogue in a very important way and having influence on it.
Stan Phelps: What fascinates me and I tried to in all the books, Andrea, and there’s now eight different colors in the Goldfish series but all of them were based on the idea of looking at hundreds and hundreds of examples.
Andrea: Can you share with us for a second what is the Goldfish series? I know what it is but I don’t think the audience knows yet.
Stan Phelps: Sure. So after that moment of truth, I started to look for companies that did that little extra and so I needed a project or like a crowd sourcing name for it and so I called it the Purple Goldfish. And the Goldfish has a lot of kind of, there’s a lot of plot behind that metaphor. But just for now, it’s the idea that it’s something that small, right? And the first three books were; Purple, Green, and Gold and that was a reference to Mardi Gras because the word that I absolutely fell in love with that I felt embodied this comes from New Orleans. And so Purple, Green, Gold; and now there’s just been a series of books that I’ve tried to tackle of what I think is an emerging issue with an either _____ or the employee engagement side of the coin, which I think you can’t have one without the other.
Andrea: Right. But why is that? Why do you see that as pairing of both of those?
Stan Phelps: Well, I think we’re all of the value driven. A friend of mine _____ like the value zone is the distance between the frontline, you know the front of the brand, that person serving the customer and the customer themselves. That’s the value zone. That’s where everything is created. So you can have this lofty idea in terms of what you think the experience you should provide. But if you don’t have people that are bought into that on the frontline and that value zone then you’ll never going to be able to make that change. So what I personally found is the companies that really got it for the customer, Andrea, even got it more so for the employees. In fact, nine out of ten times they’re actually placing a greater emphasis on the employees and the culture that they want to drive than they are in the customers themselves.
Andrea: Sure. Absolutely, I mean, if the frontline folks, like you said buy in, almost embody the brand in their conversation and in the way that they serve then it totally changes the game.
Stan Phelps: Right. Yeah, so all the books in the series have kind of focused on, and some, I think, the best books in the series have touched both sides of it. So for example, I wrote the Red Goldfish is entirely about purpose or the Yellow Goldfish is all about happiness. But here’s the deal, purpose is magical because it catch across both the customer side of the equation as well as the employee side. And yellow is all about happiness, so it’s about making sure that your customers are happy but, at the same time, your employees are happy as well as the fact that you’re looking at society and should then give back to societal happiness.
Andrea: OK, let’s take a look at some more specific around differentiation for customer service. What are some different things that you talk about that are really important for somebody who wants their company or their brand to be able to have a voice of influence, to be an influence in the world and with their customer themselves?
Stan Phelps: Yeah, you know, so I’ll touch on Purple because that’s what I’m going to be talking about in DC and I hope everyone comes out for Smart Customer Service 2019. Purple is really about understanding that I think there are two sides of the coin when it comes to customer experience. The first side of the coin is all of the value that you provide. And so throughout Purple Goldfish, there are six different ways you can provide a little bit of added value. The other flip side of the coin is the concept that I call maintenance. So value is all the things that you do for your customer. Maintenance is all of the things that your business processes due to your customer. Meaning, how easy do you make it for them to be able to do business with you? And so how do you do the little things to reduce friction and improve the experience? So I think at the end of the day, there’s no big magical answer but it’s about finding the small and little things that you can do that can make a big difference. You know, this isn’t a Trojan horse, right? There’s no one big catch all. It’s a lot of little things that if you can understand your customers and what drives them and you can design these little things and you can deploy them effectively that’s going to be the key to success. It’s something I called the “3D development.”
Andrea: OK, so do you want to take that any further, that 3D development?
Stan Phelps: Yeah, I mean it’s not complicated. Again, the first ‘D’ is Discovery and understanding who you are as a brand and what your customers value the most, not to over think it, right? You want to be great to the things that your customers value the most and you want to understand where you want to be in the market place. Once you understand those two things, you can then go to the “D” of Design.” So you go from discovery first to design. And Design is thinking ways that you bring those things to life. How can you accentuate the things that matter the most to your customers and how can you do the way that reinforces who you want to aspire to be as a brand. And then third is this idea of Deploy. So how do you test, pilot, and validate those things as well as how do you make sure that your team has bought into it, that you create a process around it, and that you have the resources that you can do it again, again, and again. And what do you do once you deploy, you go right back to that first day of discovery. I say it as it’s a continuous development idea.
Andrea: Yeah that sounds great. Alright, so do you have any examples of little things that you’ve seen companies do that really make that big difference. Now, I realized that this might not be applicable to every single company that’s out there but perhaps there are some ideas that could spark other ideas.
Stan Phelps: So I’ll give you a couple on the value side of the equation. And so we spend a lot of time on this idea. One of the categories is first and last impressions and doing a little something extra to make that strong first impression. You know, there’s this idea of _____,you remember the first thing and typically the last thing we experience and maybe it peak somewhere. So like the DoubleTree hotel, they’re one of my hall of famers. That chocolate chip cookie, it’s that warm, great first impression and it’s something that they have down to a science in terms of the consistency of doing it. I think it embodies what they want to be seen as a brand. They wanted to be seen as that kind of warm, welcoming place. And so it’s very well-positioned as a great strong first impression. Another example in the value category is a category we call sampling. And so one of my favorite examples is an ice cream shop in St. Paul, Minnesota called Izzy’s Ice Cream. It’s such a simple thing but when you buy a scoop of ice cream at Izzy’s, they let you pick a second flavor for free and this small little mini scoop and they actually _____, so you can’t copy if you’re an ice cream shop. But it’s this small little mini scoop and that little mini scoop is called the Izzy.
Andrea: That’s cool!
Stan Phelps: It’s brilliant. I mean, this is an amazing strategy for the customers that already do business with you, Andrea. On average, they only know 20 percent of what you can do for them. So with the people that are already customers with you, why wouldn’t you invest a little buck to give them a little taste of something else? So I think, unfortunately, we most often think of sampling as something we do for prospective customers. Why can’t we use it for the customers that we already have? So that’s the value side. I’ll be giving an example or two on the maintenance side of the equation and so a couple of those over there, one is convenience. So how do you do little things to be more convenient? One of my hall of famers there is that company called TD Bank. They’re on the East Coast open seven days a week. Some nights there are open till 8 o’clock at night. Even if they don’t decide to be open seven days a week or open till 8 o’clock, you can take this thing that they do. They actually open the doors of the branch, Andrea, 15 minutes before what scheduled opening is and they actually keep the doors open 15 minutes afterwards. So think about it. Each day, you might have some people four or five customers that show up before the bank officially opens, but what do they do, they open the door and greet those customers as a way of reinforcing that convenience. And we’ve all been there rushing to get to the bank before it closes; they open the door for 15 minutes for people and that scheduled in, right? That’s scheduling in a little more convenience to reinforce what they’re all about. Another great example is what we call an added service to make it easier to do a little something extra. So, Safelite, when they come and do a repair of your windshield, you know, while that Epoxy is filling that crack and setting, it takes about 10 minutes, they typically will vacuum the interior of your car. They’ll get glass cleaned or do all of your windows. Now, that was never part of the deal, but they have that little extra time and they invest that as a little extra buck. And their front line, I think each and every week, every person on the front line gets their own NPS score at Safelite.
Andrea: Nice. That’s really cool! Those are great examples. Thank you for sharing those. Alright, so Stan, why should somebody attend your specific breakout session at the Smart Customer Service Conference?
Stan Phelps: Well, I’d like to think there’s probably going to be a lot of people that already understand the importance of providing that great customer service where I would say overarching experience. My hope is that their perspective might even get slightly shifted and they’re going to walk away with kind of the recipe for being able to create signature differentiators for their brand to create that experience that people talk about, to read about, and post on Instagram about.
Andrea: Awesome! OK, so how can people find you?
Stan Phelps: A couple of ways, StanPhelpSpeaks is my personal speaking site and then I’ve got about eight other co-authors for these books, so purplegoldfish.com is kind of the Goldfish collective and the think tank.
Andrea: Perfect! Well, thank you so much for taking time to be with us here on the Voice of Influence podcast and I look forward to seeing you in DC.
As Founder of E-WRITE, Leslie O’Flahavan, is a problem solver for work-related writing challenges who has helped thousands of people learn how to write well. She helps customer service agents write on-brand emails, chat, and social media posts. In this episode, Leslie discusses what led her to create her business back in 1996, why she’s so passionate about helping customer services representatives, the top skills she helped several major airlines incorporate into their customer service writings, how personal connections with your customers offset repeat complaints about the same issue, what a “brand voice” is and how she helps customer service agents write in that voice, and more!
Play here (the red triangle below), oniTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio(Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Transcript Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast! Now, as someone who wants to have a voice of influence or you want your organization to have a voice of influence, I know that you’re pretty highly focused on doing what’s best for the people that you serve. And so in the next few weeks, we’re going to be featuring some interviews with experts who are going to be speaking at a conference that I’m going to be speaking at in Washington D.C. It’s called the Smart Customer Service conference. And it’s from April 29th through May 1st 2019. So if you are in that area, or if you are in industry where customers service is important to your business then that would be a fantastic conference to come to. But even if you’re not, we have some really interesting interviews coming up for you. And the one today is going to be a blast. So today I have with me, Leslie O’Flahavan. Leslie has helped thousands of people learned to write well. That’s right, we’re going to be talking about writing. As founder of E-WRITE, she is a problem solver for work-related writing challenges. She helps customer service agents write on brand, email, chat, and social media post. And Leslie has worked with several international airlines to update their style of communicating with customer. She has done so many things. She’s also an instructor for Lynda.com.
Andrea: So Leslie, is it great to have you with us here on the Voice of Influence podcast.
Leslie O’Flahavan: Well, thanks very much! I’m really excited to speak with you and thanks for inviting me.
Andrea: Well, I’m curious. How did you get started with teaching people about writing? Is this something that you have always been particularly good at and then you wanted to teach or how did this go for you?
Leslie O’Flahavan: Well, I tell the story quickly and in reverse chronological order. So my business is called E-WRITE and you can guess when I founded it by the name. I founded it back in the e-hyphen era. I founded it in 1996 and this is when email was just becoming a common way people communicated at work. And I thought “Well, shoot, that’s gonna change everything. People who have not been writing email to each other, now they’re gonna be writing email to each other. They’re gonna need help writing it well.” And that was a little wrong and a little bit early because, you know, it was so trivial and mundane in 1996 when I started the business. People didn’t really want any help learning how to write email well. But what they did want was help learning how to write with web content. So, I launched the business in 1996, as I said, and started offering customized onsite writing workshops for people who wanted to learn web content, e-newsletters, and all other kinds of online writing because it really was quite new to them. Before I started E-WRITE, I was a college writing instructor for nine years. Before that, I was a high school English teacher. Shout out to all the English teachers out there, and I did that for nine years.
Andrea: That’s great!
Leslie O’Flahavan: So that’s a brief history of my life as a writing instructor.
Andrea: Love that you taught school. I was a music teacher as well. OK, so that’s your brief history as a writing instructor. So you were teaching for a very long time and then you turn that into a business where you’re helping businesses with this. What do you do with that now? What are you doing with your business now in terms of teaching people how to write?
Leslie O’Flahavan: Well, my business is like a nice big dining room table with many, many strong legs under, and that’s one reason that I’ve been able to stay in business for all these years. You know, essentially, I’m a writing instructor. I developed writing curriculum and I deliver it. But it’s way more complicated than that and way more broad. For many years, I did offer web-writing courses for corporations, for associations. I live in the Washington D.C. area, so there’s a lot of headquarters of nonprofit here and _____ agencies. But somewhere around 2001, I started to learn more and more about the work life of people who had been answering 1-800 phone numbers in the customer services role. You know, many companies employed them in a hundreds or even thousands customer service agents or customer service reps, and their writing life was getting more and more complicated. And it continuous to be quite complicated because, you know, back in the days, they answered phone calls and postal mail and then they added emails and then they added life check and they added social media and then they added text. And now they’re doing all those channels supported by a_____, so it’s really, really complicated. And there’s a workforce, they’re not the most writerly. It’s not like sitting down with a bunch of PR professionals or with a bunch of marketers. These are not the most writerly people and they needed help. They work in a factory of writing. So for about the last 15 years or so, I’ve offered a lot of writing training, custom curriculum, training delivery, and other types of support to large customer service organizations. And as you mentioned in my intro, since maybe 2012, I’ve worked with, I think 10 or 11 big airlines to help them update the way they communicate with customers and enable their frontlines customer service agents, even their reservation agents to write better.
Andrea: Hmmm. Just briefly, I really want to get how you help write to customers in their company’s brand voice. But what are just like some of the maybe top three or five things that you actually helped those airlines to incorporate into their writing?
Leslie O’Flahavan: Well, one is the skill of responding with empathy and replacing knee-jerk insincere sympathy with empathy. So for an airplane when a person emails in and says “I am so angry, I have to sit at Baltimore airport for six hours for weather delay and when I looked out the window, the weather looked fine to me.” That’s an angry email from a customer. Most airlines are built to respond, “We regret any inconvenience this delay may have caused,” which is just passive-aggressive nonsense. So one thing I do is train the frontline agents and gain support from their managers to have them respond with empathy and, if necessary, to apologize because airlines really needn’t apologize for the weather. But what they can say is “Thank you for contacting us. I do understand that travel is stressful and sitting at the Baltimore airport for many hours must have been especially tiresome.” That’s empathy. That’s I see your way. And customers appreciate this. It doesn’t make the weather delay go away but it does make the airline sincere. Not only sound sincere, that is a sincere behavior.
Andrea: Sure.
Leslie O’Flahavan: Shall I give you another one?
Andrea: If you’d like, that’d be great.
Leslie O’Flahavan: Sure! Well, lots of big customer service organizations airlines or other ways rely on formed letters or formed answers even if it’s not a full letter, they rely in formed answers or prewritten content. One thing I do is help the frontline customer service reps learn how to customize those contents. So for example, if you have a little snippet of prewritten content that says when you’re open, when your stores are open, you don’t need to customize that if you’re open Monday through Saturday from 8:00 a.m. till 9:00 p.m. that should be prewritten. But I help them learn how to add a little bit of personal information such as, “So we hope you’ll come in this weekend.” So the prewritten content doesn’t come across as robotic.
Andrea: Hmmm. I love that! And it really does kind of speak to the personality. All of a sudden, it’s not just a corporation and it’s not just a company, there’s an actual person behind that and you’re actually connecting with that person.
Leslie O’Flahavan. Indeed. That’s it and that’s what customers crave from a practical point of view that personal connection offsets repeat complaints about the same issue. Because when you’re a customer and you don’t feel anyone’s paying attention to you, you’re going to make a lot of noise, repeated amount a lot of noise and that’s expensive for company.
Andrea: So what is the company’s brand voice? Let’s talk about this a little bit. Let’s talk about first of all what a brand voice is, especially in terms of writing.
Leslie O’Flahavan: OK. Well, a brand voice is set of writing choices that support the personality your brand conveys through many means, through its logo, typography, mascot, or advertising campaigns. Brands have personalities and personalities have a voice. And the definition of what your brand voice might be or what the writing choices you might make to sustain that brand voice. This is information that is very commonly understood from marketing and PR and graphic designers, and all that community in any company. But it’s information that’s rarely shared with people who work in customer service and they’re expected to kind of soldier on without it or to write the customers with not much awareness that they’re sustaining the brand voice. So a lot of my work involves taking the brand voice guidance that’s already in the big company and basically showing it to the customer service management. We have just never seen it before. It’s the bad byproduct of a siload organization. They have often just never seen it before. So sometimes, I’ll ask “Can I see the brand voice guidance that your marketing team gives to your ad agency?” And they’ll retrieve it and I’ll say, “Let’s figure out how are we gonna use this for the person with the headset on who’s answering the phone or the person who is answering your support Twitter handle. You know, how is this person going to be able to read this guidance and make it real in their own life?”
Andrea: Oh yeah absolutely.
Leslie O’Flahavan: We want customers to have the same experience with your brand personality after they have a problem or when they have a question. If they did before the spent the money with you back when they were falling in love with you. And that’s why it’s so important that the people who provide support help service whatever you want to call it. They’re aware of the writing craft that goes into sustaining that brand voice and they know how to make those same writing choices.
Andrea: So how do you actually translate the document that you got from the marketing team and help the customer service agent to actually be able to write in that. And whether that be the really big companies or even small companies, how do you translate that for them?
Leslie O’Flahavan: Well, sometimes I do within the form of customized onsite training or online training. Sometimes, with the customer service management support, I will write a customer service brand voice guide, a separate reference work. But mostly, I plant the idea and support the behavior change that enables people to write in their company’s brand voice. Because remember when customers write for help that’s usually emotionally neutral, but when they write to complain, the people who answers those complaints day in and day out, often become very protective of the company. They can sometimes become defensive, because all day, every day, people are complaining at them and it’s painful.
Andrea: And it can feel personal.
Leslie O’Flahavan: And it can feel personal, and defensive writing is rarely in a brand voice. Because the more you’re trying to protect your company or insist on a policy or reject the fourth request for a refund, the more you’re trying to say no essentially, the more difficult it is to use that kind of candid a flirty language that we use in marketing. It’s hard work. It’s hard work. But I forgot to say something that’s really at my core and that it sustains me as we do this hard work is, I believe workplace writing is a learned skill. While I completely accept and recognize that there’s some kind of gift involved with poetry, fiction, writing drama, or reading a play; I believe that for most people, being able to perform competently as a writer at work is something they can learn. And I believe it’s not almost a civil right issue, to me, it is a civil right issue. If you hire somebody to do this hard job and this person who’s a customer service rep is probably not bringing down the big box either. If you’re the employer, you’re obliged to provide the training they need to do job well. Power to the people!
Andrea: Absolutely. I mean, there’s so much to that. I mean for so long, it felt like customer meant sort of like the dark people in the basement that have to deal with all of the yucky stuff. And we just want you to get it done as fast as you can. We don’t have to make this go away. I don’t even want to know that it’s there. But those people are the most powerful people in the company and they don’t even realize that there’s some definite contradiction there in between what they’re actually doing for the company and the amount of respect and support that they receive.
Leslie O’Flahavan: That’s really true and really wise observation. And perversely, social media has kind of blurred the lines between marketing and customer care in a way that some companies are managing very well and some aren’t. But it doesn’t really matter in the sense that all of these customer communications are coming in through, for example, Twitter. So, some very big companies separate the functions of handling customers’ complaints or questions about purchases or about subscriptions or about account information. They _____ separately from their marketing in social channels and some smaller companies can’t do that. So the person who is pushing an offer for 15 percent off coupon or something is the same a person who’s answering questions about why, what to do, how to reload the app when it’s not working.
Andrea: Right, right.
Leslie O’Flahavan: And I think that’s actually giving the leaders a little bit more respect and the customer service rep are less like the people in the basement with the headsets on and they very gently chained the ankles to the desk, you know.
Andrea: Yeah, absolutely. And I know that there are lots of really great companies that are thinking progressively on that and doing some really good work and obviously hiring people to come in and help with this sort of thing. So do you have any tips for writing in a brand voice? For example, if a company’s brand is based on prestige and needing to establish trust with their customer that sort of thing, what kind of things do you suggest that they do or don’t do in order to write in that voice?
Leslie O’Flahavan: Let’s take an easier example because when you’re thinking of a prestige brand like a five star hotel or something like that?
Andrea: Sure. You can take whatever example you want to take.
Leslie O’Flahavan: OK. Yeah, let me think about that. Writing in a brand voice has to do with some very easy to describe writing behaviors and some that are more difficult. So for example, is usually branded language, so part of writing in a brand voice is using the very terms that your company uses for such things that people can purchase elsewhere. So for example in an airline, do you call it a flat bed seat when it’s in first class or do you call it lie flat feet. So one part of writing in a brand voice is keeping everybody up to date on the term that we use and making sure they use it. Another part of writing in a brand voice is choosing a level of formality and sustaining it through all your writing choices. So if you’re talking about clothing _____,you’ll notice that a lot of their writing, even the writing in some channels that we would consider kind of playful like Twitter, they’re rather formal. They don’t use a lot of contractions. They don’t use as wide a range of emojis this kind of thing. They stay kind of formal because they’re close are kind of formal. A lot of times when answering completely casual company will write “Oh no!” Well, a form of company whose brand voice is formal doesn’t do that. They’ll say “We’re sorry to hear that.” Or “This is not good to hear,” these kinds of things. So the first thing is choosing and using the language our brand users, another writing choice is the level of formality in the word you choose or in the structures such as contractions or full form of the word. Another is the kind of extent of the irreverence you use or the snark or the mock or all of that. In contemporary customer service writing, there’s a lot of irreverence and snarky writing and a lot of brands are built on snarks. So we have to approve of it because if the brand voice before you purchase is snarky one or sarcastic one then it make sense that the brand voice app you purchased will be the same. But kind of how much of the brand voice is snarky, that’s an issue or reverent. I put snarky at one and in reverent at the other. And then I think another quality of brand voice is, I don’t know, how much of the responsibility for the service breakdown are you willing to shoulder? And that’s come out in your writing. Some companies by brand are extremely reluctant to shoulder much of their responsibility for the breakdown and others are quite willing to shoulder responsibility for the breakdown. So once that they’re unwilling, they might write things such as “We’re sorry to hear this, please contact us with full details of where you purchased the product and what kind of damage you observed in the packaging.” But if they’re kind of less standoffish, they might be willing to write something like “Oh no, we hate to hear this happen again.” Which comes across a schedule but it’s actually a different feature of the brand voice.
Andrea: Hmmm yeah. These are all really fantastic tips and examples. I know that you’ve already mentioned that you care in a sense because it’s almost a matter of justice for you or taking care of these front line people, why do care about these topics so much?
Leslie O’Flahavan: That’s the Adam and Eve of questions isn’t it?
Andrea: Yeah.
Leslie O’Flahavan: Well, life work has been to help people write better. So that’s kind of simple. You know, I’ve been working in this field a long time and it means a lot to me for that reason. I think, I’ve seen people grow a lot and that’s very meaningful to me. Sometimes I help cause that growth, sometimes I was just at their shoulder while it happened. I do think that having me around helps people believe they can grow and be better writers. I also think that when you’re at work, some of the widest range of skills you have to come up with are ones you exercise in writing, and you’re rarely notified beforehand that you’ll need them. So if you’re a salesman or a saleswoman, you know you have to be able to give pitch and use it powerfully, you know that. But did you also know that you might have to write a blog post about a new offering that your company had, maybe not. But nobody says to you, “I just want you to get ready. You may have to write a blog post.” Nobody says that, they say, “Next Tuesday, we need you to do a blog post.” It’s kind of like being the person who picks up the golf balls at the driving range, you know, there’s just all of these things coming at you. All of these writing responsibilities even something as mundane as a substantive email to your boss is a challenging writing responsibility. So I believe people deserve the support to accommodate these changing demands.
Andrea: Absolutely! OK, Leslie, you are doing a session with another colleague, Smart Customer Service conference here in April 2019, can you tell us just a little bit about it?
Leslie O’Flahavan: Sure! I’ll be glad to. I’m speaking with Jeff Toister who is a close friend of mine and a much admired colleague in the customer service. I think over the last five years Jeff has run a survey at least three times to find out what are customers’ expectations for email response time. So, let’s say you have an insurance policy, you have an insurance policy and you have a question about it and you email in to your insurance company asking the question, how soon do you expect an answer. And it won’t be any surprise to anybody that people are expecting answers from companies via email really quickly, much more quickly than they used to. I believed Jeff did his survey for the first time in 2012 or 2013 and I think response time has shown by half. So he’ll talk about the results of his survey and the insights he has _____ from it. And I will talk about how to answer that quickly without using formed letters all the time or without sounding like a robot or a company that just doesn’t care. That’s what we’ll be doing.
Andrea: It sounds very exciting and it sounds interesting as well. Thank you so much for being here on the Voice of Influence podcast. We will have links to the Smart Customer Service conference in the show notes. But also, I know that you offer some things as well, can you tell us just a little bit about that then, Leslie?
Leslie O’Flahavan: Sure! I’d be glad to connect with anyone who’s listening on Twitter. And I’m proud to say that there’s no photos of eggs Benedict in my Twitter. It’s all about writing. So I’m at LeslieO. I’m not Leslie zero, I’m Leslie O, and of course, I blog at Writing Matters at my website ewriteonline.com. And I am really open to conversations about what’s bugging you as you write or how you’ve grown. In fact, I’m the person who wants to hear how happy you are with something you wrote, because I’ll be happy too. That kind of joy carries over. So if you have questions about how to respond to your customers or you want to show me something you’re using in a newsletter or another publication and just get my feedback, _____.
Andrea: Oh that sounds great! And you truly are a joy, Leslie. Thank you for being here.
LeslieO’Flahavan: It’s my pleasure! Thank you for listening as we were talking before it’s an honor to be listened to. I really appreciate it. Thanks for the great questions.
Recently, my children came home from school and they were telling me about a girl who was “bossy” and it was clearly a negative thing to them.
This made me think about how children, especially ones who’re sensitive to the feedback of others, struggle to know when it’s appropriate to assert their voice and when they should hold back.
In this episode, I speak about how to find that balance and read an excerpt from my book, Unfrozen: Stop Holding Back and Release the Real You, of a story from my own life that perfectly represents this struggle.
Kim Gravel is a veteran tv host, entrepreneur, public speaker, and life coach who’s appeared on The Steve Harvey Show and was regularly featured on SiriusXM’s Dirty Pop with Lance Bass. Through her own hit show, Kim of Queens, she was able to entertain audiences with her quick wit and vivacious storytelling. In just two years, Kim was able to build her business from nothing to a $60 million success.
In this episode, Kim shares the core purpose of her message, how her voice was always as strong and confident as it is today, the value of communication, why helping others with self-expression is a large part of what Kim does in her work, why you need to quit preparing and start doing, the importance of being passionate about what you do, and so much more!
Play here (the red triangle below), oniTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio(Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Transcript
Hey, hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.
Oh my goodness, you guys, today is a treat! We have Kim Gravel, who is a veteran TV host, entrepreneur, public speaker, and life coach. She was booked on The Steve Harvey Show and was regularly featured on SiriusXM Radio Show, Dirty Pop with Lance Bass.
And through her own hit show “Kim of Queens,” Kim was able to entertain audiences with her quick wit and vivacious storytelling. Indeed, I know, and you’re going to experience it. Her Passion for people was made obvious onscreen as her unexpected depth and genuine heart helped her clients find confidence and self-love.
For her newest venture, Kim has partnered with retail giant QVC to launch the Belle by Kim Gravel apparel line and Belle Beauty Cosmetic line. And in just two years, Kim was able to build her business from nothing to a $60 million success.
Andrea: Kim, it is so good to have you with us here on the Voice of Influence podcast.
Kim Gravel: Oh, so exciting. I love it. I love Voice of influence. What a fantastic title, right? Because we all have an influence, so, you know, and we all have a voice so people just don’t get that. So I love the title of this podcast.
Andrea: Awesome. Thank you. I love it too. It felt like it was like this, I don’t know, handed to me or something, you know.
Kim Gravel: Yeah. Uh-hmm.
Andrea: OK, so Kim, I know that you’re really driven by purpose and mission and your message, so could you share with us kind of what you’re all about, I guess. What is the purpose and message, the core of your message?
Kim Gravel: You know, I think my particular message has been what it’s always been. It has evolved, it’s changed, it has had many faces, it’s taken many turns, and manifested in many different ways. But for me, it’s about knowing the ‘why you’re here’ and ‘what are you going to do about it.’ You know what I’m saying?
Andrea: Yeah.
Kim Gravel: I think some get it at a very early age, most people never get it, and some of us are trying to get it on a daily basis and some of us, it’s just a journey. But when you can figure out the why you are here then you can get onto what are you going to do about it because everybody has a purpose. And that’s such a self-help guru type, you know, answer but it’s just the truth.
I’m a straight shooter, so I’ll just tell you straight up, you weren’t here, you weren’t put on the earth just to take up space, there’s a reason. And you can call it whatever you want to, super spiritual, super new ages, super…whatever they’re labeling it today. But that’s just the heart of it and I think everybody is always searching for that. People say, you know, “Uhh, people are searching for love. People are searching for self-worth.” No, people are searching for ‘why am I here?’
Andrea: Yeah.
Kim Gravel: Yeah. All the other stuff that’s just add-ons, you know, what I’m saying?
Andrea: Uh-hmm.
Kim Gravel: And so for me, helping people see that or helping people even understand that that is why they’re here is what the message is. It’s so difficult but so simple at the same time because for me, I found out what that was. I was doing that. You’re always doing your purpose. You just never can define it. You know what, I’m saying? It’s everything you never thought you always wanted. That’s what purpose is, you know.
Andrea: Yeah.
Kim Gravel: It’s everything; you never thought of, that you always wanted. And so, you know, that to me is everything and that’s the ‘why’ behind everything I do.
Andrea: OK, so usually I find that that when people are driven by such a strong, you know, purpose like that, it’s personal. So is there anything that, you know, any stories that really connect you personally to why you care so much about that?
Kim Gravel: Yeah, because when I was young I just remember, you know, because back then, back in the day, because now I could say I’m middle age, which I can’t believe I’m saying that out loud but it’s the truth. But back in the day when I was a kid, and like my children who were 9 and 11, when I was sitting in my bedroom, we didn’t have video games and iPhones in distractions.
So I would sit for hours on end and line my stuffed animals up on my bed and either sing to them or talk to them or communicate with them because, you know, girlfriend didn’t have a lot of friends at the time. My parents moved a lot. And so for me, I had to entertain myself. I didn’t have a sibling yet. I just remember those days and I knew that I was meant for something at a very young age.
I grew up in the church. I grew up with very strong, encouraging parents. But I would stop and take the time as a young kid and listen to that still small voice that would speak to me, the inner me and say “There’s something out there for you, there’s something out there.” I wasn’t distracted. You know, we didn’t have the distractions back then.
So for me, I can remember a specific time, I was riding in my mom’s brown Malibu car and back then we don’t have to wear seat belts and I would chew on the back seats. I know I had an oral thing, “Don’t talk to me about that right now.” Well, I would sit there and I would daydream and dream. And I would tell my mom about all these dreams and my mom either she wasn’t listening or, you know, she just let me talk either way and I would just say it.
And I remember one time coming home, I think it was from, we called it Richway, I think it’s now Target. But back in the days, it was called Richway, it was a department store. And I was eating a slushy my mom had got me, and I said to myself and I said it loud, I said “Mom, I’m made to sing or talk to people.” And I remember my mom going, “Well that is true, you can run your mouth.” Only my mom could do it and that hit me and it stuck with me now. That has taken on so many different forms, so many different ways. But I truly believe, if you could trace back to when you were young, your purpose will be there.
See, a lot of people are trying to get over their past or they’re trying to…a lot of people have gone through hard times and struggles, but all of that is locked into that purpose. There’s a ‘why’ you went through that and there was a reason behind it. But we get hung up on what happened to us instead of what can happen through us. For me, I clearly remember the moment. I remember that period of my life where I knew and then the real work and frustration and hail began.
Andrea: OK. I was hoping you were going to say that because, oh my goodness, because I really felt…I remember feeling some of those similar things and especially we share a passion for both speaking and singing. I remember, I actually watched the song that you sing, you sang Phantom of the Opera.
Kim Gravel: Oh God, help me.
Andrea: And you’re in the Miss Georgia competition, oh my gosh, it was great.
Kim Gravel: Well, the only reason I would demonstrate, you know, I wanted to have scholarship money and I want to be heard.
Andrea: Yeah.
Kim Gravel: I love your “Voice of Influence.” I wanted my voice to be heard.
Andrea: Yes, yes!
Kim Gravel: You know what I’m saying?
Andrea: Yeah, I do.
Kim Gravel: That’s everybody. That’s everybody on the planet, you know, so for me, that was just a way for my voice to be heard.
Andrea: Did you ever struggle with the fact that, I mean, you have a really strong voice. At least at this point, you’re very confident. You’re not afraid to say it. You know, like you said, you’re a straight shooter. Was that ever something that you held back?
Kim Gravel: Sure.
Andrea: OK, why?
Kim Gravel: As a woman, can you imagine as a southern blonde or at that point I was probably live brunette. God fearing Christian Bible belt big mouth girl, are you freaking kidding me? I would go to church where you’re supposed to be I loved and cared for. And let me tell you something, I’m a strong believer. I still go to church. I love God, everything. But those early years, I was told, you know, be seen, not heard. I was told you just get married and have kids. And I thought, “My Lord, why would God give me this voice? Give me this passion; give me this preaching quality…” I’m saying that in air quotes as I’m talking to you “…and not be able to use it?”
Andrea: Oh I do.
Kim Gravel: I went through all of that. You know what I’m saying?
Andrea: Yes!
Kim Gravel: I went through all of that. I’m still going through that to some degree. There’s sometimes I still have to say, “You know, I’m pretty much not going to do that,” and slide that piece of paper and say, “We’re not going to do that deal. I’m better than that.” But I still go through them. I’m like, “I hope if I slide the paper over and they say no and I’m rejected.” And then, you know, especially as women, and I’m sorry I’m a woman, I’m pro woman. I think women run the world. I think we are the backbone, the neck bone, the tailbone, you know, leg bone, you know, we’d make it happen and I live with three men so I can say that confidently.
But yeah, the doubt, the insecurity, the “I’m not enough” or “I’m just a girl” or “You’re not smart.” Oh God, if I could write down how many times someone has assumed that I was unintelligent based on whatever, fill in the blank. And you know what; let me take this right now. I know somebody as dumb as hell, now I must say dumb as hell. I almost say it when they think I am. When someone meets me and it takes them a month, two months, six months, a year to figure out I’m intelligent then they’re stupid, not me. You know what I’m saying? So that’s what I want to say to people.
A lot of people are having all this expectations, all of this in the box thinking about what they should be and what they shouldn’t be. I see the school system with my children, it’s such a frustrating thing and they’re the ones that don’t have it together. And so for me, yes, the struggle has been long. I still struggle. I laid in bed yesterday. I’ve had a little bit of a cold and watched Charmed on Netflix from season one, I’m up to season three now, just because I had this deal just going so wrong and it’s clearly a lack of communication, and I can’t figure out how to make these people understand.
And so I lay in bed all day wanting to get a chocolate cake, but I’m really working on trying to lose weight. But I just lay in bed and watched Charmed and thought “This is never gonna happen. These people are never gonna get it. This is never gonna happen.” And that still small voice said, “Keep communicating,” because that is the biggest problem we are facing, millennials, us, and everybody is lack of communication and connection.
Andrea: Well, do you think that part of that is fear?
Kim Gravel: Oh, sure! Oh girl, you could go ahead and speak on that. Anything based out of fear, being fear motivated, you’re in trouble. Fear insights are the complete opposite. Now, I will say this, I get excited talking about this, doubt, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I love this line in the song by YouTube it says, I have just enough low self-esteem to get me where I need to go.
So doubt and a little bit of self-awareness in that way, that’s good. Fear, no. OK, because really fear like…my mother has spiritual…“What if it snows while we’re on the plane.” “We can’t do about it anyway, honey.” You know, God’s got it. If it’s time, it’s time. If it’s not, it’s not. And she’s not even a fearful person, but just that things we can’t control is what we really fear. The self-doubt and the little bit of insecurities that we have about ourselves that we can’t control and that’s not necessarily always a bad thing. Does that make sense?
Andrea: Yeah.
Kim Gravel: Fear is a myth. It’s not real. Bad things we fear never come pass anyway.
Andrea: Right? So much of it is in our own heads and so much of it is a misconception too of what other people are actually thinking.
Kim Gravel: Absolutely, or miscommunication. Again, everything is about communication. Your confidence, like my relationship with God is communication. My relationship with my husband is communication. My relationship with my business partners is communication. I mean bad communication could set a whole lifetime off. So that’s why I think what we do, girl, is so powerful.
Andrea: OK, so part of what I think we’re both doing, but I’m really wanting to hear more about what you’re doing to do this is helping people express themselves.
Kim Gravel: Uh-hmm.
Andrea: So, self-expression and I know that Kim of Queens, I mean a lot of that was self-expression.
Kim Gravel: Sure!
Andrea: Helping pageant girls be able to kind of figure out who they are and what they’re doing with all of the different pieces of the pageant. So tell me more about why self-expression and you helping people with self-expression is so important to you.
Kim Gravel: OK, because what we teach at schools, what we teach at colleges, what we teach in a lot of times these self-help books or these YouTube videos, what we teach has great self-expression, right?
Andrea: Yeah.
Kim Gravel: Express yourself, be you, do you boo? If I’ve heard that one time, I heard it a thousand and I totally agree with that. But then we tell them how to do that based on laws, rules, or regulations. I love it. This little teacher told me this and she said, “You know, this is not about the theory, _____,” because they go to a private Christian school, have its own ideas but he can’t do this, this, this, this, and this.
OK, well that’s an oxymoron. Those two things cannot exist on the same plane, OK? So what we’re doing is we’re saying to people, “Do you boo?” But then we are censoring it, covering it up, denying it saying “You don’t fit here, you’re a weirdo.” “You don’t belong.” And now we have this massive backlash and everybody’s trying to belong to somebody somewhere and you really don’t belong and that is a good thing.
So for me, I will never forget a conversation I had with a very, very powerful agent in New York and I was embarking on the whole QVC thing. And I didn’t want to work with this man because I knew 10 years from now this isn’t going in well because I’m either go kill him or he go kill me. So I remember him saying to me, he said to me and this is where it came to blows, he said to me, “Let me ask you something, Kim, are you able to speak in anything other than southern colloquialisms?” Oh my God. So there he goes. OK, so he took an arrow, took a shotgun and just blew through my heart of everything that makes me who I am, my self-expression, right?
Andrea: Yeah, yeah.
Kim Gravel: So we love you to be cute, funny, and say no, _____ on a fire hydrant; we love you to do all that crap, but you’re not good enough to hang with me because you do that. So that’s what we do and I knew at that point he’s small. He’s never going to get anything other than what he gets. He’s not going to recognize who I am other than “She is a size 14 with a big butt, big hair, and a big accent.” He can’t get beyond that.
And that’s how we’re killing self-expression. We’re not supposed to be alike. We’re not supposed to be anything like anybody else. We shouldn’t even _____ or compare ourselves to anybody else because that kills creativity. So to me, self-expression, that’s everything. That’s your DNA. That’s your fingerprint. That’s the one thing no one can take from you.
Andrea: OK, so how do you look at or how do you approach helping people find their voice?
Kim Gravel: You know, it’s different in different ways. I always say this every time I’m on a show or something. I said there’s nobody that can bring out the best in you better than me. They might can do it as good as me but not better. And that is because when I look at an individual, and this has taken a lot of practice, a lot of prayers; I don’t see their race, their color, their weight, their height, their financial status, what they can give me, or what I can give them, I just look at them as like really…I pray to God, “Let me see people the way you see people,” and when I pray that, be careful what you pray for because he answered it.
And so I see that role potential, role purpose, I see too much good sometimes. Sometimes I have to be like “Run, Forrest, run” when I see some people that don’t, but it’s because I’ve trained myself to do that. So when I look at someone, I don’t speak to their insecurity, to their power. I can see all the bullcrap and say, “God, this person is naturally good at, fill in the blank.” And sometimes it’s just, “Oh my gosh, have you ever thought of…and whatever, fill in the blank.” It’s not about really me; it’s just about being able to notice something and being able to communicate that. That’s it.
Andrea: It’s like opening up doors for people. I liken it to, you know, somebody…it’s almost like people are inside of their own jail cells and there’s no lock and all I’m doing is coming over and open up the doors so they can walk out like, “Hey, did you know that this is open? Look at all the possibilities.”
Kim Gravel: You know, a lot of times, I _____ things like this and your podcast and I need a pick me up. I need a _____. I need a good workout and that helps, but the magic is not in us. It’s in us. We already have it in us.
Andrea: OK, so I know that experiencing it though, like actually taking the steps actually doing the thing is such a huge piece of it. Even in the things that you’re working on now, do you have any examples of…or stories that you want to share of how you help people take those steps?
Kim Gravel: Sure! Yeah, let me get you a personal story because once you take steps, it’s easier to take more steps. People that take chances and step out on faith take more chances and take more chances and step out on faith more and more because they’ve built up their faith muscle, OK?
Andrea: Yeah.
Kim Gravel: So for me now to jump off a cliff and do something crazy and out of the box is a lot easier for me now. It’s not as risky. It’s not as scary because I’ve done it. But I remember the first time I did it, OK. I wanted to ask, I said, “OK, I had this little singing group girls, we’re traveling around church to church.
Andrea: Love it!
Kim Gravel: Community center to community center or _____. We were producing our own CDs, we’re writing our own music, middle-aged women. I had two at home, little infants and I said to myself, I’ll never forget it, I said, “I’m gonna take this to the next level.” OK, let’s talk about stay-at-home mom, you know, sagging boobs, you know, your hind end and everything. So you take about three women like that out there trying to make it in the music world where everything is grabbing your crotch and butt naked.
So here we go and I said, “I’m gonna take this to the next level.” I said “I wanted to have a reality show.” Girl, I know nothing about nothing. I know nothing, OK.
Andrea: Except that you’re brilliant, right?
Kim Gravel: Well…
Andrea: You just knew you got it.
Kim Gravel: I knew I had something to say. I just knew I had something to say. I didn’t know who wanted to listen, but I remember doing a little video in my girlfriend’s basement for this little TV show that ended up being Kim of Queens, by the way. I said, “I’m going to take it to another…” I remember sending it out to all these producers.
Long story short, we got the show, you know, two years later. People don’t know that the _____ takes forever _____ and this producer; I met with this producer in Hollywood. Again, air quotes I’m doing right here. And I remember feeling like I was the dumbest idiot of what the heck have I got myself into, scariest thing. I wanted to quit because I thought they were so smart and they were telling me, “You gotta do this, you gotta do this, and you gotta do this.”
And I will never forget on set one day, I looked at this guy and then someone will tell you something. I don’t know where it came from but I knew it was wrong, I said, “I’m not gonna sit here and fight with these little girls and fight with these moms and fight with you. You can either do the show the way you wanna do it and get somebody else or get the heck out of my building.” Girl, I don’t even know where that came from.
I was scared to death to even say it but I knew if I didn’t take that step up and get this dude straight, my career will never happen. This is like what, 39. I’m not talking like I was 20, almost a 40-year-old woman sitting here letting this dude just tell me what the heck I am and who I am. So that moment, you’ve got to take that first step. So you’ve got in total fear in total, “Oh my gosh, if I piss this guy off, he’ll never hire me again.” But you have to know yourself and know your worth and know that you’re worthy and step out and be who you are whether they like it or not.
When you do that that’s when your when your confidence will rise. It will get easier to take those jumps. It will get easier to invest and bet on yourself, you know. I mean, some people, it’s doing a podcast. Some people, it’s going back to the school. I mean, fill in the blank, whatever that thing is for you, that is holding you back and you know what it is because if you listen to this podcast, you know exactly what I’m talking about. There’s that one thing that you say, “If I don’t do this, it’s over.”
And let me tell you something, you get a lot of chances in this life, take one for the love of God. Take one.
Andrea: I’m listening to the people who are saying though, but what if this, this, this, or this happens, but this, this, and this are on my way?
Kim Gravel:OK, well, you can’t live your life on what ifs. You’re not going to get married, what if you get divorced? You’re not going to have a baby, what if the baby dies during childbirth? What if you’re not going to…you know, you can’t what if your life you, you just can’t. At some point you have to do something or you’re going to be just reading books and make again vision boards the rest of your life. OK, here’s an example. I hear more people saying, I’m making vision boards. Well, my vision board, I haven’t had a chance to make it. I’ve been so busy since January.
Andrea: I love that.
Kim Gravel: OK, quit preparing and start doing because I’ll tell you this, once you take a step and you do like when I told that joke, this _____, either you get on board or don’t. That’s when the show popped. That’s when we got second season, and now this guy’s a good friend. He texts me and says, “Oh my God, I wish I could work with you again, blah, blah.” That’s never going to happen but “Oh my God, we should work for you.” You know, you have to do something and you have to believe in yourself enough to do it or nobody’s going to believe in you. Quit working your vision board, honey, and reading your books. Get up there and check _____, do something.
Andrea: I love it. I love that. Do you think that that part of part of what we do when we…OK, here. I think one of the things that we’re afraid of is, you know, like we’re going to polarize people, like some people won’t like me. So talk to me about that like polarizing people. Surely not everybody is into Kim Gravel, you know like…
Kim Gravel: No!
Andrea: Who is Kim Gravel’s audience and why do why do you speak to them and not everybody else?
Kim Gravel: OK, so look, I know everybody doesn’t like me. I always say this, if you don’t like me, that’s fine. I still love you. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who likes you. The only person that matter who likes you is you. And this is the thing, I like me. It’s been a long journey and I don’t like the way I look all the time. I don’t like the way what I say all the time. I don’t like the way I act all the time, but when it comes down to a little bit in my heart and soul, I do like me and I hope my children like me. But if they don’t, which they don’t right now because, you know, they’re supposed to when they get older. That’s fine because I still love them.
You got to please you, and that sounds narcissistic but it all goes back to being worthy. Being worthy and you believing that you’re worthy has nothing really to do with you, and I hate talking super spiritual but I know…
Andrea: No, it’s totally fine here.
Kim Gravel: It’s just what I know. I don’t know psychology. This is what I know. I know that I am fearfully and wonderfully made and I’m an individual and I know that there’s nobody else like me. So if I’m here, I know that he loves me, accepts me, likes me, and I’m worthy. And so when you know that you’re worthy and you feel that self-worth coming from something bigger than you, it has nothing to do with people’s opinions or even your own, or even your mom’s and dad’s or even your husband’s or whatever then it’s so much easier to not care. I don’t say not care because I think that’s a lie because I do care what people think, but I don’t stay there. Does that make sense?
Andrea: Well, it could be that too that you’re driven by such a purpose by that purpose. You’re secure in the love. You’re driven by the purpose, and so you’re willing to sacrifice the fact that people might not like you. What do you think?
Kim Gravel: I love that because when you’re passionate about something, nobody can tell you anything. I remember when I started selling on QVC and the tops or the jeans or whatever that I would sell that I was passionate about that would sell out. And the tops I was not crazy about, I couldn’t sit there and lie and be unauthentic. I could, I could go, “Oh, this is a great top.” And I would say that but everybody knew. They didn’t know why they did know. So they didn’t believe me, they didn’t say, “Oh my gosh, she’s lying.” You can just feel that, you know, what I’m saying?
Andrea: I do.
Kim Gravel: So when I’m passionate about something, you can’t tell me nothing, I’m a bulldog. I’m a bulldozer. And I’ve seen that in so many people, like in politics, people get so freaking passionate about politics and I do not know why it is this crooked industry on the planet. But they get so passionate about it but that’s why they’re willing to fight to the end for it. You got to figure out what you’re passionate about and do it. If you’re not, it’ll be stale. It won’t be authentic. It won’t be true. Does that make sense?
Andrea: Yeah, I mean it brings us right back to where we began with your why, why you are here and what you’re going to do about it. That’s essentially it.
Kim Gravel: That’s everything. And I just didn’t know if your only reason here is to really figure that people think is supposed to get married and have children, although that’s fantastic and I love my children and that’s my biggest job and responsibility right now. And they’re always going to be my children but that’s just for a season, OK? I asked people, “What do you call to do? “I meant to be a wife.” No, no, no, no, nope. “I meant to be a mom.”
Andrea: It’s our role.
Kim Gravel: No, that’s not it, sorry. And they get mad at me. Some people say “Kim, you’re just crazy.” I’m like “You’re not here to be a mom. That’s not your job. That’s not why you’re put here. You get to do that as a woman, what a blessing and what an absolute huge responsibility and it’s your most important responsibility while they’re in those formative years but your kids are going to be gone in a short amount of time. What you’re gonna do with the rest of your life and the best thing you can do for your children is to have purpose so that they can recognize.” They didn’t even know they were doing it. They didn’t even know they were doing it back in the day. I think it’s even harder now to find your purpose than it was back when you just had to survive, you know.
Andrea: Sure!
Kim Gravel: And when our parents were coming up, they just work, you know. Now, there’s so much information and I’d say information, not knowledge. There’s so much coming that people are so confused, depressed, and it’s just because they’re sitting there watching on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Other people leaving out their purposes instead of them getting about theirs, so bottom line is I should’ve been a preacher because that’s all I’ve done so far.
Andrea: Oh, no, no, no. I love it. No, this is so fun. I mean you are a preacher. I mean in a sense, you know?
Kim Gravel: Yeah, yeah. I miss that. I told you I miss my calling. I was told when I was a southern Baptist girl, you can’t preach, you’d be quiet. I should’ve never done that, biggest mistake.
Andrea: Yeah. I think for me, hearing that and feeling that sense of there’s no opportunity here in the church for your voice. I don’t know if anybody wants to hear that from me but yeah, that definitely motivated me to move towards business so…
Kim Gravel: Yeah and let me tell you something. Let me tell you all these women out here listening to the entrepreneurs that don’t think they had business to send them, you do. You sound certainly do and there’s plenty of room out there for all of us and we’re supposed to have a voice in business. The marketplace is dying for women. I cannot tell you how many business meetings I’ve set and they’re like, “Well, we want to sell to Susie, The Soccer Mom.”
And I got one now and I can’t really get into it. One is like “We wanna to sell to Liz and Elizabeth. “We wanna to sell to the mom and the daughter.” We’re always the people that they want to get our money. So you better get about getting your business that sell to each other because money in this world gives you a lot of seats at the table and that’s what women need. Entrepreneurship and money and business gets you tons of seats at the table.
Andrea: It changes the game.
Kim Gravel: It changes the game, right. And that’s what we should be teaching our young girls in college is how to…because we the workers, “I’m sorry, we don’t want to get it done.” So I’d love to see women take that part of who they are and put it in more of an entrepreneurial vein and get more seats at the table that way.
Andrea: Wow! This has been a really great, fun conversation, Kim, and inspiring. Is there any one thing that you would like to leave with the listener, like some sort of a call to action or thought that you want to leave with them?
Kim Gravel: Yeah, I do. My motto is if no one’s going to encourage you, encourage yourself. Take responsibility for your own feelings, thoughts, actions, and spiritual wellbeing, your soul. Because I will say this, the drought is over. The days of being less bad and depressed and fatigued and in debt and all of that is over. It’s time for us to stand up and it’s time for you to stand up and take your rightful place in this thing called life, because we need you and I say that all the time, “I need you.” You know what I’m saying?
There’s no one person who has it all together. We all have something together that we can all collectively share together. So we need you!
Andrea: Alright, Kim, where should people look for Kim Gravel?
Kim Gravel: Oh, just go to kimgravel.com, you’ll find something there.
Andrea: You’ll find a lot there.
Kim Gravel: You’ll find something there for you and if not, you’ve been blessed. I’m telling you what’s you’re doing, girl, with this podcast, do it. Do it, I love it! This is the future. And keep communicating because we need it.
Andrea: Yeah, thank you! Well, thank you for your voice of influence in the world.
Kim Gravel: Well, my pleasure, and I love you guys and thanks for having me, girl.
Whether you’re working with people one-on-one, an executive working with a team, or you’re a parent who wants to the best come out of your kids, you’ve been tasked the challenging and rewarding work of helping others find their voice.
In this episode, I’m talking about what it looks like to help others release their voice. Some topics discussed are how my son’s cub scout troop was the perfect reminder of how amazing it feels to help someone find and use their voice, why so much of how people express themselves has to do with what’s inside their mind, why it’s important to give immediate positive feedback when someone begins to share their voice, how doing so allows you to challenge them later, and more!
Play here (the red triangle below), oniTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio(Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Transcript
Hey, hey, it’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.
Today, I’m going to help you become a better coach, whether you are somebody who is working with people one-on-one, maybe you’re an executive that wants to help your team do better to bring out their voice and that sort of thing. Maybe your parents who are looking at your kids going “I want to see the best come out of them.”
If you are someone who is in that position where you know that have the opportunity, the ability, the responsibility even to draw out someone else’s voice to help them to become more of who they are, to help them step into who they are to use their voice and make a difference in who they are then you have a special, special place in my heart.
I totally know the amazing opportunity that you have, both for yourself and for them, because it is transformational work to be able to encourage others and to see them change, to be a guide that comes alongside someone, to encourage them, and to bring them out and challenge them and help them reach the next level. It’s so exciting.
But one of the biggest, biggest challenges that people have is that they are very intimidated by others. We’re very, very often…I mean, everybody I think, but definitely when you’re in a position, when you’re specifically are in a position and there’s somebody who looks up to you, who is looking to you to help them, looking to you as a leader or as a guide, most likely they’re wanting your approval. They’re wanting your nod and they’re wanting to know that you like them.
And so in a sense, you kind of just buy the fact that you’re in that position, you’re kind of intimidating, which makes it difficult for someone to come in and feel comfortable with you and to really be able to warm up to you and that sort of thing. So today, what we’re going to talk about is when we talk about what it looks like to help others really release that voice.
OK, and as usual, I have a kids’ story for you. I told this kids’ story. This is totally part of who I am and part of my brand are all these kids stories because I have kids and I think that when we bring it down to that level of just really simple level of children, I think everybody can relate because we were all kids at one time and many of us have children or you know children or you love children. And so I love to use these examples in order to make it so that everybody can kind of relate.
So we’re going to go to the kid story now. Recently, I have started working with my son’s Cub Scout troop because they’re going because they’re going to be singing the national anthem at a college basketball game. And they’re so excited; I mean some of them are excited. I think the older ones are having a harder time probably getting excited, but the younger ones, oh they’re so excited about this opportunity because they love to sing.
So the first thing that I do is I have them gather around me while I’m sitting down at the piano. Now, if you don’t already notice about me, I was a music teacher and I taught music lessons and voice lessons. So when I’m talking about this, this is the background that I’m coming from and I make all kinds of connections between how people use their voices in a singing sense and how they use them in a more figurative way or that voice of influence kind of way.
So I have these boys standing around me and we’re doing these scales and the more that they sing, they more excited they get. And then we go and we started singing the actual anthem and we do some call backs and echoing and things like these so that they can really learn it. And by the time we’re done, it was so fun. I had such a blast and one of the little boys looked at me and goes “I wanna be a music teacher when I grow up.” And I _____ “Oh yes, steal my heart, take it now.” I love it. I love it when they get so excited.
And that whole experience just reminded me of a couple of things that I want to share with you today. So number one, it is an amazing experience to be able to help people find their voice, to help them find joy in expressing themselves and help them find joy in singing. Number two, singing and sharing your voice in the world, a voice of influence or singing, either one of them. It’s 10 percent talent and probably 15 percent practice and the rest of it is all in the head.
Now, that is totally my own statistics. They’re actually not statistics, this is my estimation. But this is after years and years and years of working with people and helping them and what I’m saying is that so much of what people or how they express themselves has to do with what’s going on inside of their minds. You see this is a music teacher, when kids are bout in 4th grade, they start to really pull back until 4th grade, kindergarten. Earlier, I worked with little, little kids and going on up to about 3rd grade, they are very enthusiastic. They’re not afraid to sing. They enjoy it. They smile and they get into it. It’s so much fun.
And then about in 4th grade, they still kind of do it but they’re starting to pull back and you see a consistent pull back on that voice throughout the rest of their adult lives up until about the age of the late 30s maybe. At late 30s, at least women, I’ve seen this from women more than men, but at least in women in late 30s, they start to care less about what other people think about them and so they start to share more. They start to sing out more.
And then they hit 40 and there are some sort of like _____ in people and it’s amazing to see how much more comfortable they are with just who they are and they start to really share. They start to really sing. They start to really let their voice go.
So that desire to impress people, I think really start to hit around 4th grade, that desire to not just impress people as a younger child who want to impress people as well. But there’s more hesitation because the older you get, the more you realize that other people don’t necessarily adore me like I thought they did and the world is a lot more harsh that I thought it was. And some people don’t like my voice, some people aren’t going to just smile at when I sing, when I share it.
And so, so much of what goes on in the other person or maybe in yourself has to do with this head game. It’s a head game. What is going on inside of the other person that you’re working with? OK, let me give you a couple of tips based on both. I’m going use the example of working with these Cub Scouts little kids, but it absolutely applies to the way that I work with adults as well in just helping them communicate and find their voice of influence.
So when I have these little boys stand around, I have them stand around me at the piano and I’m playing these little scales and the very first thing that I do as soon as they open up their mouths and they started singing is they get immediate feedback from me. They know right away that I am so proud of them for opening up and letting sound out.
It doesn’t have to be perfect, because when someone first shares their voice, when someone first comes up with an idea, oftentimes it’s not the best one. Oftentimes, it’s a far cry from the best thing that you want from them, but if you affirm their voice immediately then they had a sense of OK, so even if that wasn’t perfect, at least it’s wanted. They want to hear more from me.
So what I do, when I’m working with these boys here, I was going up and down the scale and I was singing with them a little and they would call back and we work together and then I hear it and I go “Oh, let’s just listen to that sound. I wanna hear more of it,” and that sort of thing.
And in encouraging them as they saw the joy on my face because they were producing that joy by singing, when they could see that they had the power to make me delighted, to delight in them then that give them more confidence to sing out louder when I wanted them to sing out louder. It also give me more room and buffer to be able to correct them when I needed to.
So if they did something that’s wasn’t quite right, I could say “Oops, let’s hold on a second, it wasn’t quite as good as you did it last time,” or I could say “This little line right here, let’s take a look at this more closely and pick it apart a little bit because _____, isn’t it?” And of course these are little boys and at the same time, guys, people appreciate it when you appreciate them.
If you really want to help somebody else, if you want to help them by coaching them and that sort of thing then one of the biggest gifts that you can give them is encouragement. And I’m not saying that to ever, you know, give a challenge because I talked about this before but I think people need to be safe, celebrated, and challenged. They need to feel safe, they need to feel celebrated and then you need to bring in the challenge.
And I absolutely believe this, if you provide that atmosphere where they feel like their voice is wanted and that you are for them, you are here to help them, this is about them then when you are ready to celebrate something about them, you can do that, you can say “Wow, that was actually really great.” And then when you need to bring in that challenge, you can bring it in powerfully.
And they know, “Look, this person is my coach, my mentor, my parent, my manager, they care about me. They are for me. They are so for me that they are putting so much energy into this. They believe in me. They believe that what I have is special and that that’s worthwhile to hear even if I need to keep working to refine that, I’m willing to put myself under their tutelage in order to get better because I know that it’s not about shame, it’s not about feeling bad about myself, it’s about revving it up and feeling like it matters and that I can do something about it. And because they care about me, I have the confidence to keep going even when I get tired.
So these boys, I tell you what for 20 minutes, we were singing like crazy, and like I said, I have them around me in the piano. I’m constantly giving this feedback and then we turnaround and I look at them in the eyes. They mirror you. You guys, people mirror you and of course you’re going to really see it in a young child when you smile at them, they smile back at you. When you frown at them, they feel crummy and so they frown back at you. But it’s not unlike when you’re adult, when you’re an adult and you’re doing this.
When you’re encouraging people, they might not smile back at you right away. Because, I mean think about high schoolers, when I was a high school music teacher, it would be so funny because, you know, I would share my enthusiasm for them and the whole group. And with the whole group, they would just sort of like they were still very stoic a lot of times, especially when I first started, they didn’t know me and feel comfortable with me yet. But when I started to work one-on-one with people, when I could work one-on-one and I could hear them then I could give them immediate feedback and they started to really believe in themselves and they started to smile.
It’s the same thing when I’m working with folks one-on-one and they’re talking about how they’re dealing with a problem, how they’re working on a situation, or something that they’re struggling with. It is absolutely important. I absolutely believe that that is so important for me to start out with an affirmation of some kind.
I love how you are working towards this with this person, even if I totally disagree with the way that they’re approaching it, I can come back to that but I need to start with “What can I affirm in them first?” What can be celebrated?” Because they need to know that I care for them, I care about them and I’m for them then when I come back with a “You know what, this is really an important what you’re doing here.” And they recognize that in themselves and they see that in themselves and they start to realize “Yeah, this is important. I am important. My voice here really does matter.”
But then we get to the point of saying “Alright, so let’s take a look at this a little more closely.” “Why do you think that?” Or “How do you know that?” We need to take a look at though then we get to bring in the challenge piece then people don’t want to just be safe and celebrated. They don’t want to feel of all sense of affirmation from you. They want to know that you are here to help make them better.
So you’re not only here to be for them, with them, to celebrate them, to make them feel comfortable, or to help them find their voice. No, no, you are also as a coach, you are also here to challenge them, to bring in that extra effort, that extra beat of advice or help them think through things so that they can improve and they can feel more confident in who they are and who they are becoming as a person, whatever they are, or whatever they’re trying to become.
So much of the coaching relationship is about this head game. It’s about voice. It’s about the head game of voice. It’s about what’s going on inside of people so that they can feel comfortable enough to actually sing, to actually let their voice be heard.
I find that this is through with myself. When I start to question my abilities, when I start to become self critical or I let a criticism sink in and then I think “Oh my gosh, I do stink.” “This doesn’t work.” “I’m not going a good job,” whatever it might be. When I start to do that, if I do that before I’m about to step on stage or if I do that before I’m about to approach a group of people with an offering of some kind to help them in some way, I’m not able to offer as freely as when I want to feel like I actually have something that’s of value to offer.
So in order to help other people find that voice of influence in themselves, we need to help them connect with the fact that they are valuable, that they are worthy, and that they have something important to share. And so once you get to that point then you come in with some additional ideas about how to improve that will help them really find and release their voice. In helping them do that, you will find your Voice of Influence.
Do your employees feel respected?
Business leaders know respect is important but there’s often confusion as to what that respect looks like and what it really means.
In this episode, I cover the main points of Kristie Rogers’ article; including the distinction between “owed respect” and “earned respect”, how a recent experience with one of my sons is the perfect example of these two types of respect, what needs to be considered when deciding how to balance the two types of respect in an organization, and more!Mentioned in this episode:
Play here (the red triangle below), oniTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio(Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Transcript
Hey, hey, it’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.
Lately, I’ve been working on a project. It’s a little training or an offering that I am putting together that would help companies or organizations be able to get really clear on their values, their mission, their vision, and their purpose in order to be able to share that with the rest of the company so that they can help people connect their purpose to the purpose of the company. So a feeling like it matters “What I do really matters here.”
And in the process of working through this and working on this and testing it out with people, I’m also putting together a talk to use at conferences. So in the process, I’m reading some articles. And I came across this one from Harvard Business Review. It is by Kristie Rogers who’s out of Marquette University, and I really appreciated what she had to say about respect.
So today, we’re going to a look out what she does say about respect just like a couple of things that she says and discuss what that looks like or what it means for us as people who are trying to help others connect their purpose to the company, help others be able to feel like we matter and that their voice matters because this is something that we talk about a lot here, you voice matters, but you can make it matter more.
This is sort of the tagline that we’ve been working with the last year or so and this idea that your voice does matter. It matters inherently. You’re a human being that matters.
But on the other side, you can still make it matter more in a different sense. And I talked about this a number of times. You can do things that make your voice have more influence. So there’s an inherent quality but then there’s also this quality that has to do with your performance and what we do, what we say, and how that actually impacts our influence.
So what Kristie Rogers says in this article is that that there is kind of a consensus that people know, business leaders know that respect is important. They kind of know that. We’ve been talking about it quite a while, but maybe there’s confusion around this idea of what it really, really means and what it looks like. So she makes a distinction between owed respect and earned respect.
Let me read to you her definition. This is from the article Do Your Employees Feel Respected?Show Workers that they’re valued and your business will flourish. This is from Harvard Business Review, July-August 2018. And owed respect as she defines it is accorded equally to all members of a work group or an organization. So this is for everybody. It meets the universal need to feel included. It signaled by stability in an atmosphere suggesting that every member of the group is inherently valuable.
So, owed respect is really this general overall feeling and this general overall consensus that everybody matters. It’s this idea that your voice matters, inherently you are valuable. But earned respect recognizes individual employees who display valued quality or behaviors. It distinguishes employees who had exceeded expectations and particularly in knowledge work setting affirms that each employee has unique strengths and talents.
Earned respect meets the need to be valued for doing good work. So earned respect has to do with performance. I think that is so important. I love this distinction. I think it’s so important because you have to have a sense of owed respect. Everybody like that people matter and if they don’t feel like they matter at all, they’re not valuable, that they don’t _____ value then how are they supposed to feel like what they do matters?
Or maybe they get kind of stuck on this cycle of trying to climb the corporate ladder in a sense or be more and more and more successful because they’d be more valuable if they’re more successful. So we don’t want people to find their inherent value in success. That is something that is just there that everybody is valuable as a human being. But when there is a distinction between that and earned respect that means that the people can truly outperform somebody else.
I know that one of the things that gets confusing in schools for example is you know, do we give everybody the same grade? Do we kind of make grades a deal an issue at all? Or do we reward for things like, you know, your grades or your test scores, or do we need to just make it about attendance and the only things that you get rewarded are your behavior, you know, being quiet in class and being there.
Well, students just as much as any other human being needs to know that they are valuable and that being there is important. And at the same time, they also need to be rewarded for hard work or their abilities of what they do, with what they have and outperforming themselves essentially but it could be outperforming others as well.
So it becomes tricky though, right? It becomes tricky as a teacher, as an educator, as somebody who’s trying to decide what to recognize and what not to recognize because you don’t want to have people feeling bad and then giving up but on the other hand, you don’t want people feeling like, “Gosh, it doesn’t really matter what I do with my abilities. It doesn’t matter what I do with them so I’m just gonna give up as well.”
There is a need for both owed and earned respect. It kind of also made me think of a story with my son. So we went out to eat as a family and it was actually…let me think about this before telling you but this particular meal, we went out to eat, it was a celebration because one of our children did really well on a test and one of our children did really well with their grades, and we wanted to celebrate that. This was a moment of earned respect.
There are many times that we just do things with them and for them because we love them, because they are our children and they don’t have to do anything to earn that love and so we’ll rotate them out. We’ll do special something with them just because they’re our kids, but this was a particular celebration.
So we wanted them to know that we were recognizing, that we recognized how hard they’d worked and that it’s important and it’s good to do that. And so this was a moment of earned respect. So we decided; we were playing games at our table while watching a football game and eating and that sort of thing. That was really fun.
And then our son realized that he had forgotten something in the car. So we gave him the keys. He’s 9 years old, we gave him the keys and he walked out. We kind of looked at each other hoping he doesn’t get hit you know. We warned him before he left, you know, “Make sure you’re watching for the cars,” because he kind of tends to be oblivious to his surroundings sometimes. He looks down and walks instead of looking up. So we were a little concerned about that, you know, sending him out there by himself.
But pretty soon we saw him coming back in the door. We were across the whole entire restaurant. We see him walking in the door. He opens the door and he’s kind of looking down and he opens the next door and he sees an older gentleman that is kind of struggling to walk, and I was like “You guys, what’s he’s gonna do?” I actually said that. I wondered, you know, “Will he really do something? Is he just going to walk right by or is he gonna notice?” And you know what he did, he actually opened the door for this gentlemen and I was like “Oh, yes! I’m so glad that he noticed.”
We were sitting there and just kind of like “Oh this is awesome. Good for him.” He can’t see us. He doesn’t notice us. And then I said “Do you think he’ll open the second door?” I really wasn’t sure, and sure enough he did, he opened the second door. And my mom heart just beat out of my chest. I was so happy that he did that. It just elevated the level of respect that I had for him in that moment.
And so he came back to the seat or the table with us and we told him, we’re like “Grant, we are so proud of you.” Like him doing a good job on a test, but he didn’t actually worked too hard at was one thing. But Grant actually paying attention to another human being and giving him owed respect, opening that door for him.
He didn’t notice the gentleman _____ so it’s not like he earned their respect in the sense that he had done something for Grant, instead he gave him owed respect because he’s a human being and he could see that he needed help, he opened the door. And this made me so proud of him, and in that sense, Grant, earned more respect from me.
When it comes to how we apply this to our work environment or to our organizations, we need to, and these are some of the things that Kristie said in her article but also some things that some of my thoughts as well kind of make _____, we really need to provide an atmosphere where everybody knows that they matter, that they are valued and their contribution does matter.
So when I’m doing a workshop or I am helping a company come up with their values, we make sure to do things and to integrate ideas that will help bring out the voice of the people that are working there, not just the executives but also those who are kind of on the frontline and doing work with customers and things like these. So we capture their voice. We give them an opportunity to speak then we go and have conversation with the executives then we get more clear from their perspective.
You know, we kind of hear both perspectives and what kind of the executives kind of do some of that real work of determining which things we’re going to really highlight in terms of values or initiatives that they’re wanting to move forward and then we go back again to the people and we say “This is based on what you said and what the executive said and do you have any ideas of how we could implement this?”
So in each instance, we’re making sure that these folks feel like, and that truly are respected, that they are giving a voice. But at the same time, a voice doesn’t necessarily carry as much weight or influence as another voice because some people are in a position where their voice, their influence is greater simply because of their job position and they earned that position. And so they do have greater influence over the whole entire process; however, that doesn’t negate the fact that everybody has influence. Everybody has a voice in a sense and all of those voices do matter.
But we do have to acknowledge both and that when somebody does put the extra effort that they should be rewarded. So it is a balance. It is a balance of certainly understanding what the people need in terms of respect and owed respect as well as rewards or celebration or the opportunity to take new opportunities to explore new options or to have more influence.
Another important point that Miss Rogers makes is that when you’re trying to decide what the balance should be of owed and earned respect in your organization, there are some things that you should take into consideration. If you are trying to produce a collaborative result perhaps it has to do with innovation or coming to consensus on something then owed respect should be given more weight.
However, if you’re in a situation where there does need to be some competition or it’s more of an individual situation where individual effort and success needs to be measured, well maybe then earned respect needs to carry a little bit more weight.
But it is certainly true that every single place you go, owed respect is absolutely important. It’s imperative. If you want to have a voice of influence, if you want to make your voice matter more then you will give voice to others. That is how you make your voice matter more.
So respect all and give even more respect or celebration to those who have gone above and beyond and make your voice matter more!
Leena Patel is the CEO of Global Impact Systems, founder of Sandbox2boardroom.com, and a leading expert on helping executive teams worldwide drive innovation and develop a culture of collaboration and inclusion. She draws from two decades of experience as a business owner to design and execute innovation initiatives that capitalize on new business opportunities and secure a strategic market position.
In this episode, Leena shares why leaders need to focus on helping their teams become better problem solvers, how her grandfather’s personal relationship with Gandhi had an impact on who she is today, the logic her Gamulation system that helps participants perform better in high-pressure situations, her personal mission to 4x the number of women CEO’s in Fortune 500 companies, and so much more!
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Transcript
Hey, hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.
Today, I have with me, Leena Patel, who is the CEO of Global Impact Systems, founder of Sandbox2Boardroom.com, and a leading expert on helping executive teams worldwide drive innovation and develop a culture of collaboration and inclusion. Very, very hot and important topics right now.
Leena draws from two decades of experience as a woman-owned business owner to design and execute on innovation initiatives that capitalize on new business opportunities and secure strategic market position.
Now, part of what Leena does that is really fascinating is Gamulation, which I’m excited to hear a little bit about that. Hopefully that’ll come up in our conversation, Leena. But Leena’s voice, this is so fun. She is a powerful person and she’s got this amazing drive, I don’t know, like can really get to the point and can see through clutter. I can tell she can just see through stuff and get right to what needs to be done or said.
Andrea: And so I’m excited to have you on the podcast with us today, Leena.
Leena Patel: I’m excited to be here, Andrea. You know, you must be psychic, because I _____ you know, we haven’t had this conversation and I didn’t even know that you felt that way about me. But one of my gifts that I’ve been told and I’ve known and felt it for decades now is this sort of ability to just get through the clutter, like be able to see exactly what somebody needs to take them to where they need to get to. And it’s just this ability to connect dots.
I actually want share and talk about that today, but crazy psychic ability that you have there. It’s amazing.
Andrea: Well, that’s awesome because, you know, I am kind of known for voice. That’s sort of my thing, like I look for that in people and so I can tell that. I just know that about you. So I’m excited to have this conversation. This will be fun.
So, Leena, what would you say is kind of the core message that really drives you in your business? I mean in your life?
Leena Patel: So, I’ve been on a journey that has evolved over the decades and the place I am right now is…let me kind of just sort of share what’s going on in the world right now. The core message is to help organizations understand that leaders or the teams that they have…we really need to focus on up skilling everyone to become better problem solvers so that we can connect dots, do what I do, which is kind of help people get through the clutter and help them to do that, to be able to connect dots between different ideas, different roles, and different industries.
And the way that we do that is helping them unleash creativity in themselves and in others and teaching them to innovate but in a very, very strategic way. I think that’s the way that businesses are going to win in the future.
And why, I mean why is that driving me? In order to answer that part of the question; I grew up being mentored by my grandfather. I’m not sure if you knew this about me, but his mentor was Gandhi. And the message that I got growing up from my grandfather was…
Andrea: Excuse me, when you say his mentor was Gandhi, can you just briefly explain what you mean by that? Because some of us would consider like authors or activists to be mentors without actually having relationships, so what do you mean by that?
Leena Patel: So he met Gandhi at the age of 16. He actually delivered a speech, a talk at his school, and his life changed. Everything changed for him in that moment and he knew that this is somebody he wanted to follow and he wanted to learn from. So they actually had a live, in person mentor-mentee relationship. He was with him for 16 years. He stayed in his house.
Andrea: Wow!
Leena Patel: He was part of India’s move towards creating independence. There’s a whole sort of back story between his relationships. He was a spiritual activist. He was a political activist and that was his mission and his purpose in life. He was in his 30’s at some point. Basically, the British government kind of forced him to leave India. And so he moved to Kenya from there, which is where he met my grandmother and they got married and that’s kind of how I came into the world.
But those 16 years of his life were a huge part of who he was, what he stood for, how he showed up in the world, and consequently how he raised us; my mother, her brothers, and sisters. And how we were raised because we grew up very close, you know, spending holidays, weekends, summers, and vacations together.
And sort of from the age of four, I had a very close relationship. Two of my uncles committed suicide when I was 4 and 5 years old respectively. The reason for that was they actually felt like they didn’t have a voice. They wanted something in their life that they feel they couldn’t speak up for. And because they didn’t know how to speak up, they didn’t know how to exercise their power and their voice, they took their own lives and that’s a really extreme thing to happen.
But it really kind of anchored into my mind at the age of four without being able to articulate it the way that I can now that I didn’t ever want to do that. I don’t want to ever live my life that way, and I didn’t want other people to live their life in that way.
So that became the beginning of my relationship with my grandfather and him mentoring me because he helped me to understand these incidents and other incidents in my life in the context of, you know, sort of the bigger picture in what’s going on in the world. And so leading change, driving change was a big…it’s just sort of felt like I grew up, it’s part of my DNA, you know. So his lessons for me was to drive change where change is needed, to not be afraid to challenge the status quo, to do it respectfully, do it with kindness and understanding of where people are and meet people where they’re at. But you and I, individually, and collectively _____ and so that’s been a driver for me in my life.
Whatever I’ve done, and just to sort of give you a little bit of a kind of back story of my professional background, I’ve got background in the arts and sports and entertainment. My first career was as a professional dancer. That was over 20 years ago.
Andrea: Which is fascinating though. It’s fascinating.
Leena Patel: But there’s a reason I’m sharing this with you because I moved then from the world of high performance into sports. I started coaching athletes. I worked with some Olympic level athletes. I worked and trained with the artists of Cirque du Soleil for a number of years. I worked with Celine Dion and personally worked with her for many years, over 15 years and her management team and her organization and then move from that world into the world of business.
I started training businesses on how they could bring this elite performance, high performance skill set into their business to drive performance within their team players. And so it’s been this evolution and I share all of this to kind of say that all of these experiences that we have in different areas of our life have led me to this moment of what I’m creating today.
And the realization for me at the time, you know, my whole life would be from sports, to arts, and to business. I’d start learning about the digital marketing and I’ve learned about tax and accounting. And I’d go in and learn about, you know, sustainability in the environment.
As I started evolving in business, I created Gamulation. This is my innovation in instructional design because I realized that people in business weren’t learning the skills they needed to learn. So I came up with a new and more fun and playful way for them to integrate information so that they could up skill themselves quickly.
So the business was going through all this sort of evolution as new skills were being added as I was innovating to adapt to the marketplace. And I was driving myself crazy, thinking, “Who does this? Nobody does this.” Our entire life was taught to zone in and niche and focus on one industry and one specialty, and these are the people that are rewarded.
Here I am learning all these different skills; one, because these opportunities are just coming to me; but two, because I’m genuinely interested in how people do things in different ways. And I went to a mentor and he said “You know, don’t worry, you’ll figure it out. You’ll figure out how everything maps together.”
The turning point for me was realizing that all of this information wasn’t a limitation. It wasn’t a shortfall. It was my secret sauce. And it’s the thing that leaders today need more than ever. They’re solving their problems right now in isolation. Yeah, innovation is a hot topic right now in companies because they’re realizing that they have to adapt to new technology, artificial intelligence, things like that.
And so it’s top of mind for like 85 percent of CEO’s innovation right now but then they’re going ahead and bucketing things. They’re now looking at gender and diversity and figuring out how to put more women in leadership positions and then they’re looking at their sales and marketing teams and figuring out how to help them perform better. And they’re looking at big data and they’re bucketing all these different initiatives in their company and then sort of wondering why they’re not being successful.
So one of the things that I realized is that if I can actually teach them how to connect the dots between these different initiatives, I can actually draw from the 16 plus industries that I’ve now worked in over the last 20 years and help them to see _____ if they can implement what somebody’s doing over here in the tech space, you know, what somebody is doing in healthcare and in manufacturing, for example.
Now they’re innovating. That’s one level. So we teach them actually how to connect the dots in a very systematic way to help them get exponential results.
Andrea: Wow, I love that. It’s interesting because I can understand the frustration with the idea of having to narrow down not being able to use all the curiosity that’s inside of you. And yet, there is a way to use that curiosity and it kind of reminds me of Adam Grant’s book, Originals, and how people who are truly original, innovative and all that, that they really are able to draw from a lot of different sources and background and experience in order to bring all that to the problem that’s in hand.
And it sounds like that’s exactly what you’re doing and that’s what you’re teaching companies to do. I love that! So what are some of the ways that you do that? Could you maybe just share with us about Gamulation, this really cool training, or I’m not exactly sure what it is. I kind of have an idea but I want you to tell us a little bit about it.
Leena Patel: Sure! I’ll give you two examples. I’ll talk about Gamulation since you asked. So we use that as a tool for actually helping leaders and teams understand or learn the skill they need to do. So one of the ways that we want, we want people to actually learn faster. We want them to retain information and we want them to go away and implement it.
Traditional ways of learning have not really served people in doing that. It just sort of giving people a 10-step process, teaching somebody through a presentation whether sort of passively receiving that information. So Gamulation was really a combination of two different ideas, the gaming world which is so popular today and you know, women, men in their 20s, 30s, 40s utilize that as a pastime to activate and engage their brain.
So the gaming world that has really taken off and millennials, particularly, really connect with this. I want to bring that environment of fun and learning through games and through play, but bringing it into a business environment so that it was highly relevant. It was highly structured and it helps people to actually retain information so that they could go in and implement it and actually get results. They could actually get a return on their investment from investing in trainings.
So Gamulation is bringing together in the world of games, the fun and the playfulness that’s _____ and the world of simulation which has been around for a 100 years. And simulations are known and utilized in healthcare and in the military for a long time because they understand that people learn best when you put them into an environment that resembles the environment they’re going to experience. They’re going to be challenged in.
So the military are going to train in a sort of war zone environment so that when they’re on a battlefield they know immediately how they’re going to respond under pressure and they’re trained to do that. And I wanted to train people in business in the same way to put them into environments where their skills were really tested and challenged so that they didn’t just sort of know on a surface level, “Here are the skills to be a great negotiator. Here are the skills to be a great innovator and here are the skills to be a great leader.”
But putting them into environments where their leadership skills would be challenged, where their negotiations skills would be challenged, and where they really have to negotiate. But they have to do it and they’re dealing now with sort of international diplomacy and they’re dealing with contracts, and they’re dealing with time pressure. And putting all this pressure into them to help them see how they’re going to show up when the crap hits the fan, really.
Because it’s easy to be performing at a high level when things are going great, but we’re really going to be challenged and we’re going to make the worst decisions. And I learned this, you know, this is how athletes trained. This is how I trained, and this is how I trained other athletes is if you’re going to win a marathon, it’s great to just be like, “Hey, let’s have you running at a particular pace.” Or you know, “These are the things that you need to be doing to train.”
But on training day, like on the day of the Olympics, on the day when you’re on stage, on a day when you’ve got that really big important meeting going on where the cameras are on you, people are going to be there, there are going to be interruptions, there are going to be audience, all of a sudden your adrenaline is lifted and loosening and you start making crazy mistakes.
So I would train people to operate under high pressure by throwing all these stimulus, distractions, and interruptions at them during the training process so that they learn how to focus even amidst all the craziness and so they wouldn’t be making those crazy mistakes. And because they were training at that level, when they were put into those high pressure negotiation environments or they had to make difficult decisions or teams are falling apart, business deals are falling apart, they didn’t crumble under the pressure. So they made sound business decisions that ended up saving their business, you know, sometimes millions of dollars of revenue depending on the organization.
Andrea: Wow, that’s really interesting! And then you said that you were going to talk about something else too. What else is on your mind?
Leena Patel: So yeah, that’s how I’ve used Gamulation as a tool to train leaders and teams. And it’s simply a tool, a mechanism for helping them get to their goal faster. You’d asked what kind of example of how I’m sort of helping companies do this. One of the things that’s really been huge for our business this year is helping leaders not only sort of innovate in terms of what they need to develop in terms of new product ideas or their processes internally, but as I particularly focused on the entertainment sector, the tech sector and those sort of big, big areas that I focus on.
And there’s a big conversation, I’m not sure if you’re aware of right now, but diversity is the big conversation that’s happening in these spaces where they’re really wanting to focus and bring more women into leadership. There’s a recent initiative by the ex-governor of California where there has to be at least one woman on the board and three by 2021, I think it is. And so that companies and businesses are sort of scrambling to put women in leadership positions to “meet that quota.”
So the gap is that these women are not necessarily trained for leadership positions. They haven’t been given a skill set and so what we kind of have them do is help them to really align. We go into companies and say, “Instead of focusing on your innovation initiative in one bucket and then focus on growing women in leadership and growing your diversity team in another bucket, let’s bring them together. Let’s actually help your women, your potential like women that you’re grooming to step into leadership positions. Let’s really help them to understand your company’s long term goals and utilize and leverage their innate skills and abilities that they have as women, that they have coming from these diverse backgrounds to actually forward your company’s goals.”
So now they’re actually adding to the bottom line revenue of the company. Now, we’re also going and teaching these women not only like use your skills to help the company innovate and drive revenue, but we also are going to teach you actually how do you position it. Because women and men think quite differently as we teach them actually to how they make the business case for their ideas so that they’re speaking the language that men understand, right?
So now, they’re setting themselves up for success because they’re helping the businessmen. They’re setting themselves up and positioning themselves for leadership skills and leadership positions. They’re learning how to ask for the money that just they want and not that they’re owed. I mean, they’re not just saying, “Hey, you know, what, let’s promote more women because it’s the right thing to do.”
So we’re moving beyond kind of tapping into people’s moral consciousness and saying, “Look, this is not only the right thing to do, this is helping us, this is helping you _____.
Andrea: The strategic thing.
Leena Patel: Strategic. It’s really strategic. So women are getting promoted. They’re getting the money that they’re due, the respect that they’re due. They were setting the business up for success. It becomes a win for business, a win for the women and win for the cause, and so that’s an idea.
This is one example of how it really strongly bringing together two areas. You know, bringing together the tech space, bringing together innovation which is needed in every industry right now in order to really be prepared for the future, and then bringing together this initiative to drive women in leadership and uniting it together so that it becomes a win, win, win.
Andrea: Uh it’s fantastic. Yeah, I was noticing that with some women. I spoke at a conference recently with women and we were talking about portfolio building and building business case, just not exactly, but similar to what you’re talking about.
When I was doing some research around that before the talk, I kept hearing from other people that were in executive positions that women don’t come to the table to ask for more money as often as men do or they don’t ask for as much more money in their salaries as men do. That’s just generally speaking of course.
But you know things like this that you’re talking about that I think across industries, women need this kind of training. They need to know how to bring all those things together and think strategically and be able to communicate in that strategic way, yet bring all their empathy and ability to connect to the table. It’s so huge right now. I just think that’s a fantastic thing for you to be doing with companies.
Leena Patel: Yeah. Really, for me, it’s so exciting because I’m speaking literally like a couple of times a month. I’ve been speaking at women’s conferences where I’ve been going into companies and sort of helping them to actually introduce this idea to them and actually how we can implement it within their company.
And I’m talking to these women and it’s amazing while these companies have women’s initiatives and women’s groups and employee resource groups within the company. The very fact that they’re looking at their initiative separately and there’s not this sort of alignment and communication between the different business units and all the way sort of down from executive leadership, all the way down the company is massively hurting them.
I actually looked into this and I found that like the research and the data shows that literally just by making this one shift, they get their goals. I think it was like 38 percent faster, like just because of this alignment and just by bringing two business units together, like sales and marketing. Just by aligning people, their revenue jumps up 20 percent. That’s one shift they need to make.
And so for me, it’s so exciting to go and talk to these women and really listen to what it is that they need. You know, their self confidence has been really burned for a lot of women just being in that working environment. So helping them build that up by teaching them that the natural skills that they have, like building great networks, building relationships, this ability to problem solve, or multitask; when they apply that strategically to the company’s goals and how to do that and put it together in a business case that really make sense for the company, makes sense for them, it shifts them in such a huge way.
So it’s super exciting for me to see that transformation. My personal goal, my personal vision right now is to see more women in leadership right now in the Fortune 500 companies. There are 25 CEO that are women and I want to get that to a 100, like that’s my personal goal and my mission by 2025 and that’s a pretty huge, pretty huge endeavor.
But to tap into those, those Fortune 500 companies and help them to actually not just make that number that women are in leadership, make it like, “Hey, I’m hitting my quota,” but no, this is the right thing to do because now we’re truly leveraging the value that they bring and we’re utilizing it to open up new market spaces and drive revenue to the company.
And by the way, people are feeling great because they’re being heard and acknowledged in the workplace and what a magical thing that you can make money. And you know, you can serve your bottom line and your people are happier for it and you’re doing some good in the world at the same time.
Andrea: Leena, can I just ask you a really blunt question? I’m going to forewarn you. I should’ve forewarned you but I am, what makes you think that you have the ability to get to 100 CEOs by 2025? I want you to be honest because I’m excited to hear your answer.
Leena Patel: So it’s 25 now. There are 25 female CEOs in the Fortune 500 right now, and I want that number to be a 100. That means it’s got to like _____ in the next seven years. So I’m speaking to a number of senior leaders in Fortune 100 companies right now. Actually, there are about four companies, if not five. I’ve got two calls scheduled next week in the Fortune 20, in the top 20.
So I’m going out and we’ll be like making it my mission to talk to and make connections with the influencers because, you know, those companies like when they initiate these changes, it becomes a ripple effect. And the other companies, the medium sized companies and the small businesses start to follow over time. But they’re looking to these big companies, the influencers as kind of leaders and sort of paving the way.
So my decision was, I’m just going to go straight to the top. I want to work with the people that are out there, driving change. They’ve got incredible products and services, they’re offering to the world, and they want to be that _____ in the next 5 to 10 years.
The world is changing so quickly right now that they need to be on top of it. They need to be on top of it in terms of how they’re innovating, how they’re connecting with their customers, the customer service that they’re offering, and the way they’re treating their people. And they need to consider all of this and sort of put this on the table and then be strategic in putting a plan together so that they’re heading, they’re checking all these boxes.
Some of them are doing a great job, but a lot of them, the great companies right now that are doing so well are really struggling.They make great products, but they’re really struggling, for example, right now to support their women. They’re really struggling with understanding how do we work and drive this initiative forward without affecting their bottom line revenue.
And they haven’t cracked the code and part of it is because they’ve been in the tech space for so long. They’ve been in one mindset, which is what we’ve been talking about today and earlier. So kind of going and saying, “Hey look, I’ve got this other perspective. I’ve got this experience of being able to like draw knowledge from other industries and I can help you connect the dots so that now all your initiatives are aligned and you’re moving, your ship is moving in one direction and your people are behind you.”
So while I don’t see it as an easy task and, you know, for one minute I think I’m arrogant not to think I singlehandedly would be able to do this by myself. I think it’s going to take a lot of people jumping on board with this idea and kind of recognizing it.
Our firm, personally, right now is really focused on reaching out to these companies and helping them to understand and we’re getting interest and movement and traction. So I’m really excited to see how this is going to sort of start to cascade over the next 12 months. And, sorry, just what kind of vision is to bring other people onboard and help them to sort of say “This is what I’m doing, like if you want to help and you want to jump on board with this, let’s do this together because this is something the world needs.”
Andrea: Well, it sounds like to me, it sounds like number one, you have confidence because you have lots of positive successful experiences. They’ve built up overtime. You’ve worked with tons of different kinds of people. So number one, you have confidence. And number two, you have purpose. This thing that’s driving you and this is just me kind of my observation of what you’re talking about and why I think that you are going to make this happen, but also because you have this purpose.
You are so driven because you believe in the reason why it’s important and you care about it. It’s something that you want to see happens and you care about voice, you care about, you know, all these things that have kind of happened to you in your life and this huge purpose is like backing you up to.
So it feels to me like you’re unstoppable. It feels like you’re going to make it happen and not because you just think you’re all that, but because you care and you know it’s the right thing. You know it’s going to be good for them and so you’re going after it. And I just wanted to point that out because I love it and I think that it’s going to happen, yeah.
Leena Patel: Thank you. I appreciate that. I know it’s a long journey and it’s taking action every day continuously reaching out, even when people don’t see the value in it or don’t see that it’s top of mind for them today, but continuously pointing out “Here’s where the world’s heading and you’re either going to jump onboard today and start strategically planning for the future or you’re going to be back peddling and catching up in five years time because your competitors have taken the leap.”
And you know, it’s so interesting for me that the people, the companies, specifically companies within the Fortune 50 that I’m talking to right now, the ones that are responding and wanting to initiate this conversation and learn more, are the ones that are actually already doing amazing things in this space and they want to push the needle. And it’s fascinating to me that the people that are already doing great or like the ones like “How can I be better, what can I do differently?”
And the ones that are kind of struggling in this space but they’ve got a multibillion dollar company, they’ve got something that’s really awesome and everyone is using and utilizing their product, they somehow think that because I’ve got this awesome product, they actually don’t need to innovate on their people. They don’t need to change their culture. They don’t need to, you know, kind of focus on taking care of things and they’re missing this whole thing.
And I’m like, “Wow, this is amazing that they’re operating in this way.” And so my kind of goal is to just educate and maybe just to open the window and kind of what could be possible for them if they look at their business from a different perspective. And if they see that a lot of these companies, some of them are goals driven and they understand that and a lot of them aren’t.
So, you know, part of being strategic is helping them to understand that this is actually going to have a positive bottom line effect. But my end goal is to drive them towards understanding that it can be a win win. They can build a great company. They’re building a company and future proofing that company by thinking in this way.
But they’re also, eventually, using their influence and their power to create some good. And creating that good in their workplace and the environment and the culture they’re building, creating some good in the community that they can now kind of impact, creating some good in a world by solving bigger problems in the world. So that’s sort of my, you know, sneaky end goal is to sort of help them to use their power and influence for the better. And I think that, you know, it kind of becomes a win win for everyone.
Andrea: Yeah. What would you like the listener to take home with them today? Of all the things that we were talking about so many important nuggets, but what’s something that you would want to leave with the listener today?
Leena Patel: The number one takeaway, I want people to get as that now is the time to cultivate creativity amidst this chaos. Now is the time to take action, to take risks, to up skill yourself, to up skill your people. Gandhi said we need not wait to see what others do. So taking those risks, even though it feels challenging, you know, to lead the way in your industry and lead the way for the future. Take that action.
Andrea: Hmm OK, so this has been great. This has been fun to hear and inspiring for sure. Leena, how can people connect with you, and is there anything in particular that that you would like to point them towards?
Leena Patel: Sure, our company website is Sandbox2Boardrom.com and that’s Sandbox 2, the number two boardroom.com. And you can definitely connect with me there. I’d say that, you know, wherever you are in this innovation journey, whether you’re just starting to think about innovation or you already got an initiative in mind that you want to develop or that you’re developing, or even if you’re an expert and you want to be stretched and challenged so you can continue to push the boundaries and lead the way in your industry, you want to start by changing the way that you think. You want to start by getting better at solving problems.
One of the ways that you can do that is by asking more powerful questions. And I have a resource for you that will help you to identify the blind spots that your organization could be overlooking. So no matter if you’re at that C-suite level or if you’re a senior leader or you’re an aspiring leader of rising star, just train your brain to be a better problem solver and think differently will kind of move you _____ along that journey.
So this resource, you can download from our website, it’s a free resource code 42 CEO Questions to Maximize Your Innovation Initiative, and it’s going to help you to just think about questions that you may have missed that will help you to move things forward, to think more strategically. And you can access this free resource at Sandbox2Boardroom.com. Again, Sandbox2Boardroom.com/gift and that’s for you as your resource to just start getting moving forward your initiative.
And then I invite those _____ sort of looking to be more, if you’ve got an initiative coming up in the next 60 to 90 days and you really sort of want to move things forward and strategize to connect with me directly, I’m happy to give you some ideas that can really kind of move that forward for you a little bit quicker.
Andrea: Excellent! OK, I love that, the questions. This is going to be fun. So, we’ll make sure to put all that in the show notes as well at voiceofinfluence.net. Thank you so much, Leena, for being here today and for what you are and are going to do in the world.
Leena Patel: Thank you for having me, Andrea! It’s been such a pleasure speaking with you.
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!
Play here (the red triangle below), oniTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio(Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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.
Dr. Espen Klausen is a regular here on the Voice of Influence podcast and he’s back again this week. This time, Dr. Klausen is here to discuss mental health for pastors.
In this episode, we cover the role the church has played in Dr. Klausen’s from the time he was a child to now, the unrealistic expectations we placed on pastors to always have it all together, how our bodies are designed to handle stress, his tips for what pastors can do to help protect or improve their mental health, and more.
Play here (the red triangle below), oniTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio(Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Transcript
Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!
Today, I have with me Dr. Espen Klausen who is a regular here on the podcast. I appreciate his psychological, spiritual point of view and the wisdom he has to share with you, the audience. And so I continually invite him back whenever we have some particular questions that fall within his realm of expertise.
Andrea: So today, Espen, you’re here to talk to us, specifically, about pastors and this has to do more with some of Espen’s own message and his own passion.
So, Espen, first of all welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!
Dr. Espen Klausen: Thank you so much, Andrea. I’m happy to be back.
Andrea: The thing that I wanted to ask you to start this off is what is this message that you have that pertains to pastors? Where does it come from for you?
Dr. Espen Klausen: I’ve started a project and starting to offer seminars to churches to help their ministry staff in particularly pastors better understand mental health and provide better self-care when it comes to mental health. This mission comes of many experiences particularly in the last couple of years, but really throughout my whole life. I’ve grown up with pastors my entire life. I grew up in a little island in the end of Oslo Fjord.
Andrea: In Norway?
Dr. Espen Klausen: In Norway, yes. The local little church that could sit 50 to 75 people, and a 150 on Christmas Eve, just don’t tell the _____. It was right across the street from the house I grew up in. My parents were highly involved in the church community, and pastors will often come over for coffee before church services would start.
My first paid job was a church attendant at the church taking care of things for the service. It included being the secretary at the church council and since then I’ve been in around pastors all the time. Last year or two, I became an elder at our church and now has been a part of hiring ministry staff, consulting to ministry staff including pastors.
I also run a lot of mental health talks at some men’s conferences in all the church settings. One thing that’s become clear in the last five years is it’s predictable. Each time I do, one or more pastors will sneak in to the back row of my seminar and then right afterwards, or by email or phone later, will kind of sneak to get a few words one-on-one with me and they’re thirsty to better understand the mental health and also to better deal with the challenges that they’re facing.
And this has culminated into over the last couple of years; we’ve had a big rise in suicide among pastors. One of them was in Appleton, Wisconsin, which is just half an hour away or 45 minutes away from our own church. So it was a big loss to the community. Mental health issues seemed a big problem among pastors. They need help but they have a hard time finding it or asking for it because we have these unrealistic expectations of pastors.
We expect them to have it altogether. We expect the stress should not be getting through them. And very often, the pastors themselves often have this belief that everything emotional or mental is spiritual. If you believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior, which is the most important thing of all and is something I wish on everyone on this earth, yet just like coming to Christ, does not make you broken leg not broken.
Coming to Jesus Christ does not mean that past trauma or defects physically in your body and brain of stress and hearing about other people’s suffering all the time and having responsibilities that can easily take you 50, 60, 70, 80, or 90 hours a week, those things are still going to affect your body and still going to affect your mind whether you believe in Christ or not?
Andrea: So true, so true. You know, you have this little story on your brochure and website, do you mind sharing that little story with us? Do you know what I’m talking about?
Dr. Espen Klausen: Yes, yes. I was 6 years old or so you know how childhood memories go, it would take a couple of years. But it was one of these Sundays I talked about where couple of pastors were having coffee in our kitchen before service. Whatever reason, there was a line mask around and I put it on. And I walked into the kitchen and I looked up at the pastors peering through those poorly placed peeping holes in the mask and I go “Roarrrrr!” The pastor goes “Huhh huhh huhh, do you eat people?” And I said “Yes, and I eat pastors too!”
Very cute but the real moral of the story afterwards apart from one of the pastors immediately rewriting his sermon and finding a way to put it in because every pastor needs a “On my way to church this morning” to include in their sermon. Apart from that, the really important thing of that story is myself as much as most other people I believe right there. I really said the crux of the problem right there “Do I eat people?” “Yes, and pastors too.”
We often forget that pastors are people and pastors often forget this too. We sometimes have this sense that somehow the Holy Spirit has inoculated ministry staff from suffering the effects of life that affects everyone else and they’re people too, and yes lions would eat the pastors too. I’m not to talk with _____ about it but I think you can stretch that far.
Andrea: I love that story because it’s such a telling example of what you’re saying that everybody, I think most people, do have that sort of the pastors on the pedestal kind of perception. I remember having a conversation with a pastor myself and he was talking about how hard it is to have actual relationships with pretty much anybody but especially anybody in his congregation.
He was just kind of implementing how lonely it is and people just don’t really try to befriend them or that sort of thing, he and his wife. And I said “Yeah, but everybody is intimidated by you.” I mean, “They don’t think that you need it but they also feel like you are above them, so it’s pretty hard to want to do that.” He was like “Really, they think that?” I thought, “You don’t realize that they think that.”
We got something to talk about here because, yeah, I think it really is hard for parishioners from most people, the vast majority of people, to actually have good conversations with the pastor and feel like they’re not being judged or feel like they’re going to be scrutinized. And maybe that’s how people perceived being having a conversation with a psychologist too, I don’t know.
Dr. Espen Klausen: Yeah, and really the problem is just as much than in the in the other direction because now the pastor is sitting there. Even the person who invited the pastor over, the pastor is always sitting there “Am I there as a friend and I can relax and I can share my own internal struggles, or am I a pastor and a shepherd of one of my sheep?”
Actually, I made a point out of the following; I have friends that are pastors. But in order to really develop those friendships, there have been times when I’ve invited them, “Hey, let’s have coffee.” Or “Would you come over for games, I’ve invited a couple of guys too?”
I made it sometimes explicit in my text or an email and say “Hey, as a friend, I would like to hang out with more.” And then the invite because, otherwise, pastors usually don’t know what it is. Is this an excuse to get together to talk about something difficult? Is it, “They’re inviting me because I’m a leader in the church and important to them but I’m still on this pedestal?”
But that said, we will now getting in to know their characters which is a big struggle, I think, for many pastors. Our churches have been going through some changes over the years of who’s there or not and it felt bad for pastors with it following. Pastors don’t have exits. They don’t have a real exit strategy that would be palatable to most other people.
Most of us, if we have a job where it’s not going the right direction or we want to move in a different direction or we’re just so stressed, we need to find a less stress job. For a pastor to do that, they are usually not just giving up their job. They’re expected to promptly lead their church family. They’re also would be expected to lead most of their friends because most of their friends are going in that church family.
A pastor stepping down from pastoral job to something less stressful is often seen as a failure, even though it shouldn’t. Although many pastors do end up stepping down, because it is too stressful, but is this draconian expectation usually that when a pastor steps down from a church, he also leaves the community and go to a different _____.
Andrea: Right, and it make sense why that would be the case. I’m not sure what your take on at this but I can see why a church would say that a pastor would really need to stay away for a while because they’re naturally still looked at as the leader. So if you try to bring on another leader in, it could easily, I don’t know, I could see that going bad.
Dr. Espen Klausen: Yeah. There are good reasons for it. It’s important to do something like that so that you don’t split the church where there’s unclear leadership. So there are all good reasons for that which is actually even more so why it’s a problem for the pastor because it forces them into that situation.
A lot of pastors that I’ve talked with feel stuck or they’ve a hard time stepping down from certain things or stepping back from a friendship that’s not all that healthy. They’re a part of the congregation and if they step back from that and that is other repercussions.
But even more importantly, like we talked about earlier, the relationships are often one-sided. It’s hard for the pastor to find the same kind of ability to be open, admit mistakes, or talk about weaknesses. But really, even more importantly, to be real and express, having emotions and doubts, stress and anxiety and bouts of sadness; all of which are not weaknesses. All of which are not spiritual difficulties, all of which are what you would expect from any person who’s put to the amount of stress that the pastor is.
But again, we have this notion that all of those things, somehow, indicate spiritual weakness. So they often don’t feel the safety that they can. So a big reason for my seminars that I’m launching and starting to offer to churches to provide pastors with the education that, because it’s not just the pastors face this from others, the pastors tend to face this with themselves.
Andrea: Right, almost even in a bigger way. A lot of pressure we can put on ourselves.
Dr. Espen Klausen: Yes, and they feel guilty about feeling sad or they feel guilty about having anxiety because they often feel “Oh I’m not trusting the Lord enough,” or whatever phrasing they use not realizing that many of these things are per God’s design for us. He created us with a nervous system that acts through things in certain ways.
So the whole other podcasts is the learning and biological and brain rewiring benefits of a bout of depression when it’s happening the way it should, the importance of anxiety of how we cannot take away stress without taking away the positive side of stress. All of these are part of normal good mental health.
But when we don’t deal with them or we don’t cope with them or receive them as indicating a problem then really we’re really heading down a bad track. Now, I should say, I’m not going to imply here that this is the same for biologically based mental health issues. God has created us in amazing ways but in A full world, everything fails.
Depression in a normal way is supposed to serve a purpose. But in a broken biological full world, people’s brain can kick into a depression and stay in a depression when it serves absolutely no good functional purpose at all. Or can have an anxiety disorder where it’s “Hey, it’s our normal anxiety system that’s good; we’re supposed to have it. It’s by God’s design.” But if we live in a full world and you went haywire and someone has an anxiety disorder.
I’m not saying that all anxieties serve a good purpose, I’m saying when God originally designed us and before the full mess these things up, we all had good parts and we all have these when we’re supposed to and when they are good. But when we then over spiritualized them, we see them as problem rather than God’s design.
Andrea: I can personally relate. I mean, I certainly been through a situation where I really was over spiritualizing. I felt like I was such a bad like, “I should know this. I should figure this out.” And I’ve heard other people say this as well where they feel like they should be able to get over something. But then it turns out that they really just need to get more sleep or whatever physical thing they need to take care of. That’s a really important point.
Dr. Espen Klausen: One of my personal favorite examples is both mental and, to some extent, physical challenges that we have is we go through the day. They will cause physical reactions in our body. And some of those physical reactions, really, only have one way to get better and that’s to do something physical.
Our stress is formed in our brain. That’s the part of the brain that puts us into a stress mode. It’s the part that let us go go go to get things done which often pastors are under because they have 12 hours that’s supposed to get done in six hours and they’re really tired but it gets them going and it does fantastic thing, this cortisol and that’s the stress hormone in our brain.
But the way it leaves the brain and the way it leaves our blood supply is to get burn up in our muscles. And when we face stress through the day even if it they’re mental, our body is always ready for physical challenge even if the challenge we’re actually facing is emotional, mental, cognitive, social; our body still responds as if this is going to be a physical challenge. So our muscles tensed up, our breathing changes, and yes that cortisol level gets higher and stays in our bloodstream.
But the only thing that’s going to reset our muscles to a relaxed state or is going to get rid of the cortisol is physical activity, yet almost never do I encounter a pastor who’s exercising enough. And no amount of bible reading or trust in Christ is going to make your muscles relax when they’re tensed because of the challenges they’re gone through.
Believing in Christ and reading the bible and praying just not burn cortisol out of your bloodstream except in the situations, which I believe can happen, where God has ordained, this pastor is on a mission, he’s doing five seminars in three days, and is helping a lot of people. And I do believe there are times God helps people through and can supernaturally intervene in that way.
But we don’t plan our life for supernatural intervention in that sense. Pastors do have to learn how to deal with the reality of how God created our bodies to respond with stress, sadness, grief, or loss. Never mind something that I often share which is the challenges of vicarious trauma, that is listening to other people’s pain, listening to other people’s suffering, and hearing the sins and struggles of others. It does take a tool and it does require ways to deal with that.
Andrea: So what kind of suggestions do you have for pastors, for people who are supporting them to create a system or put something in place that is going to help them move through life, I guess, in their role as a pastor with better mental health? What kinds of things do you think the pastors should put in place?
Dr. Espen Klausen: OK, here are a few suggestions. If you want more; hey, there’s a six hour seminar I offer.
Andrea: Exactly.
Dr. Espen Klausen: But here are a few basics. I believe any pastors should have 20 minutes of heart pumping, out of breath exercise every day. If there’s someone that’s _____, it’s a basic recipe for handling stress. It goes back to what I’ve talked earlier. You don’t deal with that physical part; none of the other part is going to really help with it. It has to be taken care of.
A 20 minutes a day will not do much to physical health that one just helps the mental health. Physical health will require you to exercise beyond that but 20 minutes a day; I would recommend it for the stress. When I go to high stress times, I apply it myself.
It is important for pastors to have at least one mentor, one check in person that is outside of their church. They need to maintain some network or some people that they can go to so that they can dare to be weaker with that person or express what they may think is a weakness. Someone that they can talk with that is not identified as one of their flock as a shepherd. They need outside of that. It could be a pastor at a different church. It could be an old friend that’s also a believer from childhood. And hey, it can be a therapist.
I would highly recommend that but very often I run into, again, many of the pastors that have sneaked in to talk to for a few minutes, I said “You know it could be really good for you to see a therapist. It can be me or someone else.” And he’s like “No, I couldn’t do that.”
Andrea: Hmmm, I wonder why?
Dr. Espen Klausen: Again, because they often feel that if they see a therapist, either it means, they themselves had to admit things are difficult. Or they’re afraid other people might find out and they’re going to think that they shouldn’t be in leadership and are not in a good place spiritually. Because if you’re in a good place spiritually why would you need to see a therapist.
Andrea: So you’re saying that somebody who is in a church or helping lead the church but may not be the pastor should not be suspicious of a pastor who is getting therapy or going to therapy?
Dr. Espen Klausen: Absolutely, should not because any pastors or someone in major ministry in a church they’ll be under enough stress and _____ to understand the mental health and deal with so much vicarious trauma from what they hear and counsel others with that they really probably should be a therapist. A stand recommendation for therapist is to be in therapy, and I think most pastors in one capacity or another do serve us therapist in the form of pastoral council.
Andrea: Another action could possibly be spiritual direction?
Dr. Espen Klausen: Spiritual direction is something that can be helpful with that. Spiritual direction has its limitation when it comes to usually knowledge on mental health. But it can help with processing with someone else to some extent that vicarious trauma, it is great for being able to have some humility and reexamine yourself, so spiritual direction or getting spiritual director is certainly very helpful tool in that regard.
Another recommendation I have for pastors too, it’s going to take a little bit more explanation. Some of your listeners maybe familiar with the following concepts and others would not but that’s what’s called spiritual temperament. We all have different spiritual temperaments. You go online or you look of articles. There are books and articles of spiritual temperaments. But what it really boils down to is we each have different ways that we naturally connect with God in which we feel God’s presence or feel like we actually get into it with God.
There are a lot of different temperaments, but usually each church emphasizes one to maybe three of those different spiritual temperaments. I’ll give examples for spiritual temperaments, intellectual. It’s learning about God, studying the bible to learn more facts and more understanding, how does the trinity work, what are these doctrines, or what’s the nature of God on a very intellectual level.
For others, it’s enthusiasm. It’s getting into the worship, feeling God’s presence or a collective spiritual temperament which often off with enthusiastic, which is being with other believers and worshiping God together. For others, it’s ecstatic which is get rid of all sounds, get rid of all distractions, not study the bible except maybe take one verse and just read it, just spent with God in silence.
For others, it’s nationalist. It’s going out being in nature; see a part of us called general revelation which is which part of general revelation is to see the evidence of God in his creation. And I can go on and on and on about different spiritual temperaments.
But we usually connect better with God in which it’s very good for healing a lot of emotions and wounds when we can connect God on a good level, yet the church we’re in as ministry staff will not always cater to all of this. In particular the pastors of the church is likely going to hold you into one of the spiritual temperaments that that church does but that might not fit your way of worshiping.
I’ll give you an example out of discovery of my own. People that knew me or maybe I’ve referred to this in the podcast before, but a couple of years ago, I was struck by a patient. And I went through a long period recovery from a concussion. In that period of time, I could do almost nothing.
I could physically and mentally do anything, but just for the sake of my brain healing, I had to limit as much sound as possible. I should stay in a dark room. I should try not to think about stuff. I should not read anything. I should certainly not go on a screen, I just needed to do absolutely nothing.
And up until then, I’d always thought, I was an intellectual when it comes to my spiritual temperament is how I connected with God. Except during that time of recovery when I was forced to slow down and then spent my time with God in quiet with absolutely nothing, I started connecting with God in a way that I’ve never been before.
And by now I’m realizing because I never really had the opportunity or never made myself do it when it comes to connecting with God. Because I’m going to connect with God the best personally, not the way for everyone else but that’s my spiritual temperament, I have to clear everything else away.
That also means I’m not going to connect with God the most while I’m church unless we have a very specific service for that. Now, how does this go back to pastors? Well, if the pastor’s spiritual temperament does not match what the church does then they need to really carve out that time for themselves. The pastors have a hard time doing that because it doesn’t fit into their schedule.
If a pastor’s spiritual temperament is intellectual, they’ll prepare for the sermon by studying the bible or reading up about it. If they’re enthusiastic, they’ll usually engage themselves more in the worship team and leading of that. But if their spiritual temperament doesn’t quite match how services are done, they really need to get focused on finding it themselves, in their own life.
Now, I’m jumping here but we were talking what things pastors can do. Really, I recommend for any pastor pick up some good psychology books, seriously. But avoid the pop psychology, not about the pop psychology. Read more the foundational stuff that that’s not. Pick up a book of cognitive behavioral therapy. You’re not going to do cognitive behavioral therapy with yourself, but it’s probably going to teach you a lot about how our thoughts and feelings and behaviors work regardless of your condition. Pick up books to learn about how anxiety works. And in that sense, find one that’s not written from a biblical perspective.
I never read books on anxiety that kind of biblical but I read many books on anxiety. When I read about depression that’s not pop psychology but good science on how our brain works and good therapy for depression and stuff. It’s not kind of biblical. Actually, a lot of these things, the way I like to describe it, many of these things only need a slight squeeze and they would drift with spiritual truth.
Once you come to understand these things, the applicability and how it fits in with biblical truth and God’s plan then all there _____. But it’s important for pastors that they understand how anxiety works, how stress works, how sadness works and so many other conditions that just part of the way God has created us.
Andrea: Wow, there’s obviously so much here. I’m really fascinated by the spiritual temperaments. And like you said, there are probably a couple of more podcasts in here somewhere. But I really appreciate you sharing with us some of these insights about how pastors can really give more attention to their mental health and to taking care of themselves. And I think those of us who are supporting pastors or wanting to support them, we have a little bit better idea how to do that.
And Espen, when it comes to doing your workshop and working with any pastors, how can people get a hold of you for that?
Dr. Espen Klausen: I would direct people to my website. It’s very creatively named. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to name my website. It’s www.espenklausen.com which just happens to be my name.
Andrea: Yes, and we’ll certainly have that in the show notes. So if anybody is interested in hiring you to come and do a workshop for pastors or speaking at a conference or something like that and that’s where you can find you then.
Dr. Espen Klausen: Yeah and the contact information will be there. There are flyers up there for the specific _____. But I also there have _____ of other kinds of trainings and seminars that I can provide at the intersection of mental health and spiritual matters and how it applies to how we understand how our mind works.
Andrea: Awesome! Thank you so much. I’m glad that you’re doing that Espen. It made me really happy to see this new offering that you have and I know that you’re going to help a lot of people. So thank you!
Dr. Espen Klausen: Thank you so much and thank you for having me.
