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Key Differences Between Healthy and Unhealthy Influence

Episode 153

Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Today we’re extracting the key takeaways from the series we’ve done this summer about power dynamics and the abuse of power.

We started this series because we recognized how important it was to directly address the unhealthy imbalance of power and unhealthy use of power.

The first step is to be able to clearly recognize the abuse of power and then to stand up in the face of the abuse of power. In this episode, we’re covering why all of this matters, how to know when we should step in, how to step in without causing additional pain, and so much more.

 

Mentioned in this episode:

 

 

Find our Lifeline resources and information about the course here.

Transcript

Hey there!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Today, Rosanne and I are back.

Andrea:  Rosanne, you want to say hi?

Rosanne Moore:  Hi, everybody!  Good to be with you again today!

Andrea:  And today, we’re going to talk about the podcast series that we’ve done this summer, about power dynamics and the abuse of power, really.  You know, I think when we started talking about how important it was to look at this and to think about how people wanting influence and things, how it can turn into something that’s not healthy, we really wanted to make sure that we started to more directly address that unhealthy imbalance of power and unhealthy use of power.

So, we put together this series this summer in order to be able to, first, help us all recognize the abuse of power more clearly because it’s so easy to kind of go through life and not actually realize what’s going on when somebody is being taken advantage of or there are unhealthy dynamics within a group.

So, just number one, being able to recognize the abuse of power.  Number two, we really wanted to focus also the importance of standing up in the face of the abuse of power.  So, why does it matter?  When should we step in and how should we step in?  We don’t want to cause additional pain or make things worse for somebody or stir the pot when it doesn’t need to be stirred kind of thing.  So, how do we know when to really engage with it and when not to?  And then finally, number three, to be savvy, to know what to do – how to decide what to do about it.

So, Rosanne, when we were pulling together this episode, we decided to kind of give a summary of the podcast episodes that we had this summer.  First of all, would you take us through the series and just kind of give us an overarching view of what we covered?

Rosanne Moore:  Sure.  Well, in Episode 143, we talked about “Deceptive Myths About the Abuse of Power”.  There were many things we covered in that specific myth, but one of the main things we covered was that coercive control is the core issue of abuse in abuse of any kind.  That’s really the bottom-line issue is coercive control.  When we talked about “Deceptive Myths About Abuse of Power”, the second part – which was in Episode 145 – one of the things that we drew out of that is that abusive people are typically very likable.  And because they’re likable and because they have a good sense of what to offer, they are very effective at manipulating others.

So, it’s really important for us to have the humility to recognize that everybody, given the right set of circumstances, can be vulnerable to deception.  Then in 144, we talked with Dr. Lucretia Berry about racism and the work that she does in anti-racism education.  And I really appreciated that one of the things that she said is that when we’re looking at racist systems, it’s not an accusation.  It’s not about accusing, but it’s recognizing that the systems that we’re all part of have degrees of unhealthy components.  And so it’s just really important that we’re willing to play our part in dismantling the things that are not good and that we are proactive in being educated about what is not healthy so that we can equip ourselves and our children to do better.

Andrea:  That was really good, yeah.

Rosanne Moore:  It was.

Andrea:  And I appreciate that point that you’re bringing up about not being accusatory because I think that was an incredibly valuable piece of what she brought to that conversation was it’s not just about making people feel bad.  It’s about recognizing…  What system is completely healthy?

Rosanne Moore:  Right.  One of the things she talked about was it’s not saying everybody’s, you know, a horrible white supremacist.  It’s that all of us have ways we’ve been brought up in systems that contribute to viewpoints that aren’t necessarily true.  And so being willing to each of us recognize what have I been taught to believe that may not be an accurate perception doesn’t mean I view people disrespectfully….

Andrea:  Or that I am a bad person in general.

Rosanne Moore:  Right, right.  It may just mean that I have a wrong perception of what the reality of somebody else’s experience is.  And so, having the humility to be willing to learn about that is really important.

Andrea:  Mhm, and then onto 146.

Rosanne Moore:   Yes.  So, 146 was Naghmeh Panahi.  She talked about “Finding Her True Voice After Domestic Violence”. And a couple things that stood out from her episode, I think, were that it’s so typical – not just in domestic violence situations, although it’s certainly is common there – but in general, society tends to blame victims of abusive situations.  The burden is put on the victim.  And so, it’s really vital for us not to remain silent, but to speak out and act on the behalf of the oppressed instead of adding to the burden they’re already under and just saying, “Well, they should just be able to get themselves out of it.”  Recognizing that there are so many hurdles and that trauma plays a role in the burden that they’re dealing with.  And so, there’s a real need for people to be proactive in helping those who are being oppressed for whatever reason.

Andrea:  Yeah.  I know that people really loved hearing her story because it was such national and international news.

Rosanne Moore:  Sure.

Andrea:  Her husband having been imprisoned in Iran for his faith, and she spent three years trying to get him freed from that situation.  But even in the midst of that, she was experiencing abuse from him because they’d be on the phone, and he would say horrible things to her and try to control her and try to diminish her in her thoughts about who she is and that sort of thing.  There was so much to just the story itself that I really hope that, as a listener, you’ll go back and listen to that if you haven’t heard it yet.  That story is really compelling.  But then she made so many really good points just like you were saying, Rosanne.

Rosanne Moore:  Yes.  And she talked too about some of her colleagues and the twists and turns that their stories took.  And one of the comments that she made… because she deals a lot not only with domestic violence but with the systems that women internationally find themselves in that are oppressive, religious persecution, and the systems’ customs, social customs in other countries that are very oppressive.  One of the things that she brought out was that all of that is diminishing, but what’s hardest is when it is an intimate partner, it’s the person that you expect to love and care for you.  And everybody else thinks everything’s fine, and you’re living in this private hell that others don’t see.

Andrea:  Which was just so exemplified and like, magnified by her situation where she was in the public eye and was fighting for her husband.  And so to anybody that was an onlooker, you would just think that things were great with their marriage.

Rosanne Moore:  Right.

Andrea:  But that just wasn’t the case.  I remember one of the things that she said was just how she so wanted to be a good wife and she was trying to figure out how.  “How can I be a good wife?  I’m obviously not doing it right because he’s still mad at me.  I’m doing all the things for him, but he’s still mad at me.  He still treats me poorly,” and that sort of thing.  So, that was really, really compelling too.  And then in Episode 147…

Rosanne Moore:  Right.  We had Dr. Debra Wingfield talking about “Why We Need to Understand Trauma and Coercive Control”.  And she really brought a lot to the table in terms of the long-term effects of trauma.  We can often think that, “Okay, if somebody’s had a bad experience, but they’re out of it now, they should just be able to be fine and go on with their life.”  Or you know, “The court system will handle things,” and there’s not the recognition that often the family court system has a lack of appropriate training so that they’re functioning under all these social myths that general society is as well.

But because of the power that they wield, they’re actually codifying injustice instead of bringing justice, and that the impact of that is lifelong for women and children in particular.  That’s where the failure tends to fall most heavily is on the women and children in the court system.  And so, that was really important too, of realizing it’s the injustice… failing to bring justice in a situation like that has much larger social ramifications, and they’re long-term.

Andrea:  Mhm.  Yeah.  Gosh, you know, one of the things that came to my mind when you were sharing that, Rosanne, was just how common it is for people to… you know, we want to believe that the people who are in these positions of power are going to take care of us.   Like, “Well, it got to the courts, so I can relax because they know what they’re doing and they understand my situation,” or “They understand my friend’s situation,” or whatever it might be.  Or going to a pastor – we find that in the next episode that we’ll talk about here – but even going to a pastor or even some counselors and thinking, “They should know exactly how to help me,” or a doctor, you know.  So many different kinds of people who we go to for help, but we don’t recognize their limitations.  And sometimes they don’t recognize their limitations.

Rosanne Moore:  That’s when they’re most dangerous…

Andrea:  Right.  It’s so sad.

Rosanne Moore:  …is when they don’t recognize their limitations.

Andrea:  Right.  But Debra is doing some education and wants to do more education of the court system itself.  So, if the people involved in the court system could have a better understanding of trauma and those dynamics of coercive control, maybe then they would have what they needed to make those, you know, decisions that they need to make.

Rosanne Moore:  Right.  And another thing that Debra brought out too that she mentioned in her episode that I thought was really important – because we are looking at various systems – is that healthy parenting involves allowing a child to experience natural consequences of decisions.  It’s not about manipulating, controlling, owning the child.  You know, so I think a lot of times, wrong views of influence or unhealthy control can get started very early in our families of origin.

I don’t know about you, Andrea, but I know when I’m tired and I’m stressed, I don’t want to take the time with my kids to always engage in healthy ways.  Sometimes I’m just like… I can use shame or I can use my own frustration to pressure them to do what I want instead of training them or engaging them in healthy ways.  And that’s something that I’ve had to go back and apologize to them many times for, of allowing my frustration with a situation to cause me to lean on them instead of teaching them, kind of discipling them, if you will, mentoring them in a healthy way.

Andrea:  Oh my goodness.  I mean, when I finished this interview – like the day that I actually recorded the interview with her – I ended up… this was the first time that I gathered with just a few friends after COVID started and everything, and we gathered in my friend’s backyard.  And we’re talking and I was just feeling the weight of it and how big of a deal coercive control and understanding what coercive control is and the difference between that and what you just described – which was the natural consequences – how big of a deal that was.  I just felt the weight of it so hard and I was just telling my friends, I was like, “You guys, we all have to have a better idea of what coercive control is.”  And just like you said, it’s so easy with kids.  I mean, you know, you grow up with, “Children should be seen and not heard.”  That’s changed a lot over the years, but we’ve been kind of like, “The child should go do what I tell them to do right now without asking.”  I heard that a lot from parents who were parenting and feeling like they should be making their child obey without delay.

Rosanne Moore:  You know, I was thinking about that today, the whole idea of teaching children to unquestioningly obey instead of relationally obey.  It’s a very different paradigm.  If you treat the child as an adversary and control as a sum-zero game, then there’s always a winner or loser and you’re not connecting with your child.  And it’s dangerous too because it doesn’t teach them how to evaluate what healthy power looks like, what healthy authority looks like.  And so it can actually put them in dangerous situations if they’re used to unquestioning obedience.

Andrea:  I think that’s a perfect segue into 148.

Rosanne Moore:   Yes, because in 148, we had Pastor Jimmy Hinton on here talking about “How to Spot a Child Abuser Hiding in Plain Sight”.  And he had the heartbreaking experience of discovering that his own father was a pedophile who had many, many victims, including members of his own family.  And so, one of the things that Jimmy emphasized was that when allegations of abuse are brought forward, it is not our job to investigate.  It is our job to take those allegations and report them immediately to trained authorities who have been taught how to carry out an investigation appropriately. 

I think that too often it’s easy to think of, “Well, the person is innocent until proven guilty.”  That’s actually a misquote – it’s presumed innocent until proven guilty – but we’re not the court of law.  There are authorities that are trained to carry out investigations like that.  And so, it was really valuable to hear Jimmy’s perspective.

Andrea:  Yeah.  Yeah, you even brought that quote up in Episode 149.  I don’t want to go to Episode 149 yet, but when you started to talk about how to support somebody, one of the main things that you said was very similar, which was, “It’s not your place to determine whether or not this person’s accusations are credible.”  And a lot of times when people come with accusations of abuse to a friend or family member, that family member thinks, “Well, I need to go check with that person and make sure, you know, ‘Was that what you meant by this?’”  And I think it similarly came up with this conversation with Jimmy that that is not our place.  And yet that’s how a lot of people feel.  A lot of people feel like they are responsible to that other person as well, especially if they have a relationship with them because they know it could tarnish their reputation.  They know that there’s a lot at stake, and yet we’re not trained to do that.

Rosanne Moore:  And part of it, too, is nobody wants to believe that they’ve been deceived, you know.

Andrea:  Oh, absolutely.

Rosanne Moore:  And so, I think that’s the other knee-jerk reaction is like, “Oh, if these allegations were true, I would know that about this person.  I would have recognized that there was a problem.”  And Jimmy’s point was this was the father that he had adored and looked up to and yet, when the allegation was made, he realized that the person coming forward, it cost them a great deal.  They had nothing to gain and everything to lose by coming forward.  And so he immediately took it to the authorities.  I think every parent should… because we all want to have our children be safe.

And one of the things that Jimmy brought out was that a lot of the things that are done that we think are keeping our children safe are actually not highly effective.  He gave some really good proactive tips about how to keep our kids safe.

Andrea:  He did.

Rosanne Moore:  So, every parent, if you didn’t listen to that episode and you have children or grandchildren, definitely check that one out.

Andrea:  Or if you teach children…

Rosanne Moore:  Right.  Work with them in any way, yeah.

Andrea:  Yeah.  You know, people get trained – teachers and whatnot – they get trained in how to handle abuse accusations or when they suspect abuse, but they don’t get trained in what Jimmy talks about, which is how to spot somebody who might be an abuser.

Rosanne Moore:  Right, how to prevent it.

Andrea:  How to see them ahead of time so that you can see that, “Oh, this person is exemplifying behaviors, that are consistent with somebody who wants to abuse a child.”

Rosanne Moore:  Right.  Yeah, because after the abuse is done, I mean, you want to handle it well, but the damage has already been done.  You want to prevent it if you can.

Andrea:  Yeah, absolutely.  And there were so many things about, again, his story, and it was a really compelling conversation as well.

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah.  So that brings us to 149, and we’ve touched on it a little bit.  We did an episode where you talked with me about “How to Support Someone in an Abusive Relationship”, what can be done if you know that somebody is struggling in an abusive relationship?  How do you help them in a way that’s truly helpful?  So, one of the things we talked about was knowing the limits of your expertise, making sure you get your own ego out of the way so that that’s not clouding your vision.  And the other big thing, I think, we talked about was that that being a good listener so that you can empower the other person instead of trying to rush in and be the hero to take their choices away.  That’s not something you want to do.  You want to empower their choices instead of make the decisions for them.

Andrea:  Yeah.  You know, Rosanne, I think this is a really good time for me to bring up Lifeline because this idea of trying to support somebody in an abusive relationship…  Lifeline – the course that you created – was really created to help people, women in particular, who are in an abusive relationship, but then to help the people that love them to know how to help them best.

And so, you talk about it here in this episode, but then you dive so deep into it in Lifeline in a way that…  I just want to say from the perspective of somebody who listened to the entire thing – because I interviewed you for the Lifeline course – from my perspective of somebody who hasn’t been in an abusive relationship but wants to be supportive to other people, I just want to say that going through all of that material is so incredibly eye-opening and heart-opening, I think, too.

And it made me so much more aware of what I could do or what I shouldn’t do to the ends that you were just describing here; like, you know, not taking over and being the hero for that person, but how to empower them to be able to make their own decisions and using even some of the course material that you created in order to do that.  I just think… Oh man, it was so good.

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah, and I created Lifeline because when I went into the court system, I just thought if I told the truth and presented evidence that I was telling the truth, that I would be believed and I would be taken care of.  And to have to deal with navigating the court system, which was a very different experience than what I had imagined…  There was not a deep devotion in the court system to uncovering the truth, or to protecting me or my children.

And so, I had to learn how to communicate and what the roles of the various people in the court system were.  I was being given all of these decisions that I had to make at a point when I was tremendously traumatized still.  And so, trying to think through those decisions and make long-term decisions – things that were going to impact things for me and my kids for long-term – while I was in the middle of all this emotional upheaval was really difficult.

So, the whole reason Lifeline was created was to take away some of that burden, to help women think through those decisions and not just be inundated with them.  Because you do, you feel like you’re drowning under this mound of paperwork.  And while I found some really good resources – and that’s part of our giveaway, is our resource list – I found some good resources that would help with dealing with the psychological aspects of leaving an abusive relationship.  I didn’t find a lot of practical decision making ones, and so that was why that course was really important for me to be able to share with others.

Andrea:  And you also have shared all of that information before on a very personal level with many women that you’ve walked through this with, and so it’s not like you just went through it and you just created it.  It’s been eight years since your divorce, and you are in a position now where you’ve walked through this situation with many people.  And so, I think that’s important for people to know.  And as you’re continuing to do advocacy work for laws that are going to be more understanding of trauma, and just bringing awareness to that piece of it…

I guess I want people to know… I want you to know, listener, that if you or someone you know has experienced… maybe you’re in an unhealthy relationship and you’re wondering whether or not this might be coercive control, first of all, you can go to our episodes here that we were talking about – particularly 143 and 145, and then this one, 149.  But then also the whole first module of the course is just available for you if you contact us; text the number 44222, text VOILIFELINE.  So, again, the number would be that you call or that you send the text to would be 44222, and then VOILIFELINE, and that will give you access to the things that are just readily available for you.

And then we do have a course that continues – because it’s a lot of information – to help somebody through the process.  So, if you decide that you would like to continue that process, you can learn more about it there.  It’s really highly valuable.  Rosanne, thank you so much for all the work and really, the emotional toll that it took.  It cost you a lot to put it together, and I’m grateful that you did.

Rosanne Moore:  Definitely left it all on the court working on that, yeah.  But you know, as you said, I’ve done this with enough women, and we wanted something that was going to be really broader than my own personal experience that would help women make decisions even if their circumstances were very different from mine.  And so, we tried to cover a broad range of things.

And yeah, whether, if the listener is herself in an abusive situation or maybe is concerned about a friend, check out those resources because there’s a whole lot there for you to be able to just evaluate.  And then if you do decide to get the course as well, to purchase the rest of it, don’t plan to do it all at once.  There’s a lot of pieces, and you can do it over time.  It’s something that you can unfold as you’re able to do.  So, yeah, we just want to provide that for you so that you can take things apart piece by piece over time instead of just drowning in paperwork.

Andrea:  Okay, so moving right along to narcissists.

Rosanne Moore:  That’s a good segue.  Oh yeah, 150, we talked about “When Narcissism Comes to Your Organization”.  And Dr. Chuck DeGroat had just written a book about narcissism specifically in church organizations.  A couple of things I thought that were real standouts from that interview… and I loved listening to you, Andrea, and to that conversation that you had.  You asked some really, really good questions, and I think he really enjoyed being able to engage as deeply as he did.  So, we’re going to touch on a few things, but there’s a lot in that.

Andrea:  It was packed.

Rosanne Moore:  It was.  So, if you didn’t hear it, go back and listen to it.  It’s a really good one.  A couple things that he pointed out, though, is that character matters more than giftedness, charisma, or accomplishments.  That it’s really easy sometimes to let somebody’s charm or their giftedness or their apparent accomplishments make you give them a pass for bad behavior, but over the long haul, that’s going to be more damaging to your organization.  Character does make a difference.  And that was one of the things that kind of stood out to me in what he was sharing.  Another was that there is healthy confidence.

We go back to the original question we talked about, “What is healthy influence versus unhealthy influence?”  Healthy confidence is going to empower us to serve others with humility and curiosity, but on the other end of the spectrum, narcissism is fueled by manipulation and self-serving behavior.  So, just as there’s good and bad influence, there’s healthy confidence and then there’s self-obsession.  So that was a really good episode.

Andrea:  Yeah.  I think that was a conversation I’d been waiting to have for probably two years since I really started looking into narcissism.  I’d been wanting to talk to somebody about this, and the opportunity to talk to Dr. DeGroat was just a real honor.  And he shared so much information; in particular, also, about not just the individual and how this is hard for us to recognize, but then also why it’s so hard for a community, an organization to admit that that’s been a problem.  And maybe once a person leaves… they leave, but then it leaves behind still a system that is used to the way that they function.  So, they continue to function in ways that are unhealthy.

And so, I think one of the things that I really wanted to make sure we covered – and he, you know, certainly is all about this – which is just once the person leaves you still need to work on healing.  And whether that’d be an individual or in a system, I mean, there’s still a lot of work to be done to look at one’s self, to reflect, to say, “Is this really how we wanna be?  Is this really healthy?”  It just goes back to that same issue that we keep bringing up, “Let’s look at this.  Is this healthy?  Is it not?  Are we willing to admit it when we’re not and when we’re doing things that are contributing to something that’s unhealthy?”  It was incredibly important, and I’m really glad that we did that. 

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah, it was very good.  And our next one – kind of still along those lines – of what does institutional health and leadership look like.  Episode 151 was with Dr. Neil Schnoor; “Institutional Health and Leadership in Difficult Times”, what does that look like?  One of the things that he brought out was that in order to have healthy checks and balances in an organization, there have to be ways to report problems or potential problems without fear of reprisal.  So, you can’t just say, “Oh, we’re gonna have a great, healthy organization,” and not have any system where, when things get off track, it can be talked about without there being any punishment for the whistleblower.

Andrea:  Yeah, that was a really key point.

Rosanne Moore:   Yes, yes.  And then he talked about taking the time to listen and really understand the variety of needs in departments, and the perspective of those in roles that are different from your own, and to value the different areas of expertise that others bring.  And I thought all of that was really, really valuable.

Andrea:  Yeah, and Dr. Schnoor, he is the chief of staff to the president at California State University, Long Beach.  He helps make sure things get done and that they get done well.  And I actually had him for a professor when I was in college doing a music education degree, but he talked a lot about leadership.  He was always about leadership.  So, I followed him through the years.   He was actually on the podcast a couple of years ago, actually… well, three years ago, I think, and we talked a lot about this dynamic of power.

And so the perspective that he brings is one of, you know, no matter how high up you are in the organization, no matter how much power you kind of have, it is vital that you listen, that you care, that you really take on the perspective of other people and appreciate what they have to bring.  So, there’s a humbleness there that if it’s not there, you’re going to miss out on a lot of things that could lead to unhealthy things.

Rosanne Moore:  And I think one of the things that really caught my attention about that episode was the point he made that it’s easy if somebody else is not good at what you’re good at to think less of them and if they’re struggling in an area that it’s kind of your expertise.  Whereas, if you were trying to do their expertise, you would be struggling just as much you know.  We can’t all be good at everything, and that somebody is not less… just the importance of valuing what each person brings to the team.  I thought that was a really good point that he made.

And that kind of leads into our next one which is looking at how things are interconnected.  Dr. Jason Kanz talked about “Being a Voice for Wholeness and Human Flourishing” in Episode 152.  He talked about how it is important to recognize our interconnectedness and interdependence.  If we don’t recognize the reality of that, then we don’t really recognize how important it is for us to be healthy ourselves because our lack of health will impact the system as a whole.

He also talked about how our lack of wholeness often involves wearing masks instead of being authentic and causing us to show up differently with different people, instead of being consistent with all of our relationships.  And that fragmentation can cause us to harm others without even realizing that we’re doing that, that our internal disconnection destroys curiosity and how that curiosity is vital for connection.

Andrea:  Yeah.  He really helped us, I think, to kind of bring it back to ourselves instead of, you know…  We had an opportunity to look at abuse and what those dynamics look like, what’s coercive control, and how do we handle that in a community or in an organization, and then in Jason’s episode, he brought it back to, “But what about you?  How healthy are you?”  Because if we’re not healthy, if we’re really struggling with something and we’re needy in some way, or we’re self-serving and we feel like we have to have power or whatever it might be, we’re going to end up affecting everybody else around us with that negativity.

Rosanne Moore:  Or as you’ve often pointed out, you know, when people are angry, often what’s the sad underneath the anger?  What’s the thing that they’re disconnected from in themselves that they’re really grieving but that comes out of them as anger?  So not being self-aware about our fear or about our sadness or things like that can actually cause us to behave in ways that are going to break connection with other people. 

Andrea:  Mhm.  So, yeah, thank you so much for summarizing for us, Rosanne.  You know, I really hope that everybody will listen to all of these.  I know that in the past, Rosanne, we’ve been kind of trying to find our voice, the things that we really care about as a company and for the podcast – you know, what exactly are we trying to accomplish and what are we trying to share – and this gets to the heart of it.  Like, this is foundational to what we hope to accomplish in the world, which is to help people really connect their gifts with the need in the world and have that influence, but have it in a healthy way.

I mean, really, one of the problems that we see is that people are exerting this kind of influence.  If you’re using coercive control to get somebody to do something, you might get them to comply with you.  You might get them to do what you tell them to do, but then when they walk out the door, they may not ever care about it again.  They may nod when you’re in the room and say “Sure, I’ll do that.”  And then when you walk out, they decide not to.  So, the kind of control, the kind of emotional investment that you get out of others when you’re trying to influence in this way is not what you actually want.

Rosanne Moore:  It’s so true.  And in the weeks ahead, we have some new offerings that we want to share to talk about what we’re doing as a business and the help that we can give our listeners.  One of the big things is, “How do you get healthy buy-in?”  That’s one of the things that you address a lot, Andrea.  And we’ve talked some too about just why you’re passionate about this, how you started looking at this, and why influence matters, and what does it look like to have healthy influence.  And I know our listeners are going to benefit from hearing more about why this has been something percolating in you for a long time, and really, what helps you be a good guide for others in learning how to build teams that are working collaboratively.

Andrea:  Mhm.  So, I’m excited.  I’m excited about the direction that we’re headed.  I’m excited that we have this foundation kind of beneath us as we move forward because there’s so much here that I think anybody that wants to take on leadership, that you care about other people and you want to help them.  I mean, that’s essentially what it comes down to.  You want to help people or you have a mission of some kind, then these are the kinds of things that we want to be able to help you address so that you know about them so that you know how to handle them.

So, thank you for this summary, Rosanne.  It’s been fun to kind of go back and think through these episodes and just the significant contribution they make, I think, to any of us that are wanting to make a difference in the world.  So, again, if you’re interested in learning more about Lifeline and perhaps even getting those resources that are there and available to somebody who is in an abusive relationship, please text VOILIFELINE to 44222 and visit us at our website voiceofinfluence.net.  We are excited to continue with you into the future.

Your voice matters, and you can make it matter more!

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When Narcissism Comes to Your Organization with Dr. Chuck DeGroat

Episode 150

Dr Chuck DeGroat Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Dr. Chuck DeGroat is Professor of Counseling and Christian Spirituality at Western Theological Seminary Holland MI, and Co-Founder and a Senior Fellow at Newbigin House of Studies, San Francisco. He is a licensed therapist, author, retreat leader, and spiritual director. Chuck has been married to Sara for 25 years and has two daughters. Chuck is also the author of the new book, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse.

Today we’re tackling the subject of narcissism, the systems that allow it, and how to deal with it. This conversation is applicable to organizations of all kinds but we take a deeper look at how it shows up in churches specifically, and in organizations that have a similar structure and culture. I think you’re going to find this to be an incredibly rich conversation.

In this episode, Chuck shares how it feels to be on the other side of a narcissist, how to recognize the narcissistic bite, vulnerability versus fauxnerability, what happens when we are complicit with a narcissistic leader, why we protect people in power, how to use our voice even though it may feel narcissistic, and so much more.

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Transcript

People of influence know that their voice matters, and they work to make it matter more.  This is Andrea Wenburg, and you’re listening to the Voice of Influence podcast.

All right, we’re tackling the subject of narcissism today.  What’s really interesting about this conversation is that we’re talking about not just narcissism itself, but also systems that allow narcissism, that are susceptible to narcissism, and how to deal with it.  There is much going on in this conversation.

The person who is with me here today is Dr. Chuck DeGroat.  He is a Professor of Counseling in Christian Spirituality at Western Theological Seminary, and co-founder and a Senior Fellow at Newbigin House of Studies, San Francisco.  He is a licensed therapist, an author, retreat leader, and spiritual director.  Chuck has been married to Sara for twenty-five years and has two daughters.  He has a new book out called When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse.

This conversation is certainly applicable to organizations of all kinds.  But we do talk about some of what goes on in churches, specifically, and in organizations that have that kind of a structure.  I think that you’re going to find this an incredibly rich conversation because we tackled a lot.  We talked about what narcissism is, how you know if you’re sort of on the other side of narcissism.  He talks about the narcissistic bite and fauxnerability – which is a fake sort of vulnerability – different characteristics that people who have narcissism… those characteristics that they display, and what happens when we are complicit with somebody who is a narcissistic leader.

So, why do we do that?  Why do we like how we feel around that person?  And why do we protect other people in power?  There is so much here.  We discuss whether or not it’s possible for a narcissistic to change and how people can kind of determine whether or not their impulse to lead, to have influence, to be up on stage, to have their podcast… whether or not that is narcissistic, and whether or not we need to be concerned about that or how we handle that without completely refusing to use our voice.

So, how do we use our voice even though it may feel like, “Could it be narcissistic?”  These are really, really interesting things that we talk about in this conversation, and I think that you’re going to get a lot out of it.  I highly recommend that you check out Dr. DeGroat’s book, When Narcissism Comes to Church.

Here’s my interview with Dr. Chuck DeGroat:

Andrea:  Chuck DeGroat, it is great to have you on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Thank you so much.  It’s good to be with you.

Andrea:  You have just written a book that’s just been published When Narcissism Comes to Church:  Healing your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse.  This is such an important topic.  What led you to write this particular book?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, that’s a good question.  The safer version of that story really goes back to the work that I’ve done over the last fifteen years or so.  I do a lot of psychological testing for people who are pastors and ministry leaders and church planters and organizational leaders.  And what we’ve seen, particularly, in the church – and I know your audience is broader than that – but what we’ve seen, sadly, in the church is that a significant majority of people going into ministry test in what we call the Cluster B, or the DSM-5 calls the Cluster B personality disorders, which feature narcissistic tendencies.

And so that’s a primary reason to sort of diagnose and explain why that is, particularly in church and ministry contexts.  The larger reason is actually more personal.  I mean, it goes back to my days in seminary in the mid-1990s, in my own arrogance, in my own certainty, in my own sense of being God’s gift to ministry, and recognizing that that was painful for people in my life and for my wife and doing my own work in counseling.  And so that’s been really important.

Andrea:  Let’s start with defining narcissism, though.  Our audience is somewhat familiar with the term, but would you do that for us?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yes.  So, when we think about narcissism, just to kind of click off a few characteristics, we often think of the classic grandiosity.  Alongside of that, there’s often a kind of interpersonal attention-seeking that goes along.  We, more often than not, see that those who are diagnosably narcissistic show very little empathy.  In other words, they’re really just not able to connect with the basic needs and emotions of another person.  And then often, because they relate in these ways, there are impairments in their relationships and in their work.  And so, there are ripple effects within organizations, churches, and so forth.

But one of the things I say is that might be kind of a classic caricature of narcissism, but it is more complicated than that.  But yeah, more often than not, we see this in attention-seeking, grandiosity, lack of empathy, and impairments in relationships.

Andrea:  And what does that look like when you’re on the other side of that coin when you’re the person who is experiencing the narcissism?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Mhm.  It’s crazymaking.  It can be really confusing because – and I’ve been under narcissistic leaders and I’ve experienced narcissism in organizations – oftentimes, you’re drawn to a narcissistic leader.  He or she may be inspirational, influential in your life, they may cast vision that is exciting and impactful.  And yet when you experience what I call narcissism’s bite, you will experience it as you’ll feel kind of crazy.  You’ll wonder, “Is it me or is it that person?”  “Maybe it’s me, maybe I’m missing something.”  “Maybe I did something wrong.  After all, he’s so powerful and everyone loves him.  It’s got to be me.”

Andrea:  Yes.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  So, you second-guess your own reality often.

Andrea:  Narcissism’s bite you said?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Mhm.

Andrea:  What does that tend to look like?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, it can be a little tiny bite sometimes and it can be a big bite.  Oftentimes with the smaller bites, it looks like what we call emotional abuse or spiritual abuse.  These are like tiny, little knife blows over the course of many years.  It might be a cutting kind of remark or critique.  It might be pulling the rug out from under you within a project.  It might be sort of whispering in the ear of a colleague about how you’re not doing your job.  It might be any of those kinds of things, but eventually, when it comes back to you, it’s kind of like, “Ouch, that hurt!  I thought I was doing well.  I thought that he liked me.”  And so the bite can be something of a confusing ouch, in which you say to yourself, “I’m just not sure it happened.  I thought I was playing by the rules.”

Andrea:  And then you just feel completely confused about what’s going on.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, yeah.

Andrea:  The term gaslighting comes to mind.  So is that how you would define gaslighting or what is that?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, I think so.  I think that phenomenon of gaslighting is, it’s a word that we’re using or a descriptor that we’re using more and more to put words around that experience of feeling crazy and confused.  I remember years ago when I was under the leadership of a narcissist.  This was someone who’s well respected and a number of important circles had raised lots of money, had influence.  And I remember that there were these ouch moments, you know, what I described as the narcissistic bite, right?  There are these moments like this where it was kind of like, “Ouch, that hurt,” or “Why did he say that to me?” or “Is he not confident in my abilities?”

But more often than not, I had this sense of, “It’s got to be me.  There’s got to be something wrong with me.”  And there would actually be times where he’d come to me and he’d say, “Chuck, I’m just not sure what’s going on with you.  You’re not as sharp as you used to be,” or “You’re not as engaged,” or “Last week, when you got up in church and you gave that announcement, you weren’t as charismatic as you usually are.”  And, so those of us on the other end of this gaslighting that you make mention of feel as if we’re going crazy.

Andrea:  Right.  As though you’re not sure what your reality really is anymore.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Mhm.  That’s a really good way of putting it.  And I think there are times where we find ourselves in that space, and I’ve seen people leave.  My primary context is more like ministry, Christian organizations, and things like that.  And I’ve seen people leave ministry, leave pastoring, leave organizations with their tail tucked between their legs, questioning their own reality until they get them in with a good therapist and begin to identify like, “Oh, it wasn’t me.  Actually, I was doing as well as I could have, but I experienced the bite of a narcissist.”

Andrea:  Okay.  That’s so important.  So, now, what does somebody do when they’re in that situation?  Maybe they have experienced the bite of the narcissist.  How do they heal from that? Are there any particular steps that people take or that you just find a good therapist?  What are some of the things that you suggest?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.  Yeah, that’s a great question.  And really it does begin by defining reality.  As you mentioned, they begin to question reality, right?  And so, you’ve got to find a space, a place, a person in which you begin to define reality rightly, and, oftentimes, that’s a therapist.  I’ll often say to people who call me, write me say, “Hey, I think I’m in a narcissistic organization with a narcissistic pastor.  Do I confront him?”  And I’ll often say, “No, don’t do that at all.  Actually, step back, and take care of yourself first.  Define reality, get clear on what’s going on.  Begin to tend to your own wounds, and heal your own wounds, and then make that decision as to whether or not you want to engage, but only after doing some clarifying work in therapy.”

And, oftentimes, as a therapist, when I’m doing this work with someone, it’s just not one session, it’ll often be weeks and sometimes months before they can begin to get clear on, “Oh, this actually happened to me.  And, now, I’m beginning to connect the dots and I’m beginning to realize I’ve been in this…”  Like, I was talking to someone earlier today who was in an organization with a narcissistic leader for thirty years, and it took twenty-six years to wake up to it.  And so this can take a long while.

Andrea:  And I would imagine that tending to your own wounds… like, you have to first recognize what the wounds are, and I suppose that’s part of that defining reality and seeing what it is.  I’ve certainly seen it happen where people don’t even realize that they are hurt, that they’ve been hurt until they start to see it in their body, and in the way they react to other people.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, that’s right.  And they don’t realize it even in their body.  And so I’ll ask them, “So, how do you feel?”  Or “How do you experience this in your body?”  And they’ll say, “I feel okay, fine.”  And I’ll say, “Well, you got to give me a little more than that.”  And it’ll take a while for them to actually get in tune.  So, I have to ask specific questions like, “What about your sleep? Has your sleep been disrupted?”  “I don’t sleep at all.  I don’t sleep well at all.  I’m constantly ruminating on stuff at work.”  Or “I’ve had this pain in my back for like the last five years, and it just doesn’t go away.”  Or “I’m dealing with heartburn and acid reflux all the time over the last three or four years since I’ve been working in this organization.”  “I’m constantly down,” or “I’m constantly anxious.”  And, yeah, what is amazing is that at the outset, people often can’t identify those feelings or those symptoms.  They’re so disconnected because they’ve been in survival mode for so long.

Andrea:  Right.  And they’re not even sure that… like we were talking about before, they’re not sure what their reality is.  So, I can see why it would be super helpful to have other people’s perspective if it’s a really good, you know, therapist or even friends, as well, to be able to say, “No, you’re not crazy.  You are normal.  They’re not normal.”

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, just to reflect back and say, “That doesn’t sound healthy.  Let’s have a conversation.”  Yeah, definitely.

Andrea:  Okay.  So, it seems like we tend to exempt people who are in leadership who tend to be really talented and charismatic, attracting people to the cause, that sort of thing…  We tend to exempt those people from accountability when it comes to the narcissistic bite, if you will.  I mean, that’s what I see.  Is that what you see, and why do we do that?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  I think that that’s a great observation, and I think you’re right.  In large part, we protect those in power and people in power protect those in power.  When I tell stories, by the way, I always kind of conflate different stories as to kind of conceal the identities, right?

Andrea:  Sure.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  A few years ago, in a situation in which a prominent pastor was revealed to be abusive, and it stunned me because I knew the community and I knew some of the people involved.  But I knew that some of the people involved, who I had some love for and respect for, that they helped cover it up and protect this person.  And I knew them well enough to know that, like, that’s not…  At their core, I know that these are good human beings, and yet, when you get into those positions of power, and you become self-protective, and you develop relationships of loyalty, you call in favors, right?  And so, “We do exempt this person because, you know, he’s had so much of an impact.  He has born lots of fruit in his ministry, or you know, he’s been so successful in his organization.”

And so, we don’t want to go after those folks, you know, because it seems like they’ve done a good job.  This is where we have to, again, name reality.  We have to name the pain.  Where there is narcissism, there’s always a debris field of abuse: spiritual abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse at times.  So, this is where we need to name reality and tell the truth about what’s really going on and the impact.  And I remember, going back to that story a few years ago, as I talked to some of those people involved and said, “But do you realize the debris field?”  And as they recognized the debris field, there was this sense of profound shame, like, “Oh, I allowed this to happen.  I’m so sorry.”

Andrea:  That’s got to be really painful to see when you have allowed something to happen.  I would imagine, that with the self-protection that you were mentioning before, that part of what we’re protecting ourselves from is the idea that we’re wrong.  The idea that God might not be who I thought He was if this pastor isn’t who I thought he was.  Do you see that as well?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, I do.  I do, and I think there are lots of reasons why we find ourselves maybe covering up or complicit.  I remember a number of years ago being kind of in the middle of a situation where I found myself there.  And during that time, I liked proximity to the narcissistic leader.  And I didn’t know or think that this person was narcissistic, but I liked it because of how I felt around this person.  And then when others started to come forward and say, “I had this experience and this experience and this experience,” it was hard for me to begin to connect the dots and recognize that this person who I respect and who has high confidence in me and who has encouraged me is also a really flawed human being who has hurt others.

And so there are a lot of reasons why we’re not entirely clear right away, you know.  At the time, I had a license in counseling.  I had a Ph.D. in psychology, right?  I’m supposed to know these things.  And yet, what I want to say to your listeners is, let’s have some kindness for ourselves and offer ourselves some grace because sometimes we have blind spots too.  And then if we do find ourselves in a place or position where we’re complicit, then let’s own it, and recognize how our participation has hurt other people and really be honest about that.

Andrea:  Wow, your statement: “I like how I feel when I’m around this person.”

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.

Andrea:  Gosh, I’ve seen that.  And of course, I’ve felt that, and I’m sure other people felt it around me when I’ve been, you know, unhealthily handling influence.  But that is really important because a lot of times we make our decisions based on how we’re feeling around somebody.  We think that that is a good thing to feel good, you know, “I love how I feel when I’m with this person.”  But what are the feelings that we should be attuned to, that would kind of trigger to say, “Wait a second, I need to take a step back because I’m actually feeling…” whatever it might be, whether it be indignant or…  What are some of those things that we should be watching for?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, you mean like when we kind of find ourselves in the middle or maybe even a little complicit?

Andrea:  Yeah.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Well, that’s tough because we’re not always aware of our feelings in that moment.  I think what I often tell people is be aware of the “high U” experience.  So, what I mean by that is it can be like a roller coaster, being around a narcissist, because you experience these high highs and then these low lows.  And so be aware of being on a kind of perpetual, year-long, five year-long, however long it takes adrenaline high where you’re riding this wave, you know.  So the narcissistic leader announces some big new program or initiative for the company and you’re going to be involved and you’re riding the wave up.  And there’s a party and the drinks are flowing.  And I’m feeling really great about myself and I belong.  And then he comes to me three weeks later and says, “You really dropped the ball on this,” and now I’m feeling really low.

And, oftentimes, you know, I look back to my own life ten, twelve years ago when I was in that place, but oftentimes, I’ll find that when people come to me, it’s sort of like, they’re somewhere, probably, riding close to the low part of the roller coaster.  Now, they’re recognizing that they’re on the outs.  But as they document their experience over the last two years, or five years or ten years, there was a sense of, if I ask, “Well, what was it like? What did you feel?”  “Well, it felt so good for such a long time and I was riding such a high that I really, you know, wasn’t as healthy as I could have been.  And I was eating too much and drinking too much and making a lot of money and doing a lot of great stuff, but now I realized that I was kind of lost.”  And lots of folks who I talked to will talk about feeling lost, feeling alone, feeling like there wasn’t any ever real connection.  It was more like trauma bonding with this person.  And there was never really a sense of, like, we knew each other or we were connected to one another.

Andrea:   Hmm.  Trauma bonding.  Can you explain that?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, trauma bonding.  Yeah, it’s a kind of false intimacy where you develop a relationship around your frustration with a scapegoat or someone else.  And, so, you know, for instance, just talking to someone recently who really did life and relationship like this for a long while, and she and a co-worker had a bad experience at another company and they both came from that company.  And they both reported to the same narcissistic boss.  And so they would often get together and they’d talk about how terrible it was in this other place.

And they thought that they had a relationship.  In fact, they’d get together at times for drinks after work and share life stories with one another until the narcissistic leader picked one over the other for a position.  And then there was a sense of, “Oh, we didn’t have a relationship.  All we were doing was we were just kind of raging with one another about our shared experience of anger at another person.”  And that’s not really intimacy.  That’s not healthy intimacy.  That’s a kind of false intimacy that’s born out of pain.

Andrea:  Okay, raging about another person because of something that they did that we don’t like.  Boy, does that happen a lot!

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yes. Yeah.  Right.

Andrea:  So that, in particular, sounds like a really important thing to be attuned to in ourselves when we’re doing that and then to ask those questions around, you know, “Is this healthy?”

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.  I love that phrase that you just used, “to be attuned to ourselves”, right?  And to recognize… and I have some shame about this, that I haven’t recognized this at different times over the years.  You know, you just said it.  We all find ourselves in conversations like this, and you know, it’s a half-hour in and I’m going off on someone who I’m frustrated with, and then I have this moment of clarity.  And this happens more often than you think, I have this moment of clarity where it’s like, “What am I doing?  What am I participating in?”  But it feels powerful if we’re honest.  It feels powerful.

Andrea:  And like you said, the adrenaline high.  There is an adrenaline high when you feel that kind of indignance.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  And the reality is, for many of us – and I’m one of these folks – if we look at our own stories, we realize that we experienced some kind of pain, trauma, and abuse in our past.  And so, the power of that moment of scapegoating another or raging about another, there’s a kind of power because you feel seen, you feel heard, and you feel empowered in your speech.  And I realized that in a way that for me is a really sad and troubling way of getting needs met.  It’s not ultimately how we healthily get our needs met, but it’s something that we commonly do. 

Andrea:  Let’s move toward the system.  So, your book talks about healing your community; not just the individual, but also the community.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Right.

Andrea:  How do we know when we’re in a situation… or how do we even recognize the difference between a leader who just has a lot of influence and a narcissistic leader?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Oh, that’s a good question.  Yeah, because they can look a lot alike, right?  And the thing about it is, oftentimes, when I get talking about these things, people will come back to me and they’ll say, “So, you’re saying that a leader can’t be charismatic or influential or inspiring.”  And I want to clear this up and say not at all.  I think they can be all of the above.  But those who are narcissistic manifest this cluster of attributes, and you know, we talked about it a little bit earlier.  There’s that grandiosity, that attention-seeking, that lack of empathy, and ultimately their influence is not in service of others.  It’s really in service of their own ego.

And, so, I’ve met some of the most gifted, charismatic, influential folks who are humble and self-aware and curious.  And in fact, I had someone come to me who said, “You’ve just written a book on narcissism. Am I a narcissist?”  And I said, “No, actually, just the fact that you’d ask that question tells me that you’re probably not narcissistic,” because those who are, are deathly scared of asking that question.  So, where there is curiosity, where there is wonder, where there is humility, self-understanding, we don’t see narcissism, although we may see some of the features that look like narcissism in some contexts.

Andrea:  I love that list that you just gave; the curiosity, the humility, and… self-understanding, is that what you said?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, right.

Andrea:  I can see how it would be really helpful to see that that is how you know that somebody is more healthy in terms of their influence.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.

Andrea:  So, when it comes to the system, what is a narcissistic system?  Is there a narcissistic system, and what creates the system around somebody to make that happen?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Oh, yeah.  Do you have a two-hour window to talk about this?

Andrea:  I sure do!

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.  This is complicated because, you know, it’s one thing to deal with a powerful, influential, narcissistic leader.  It’s another thing to deal with a system.  That’s where it’s sort of… it’s invisible.  It’s like, you know, we’re recording this in the midst of COVID-19 right now, you know, and it’s a virus.  It’s in the air.  It’s invisible, you can’t see it.  And you know, my context – as I mentioned earlier – is often Christian circles context, organizations.

And I remember a few years ago, a friend of mine who got a job at a very large Christian organization and almost immediately recognized that there was a problem.  Like, this organization that was actually devoted to caring for others featured people higher up in the organization and middle management, who were all consumed with being the best, doing the best; “We’re better than that organization. We’re more unique. We’re more special. We’ve got more influence. We’ve got more power.”

And I mean, this was literally in the air, in the waters that they swam in.  And I remember my friend calling me, saying, “What do I do?”  And I came in, I did some consulting with them and there was a slow recognition over time that because of a history of leadership there and because of their quick rise to power and influence in their particular sphere, there was this sense that even though it was a Christian organization, you’d think it would feature humility, and deference to others, and self-surrender, and that those things were not evident at all.

And as the community began to realize this, it really took the higher-ups the leaders, the vice presidents – as they begin to realize this – there was this kind of collective humbling like, “What have we been doing?”  It was really powerful to see, but boy, it’s really difficult.  I mean, I mentioned already that we can take two hours.  I don’t think I fully answered your question, but I mean, it really takes some time and some real significant effort and intentionality to draw out the depths of systemic narcissism.

Andrea:  You mentioned a couple things there that sounded a little bit like a group of people who believe that they are the hero, that they’re going to come in and save the day.  Maybe that they are right and everybody else is wrong, that sort of thing.  And is that in line with what you were saying?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, that’s right.  That’s right.  And I think that there’s a collective sense of… I’m thinking of, now, a megachurch where when they came to grips with this, the way they told this story was, “We really thought…”  Keep in mind, Christian context again, they really had this idea that like, “God has blessed us more than God has blessed anyone else in the area.”

Andrea:  Yeah.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  “And you can see it because our church has grown.”  And you don’t need God in the picture necessarily to think that, you know, “The market has blessed our organization more than any other organization.”  So, we can all sort of have this narcissism sort of implicit or explicit in our collective system.

Andrea:  Right, because we have had more success or we are blessed more or yeah, I get that.  Here we go, I’m making the assumption.  I don’t know that it’s true.  I mean, do you believe that churches are particularly susceptible to narcissistic leaders and becoming a narcissistic system, and why would that be?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  That’s the ten-million-dollar question.  Why would that be the church of all things?  And the reality is, is going back to the early centuries of the church – if we just kind of take a historical journey backwards – you see from the time of the kind of the Advent of Constantine and Christendom, there has been this conflation of Christianity and power represented in the Christian empire, right?  And so, narcissism is not a new phenomenon.  And I do think that there is this sense of manifest destiny at times.  Like, “God is on our side, and we’re at war with the powers and principalities and we’ve got to win the war.  And we’ve got to do everything that we can to win the war.  We’ve got to marshal our forces.”  And so we use militaristic language.  I can’t tell you how many churches and organizations I’ve learned about that have names, that have some sort of militaristic overtones or undertones, right?  And I remember when I was a little kid in vacation Bible school and church singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

Andrea:  Yeah, “I’m in the Lord’s Army.  Yes, sir!”

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.  There’s this sense that we have to conquer, and look at the damage over the years that has been done in the name of the conquering army of Christ when Jesus himself was a suffering servant.  Peter picks up the sword and cuts off the ear of the centurion, and Jesus restores the ear, you know.  So, I have trouble answering your question because it’s so paradoxical.

But I remember a colleague, an older colleague of mine – who’s been doing assessment longer than I have – once said to me that, you know, “Look at all the men, in particular, who go into ministry who test on the narcissistic spectrum.”  And he said, “Do you think it might have something to do with the fact that you get up on stage and you say, ‘This is the word of the Lord’?”  And I wonder if there’s just something to that that we are representatives of God.  “I’ve got a master of divinity, right?  And somehow, I’m ordained, and I’ve got a Master of Divinity, and I’m special.  God has set me apart.”  It’s really dangerous.

Andrea:  Right.  Oh, man.  And anytime I hear, “God told me,” or “God’s way,” I feel very nervous about that dynamic because it really kind of strips away people’s desire or their thinking that they have the ability to think for themselves.  It’s like, “Okay, so you’ve told me, you’re sort of in a higher-up position than I am.  I assume that you’re closer to God.  You’ve told me that God’s way is this way.  So, I need to conform to that and I’m conforming to what you’re telling me because you’ve said it.”  But is it God’s way?  I mean, it takes away that sense of agency, I think, that people need to maintain in order to really buy-in, I guess, to what God is saying to them, you know…  I don’t know, to faith in general.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, that’s really good.  And you know, what’s tricky about that now is that for a long, long time, we’ve given pastors power.  Power to absolve us of our sins, you know, power to speak to us when we come to them for marriage counseling and say holy things.  And now we’re seeing a decline in the church.  We’re seeing a decline in the power and the respect that ministers are given.  And I think it’s directly related to narcissism in the church and the abuse of power in the church.  We’re hearing more and more about ex-Evangelical – people have left evangelicalism – people have stepped away from church, people are deconstructing.  And I think this is directly related to really the absence of Jesus, you might say, in the church, you know, because I think Jesus stands in the middle of the church, and is kind of like, “This doesn’t look a whole lot like Me.”

Andrea:  And “laying down my life and giving up all of my rights as God.”

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Right, right, neighborly love, love for the poor, and you know, suffering servanthood.  So, I do think that we’re at a moment – I’ve said this in the book, I say this in lots of different contexts – I think we’re at a moment of reckoning.  And we’ve got some choices to make about how we’ll show up.  And it’s interesting to me that we are recording this during COVID-19, where you’ve got this big, kind of, anxiety, right?  “How are we going to do church?

We’ve got to get video equipment.  We’ve got to put it online.  And we’ve got to make it look really good,” when some pastor friends who I really respect are saying, “Okay, we’ll figure that out, but what we need to do is we need to move to our neighborhood.  We need to move to people in our community who are struggling, kids in public schools who aren’t getting meals.”  The ones who I think are following Jesus really authentically are thinking about people in the community, people in need, and they’re moving toward the margins.

Andrea:  Thinking about others who… without the goal of… like, they’re not going to add to their power per se. 

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Right, right.  It’s not about power.

Andrea:  Yeah, it’s just about connecting and serving.  Would you say that there are characteristics of an organization that make it more susceptible to becoming a narcissistic system?  I think about things like a hierarchical structure.  What are your thoughts?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, that’s good.   I do think there’s something to say about structures, for sure.  Sometimes hierarchical structures, I think sometimes theologies, and oftentimes it has much more to do with psychology.  In other words, how people show up, what they bring, and the baggage they bring.  People in pain connect to other people in pain, and they look for and idolize the narcissistic leader, right?  I mean, you can wrap whatever theology or structure you want around it.

And this is where it gets a little bit tricky at times because people often come to me and they’ll say, “Well, you probably see much more narcissism in non-denominational churches in your work.”  And I’ll say, “No, I see it in places where there’s lots of accountability.  I see it in places where there are level structures and hierarchical structures.  I see it in places where women can be pastors and women aren’t allowed to be pastors.”

I do think those things factor in at times, but I do think that oftentimes, it’s a group of people looking for… the psychological language is they’re“ideal hungry followers”.  They’re idealistically looking for someone to meet all of their heroic aspirations, you know.  Someone really to be God, in a sense, God in the flesh.  And this is easily transferable into all kinds of different organizations and startups.  I lived and pastored in the Bay Area for a while, and you know, the kinds of leaders that commanded the attention at the head of startups, you know, and larger companies in the Bay Area, oftentimes, there were a group of followers who are hungry for that kind of heroic leadership, you know.  And so, it’s a function of some kind of collective psychology as well, too.

Andrea:  Right.  That sense of needing a savior or needing a hero to come save the day and then, ah, phew, I feel relieved that somebody is gonna save this or save me or finally, somebody thinks what I think, and they’re going to take the message further.  And then that sense of relief, it just seems like people just let down their guard then and follow willy-nilly.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, I think that’s it.   And I think that this is not a contemporary phenomenon.  I think we’ve been doing it for a long time.  I mean, I’ve been doing this kind of work for over twenty years now, and it’s a shock to me that we’re really not much further along than we were even twenty years ago.  And that’s what?  The advent of lots of information, psychology and understanding spiritual and emotional abuse and trauma and gaslighting.  And we’re still missing it and following leaders who trick us into thinking that they’ve got it all, that they’re the hero.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Let’s move this conversation toward healing.  Let’s say a church then they’ve had a pastor that has displayed this narcissistic bite and has now left, and the church needs to heal somehow.  The temptation is to say that, “Oh good, the pastor’s gone, so we’re better now.”

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yes.

Andrea:  But I know that you would not say that that’s necessarily the case.  So, can you tell us what kinds of steps a system or a church should go through to really heal and not allow that to happen again?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, that’s a great question, and again, a complicated one.  Do you have two hours?

Andrea:  I know.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  So, one of the easier conversations I have with churches that are in crisis is around me coming in and helping them get out of a pretty significant jam with a narcissistic pastor.  Like when they’re really stuck, it’s not hard for a church to make the choice to say, “Come on in, and help us figure out what’s really going on here.”  The much harder conversation is once we get to a place where perhaps that narcissistic leader steps down, and I say to them, “Now, the real work happens, because now you’ve got to ask yourself a question, ‘How did we get into this in the first place? And what implications does this have for our team and for our structures and our organization and our people and our vision going forward?’”  And it’s kind of like what I hear then is, “Thank you so much for helping.  Don’t call us; we’ll call you,” and I’m being serious.

Andrea:  I believe you.  I absolutely believe you.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.  And so that’s really… it’s sad to me.  It’s disturbing because what they end up doing… and we’ve seen this recently with quite a prominent example – I won’t name it – but a very large church that went through its own pain, and they develop a job description for the very same person that they just fired.  It’s kind of like, “Really, you couldn’t invest just a little bit more money for someone to come in and help you walk through this next season?”

Andrea:  Do you think that it’s money, though?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  I think it’s more than money.  I think it’s fear.  Like, all the attention is on narcissistic leader before then, but then I ask them to turn the attention to them and their own complicity in it.  I ask them to look at long-term patterns.  I ask them to look at structures, and I ask them to look at implicit beliefs.  All this comes from the Systems Thinking of Peter Senge, and when we do that kind of work, it’s kind of like, “Wow, now I have to actually ask hard questions of myself, and it was a lot easier to ask hard questions about the pastor.”

Andrea:  Well, if we’re already looking for somebody to save us and to be the hero, then if that hero then becomes… I don’t know, the bad guy, as soon as he’s gone, it’s like… the answer is gone, but also the problem’s gone.  You know, like you’re putting yourself in that position where you don’t matter in this scenario, and you do.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  You do.  And you’ve learned to live in a particular kind of way for a long time.  I think that there’s a sense of relief.  For instance, when that powerful narcissistic leader leaves, and there’s this sense of, “We’re okay now.  The problem is gone,” when the problem is still there.  It exists in the air, people’s ways of being, their styles of relating and communicating and assigning tasks and programming, all those things have been sort of formed around the habits of the system.  And so, you know, I’m watching as a number of churches that I’ve consulted over the years made the choice not to do this, and now there are different stages of dysfunction, whether or not they’ve hired another senior pastor that’s replaying, or there’s competition and drama amidst the remaining…whatever it is.  There’s a remaining toxicity that they haven’t dealt with.

Andrea:  And they need to read your book and then give you a call.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.

Andrea:  Okay, is there a way that we can have healthy influence with somebody who does seem to be a narcissist?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Well, I definitely think that relationship – let’s just say relationship, period – with a narcissist is really difficult.  I think someone who’s diagnosably narcissistic… and I talked about the narcissistic spectrum.  So, there can be people who have traits who are not diagnosably narcissistic, but if you are NPD – narcissistic personality disorder – it’s really hard to have influence.  It’s hard to have any kind of honest relationship because… the metaphor I like to use is just imagine you’re dealing with the actor on stage, not the real person behind the stage.  And so all you’re getting is the mask, and oftentimes they don’t know anything other than the mask.

So, the short answer to your question is it’s really hard to have influence.  Now, with someone with narcissistic traits, you’ll notice a curiosity.  And the question I like to ask – and this is a kind of litmus test for me – is, is someone willing to ask the question of his or her people, “How do I impact you or how do you experience me?”  And if a leader is willing to ask that question to his or her people and really receive honest answers without a threat of termination or whatever it might be, then I think we’re well on our way to the possibility of health.  But if they shut that down or if they don’t allow people to answer honestly, only answer a certain way, then I’m really suspicious of the possibility of any influence or progress.

Andrea:  Now, I’ve heard you use the word fauxnerability, like fake vulnerability.  It sounds like that would come into play here.  Like, how can you tell whether somebody is being genuinely vulnerable or just playing the game so that you think that they are?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  You ask good questions.  Wow, this one… so fauxnerability, that’s a term that I came up with – I hope no one else has used it before – but this fauxnerability looks a lot like honest self-disclosure.  It looks like transparency.  It may even look a little bit like empathy, but it really demonstrates none of those qualities and it’s really tricky. And you know, I’ve experienced this, and so that’s why I name it.  I’ve been sucked into it.  How do you notice it?  Because generally there are a number of different things, and the description is kind of laid out in more detail in the book.

But more often than not, when a person who’s fauxnerable, not vulnerable, talks about his or her life, they talk about their life in general terms.  They don’t talk about how they specifically have hurt people.  They may say, “Oh, I’ve made my share of mistakes over the years.”  But they won’t necessarily say, “Yeah, I just had to confess to someone that I’d been a real bully to them.”  You know, they won’t be that specific, right?  And they don’t manifest repentance or real genuine honesty over the course of time.  They may say something halfway honest at one point, but you don’t see that lasting over time.  And so, those are two common characteristics that you see with people who are generally more fauxnerable. 

Andrea:  All right.  Now, I have noticed that a lot of people, but I would say women in particular – this is what I’ve seen more – are pretty sensitive to the urges within them to want to be on stage, to want to perform, to want to lead or speak up with their voice, but they’re sensitive about it.  They’re nervous to share their voice.  They’re nervous to speak up or to lead because of their prior experience with what may or may not have been narcissism.  Or they’re worried about it being unhealthy power, a desire for glory.  I mean, this is certainly me.  So, I’m describing myself, certainly.  But would you help us bring some clarity to that difference between a healthy desire for influence and an unhealthy desire, whether that be on a stage, in a boardroom, or a conversation?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, yeah.  Well, I think what we always have to look at is one’s motivations.  And I think there can be and ought to be a healthy desire for influence that comes out of true humility and a desire to connect with others, to meet the needs of others.  And not in an unhealthy, self-sacrificial kind of way, but in a healthy self-surrendered kind of way.  Our motives are always mixed, you know.  And so, when someone comes to me and says, “Wow, I loved that attention that I got on stage tonight when I preached.”  That’s the second thing that’s actually encouraging to me.  Like, I’ll often say, “Thanks for saying that out loud,” because I think that sort of takes the power away from the narcissistic impulse.

I do think for women, in particular – and maybe I’m missing a piece of this – but I think at least a part of what I hear from some women who’ve been disempowered is, “Boy, it’s really tough to get up there and exert an influence when I’ve been so disempowered over time.”  And I know because I’m teaching a seminary where there are a number of women who’ve experienced this and now they’re preaching.  And I remember one woman saying to me, “There is a kind of like, ‘Screw you, I’m gonna get up there, I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do, and I’m not gonna take no for an answer anymore.’”  And what I want to say is if that’s the case, that kind of feisty, edgy, maybe a little angry, just be honest about it.

And I think that there can be actually something beautifully repentant about that as well and honest about that, but just be honest about it.  I think that the more we disclose our lives to one another, our motivations, the more we realize that we’re all mixed.  None of us is, you know, perfect in terms of our own motivations, but I do think those who’ve been disempowered, sometimes it’s like, “I don’t have the benefit of choice or autonomy.  Like, I just get to show up and be humble.  Like, I actually have to fight my way to the stage, and that’s harder.”

Andrea:  Hmm.  Yeah, and I think that if you’re willing, if there’s something… at least what I found for myself, I should say, is that when I have found that I’m willing to be embarrassed in the moment – like, maybe it won’t be perfect, maybe I’ll get rejected – when I’m willing to put that on the line for the message, it doesn’t matter how I get the message out, whether it’s on stage or whatever.  There’s something about that, like you’d said, “You’re not just sacrificing yourself in an unhealthy way, but you’re willing to lay down the ego part of it even if it does end up feeling good.  There’s something about that initial, like, “I’m willing to put this on the line even if I screw up.  I’m gonna do this because I love people more than I’m worried about what they think of me.”

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.  And that’s where I’d hope and we’d hope, you know, that we’d all end up at some point.  And it’s obviously more complicated than that.  And I want all of your listeners to know that for those of us who have influence, you know, who record podcasts, who write books… I mean, someone actually presumed that I wasn’t narcissistic because I was writing on this.  And I said, “Oh, no, no, no.  You don’t actually get to a place where you publish books, and you speak a lot on these kinds of things without having a little bit of narcissism in you.”

But there is a… people get thrown off by this language, but a healthy narcissism.  I’d rather call it maybe a healthy confidence.  Psychologists tend to call it a healthy narcissism, at times, for young people like your five-year-old, who says, “Daddy, daddy, look at me! I’m doing a handstand,” you know.  But that healthy sense of… for instance, watching some of my students preach for the first time, and that healthy sense of like, “I did really good job. I’m really grateful;  I’m proud of myself.”  There’s something beautiful about that that I think we can celebrate.

Andrea:  Hmm, without going to the top of the roller coaster every time.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.

Andrea:  It’s not the roller coaster.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, that’s great.

Andrea:  So good.  Thank you so much, Chuck, for your work in this area and for sharing your work with us and being a “Voice of Influence” for our listeners.  Where can they find you and your book?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:   Sure.  So, I blog.  I’ve got resources and other information over at chuckdegroat.net.  And then the book is called When Narcissism Comes to Church, and it’s at all the major booksellers.  So, you can find it at just about everywhere you look.

Andrea:  Perfect.  Thank you so much, Chuck!

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Thank you so much for hosting!  Great questions!  I appreciate it!

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Mentoring Leaders at Church and in Business with Natasha Sistrunk Robinson

Episode 142

Natasha Sistrunk Robinson

Natasha Sistrunk Robinson is the President of T3 Leadership Solutions, Inc., where she provides customized executive leadership coaching, consulting, and mentoring services.

Natasha is an author and sought-after international speaker with more than 20 years of leadership experience in the military, federal government, academic, and nonprofit sectors.  She is the Visionary Founder of the nonprofit, Leadership LINKS, Inc. and the Host of A Sojouner’s Truth podcast.

In this episode, Natasha and I discuss her expertise in mentorship in the context of church, gender, and racial and ethnic diversity.

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

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Transcript

 People of influence know that their voice matters and that they can make it matter more.  I’m Andrea Wenburg, and this is the Voice of Influence podcast.

Today, I’m speaking with Natasha Sistrunk Robinson, who is president of T3 Leadership Solutions, Inc. where she provides customized executive leadership coaching, consulting, and mentoring services.  She is an author and sought-after international speaker with more than twenty years of leadership experience in military, federal government, academic, and nonprofit sectors.  She is the visionary founder of the nonprofit Leadership LINKS and host of “A Sojourner’s Truth” podcast.

Today, Natasha and I visit about her particular expertise and mentorship.  And we talk about it in light of and in a context of church, in a context of gender, and in a context of racial and ethnic diversity.  I think that you’re going to get a lot out of this conversation with Natasha.

Andrea:  All right, Natasha, it is great to have you with us on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Natasha S. Robinson:  Thank you so much for having me.  I really appreciate it.

Andrea:  Would you tell us a little bit about your business, and ministry, and just kind of what you do?

Natasha S. Robinson:  Sure.  So, I’m Natasha Sistrunk Robinson.  I have my hands in a few things, actually, but I’m a small business owner.  So, I’m an entrepreneur, and I do that work of leadership consulting, leadership executive coaching and mentoring through my business T3 Leadership Solutions, Inc.  And then as far as ministry, I am an author.  I write books.  I write Bible study.  So that also means I go out and do quite a bit of speaking, teaching, training, facilitating around mostly faith, leadership, mentorship, and some reconciliation on cultural awareness, cultural competence, and diversity type things as it relates to justice.  And so that’s what I do for writing in ministry and I have a nonprofit, Leadership LINKS, where we do a lot of similar work as far as raising up the next generation of leaders.

Andrea:  And how did things kind of get started for you?  You have a background in the military, is that right?

Natasha S. Robinson:   Sure.  Yeah.  I graduated from Naval Academy in 2002.  And then I was commissioned as an officer in the United States Marine Corps.  So, I was actually a financial management officer, and I did that for six years.  And then I went to work at Department of Homeland Security, where I continue some similar work as far as financial management in the Science and Technology Directorate.  So, I was actually in the International Corporate Programs Office.

And so we did a lot of interagency, international agreements, a lot of grants, government contract, and that’s a lot of the work that I did for that agency.  Then I went to seminary, and that took me down a different path of ministry and writing and things, and that’s kind of how we got to where we are now.

Andrea:  Okay.  So, I also took a very strange path from teaching to seminary and then where I’m at now too.  So, I’m curious, why did you make that particular jump to seminary?

Natasha S. Robinson:  Yeah.  I think, you know, just my faith – I love the word of God, but I also love connecting with people.  And so I’ve always been like a Bible teacher, like a small group leader in my home and the church.  And so I was doing that even though I was working a full-time job; it’s like my second job, and if you count family, like your third job.  And so, you know, when I went to go to seminary, my desire was just to become a better Bible teacher.

So, I literally was going to go to seminary, and then go back to leading small group and Bible study in my home ‘cause I was very content with that.  But while I was in seminary, God started stirring my heart to write.  And so, I started writing articles.  I started publishing then and by the time I got to the end of seminary, I had developed a manuscript for my first book, which was on mentoring as intentional discipleship.

 Andrea:  And now you’re doing a doctorate degree, is that right?

Natasha S. Robinson:  Yeah, I am.  So, I’m in a doctorate program – it’s a cohort between North Park Theological Seminary and Fuller, and it’s a doctorate of ministry in Urban Ministry Leadership.  And so I’m about halfway through the coursework of that, and then, of course, next year, if all goes well, I’ll be starting my project in dissertation work.

Andrea:  Awesome!  And do you have a specific kind of focus for that?  Why that in particular?

Natasha S. Robinson:  Yeah.  So, I’m trying to figure… as far as the focus, I’m trying to figure that out.  Normally, people decide before they go; I didn’t.  I primarily decided to go with this program because of the person I got to study under.  So, my academic advisor is Dr. Soong-Chan Rah.  He’s a Korean-American, used to be a pastor but now he spent of his more recent years in the academy.  And so I selected the program – and this kind of answers your question about why – because of who I got to study under.  I wanted to read more broadly and wanted to hear from a lot of diverse voices, not just within America but also globally.  And he has the depth of experience, exposure, and education to offer me that that I wasn’t going to continue to read the same people that I read in my master’s program.  And so I’m really thankful that I chose to study under him.

Andrea:  Have you made a lot of decisions in your life based on who would be mentoring you?

Natasha S. Robinson:  Certainly early on.  In the military, for sure, and when I took my second job at Department of Homeland Security, that decision was based on the person that would be my supervisor.  She was a Hispanic lady.  She was a Christian.  She was a graduate of the Naval Academy.  She graduated in the second class of women.  She’s a retired Navy commander and she was in higher ranks of government officials.

I had other job offers with other great companies, but I thought I could learn a lot from her and I wanted to learn a lot from her so that’s what the decision I made, so certainly in my professional life.  Ministry, though, has been a lot different because – and this has been a kind of a tension for my leadership… whereas, you know, being in the military, you have a clear path for mentorship.  You have a path for promotion.  You have a path for career progression and development in your own field, your professional field, and I knew exactly what that was.  But coming into ministry, not having that set out as a goal or a plan for my life, I really felt like I didn’t have leaders or mentors to help guide me for where the Lord was leading me.

And so, a lot of that was really dependent on asking the Lord what He had for me.  And I think the challenge and tension of that has been I’ve always been a leader, and sometimes serving in capacities where, you know, you can’t lead or you’re not allowed to lead because you’re a woman or because you’re a person of color.  And they may or may not say that, but at the end of the day, that’s what it comes down to.  So that’s been a struggle and a exercise in humility and wisdom and discipline about how can you live fully into your calling and out of your identity, even when your environment or the places where the people you’re interacting with don’t share the same values.

Andrea:  Okay, you just asked a really great question I’d love for you to answer.  How can you live fully and into the fullness of who you are when you’re being constrained?

Natasha S. Robinson:  Yeah.  I think one thing I’m learning and I’m always learning – and the irony, I think, sometimes when you’re a leader or you’re good at something, you think you got a lesson.  Like, “I got that, I understand that,” and then there are times when you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I did not really act out on what I know.”  And so I think for me – and it’s a journey so it’s not even completed – but it’s really about being clear about who I am and what God has called me to, and then, you know, really being… I remember one of my mentors said to me, “God is your sponsor.”

And so, really being open to the doors that God opens for me and walking through them confidently, and then when doors are closed to just say, “Well, that wasn’t for me,” or “At least it wasn’t for me in this time.”  And that doesn’t mean sometimes you don’t need to kick doors down because I think you need to do that too when it’s appropriate.  But for me, that’s a process of discernment, and getting wise counsel from people who know me well and people who are actually for me.

And I would say this too; it’s also been just the confidence in the security of that knowing then fueling the decisions I make.  So, there are times when I’ve quit jobs.  I’ve walked away from opportunities.  I’ve walked away from, you know, certain institutions or institutionalism because they weren’t serving the calling that God had on my life.  And so that has been a part of my journey and path as well.

Andrea:  Is it hard to make those decisions, it’s hard to discern when to knock down a door and when to just keep knocking?

Natasha S. Robinson:  Yeah, absolutely it is.  And then, you know, I think we need to ask like, “God, what is my role?  What are you calling me to in this season?”  And then sometimes I go and I fight for stuff, and then sometimes I’m silent, you know, honestly.  And I don’t think you should do either if it’s going to result in sin or disobedience.  But I think sometimes that you do the right thing at the wrong time or you do the right thing in the wrong way, and you don’t actually get the results that you want.  And so that also is a spirit of discernment of, “Okay, God, not only am I going to be in this space, not only am I going to have a seat at the table, not only am I going to use my voice, but how do you want me to do those things?”  Even that needs to be steward.

Andrea:  Yeah, you know, something that I’ve said a lot is voice equals choice.

Natasha S. Robinson:  Mm hmm.

Andrea:  You just need to choose wisely, but that’s a hard thing when you feel like your voice is being suppressed or repressed or pushed down, and it’s not something that you have control over.  It is hard to feel like you do have a choice, and so you just really want to get it out sometimes.  What would you say to somebody who’s just like, “I just want to be able to say what I want to say?”

Natasha S. Robinson:  Well, I think, honestly, I think that’s more of a challenge for women too, because I think sometimes men speak and they don’t have anything to say.  And they speak very confidently when they don’t have anything to say in the same way that men will apply for jobs that they’re aren’t technically qualified for.  And because they take the risk to bet on themselves and apply, they might get the job; and in that job, they may learn new skills and everything.

You know, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the last few years reading, you know, through the Exodus and Moses narrative, and remembering when God called Moses at the burning bush.  And you know, the first thing that Moses says, “Well, you know, I can’t talk,” right?  And so he starts making all these excuses for why he can’t do what God calls him to do, and what God says to him is that, “I’m gonna be with you.  I’m gonna teach you what to say and provide what you need.”

And so, I think for women, we’ve been conditioned and socialized into thinking that we have to have it all together.  We have to be perfect.  We have to be right.  We have to be ready when we show up for something.  And sometimes what God is just looking for is a yes, and availability, and understanding that in the process of saying yes that the journey is where we are actually learning.  And our leadership is being formed for us to be ready for that thing that God has for us ten years, twenty years down the road that we can’t even see or don’t even know about.

And so we think it’s about this one job, this one opportunity, or this one relationship.  And God is going to use that job, relationship, opportunity to prepare you for whatever, the next thing.  But if you don’t say yes, you know, your knees trembling to the thing that’s right in front of you, you’re never going to get the preparation and the training that you need to prepare you for the thing the Lord sees way down the road.

Andrea:  Hmm, I love that.   The temptation to say no in those situations because you don’t feel ready is strong for a lot of people.  I think you’re right.  So, women need to bet more on themselves, huh?

Natasha S. Robinson:  I think women need to get clear about who we are and love that person, and lead out of that authenticity.  So that means when we’re entering into places where people don’t validate that, then we have a choice; and to your point, voice is choice.  You have a choice of whether you’re going to stay or whether you’re going to go.  You have a choice of whether you’re going to be a reformer within a system, or you’re going to go build a separate system or table.  You have a choice of whether this is a relationship that you’re going to stay in or not.

And so, I think that relates to everything from who you decide to marry, to what friends you keep in your circle, to what school you go to or what training you get to what career field you pursue, to what church you become a member of.  I think all those things really are birthed out of how we see ourselves second, how we see God first.

And how we see ourselves a lot of times is tainted by projections that other people have placed on us and not from a place of first saying, “How does God see me?”  Because God created each of us uniquely, and that means that even the flaws and the weaknesses that we have that God can use for good, He absolutely can.  And so, we don’t use those things to disqualify ourselves or to discredit our being.  It may mean that we need some training and some development, but it doesn’t disqualify us, you know, and so I think that once we get clarity about those things then that shapes the other things.

Andrea:  Okay.  Talk to me about mentorship.  You talk about this quite a bit and have written about it quite a bit.  There’s a quote from…I’m not sure where your quote is from, but I have a quote.  “Mentoring is a trusted partnership where people share wisdom that fosters spiritual growth and leads to transformation as mentors and mentees grow in their love of Christ, knowledge of self, and love of others.”  Why is mentoring a big deal to you?

Natasha S, Robinson:  Yeah, so that’s a quote from my book, Mentor for Life, and I’m talking about mentoring there specifically as intentional discipleship.  So, I am talking about mentoring from a Christian framework.  And I say that it’s important because not all mentoring we do is from that framework.  And I do, you know, mentoring in very diverse environments just because of the nature of my professional experience and background, and my work.

So, it’s important for a few reasons.  Number one, I think mentoring is critically important for leadership development.  And so, the way I was trained at the Naval Academy, for example, like, mentoring was built into our professional development program.  I mean, just nobody graduated from the Naval Academy without having been mentored or mentoring someone, and it was built into the system.  And then, I think, you still see that – sometimes formally, sometimes informally – in the military.

And I think, you know, that’s one of the reasons the military gets the results that it gets because of the ways that we by and large are very intentional in how we develop leaders.  So, it’s not just about influence and platforms; it’s about actually how you connect with people, how you motivate, and what you actually get done to it.  Are you actually able to accomplish a mission?  And so that’s just ingrained in me early in my very formative years.  Not just as a child, but certainly again, the Naval Academy played a significant role in that.

And so, I think the interesting thing for me was when I transitioned or pivoted right from more of professional work as my full-time focus to ministry work as my full-time focus, and seeing that – you know, especially in a church, for example, a local church – a lot of the issues that people were having, in my observation, were leadership issues.  They were a lack of leadership and so if the leadership was better being then the environment, the culture of the community or the church would be better, and therefore the mission would go forth and we would be more effective in our work.

And so, I started to write about it because in a Christian environment, I thought, “Wow!”  Well, part of the reason the leadership is so poor is number one, let’s be honest, pastors don’t get leadership training in seminary.

Andrea:  That’s true.

Natasha S. Robinson:  You can have a great pastor who can execute a passage and can understand original languages and can be a great preacher, and that does not mean they’re a great shepherd.  It does not mean that they can be a great executive.  It doesn’t mean that they know how to motivate their team, or cast vision, or hold people accountable.  There are all kinds of critical leadership skills that pastors don’t get in seminary.  And so if they’re not getting it in seminary, I think you have to ask the question, where are they getting it?  And the answer is, they’re not getting it, which is why we have so much leadership challenges.  So that’s number one.

But I think the other issue – because that’s a top-down issue – our bottom-up issue is we falter because we allow people in the church to volunteer, and then we don’t provide them any training.  And then we wonder why the ministries are not as effective as they could be, or they’re a mess.  Or their relationships are not as healthy or honoring to the things we say we believe in the word because we have not provided leadership training, development, mentorship even for our volunteers.  So, you can volunteer on Saturday and be leading something on Monday next week, all right?

Whereas my posture would be, “Okay, you’re volunteering, that’s great.  Let’s see about whether or not you have the temperament to do the thing that your heart desires to do, because maybe you might be a better fit over here.  And then what skills do you have and what are the gaps over here that you could possibly lead, and then what training and mentoring that needs to be provided so you can do this well?  Because I want you to be confident in it.  I want you to know that this is the right place for you in this season, that is a mutually beneficial experience, and that the people under you are thriving.”  And they won’t do that if the leaders aren’t trained, if they aren’t healthy, and if they don’t know how to maintain healthy relationships.  They just won’t.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Do you have any suggestions about how organizations – whether it be a church or a company – could better incorporate mentorship into their culture?

Natasha S. Robinson:  Yeah, so the thing is that, you know, we think about this as an add-on thing.  And so then the question or the statement becomes… pre, you know, our current pandemic situation was we don’t have time.  Well, you know, my belief is that prayer, I think is the first foundation, and then the second foundation is how well you are training and equipping your leaders.  Because if you do that well, then what I believe the Bible calls us to is really multiplication, and that happens when people are on mission.

And this is what Paul writes about in Ephesians 4, that some people are apostles and some are teachers.  You know, they’ll have the gift of helps, all these things, but they’re doing it for the edification of the body.  And so, I want every believer to be clear about, not just who they are, their identity, their being in Christ, but also what God has called them to.  Obviously, our first calling is to be a disciple, a student, a follower of Jesus.  So not just that we believe Jesus, we have a relationship with Jesus, it’s not just that Jesus is our Savior, but does Jesus have authority to guide the direction and priorities in my life?  That’s the first answer that we have to make, and then once we do that then say, “Okay, if that answer is yes, then what work specifically has God called me to?”

Again, so, some people would be teachers and some would be hospitable, you know, have the gift of  helps, and some people are healing, and some people will, you know, be evangelists.  So, there are all these different roles we play.  And Paul gives a metaphor of the body in 1st Corinthians 12, right?  That we all have different gifts, but it’s the same spirit and the same calling.  And those gifts should be operating together, just like a healthy body that if I bump my toe and I pull the toenail back too far, I’m going to feel that – my whole body is going to feel that because it’s hurt or it’s weak.

But in the same way, if I’m eating well and I’m drinking water, I’m getting enough sleep and my body… I’m working out, and I’m strong then I feel I have the energy and I feel like I can do anything.  The longer version, the short of it is mentoring cannot be, “We’ll do it when we get around to it,” and it’s a one-time program or event.  It has to be a part of the system in how we do things day-to-day in our operations in church, and it has to be at the foundation of it.

Andrea:  Now, you said that you also do work in diversity.  And so I’m curious, when people are trying to or an organization is trying to incorporate mentoring better into their culture, as you’ve described, could you also share with us some key points that you would feel are really important when it comes to honoring the voices of others and being an ally to other folks who are different than us and that sort of thing?  Could you share with us some of your thoughts on that?

Natasha S. Robinson:  Yeah.  I think Paul gave us a good analogy there too, right?  You know, the hand can’t say to eye, “I don’t need you,” you know, or the foot can’t say to the arm like, “I don’t need you,” and so he talks about that.  He talks about, you know, the people in the body that we consider weaker, we should see with higher honor.  He talks about that, and so I think there are things that we see in the Bible that are very clear.

Obviously, I think we need to look to Jesus, you know.  I was just doing some Bible reading, studying, and writing yesterday about Jesus at the well with the Samaritan woman in John 4 of Him making an intentional choice to engage her, to ask questions.  And so, He’s speaking to her as a Samaritan, which Jews and Samaritans had no interaction with each other.

But He’s also speaking to her as a woman, and He’s also speaking to her as a woman who’s been ostracized in her community because of her social conditioning.  You know, being someone who has been divorced multiple times and so probably the talk of the town.  So, there are all kinds of things that we see in the text where we’re not just taking it at face value.  We’re doing a little bit more, a little deeper study, and we’re hearing about the text from more diverse voices too.  That’s why I think it’s critically important that regardless of where your local congregation is that you’re reading broadly, that you are listening – especially right now, we have the opportunity to listen online to different preachers, not just a person in our home church.

And I think that’s critically important because it’s not just about having a friend of a different racial ethnic group.  I think that’s important, but when we start getting to understand issues like injustice in history, and what happens regarding sociology or in society and culture, biases, and intersectionality.  Some of these words people may or may not be familiar with, but the point is that these are systemic issues that have very long legs.  And so those issues are not solved just by people making friends.  Those issues are solved because we have to have an elevated conversation now about how systems work, and how people are impacted by those systems, and how we can actually shape the direction of those systems.

And that doesn’t happen if we’re not reading more broadly, if we’re not very intentional in understanding our need to hear from more diverse voices, not just racial and ethnic in the United States, but also globally.  I think the Western church and American church misses out a great deal because we don’t have a regard or not even attentive to what God is seeing and how He’s moving and what He’s speaking to the global church.

I think there are things that the global church can teach us, especially, considering that the global church is growing, you know, in Asia and Africa, and is declining in America – you know, at least, before the pandemic.  And so, I just think there’s a humility that’s required to listen and learn from other people, and not thinking that we have all the answers or we don’t need them as Paul says.

Andrea:  As we are wrapping up the spring and moving into summer on this podcast, we’re going to be talking a little bit more about power dynamics and abuse of power…  And I would love for you to help us transition into that right now before we go.  When you think of people who are in that position where they maybe don’t want to abuse their power, maybe they’re in a situation where they may just not have the awareness that what they’re doing is not helpful or that it is abuse of some kind, spiritual abuse, or just contributing to that systemic dynamic that you were just talking about.  Could you share or speak to that person who is open to hearing about what they should be thinking about, what they should be doing?  How should they really approach how to think about their own power dynamic in their environment?

Natasha S. Robinson:  Yeah.  Spiritually, I do believe that power in it’s initial state… so it can be used for good or evil, right?  And so, we see that.  So, I think when we go back to the Garden, the cultural mandate for us is that humans have responsibilities that, for example, plants don’t have, that animals don’t have.  And that responsibility of stewardship of the earth is part of our being made in the image of God.  And so there’s a responsibility that we have just for being human that I think we need to understand and not take lightly, especially when we think about, you know, the current situation we’re in and what God might be asking of us.  So that’s number one.

But then I think the other part of that is, you know, that we all… again, most of us in America, you know, if we can read and we have technology and, you know, we have our basic needs met, we have more power than most of the people in the world.  So, we’re not comparing to the neighbor down the street or the impoverished neighborhood fifteen minutes down the road, but just in the world.  And so what we do or don’t do given those things matters, and I think sometimes we’re not challenging ourselves to think about what we’re doing and how it impacts other people. 

And then there are ways, I think, we just honestly need to be repentant.  We need to confess and repent, because there are ways that we’re complicit in things that we, you know, might not want to be in.  So, for example, you know, I pay taxes and I vote, but I don’t necessarily agree with everything that the person I voted for that they may do, every policy they put in place, every legislation they sign.  And quite honestly, we’re not even looking at every legislation that they sign.  And so there are things that they may sign that I’m not agreeable with, but I voted for them; or I’ve paid taxes and so my taxes are supporting those efforts.  And so that’s just humbling that I think we need to be always asking the Lord to forgive us and have mercy on us for the ways that we sin that we don’t even know about, right?  And so I think that’s important.

And then lastly, this is where the mentorship piece comes in, but I think also, professionally, that sometimes we need professional help.  So, the mentorship could be, you know, it’s not just getting a black friend, or a person of color as a friend, or an impoverished person as a friend, or a disadvantaged or marginalized person as a friend.  Again, all those things are great, but if the power dynamics are not there, where they’re seen as a peer or equally valued, then even that relationship is going to be tainted.

And so, I think that we need to think about, you know, what ways might getting professional help be a good tool and resource, and that could be through spiritual direction, right?  It can be through therapy.  It can be through executive coaching where you have someone that has a better understanding of the issues but you know, they’re for you.  That’s why they’re partnering with you in the work, but they’re going to give you an objective.  They’re going to step away from it.  They’re not so personally involved.  They’re not out to get you, but they can give you some different ways to consider and look at some things, and also offer you some education.

So, I think at the bottom of this, a lot of it is people are just ignorant about the issues, and that takes time.  That is not a one and done thing.  That is a lot of time to get smart about the issues before you try to make decisions and speak on things, or even being an advocate.  Like, you need to understand the issues, and so I think that’s where the professional help connection come in.

Andrea:  Okay, great.  Well, why don’t you tell us a little bit about where people can engage you for professional help with like that, or learn about your books and the other things that you offer? 

Natasha S. Robinson:  Sure, yeah.  So, leadership consulting and coaching are offered through my website, my business T3, so t3leadershipsolutions.com.  So, you can find me there, and I’m offering virtual options as well for training facilitation and leadership executive coaching or mentoring.  So I’m glad to do that.  And then for my ministry stuff, you can find that, including my podcast information, at natashasrobinson.com.  

And then I’m also on Twitter, Facebook for Natasha Sistrunk Robinson, and Instagram.  So, I’m on all those platforms.  And then lastly, my blog is A Sista’s Journey, where I do writing.  And then all of my books, Mentor for Life or A Sojourner’s Truth, or I have a Bible study on the Nicene Creed, all of that you can find just searching Google or on Amazon – you can find it there – or on my website.

Andrea:  We will be sure to link to your website, which it appears that a lot of that is linked on your website.  So we’ll make sure that that is connected to our show notes so that it’s very easy for people to find there as well.

Natasha S. Robinson:  Wonderful!

Andrea:  Thank you so much for sharing your voice of influence with our listeners today, Natasha.

Natasha S. Robinson:  Thank you, Andrea.  I appreciate the time.

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Characteristics of a Business that Endures with Bill Flynn

Episode 141

Bill Flynn Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Bill Flynn is the author of Further, Faster: The Vital Few Steps that take the Guesswork out of Growth and we had a really interesting conversation about building a business and what the characteristics are of somebody who builds a business that endures.

Obviously, there’s a lot going on that we need to endure through right now. Even if you don’t have a business yourself and you’re listening as a leader who wants to have influence, there’s a lot in this episode for you.

In this conversation, Bill and I discussed his book, how to go from being sucked into those moments where you’re constantly putting out fires to being able to relax and plan for the future, how leading as a human being creates trust, how your response as a leader right now can impact your future success, and more!

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

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Transcript

People of influence know that their voice matters, and that they can make it matter more.  I’m Andrea Wenburg, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

 

Today, I have with me Bill Flynn, who is the author of Further, Faster: The Vital Few Steps That Take the Guesswork Out of Growth.  We have a really, really interesting conversation for you, in particular about building a business and what the characteristics are of somebody who builds a business that endures.

And obviously, there’s a lot going on that we need to endure through right now.  So, we’re going to talk not only about the business aspect of it, but the leadership aspects.  So, if you don’t have a business yourself but you’re listening as a leader who wants to have influence, there’s a lot here for you.  We have a very, very introspective and interesting conversation.

In this conversation, we talk about his book, particularly about building a healthy, thriving business.  We talked about how to go from being sucked into the tyranny of the moment – those moments where you’re sort of putting out fires that feel like crisis all the time inside the business – to being able to relax, step outside of the business, to be able to think about it, and really plan for the future.

He also talks about leading as a human being to create trust and what that really looks like, and then how leaders respond to pain – particularly right now – really can impact their future success.  I think that you’re going to get a lot out of this conversation with Bill Flynn.

Andrea:  Bill Flynn, welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

Bill Flynn:  Thank you for having me on, Andrea.

Andrea:  So, Bill, tell us a little bit about your business and what you do.

Bill Flynn:  Yeah.  So, I’ll start back a little before my business because I think it’s relevant.  So, for about twenty-five years, I was an entrepreneur.  I did ten startups over that time frame.  At one point there, I was five for six, but I’ve always been a student of business.  I’ve always learned… you know, or tried to learn about how to get better and how to improve.

And what I found out along the way, actually after the fact, was that my style is really a coach style and that’s now what I do.  I am a leadership or a business coach.  So, I work with leadership teams, and I help them think about how to run their businesses well as they can.  I ask a lot of questions.  I teach them a framework that is mostly based on some certifications that I have, but I also add some of my own stuff in there.

So, I do that until recently.  I did that full-time and now I’m helping my clients.  Most of them, actually, can’t afford to pay me right now, but I’m doing it for free because this is a calling for me, so I want to help people as much as I can.  So that’s what I do at a high level.  I’m certainly happy to go into more details if you wish.

Andrea:  Well, it probably would be wise to go ahead and explain why free, why now?

Bill Flynn:  Well, so we’re recording this just at the beginning of April and COVID or the coronavirus situation is really coming to a head, if you will.  So, many of my clients are struggling.  One of them just laid off 60% of their workforce on Wednesday.  So, it’s been sort of really difficult for them.  Others are doing okay.  Actually, some of them are doing well, but there’s concern for the future and they want to make sure they preserve as much cash as possible.

So, I’m, you know, an expense they would rather not have to have.  So, I’m forgiving them that for now because, you know, their employees are more important.  So that’s sort of why things are going the way they are, unfortunately.  It’s too bad because my business was doubling every year and had been for about three or four years in a row.  But what are you going to do?

Andrea:  Yeah, yeah.  It’s very strange.  It’s a strange time when things just aren’t the way that that they’re supposed to be, it seems.

Bill Flynn:  Yeah, right.  Exactly, and who knows if they’ll ever get back that way.

Andrea:  Right.  You know, since we’re here already at this point, one of the things that we’re here to talk about is your book Further, Faster.  So, obviously, that is something that’s going to be really important for people, for businesses in particular.  But it also might change a little bit depending on how things shake out.  And maybe could you start by telling us just a little bit about your book and what people can really get out of it?

Bill Flynn:  Sure, yeah.  So, I never intended to ever write a book.  I actually don’t like writing.  I don’t consider myself a very good one, but I’ve been doing this for about four or five years.  I speak all over the country, and I help whoever I can, and I’ve got a lot of feedback from people saying the way I look at things is really different than they’ve heard from others.  So they said, “Hey, you should write some of this stuff down.”  And so I did.

I actually hired a company called Scribe Media to help me with it because of my lack of interest in writing.  And I went through a really great process where, basically, they interview you like you would be doing, but they do it over about ten or twelve hours.  And then someone who is a much better writer than I am tries to find my voice, and then writes it all down, and we sort of work through that.  So that was a process.

But, basically, the book was just released.  And the reason we decided to release it was because it’s a book that applies to this situation.  What I teach my clients is to build a really healthy and thriving business – one of those things is to make sure that you have enough cash to weather inevitable situations like this.  You know, we’re twenty years into the century, and we’ve already had three.  You know, we’ve had 9/11 we’ve had 2008, and we’ve had now that this thing, which are really impactful crises.

And one of the things I tell folks is you should have a set of capital that’s set aside for this happening, and you can decide how long you need it for.  You know, I usually recommend six months – there are some people who want to do it for a year.  There are some people who are smaller and struggling, and they’re happy to just get three months.  You know, whatever it is to just sort of get started.  But the bulk of the book is actually thinking about how do I actually build a business that endures, which we typically don’t have a lot of time to do because we’re too busy running the business.

And one of the first things I teach the leader – or the head of company, as I like to call them – is you need to figure out how to fire yourself from the day-to-day as quickly as possible, because your job isn’t to run the company anymore – it’s to predict the future.  And predicting the future takes brain cells and insight and innovation and creativity, which is stunted or really stopped if you’re thinking about the day-to-day crisis.  I like to call it the tyranny of the moment.  We’re sucked into that tyranny of the moment too often, which doesn’t allow our brain to think.

I ask a question which I love, which is, you know, “When do you get your best ideas,” and it’s usually when I’m running or in the shower or whatever, when you’re not actually thinking.  When you’re trying to think or trying to solve a problem, you let your brain relax.  And that’s the kind of thing you need to do to grow.  That’s what the book is about.

So, we released it because… I don’t think it can help anyone right this moment.  But if you start reading it and think for the future, once you get out of this crisis and the hunkering down part is sort of… you’ve done as much as you can, you’ve survived at least for a period of time, and you can start thinking about the future.  This book is great for that.

I’m an 80/20 guy; it’s written into the title of which is Further, Faster.  It’s the vital few steps, and the law of the vital few is really the 80/20 rule, and that’s what the book is.  It’s really the few things that you should do first and focus on those and get a hold on those which will move you furthest fastest; then you can work on the other stuff.  I like to sort of think of it as this is the book for the big knobs that you can turn, and then there are other great books for the smaller knobs that you can turn to truly tweak and improve.

Andrea:  So, getting everybody together and onboard is part of what is crucial to moving forward and to moving quickly.  That’s something that we have particular interest in here at Voice of Influence is, you know, how do you have that influence and make sure that you’re actually influencing others in a very ethical way.  And one of the things that you bring up in your book is trust.

Bill Flynn:  Yeah.

Andrea:  On page 75, you say, “Game-changing ideas can come from anywhere in your organization.  The odds of them filtering up to you increase considerably when you hire the right people, and let them know that they can talk freely about their ideas without fear of judgment or ridicule.”  Would you tell us a little bit more about how to create that kind of environment where people are able to share their ideas freely?

Bill Flynn:  Yeah, sure.  So important, really great question, and thank you for referencing a page in the book.  That’s great.  So, I’m a bit of a neuroscience geek, which you may have noticed from some of the stuff in the book and creating this sort of psychological safety – which Amy Edmondson has really coined the term – is really important.  So, that starts with you as the leader.

The best way to create that environment is to show that you’re a human being.  You’re flawed.  You’re irrational.  You make mistakes.  You’re okay saying, “I’m sorry and I screwed up.”  That goes a long way, you know.  We are tribal in nature, and we’re also very forgiving in nature.  And if you are seen as that and you let yourself be vulnerable in that kind of way, then people will start to say, “Oh, well, if the boss can be screwing up left and right and whatever, and admit it then, boy, it might probably be okay for me to do that as well.”

And, you know, that people will be a lot more comfortable with being themselves and speaking up, questioning things.  You know, Amy Edmondson has this great quote that she talks about in one of her TED Talks, which says, “It turns out that no one wakes up in the morning and jumps out of bed and says, ‘I can’t wait to go to work today to look ignorant, incompetent, intrusive or negative.’  We prefer to look smart, helpful, and positive.”

But what happens in the workplace is, unfortunately – we don’t always do it deliberately, sometimes we do it inadvertently – we create this environment where people don’t feel comfortable doing that.   So, they don’t want to look ignorant, so they don’t ask any questions.  They don’t want to look incompetent, so they don’t admit a weakness or mistake.  And they don’t want to look intrusive, so they don’t offer ideas; and they don’t want to look negative, so they don’t criticize the status quo or certainly don’t criticize the leader.

You have to be open as a leader to be criticized and to be challenged, and be okay with that and be curious and say, “Wow, we have completely different way of looking at this thing. I’d be really great to understand your perspective.  I hired you.  You know, I hired you because you’re smart, and you’re a good fit, and you have skills and all these things.  So, it’s in my best interest to at least hear what you have to say, and then figure out if maybe that’ll modify my way of thinking or change my way of thinking.  

“Or have you understand, ‘I’ve thought that through and here’s why I didn’t do it that way.’”  And they understand that, right?  So, they’ve been acknowledged, and they’ve understood, and you’ve explained to them why maybe that isn’t the way to go.  That’s what you have to do.  It really all starts with you and you with your team.

Andrea:  Totally agree.  Have you noticed any particular characteristics of leaders who kind of allow themselves to be open to criticism and change their way of thinking?  Or any particular characteristics of leaders who kind of just don’t know how to go there and refuse to go there?

Bill Flynn:  Yeah.  So, definitely the first part; the second part is a lot longer answer, unfortunately.  So, I actually pick my clients, and I look for three things.  I look for someone who’s humble, I look for someone who’s a lifelong learner, and someone who is comfortable challenging the status quo.  And I have a process I work through; I talk to them a few times, I ask them a bunch of questions, I ask them about their team.

I actually offer ninety minutes of my time for free in front of their team and walk them through an exercise so I can see how they interact with their team, because behavior really tells everything.  We can say we are a certain way, but you really don’t prove it until you behave that way and you’re put in that situation.  So, I try to create that environment so I can see them.

And I’ve turned down some clients where I didn’t really like the way they interacted – they thought they were the answer man.  It’s usually the man, by the way, too often.  They felt like they had all the answers, and they would look weak if they didn’t.  I can’t really help them, because I’m going to come in and ask a lot of really basic questions that they probably don’t know the answers too.  And if they’re not comfortable saying, “You know, wow, that’s really good.  I’m glad you made me think that way,” then I can’t help them.  So, those are the three characteristics that I look for.

There are too many other explanations of the other person, right?  I sort of make a half joke and I say 95 to 99% of all leaders should hire someone like me and 95 to 99% of those people never will.  They don’t want to be seen as not being the answer man, right?  Jim Collins calls it the “Genius with a Thousand Helpers.”  I can’t help that person.  And at some point, they’re going to run out of time and energy, and that’s usually what happens.

It’s usually when growth stalls is when that dynamic, you know… an intelligent and really dedicated founder just runs out of time and energy, and hasn’t built that culture – they almost always hit a wall.  It might take a year.  It may take five years.  It might take ten years, but you will hit the wall.  And it’s unfortunate because you probably built something really great, but just haven’t created that environment to take it to the next step.

Andrea:  You know, as I think about the situation that we’re in currently and what you just said, something else that comes to mind for me is people’s experience with pain.  I’ve noticed that people who have experienced pain and have almost a brokenness… not necessarily in the idea that they were completely broken as a person, but to the point where they felt like they needed help, to the point where they accepted that they were not able to be everything for everybody, that sort of thing.

There is something really powerful with the person who has gone there and their ability to do the things that you just mentioned – those characteristics that you talked about when you’re picking your clients – being humble, and learner, and wanting more than the status quo.  When you add to that also just this experience of pain and how one responds to that, there’s something incredibly powerful with that.  Would you want to comment on that?

Bill Flynn:  Yeah, sure.  I’ll take it from two perspectives.  One is what I found is, especially, working with all the founders… because I was never a founder of a company.  I was usually brought in to help scale it, you know, sales, marketing service, that kind of thing, kind of a CEO kind of level.  And what I’ve found was the founders that had the most trouble with in working with, and getting them to the next level or helping them get to the next level were those who are really successful.  Either in some other part of their life, or maybe they had a previous success or two in founding companies.  They just assumed, it seemed, that the next one would be right so everything that they thought was perfect.

And it was only, I think, those that I worked with that had had difficulty before, or struggled in some way, or were in a position where they didn’t know something and they had to figure it out and didn’t just do it themselves… you know, lean on other people and ask lots of questions were the ones that were much more likely to succeed.  And those are the kind of folks that I kind of work with, you know.  They’ve… either through one way or another, they had some level of pain as you described it, or lack of success, or some something that humbled them in some way.  I think that’s really important.

My daughter is a college-level swimmer, and I’m an athlete as well and I played college hockey and tennis.  I played soccer in high school.  So, I’ve been on lots of teams and my daughter has been on teams since she was five – swim team, which really isn’t a team.  It’s a bunch of individuals that happen to get together and do their own thing, but they’re the best kind of team I’ve ever met.  They’re so supportive of each other.  And, you know, even though it’s really an individual sport, they act like a team that I’ve never seen before.  And I sort of asked myself, “Why is that?”  And the only thing I come up with was similar to your question on pain, which is shared misery because swimming is really, really hard.

You know, I’m a college-level hockey player.  I played against guys who played in the NHL, but I got to tell you, I don’t like swimming.  It’s super hard.  It’s difficult.  So, I think that’s the shared misery of, you know, swimming six, seven miles a day and burning seven to eight thousand calories in a few hours, and having to work through that.  I think that’s what makes a good leader and also makes a good team.  I think that’s an indicator; when you can share those burdens and you know that you’re all in this together and it’s going to be difficult, I think that helps you.

Andrea:  So, when we’re looking at the time frame that we’re in right now, we’re looking at the situation that we’re in right now, those people who are listening who are leading teams and going through hardship, what would you say to them about how their response to this all matters in terms of their future success?

Bill Flynn:  Oh, as a leader, it matters tremendously because people are going to judge you by how you act right now.  You’ll see the best and the worst in people when you’re in situations like this.  The leaders that take it on as a way to really take charge and help people and support them and sacrifice on their own versus those who sort of, you know, go into protective mode and safe mode and think more about themselves… you’re going to sort of see how that transpires over the next several months. 

And I think, you know, one of the things that you can do first is to understand that – when you said people are in pain right now – there’s a lot of stress.  The brain does not like uncertainty, and it forces itself into this protective mode – you know, this sort of fight-flight-freeze kind of thing we talk about in the popular culture.  And your first job is to help them get some control over their lives as much as you possibly can.  And what I tell folks all the time is just give them meaningful work, right?  Have them focus on the work.  They can control the work.

There’s other things you can do, of course.  You have to be concerned about health and safety of your employees.  We’re seeing that a lot with Amazon and some other strikes that are happening right now where people are saying, “Look, they’re making me go to work, and you’re not giving me any protective clothing.”  “You’re making me stand next to people.”  “You’re not telling me who’s sick.”  You know, I don’t think Jeff Bezos is going to come out of this very well unless he starts to make some changes because he says, “I’m hiring 100,000 workers,” which is great, but these people that work for him are saying, “Look, I’m uncomfortable being here because I could get sick at any moment.”  So, it’s going to be a huge thing.

So, health and safety, first, of your employees and customers, and then get them… the ones that you’re able to keep and keep going forward with, get them to focus on the work.  Keep them with things they can control, and then keep them in touch with each other.  You know, I recommend four things that you can do in virtual ways; have a daily huddle.  Every day, quick daily huddle; you know, what’s most important, what’s some good news going on?  Where are you stuck?  You can have a weekly meeting with your team to do more difficult things.  And then, you know what, have a virtual happy hour once in a while.  Just let people hang out with each other in a social setting, even though it’s sort of weird because you’re just kind of hanging out on your laptop and whatever, but it feels good.

And then lastly is just set up an hour or so a day where you and your team just hang out.  Meaning you all get on Zoom; you don’t have a meeting, but you’re just on Zoom together.  And, you know, if something pops up, just, you know, raise your hand or ping somebody.  It helps us, you know, at least have some semblance of connectivity.  I think those are some great things that leaders can do, and people will remember that.  They’ll remember that you carried them and their families.  They’ll remember that you tried to keep them connected and tried to give them some sense of control.

Andrea:  I like those.  I like those a lot.  Okay, so for yourself and your own sense of… you know, leading yourself through this kind of situation or anytime when you have really experienced hardship, is there any book or person or principle that you cling to, to help you get through it that really influences your ability to get through and keep going?

Bill Flynn:  So, I’m a big fan of David Rock, who is the head of the NeuroLeadership Institute.  He’s written a bunch of books, Your Brain at Work and a couple others.  So, I’ve taken those principles and applied them to myself.  And also my dad was an alcoholic, so there’s sort of A Principles – you know, first things first, that kind of stuff – and I think they really apply… which is what I just mentioned, I try to figure out what are the things that I have direct control over and indirect control over and what are the things I have no control over.

And the stuff I have no control over, I just don’t worry about them.  There’s nothing I can do, right?  I practice stoicism, you know, from Cato and Epictetus and all those guys.  You know, you focus on the stuff that you can control and realize that what you have is a gift.  The likelihood of us being here is next to zero, so remember that, you know, which is hard to do.  So, I sort of fall back on those things, which is the stuff I can control, I will try to put my heart and soul into it; the stuff I have indirect control on, I’ll try to influence.  You know, as you say, I can have some influence to my clients and to others.  So that’s what I do.

You know, my job is to protect my family as a parent and myself, but you know, I also can’t do that and ignore other people.  We’re tribal in nature and our inclination is to help others and so I’m trying also do that, which gives me some control right?  I lost 93% of my revenue because of this.  So, what I did first was I extended my home equity line of credit.  I applied for an EIDL.

I’m going to apply for the PPP from the CARES Act just so I have buffer because I don’t know how long this is going to last.  I do have some money in the bank to hold me for a little while, but now that I’ve done that, I can spend more time on, “Okay, how can I help people?”  And so I offer one hour a day to any leader that wants to chat, you know, whether they work with me or not.  I’m giving free, you know… any of my clients can set up any meetings with me that they want, and I’ll help them any way I can because that’s stuff I can control.

Andrea:  Hmm.  All right, so in closing this out, I’m going to ask you also to give us information about yourself and how people can get a hold of you or access to you.  But first, what advice would you give to somebody who really would like to have a Voice of Influence?

Bill Flynn:  So, if you want to influence others, the way that you influence someone is to have some level of trust first, because people are only influenced really… they allow themselves to be influenced.  It’s not something you can make them do.  And that trust is the first thing that they want.  So, the way to trust you is to feel like that you’re sincerely on their side, and you’re not doing it with an agenda in mind.  You’re doing it to sincerely help them.

So, I was a thirty-year sales guy.  I’m not a built-in sales guy.  I don’t have great technique.  I’m not an extrovert – I actually skew introvert – but I do have a sense of service and I always brought that to my sales job.  And the first question I would always ask when I was meeting with a potential prospect or their team was, “Hey, we’re gonna meet for like an hour or so.  If each of you could describe for me what would be a really good meeting, like when you talk to each other afterwards, how would you describe this meeting to each other as a success?”  And then I would write them down.

I wrote everything down they said, and I made sure that everyone had a chance to share.  And then before the meeting was over, I made sure I went over the list and said, “You know, this is what you asked for, and did I give this?”  And in an hour, I had great influence over these people.  And I had a very good close rate, you know, because also, if I said at the end of the hour a half, “Look, I can’t help you.  What you’re asking for is not what my product does.  It partly does what you want, but I wouldn’t want you to be unhappy, so here’s the name or two that I recommend people who would do what you want.”

And I’ve had people refer people to me.  They turned out not to be my clients, but they referred others who they said, “Oh, you know, Bill’s a great guy, and I think what you want is what he does.”  So, to me, that’s influence.  I definitely influenced them in some way, but they allowed me to do that.  They gave me permission because they saw that I was sincere in service.

Andrea:  Hmm, I love that.  All right, Bill, where can people find your book Further, Faster, and any other resources that you’d like to highlight?

Bill Flynn:  Yeah, sure.  So, I have a website, it’s a catalystgrowthadvisors.com.  All my contact information is on there, my email and phone number are on there.  But if you want to reach me without having to go there, it’s just bill@catalystgrowthadvisors.com.  And then of course, I have the book out.  It’s on Amazon and other places; there’s a Kindle version, a paperback.  There will be an audible version, but it actually got interrupted because the narrator is in New York, and he was told he couldn’t come to the studio anymore.  So, that’s been put on hold for a little while until they’re able to finish it.  So, I’m looking forward to that because that’ll be kind of fun.  So that’s it.

Andrea:  Awesome!  Thank you so much for being a Voice of Influence for our listeners today too, Bill.

Bill Flynn:  Thank you for having me on, Andrea.  I really appreciate it.

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Persuasion, Influence, and Negotiation for Leaders with Nashater Deu Solheim

Episode 137

Nashater Deu Solheim Voice of Influence Andrea Joy Wenburg

Play here (the red triangle below), on Apple Podcast, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Dr. Nashater Deu Solheim is the author of the new book, The Leadership PIN Code.

As a former forensic psychologist with clinical research in the neuropsychology of criminal minds, she developed a deep interest in effective learning strategies for lasting success. Now, as an expert negotiator who studied at the Program On Negotiations at Harvard Law School, Dr. Solheim has combined her experience as an executive leader in international private companies and government ministries to present The Leadership PIN Code – the definitive guide for helping business leaders secure influence and impactful results.

In this conversation, you’ll hear more about Dr. Solheim’s interesting experience as a clinical psychologist working with incarcerated offenders and then later with people who were exhibiting PTSD symptoms in warzones, the outline and explanation of her framework for The Leadership PIN Code, what it’s like to lead through this difficult time, and how you can use and understand the typical response to sudden change framework to help you understand your own personal response as well as the people who are on your team.

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Free Training to Improve the Efficiency of Your Voice

People generally don’t enjoy giving or receiving feedback, which leads to poor results as well as confusion, frustration, and resentment. Feedback conversations don’t have to feel confrontational or be unproductive. This training will help you be clear, calm, and get great results for you and the person on the other side of the table. [Click here] to transform your feedback method in less than 30 minutes!

Transcript

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3 Team Needs In a Time of Traumatic Crisis

Episode 134

Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Play here (the red triangle below), on Apple Podcast, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Everything happening right now has just thrown our world into the state of wondering what in the world is going on.  What’s going to happen with the stock market?  What’s going to happen with our businesses or our organization?  Are we going to be able to maintain where we are?  What’s going to happen with the health of the people around us?  There’s so much that is uncertain.  And we know that you want to take care of your team.

But at the same time, they still need to be productive in order to keep your organization moving forward so you don’t end up stalling out in this time of uncertainty.  That’s why, in this episode, we’re talking about three things that your team really needs in a time of crisis.

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Free Training to Improve the Efficiency of Your Voice

People generally don’t enjoy giving or receiving feedback, which leads to poor results as well as confusion, frustration, and resentment. Feedback conversations don’t have to feel confrontational or be unproductive. This training will help you be clear, calm, and get great results for you and the person on the other side of the table. [Click here] to transform your feedback method in less than 30 minutes!

Transcript

People of influence know that their voice matters and they can make it matter more.  This is Andrea Wenburg, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Today, Rosanne and I are tackling the question of what does your team need at a time of crisis?

You know, everything with COVID-19 has just thrown our world into the state of wondering what in the world is going on.  What’s going to happen with the stock market?  What’s going to happen with our businesses or our organization?  Are we going to be able to maintain where we are?  What’s going to happen with the health of the people around us?  There’s so much that is uncertain.  And we know that you want to take care of your team – you want to care for them well,

But at the same time, they really still need to be productive in order to, you know, keep your organization moving forward and you don’t end up stalling out in this time of uncertainty.  So, today, we’re going to talk about three things that your team really needs in a time of crisis.

So, Rosanne, thank you for being with me, again, today on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Rosanne:  I’m looking forward to this conversation, and you and I have had a lot of discussion behind the scenes on our own about our own company.  So, I’m looking forward to having the opportunity for us to share some ideas with our listeners.

Andrea:   So, when we’ve been talking about this, I think one of the things that’s interesting to me, and that has really shown up for me personally, is this desire to grasp for control in the midst of uncertainty.  What are your thoughts on why we do this?  Why do we grasp for control?

Rosanne:  Well, fear always ignites in us either a fight or flight or a freeze or fawn response, right? These are the trauma responses.  And all of it comes down to trying to stop something that we don’t want to happen or that we’re afraid is going to happen, from happening.  Nobody wants to feel vulnerable.  And so, of course, fear makes us grasp for control, but how we respond to fear is going to make a big difference in outcomes.  So, that’s what we’re talking about today.

Andrea:  Right.  I think one of the most important things for us to tackle here at the beginning is “Well, what happens, in a negative way, if we are grasping for control?”  “What are the bad things that happen?”  I mean, it certainly makes things harder for everyone when the leader is grasping for it or any other person, really.

Rosanne:  Right.  Yeah, so I think one thing that we have to remember is that fear in the face of uncertainty is normal.  That’s a normal – especially if the uncertainty is dangerous – that’s a normal and a healthy response.  Grasping for control, however, is not going to be a helpful response.  The danger is, fear could very quickly cause us to make everything about ourselves.

You know, I have four children, and all of them are responding differently to the crisis, and I’m dealing with it on my own.  And it’s very easy for us all to bounce off of one another at home because, when we feel afraid, we can make everything about ourselves very quickly and then everything degrades.

Andrea:  Yeah, because we are trying to protect ourselves.

Rosanne:  Right.

Andrea:  So, it does sort of become: “How do I keep myself from being destroyed in this situation?”  And when I say destroyed, it could mean a lot of different things.  But that’s one of the things that people are struggling with.

Rosanne:  Yeah.  And the most obvious part of that, of course, is the external – trying to not have our business destroyed or our life destroyed or whatever.  But what also tends to come out in situations like this is the unhealed parts of us, the unresolved parts of this that we would kind of manage in better circumstances tend to really come to the fore.  So, any insecurities that we have in other areas about whether or not people respect us, or whether or not we’re going to be safe, things that have actually nothing to do with the crisis at hand, tend to bubble to the surface any time we feel this vulnerable.

Andrea:  Is it possible that somebody might take advantage of me or my business?

Rosanne:  Right, right.  And, so, that’s another way where we can make everything about ourselves, and that’s just going to make everything harder for everybody around us.  It’s not going to be solution-oriented.

Andrea:  Right.  And the other thing that – I’ve certainly seen this with myself is that – when I am grasping for control, it’s sort of like, you know, you picture your hands trying to grasp and you just can’t quite ever get a hold of it.  Your energy and all of your resources and focus are being spent on this grasp that you’re trying to achieve, which is really impossible to achieve, at this point.  So, we’re grasping, grasping, grasping, and then I realized that, “Oh my gosh, I actually cannot…I cannot actually control the situation.”  And very little of the response of other people, or even, you know, there’s so much that I can’t control that I’m totally wasting my energy and my resources right now.

I think that was something that after a couple of days, maybe the initial kind of, “OK, this is what we have to do.  This is what we’ve got to get done.”  And then I started to notice this in myself, and I started to realize that I was really wasting a lot of time and energy on something that I really couldn’t do anything about.

Rosanne:  Right.  And especially when it comes to other people, like, are we calling things out of them or we’re trying to manage them?  Because managing just ignites their fear, it increases their sense of lack of control, and they’re going to fight us.  And then we’re just all spinning off of each other.  We’re like a bunch of bumper cars, bumping off with one another.

Andrea:   Yeah.  And I think I think even just to take that and explain it a little bit, Rosanne, the idea of managing people is really the idea of controlling people, trying to manage their response, trying to get them to do something or get them to respond in a certain way is that idea of managing.  So, it is, versus, what was the other thing that you said about that either managing or…

Rosanne:  Calling out the best in them, giving them real leadership, which is believing in them.  And believing that they have the capability of rising to the situation, and therefore calling that out, which is leadership.

Andrea:  And we’ll get to that more as this conversation moves on for sure.  When we’re to grasp for control, there is a level of trust that just starts to diminish with other people and how they feel about us.  What do you think that is?

Rosanne:  Well, nobody likes to have their choices taken away, right?  We don’t like that.  We don’t like feeling trapped.  And so if we behave in ways that make other people feel even more trapped than they already feel in the situation, that’s not going to end well.

Andrea:  Right.  So, we know that it’s not wise, it’s not going to get you where you want to go, to grasp for control.  And yet, there is this sort of…I don’t know, you do come to this point where you start to realize that “Oh my gosh, I really can’t do anything about this at all.”  So, the hope is, though, that we don’t go into this sense of feeling like we don’t have any kind of agency in this situation.  We still matter, your voice still matters.  So, how can we get it to matter more in this situation?  You know, we’re all in this together.  We all know that this is a really difficult time.

Rosanne:  Yeah.  I think there are things that we cannot control, and we have to make peace with that.  But then we’re left with the things that we can control and can be proactive about and recognizing, first of all, like you said, “We are all in this together, so we need to address it together.”  We need to be together.  We need to be other-focused in the middle of this and realize everybody’s having a hard time.

Andrea:  You know, one of the reasons why we wanted to tackle this particular question about what people need from you or what your team really needs from you, is because we are a trauma-informed business.  This is something that we know quite a bit about.  So, Rosanne, you mentioned something really interesting to me earlier about the people who are used to trauma and live with PTSD; they have an interesting perspective on this.  Can you share with our audience about that?

Rosanne:  Yes.  For one thing, resilience is learned.  And so, people who have been in very nurturing environments for the most part, like everybody runs into situations that are difficult.  Everybody has to overcome obstacles – that’s just a part of life, right?  But there are some people for whom life has worked fairly well.  They’ve worked hard.  They’ve seen the benefit of their effort.  They’ve had opportunities for education or for expansion of using their gifts, and life has worked pretty well for them.  But then there are other people who, on a very basic level, spend a lot of time -sometimes because of the choices they’ve made, often because of things that they’ve been through that were completely out of their control, either in childhood or because of health reasons or whatever, there can be a lot of different reasons – that a person has to spend a lot of energy just managing life.

And I say, this as somebody who spent a period of time early in my life battling an autoimmune disease.  And so, just basic living – the things that everybody else around me took for granted were very, very difficult for me because I wasn’t at the same starting place.  And so, even though the situation resolved eventually, my health resolved eventually – I learned something from that time.  That if you don’t have very basic things that other people have – we could look at Maslow’s pyramid of needs – if you are used to having to struggle for your basic physical needs, there are not the same opportunities for creativity that a person who does not have to struggle in those areas is going to be able to exhibit in good times.

However, in a crisis like this, when people who are used to being able to put all of their energy into creativity and innovation and self-fulfillment and that kind of thing, when they’re used to being able to live meeting those higher-end needs, when that gets taken away from them – it’s people who are used to having to struggle to survive who have a lot to teach you because they’ve had to do this a long time.  And, so, if you can take the burden off of them in terms of making sure that they know that they have a paycheck coming, and that they’re going to be OK with their basic physical needs – those actually may be people who can offer you insight and innovation and help in ways that maybe you’ve never seen the full value that they can offer to your organization.

Those will be people who can think strategically in a crisis, because they’ve had to do that over and over and over again for whatever reason in their lives.  People who have survived abusive childhoods are often very strategic thinkers because they had to be in order to survive.  That’s just one other way that I’ve seen that work.  And, so, people who are used to living, they’ve had at some point in their life, they had to live long-term in very traumatic circumstances.  There’s a resilience that they’ve built that in ordinary times, they can look more fragile.  But in a time like this, man, they have the skills, they know what to do, and they can actually be a real benefit to you at a time like this, as a leader.

Andrea:  Which I think is really, really cool.  It’s fascinating.  And I hope that if you are somebody who has struggled with traumatic events in your life and you’ve learned how to navigate things, maybe you’re feeling a little more calm than the people around you.  Then this is a really important time for you to step up and to step into that position of offering your calmness, offering your strategic thinking, and not being afraid to do that because other people might be falling apart in ways that you’re not.  So, we really want to encourage you, if you’re that person.

Rosanne:  Yeah.  And the other thing that’s important to realize at a time like this is resilience is learned.  Just like any other skill, some people might be more naturally bent in that direction than others.  But I told my kids as we were sitting down, we were talking about this whole situation.  Resilience is something that’s learned, and it’s learned in difficult times.  And, so, the fact that you feel afraid or you feel like you’re falling apart or whatever, acknowledge the reality of that.  Don’t pretend that you’re doing better than you are. Acknowledge where you are, but then recognize that: “This is where I am at the moment; but I can begin to take this apart, piece-by-piece, and I can start making positive choices. I can learn not to view this as the end.”

That’s a big part of resilience is no matter how overwhelming the situation feels in the moment, how out of control it feels in the moment – to realize seasons change. Seasons change – that’s something I say over and over to my children.  Sometimes they last a very long time, but seasons change eventually.  So, when you are acknowledging the depths of the grief or the fear or whatever, keep in mind also, “This is not the end. This is not the final word on this.”  Seasons change – this will change.

Other generations in the past faced great trouble; every generation does to some point. I think what we’re facing right now, is going to be a very defining one in history for our generation.  But we can meet it.  We have the blood of those people who have survived pulsing through our veins.  So, we can meet this challenge.  It’s not beyond what we are made for.  And so that’s something we really have to keep in mind.  For leaders, that’s an important thing leaders need to call forth in themselves and in their teams.

Andrea:  Mm-hmm.  Absolutely, because the kind of the opposite of grasping for control is when you take a step back and you say, “You know what, I can’t be destroyed by this, ultimately.  Me, as a spiritual human being, it may take my body, but it cannot destroy me.”  I mean, if you’re able to have that kind of perspective that you cannot be destroyed, then you’re not going to grasp for control quite like you when you were thinking “I have to be able to manage all the details and figure all this out.”  And, yes, we want to bring the best of who we are to the situation, problem-solve, and all those things.  But there’s a difference between grasping for that control and allowing that sort of spirit of “I cannot be destroyed by this, but I will meet it head-on with all that I am.”  There’s a difference between those two.

Rosanne:  Absolutely.  I mean, the reality is, all of us are going to die at some point.  So we want to make wise choices, of course, we want to live as long as we can for ourselves and our families and all of that.  But the reality is there is something greater beyond just the years that we have.  We have the opportunity, by the time that we spend here, to leave a legacy that outlives us.  And so, the person who lives this life in fear of being destroyed will not leave a positive legacy.  They’ll leave a very selfish, self-oriented legacy.  They will not be known for what they did for others, for the impact that they have that outlives them.  They’ll have wasted their time.

And, so, it is important to use the time we have.  And, obviously, we want to be responsible. We want to do healthy things; we want to make the most of extending as much of this time that we have so that we can use it well.  But if we live it in fear of destruction, we’re not going to live it well.   And, so, we have to think larger than that.  We have to think with vision about what kind of legacy is our life creating right now, as we live.

Andrea:  Mm-hmm so true.  All right, so, we’re going to move into now the three things that we’ve identified as things that your team needs in this time of crisis.  There are certainly other things but we want to highlight these three things as a trauma-informed company who works with leaders, who help teams to work most effectively and be the best that they can be.  So, the first thing that we’ve already kind of touched on is this need to create space for people to be able to process, especially at the beginning.

Now, Roseanne, you really are our trauma specialist in this area.  So, can you tell us a little bit more about why people need that space, particularly, at the very beginning?  Space being permission to kind of step back and do what you need to do to process.   Can you share with us why that’s a big deal?

Rosanne:  Trauma overwhelms the systems.  I mean, it’s a physiological reality.  And, so, one of the things that you have to be willing to do when you are dealing with a traumatic situation, and, collectively as a nation and worldwide, really, because this is an unknown, there’s so much that we don’t know about how this COVID-19 is going to play out, we’re all dealing with a traumatic situation.  And so, one of the things you do when you’re dealing with trauma, you get very basic.  You make sure you get enough sleep.  You make sure you take care of your body because what tends to happen is you’re so overwhelmed and disoriented that you kind of move from thing to thing, and you don’t do anything decisive. Your emotions are all raw, and so you have to re-ground, kind of, in your own body.

With trauma, there’s a sense of almost like your mind separating from what’s happening with you physically because what’s happening is so overwhelming that you can’t take it in.  And that can play out as denial.  That’s one way it can play out.  It can go into depression, and you can try to kind of separate from that feeling of out of control by feeling sad.  It can do a lot of different things with different people.  But the way to respond to trauma, the first thing you need to do, is to give your body a chance to recover from the emotional assault.  Your brain actually processes trauma as if it were a physical blow, OK?

So, you need to really take care of sleep.  You need to be sure you’re staying hydrated.  You need to be very gentle with yourself, not expect a lot of productivity initially.  You need to get your basic systems for living in place, where are you going to be for shelter.  What plan are you going to have for taking care of your family – those things are going to need to be the priority.  If someone is having to switch from working at the office to working at home, they’re going to need some time to get that set up and kind of wrap their minds around it.

A lot of parents right now are not only having to juggle the difference from working at another location to moving home for work, but they’re also having to deal with the fact that their children are all of a sudden doing school at home.  And I’m a homeschool mom; I can tell you what’s happening right now is not homeschooling.

I have homeschooled my children their entire – from the time my oldest son was in kindergarten – he is a senior in high school this year.  What is happening right now is not typical homeschooling.  If those of us who are homeschooling and used to homeschooling – who have chosen our own curriculum and have done all the things and are used to it – are struggling with this new norm of not being able to go out, of the kids not being able to do classes with other friends, co-ops activities, all of those things.  We’re struggling with that.  Believe me – I have great empathy for those of you who are thrown into this with curriculum that you did not choose and trying to set up technology so that teachers can teach you online.  God bless them, my heart goes out to them.  That is such a big challenge to have to make that kind of a switchover from a classroom setting to an online setting, just like that.

So, give yourself space right now.  It’s going to be disoriented.  It is not going to be highly productive.  Don’t expect of yourselves or your team the same standards of productivity that you would normally expect during this time.

Andrea:  Because actually processing and doing this work of giving yourself the space to sort of internally process this – and externally too perhaps – that actually is productive.  It’s productive toward the end of getting to the point where you can do more for work.

Rosanne Moore:  Absolutely.  And I would say during this early time, if you are used to meeting with a counselor and you can do that online with your counselor, do that.  If you have not previously felt the need of a counselor, you might need one now.  And, so, that can be really helpful.  Journaling can be extremely helpful.  Just the act of putting things on paper to sort out your thoughts can be extremely helpful.  But you’ve got to give yourself the mental space for your brain to come down off of that fight or flight, fawn or freeze response of trauma and to be able to settle back into logical thinking again

When you are in a trauma-based response, your body does not respond with logical thinking, it can’t.  It’s a different part of the brain.  So, the emotional part is turned on.  The logical part is turned off.  Know that with your kids too.  If you’re seeing big emotions from your kids, you can’t reason them out of them right now.  You have to calm the emotions before you can address logic.  And so, you have to do that with yourself first.

Andrea:  I wrote a lot about in my book because I had this tendency after a traumatic birth with my son, I was responding to things with anger a lot, instead of tears.  And what I realized through the process of like, kind of processing all of it, and going through it and getting to the point where I found some significant healing – is that I have to allow myself to feel the sad things that come along so that they can kind of pass by.  It’s sort of like waves of emotion.  If I keep trying to contain these waves of emotion, it really becomes a storm inside of me.

And, so, through this whole process, I have been crying quite a bit.  Not everybody is a crier, but I do cry.  I cry a lot more now than I used to because I realized how beneficial it is to me.  And, so, when a song comes on that reminds me of something, you know, I feel sentimental, I feel like the world is not as it should be.  My son is missing out on something; my daughter’s missing out on something else. This is not the way I pictured their childhood; this is not the direction that I wanted to go with the business right now, and I had other things, as I am being confronted with those thoughts – if the emotion is coming up inside of me, I allow it to come out.  And I don’t do it in front of other people for the most part, but I do find a space where I can allow that emotion to come out so that it is out.  So that it has “exited the building,” if you will.

Rosanne:   And it’s exiting your body as well because in tears, stress chemicals are released, and if you don’t release those, they stay in your body, and they produce a toxic load in your body that damages your health.

Andrea:  Absolutely.

Rosanne:  So, it’s very important that if you feel that urge to cry, find a place where you can do it.  Find a place where you can do it; it’s really important.

Andrea:  And then after you allow it to go, you don’t keep feeding that emotion.  So, you don’t go back say, “OK, now, that felt kind of good.  What else do I really feel bad about right now?”  You know, you don’t want to continue to feed it, you just want to allow it to be what it is and allow it to come out and then move on.  Go find something else to think about at that point.  That doesn’t mean you’re in denial, it means that you have processed a moment of grief, and you’re moving on, and you’re going to get something done until you need to process the next moment of grief.  So, this is another way in which we need to give space for ourselves and for our teens to be able to process especially right at the beginning.

So, Rosanne, we talked about the need for space, but teams also need truth.  They need to be able to be honest about what they’re actually confronting and what we’re going to do to meet that challenge.  Can you talk to us a little bit more about that?

Rosanne:  Absolutely.  A mark of good leadership is that you trust your team enough to be honest with them about what’s being faced, and you call them to action based on the reality of the situation.  You don’t make promises that you’re not going to be able to keep, that you know can’t keep.  Honestly, it’s kind of belittling when you try to hide from your team what’s happening because the message you’re sending is “I don’t believe you’re up to this.”  And the reality is, if you’ve done a good job of building your team, this is an opportunity for them.

I had to apply this with my son.  My oldest son, like I said, is a senior in high school this year.  So, we began talking about moving – he has been part of a high school co-op, where he would go for classes two days a week, and then the rest of the time he did his assignments at home – they had to move to classes online and I fully supported that decision.  And as more and more restrictions have come down in our state, one of the things that I had to say to him was: “Honey, you’re not going to be going back to co-op.  You’re not going to have that for the end of your senior year.  I’m sorry.”

That’s a big loss for him, but it would have hurt him worse if I had made it sound like: “Well, maybe it’s going to work out, you know.”  If I had strung him along or minimized it or said, “No, we’re not going to do that.  It doesn’t matter anyway because you’re getting to do stuff online.”  If I’d minimized the loss, or minimized the reality of the situation, both of those things would have been unfair to him.  But because I was just honest with him, and I had to say: “Look, what I can tell you is you’re not going to be going back to co-op for the rest of this year. However, this thing, we don’t know yet how long it’s going to last, how long these restrictions are going to last. But we know at some point, everybody’s going to come out again.  And at that point, I promise, we will celebrate your graduation. We will find a way to celebrate your accomplishments, even though it’s not going to look like what we originally thought it was going to.”

So, it’s going to be really important for leaders right now to be honest about the situation, to be honest about what you’re confronting because of the situation.  And then to be honest about what you’re doing to meet that challenge.  They also need to hear that – not simply like, “Yeah, it’s really bad,”  – but also, “This is what we’re doing proactively to meet this challenge, and this is what we’re asking from you in response to this challenge.”

Andrea:   People need a plan.  They need to know what that plan is.  I mean, that’s something that my husband and his business did this week was, they took a step back and they said, “OK, what are we gonna do?”  We all kind of conferred:  “This is how we’re gonna handle this crisis.  And at least for the time being, we know that this is the structure that we’re going to move under.”  Then that was communicated to the rest of the team, and though there might be differing opinions on what should happen, at least there is clarity for people in knowing, “OK, so this is what they’ve told me that I can count on for my benefits. This is what they’ve told me I can count on for my time off if I happen to get this disease. They are doing everything they can to, you know, maintain our business and keep things moving forward.”

So, they have the need for space to process, the need for the truth so that they can confront the truth and meet it head-on.  But there’s also a need to be released.  Your people have a need to be released.  I think one of the things that we immediately kind of do is we tend to operate in our zone of, you know, sort of our box.  This is what I have been told I should do.  This is my role.  This is where I fit.  That can be confining anytime, but especially in a time when we need to be able to think beyond where we were before.  We need innovation.  We need vision.  So, being released to bring the best of who you are and who your team is to this situation could be a game-changer.

Rosanne, you can talk a little bit about that, and then I’ll throw in my example.

Rosanne:  Yeah.  So, I think it’s really important at a time like this to say, “We know what we’ve been used to. This is the situation we now have – we’re open to suggestions if you have ideas.”  So, in some industries, the leadership may already have a plan, and it may be a matter of communicating, “This is how we’re asking you to pivot.”  And it may be that all that you need to do releasing them from doing things the way they’re used to, you’re asking them to pivot.  In some situations, a leader may need strategic ideas and it would be important to open things up and say, “You’re used to doing this.  What else do you see yourself as being able to bring to the table in this situation?  What other ideas do we have here?”

And I realized it depends on the role the person is playing in the company, as far as how open you’re going to be to letting them bring change ideas.  But I think it’s really important to realize in times where what has been working no longer works, for whatever reason – and right now it’s external reasons – that the greatest innovation takes place.  This is an opportunity.  We can either see it as an absolute disaster, setback, whatever, or we can see it as an opportunity.

The other thing, I think, we have to be able to recognize is part of releasing people to bring the best, most selfless part of who they are to this challenge, is realizing there are going to be people who are grieving in the weeks ahead. They may not be sick themselves; they may have lost someone, and they’re going to be grieving.  And so as a team, being released to stand beside somebody in a compassionate way and not just being frustrated by the stress of the situation, but bringing the best, most selfless part of who they are to this challenge in a very human capacity, as well as a work capacity, is going to be long-term team-building,  long-term good for your company.

Andrea:  Absolutely.  So, when it comes to releasing people to be who they are, that is one of the bedrock themes of our business.  And what we do with teams and what we do with leaders, one simple example would be when our kids came home from school, and now we’re going to be at home for a quarter of the year, longer than what we would have been.  And the question became, “How are we going to do this?  All of a sudden, lots of ideas popped up on the internet, on Facebook, on Pinterest, whatever about how to handle this with our kids, and there are a couple things that I took into consideration.  And I think that this applies to teams as well, first of all, the stage or the situation of your team now.

So, when my kids were little, I would block out time, and I would sort of make a schedule for the whole day, or I’d make a list of things that we were going to get done every day, that sort of thing.  And as they’ve grown, that has become less of an important thing for us to do, not just important, but it’s almost important that we don’t do that too much.  We don’t want to over-schedule because my kids, in particular, one of them likes the schedule, one of them likes routine.  One of them needs more freedom to be able to do things.  So, she might need a list of things to do for the day, or we can discuss, “OK, so what are the things that would be most beneficial for your mind, body, and soul today?”  But she wants the freedom to be able to accomplish those things within a broader range of time.

And she will get them done, and she will do them with joy.  And she will do them with more precision and more efficiency.  She’ll just do better job if she’s given the space to be able to do that.  But our son, on the other hand, would prefer to know exactly what he’s expected to have the same jobs every day, to know what he’s going to be able to expect for a fun activity that day that sort of thing.

So, what I’m saying here is that we need to kind of know our teams, know the people, individuals, especially if they’re working from home now and ask them, “What do you need to be able to accomplish the things that you need to get done?”  “How can I help with that?  Instead of coming up with, you know, a very strict set of rules or how they’re going to be at home, instead being able to say, “What is it that you do need in order to accomplish what you’re trying to accomplish?”

And people will fight for you.  They will fight for your organization.  They will do the best that they can when you believe in them and when you are fighting for them.  They know that.  They believe that.  They want the best for the organization because you want the best for them too.  And when they’re given the freedom to be able to do that, they’re going to rise to the occasion.

Rosanne:  Absolutely.  Yeah, I have four children that I homeschool.  And I have three different plans for how we do that.  Two of my children basically, follow one plan.  One goes to a co-op.  The other has a completely different plan because we have to do what’s going to bring out the most productivity. You have to ask yourself, I think: “What is the ultimate goal that I’m trying to accomplish?”  And then from there, what’s the best way to get people to achieve that?

Andrea:  That’s right, because if the goal is for you to have control, then they’re not going to be able to achieve that for you.

Rosanne:  Right.

Andrea:  If the goal is you grasping for control, then you’re not going to get what you want.  You’re just not going to get it.  So, we’re saying, “Look, take a step back.”  So much of this is about releasing control.  It is about putting yourself in a position and a heart position in a position with your team where yes, you will bring the best of who you are.   You’re going to bring your own strategy and clarity about what the new normal will be for your team and that sort of thing.  But if you have that energy of grasping for control, people will feel it.  And they will resist it, and they will resent it.  And it is very likely that, again, it will feel like things are harder for everyone if you’re grasping for control.  It will end up being energy and resources spent on things that won’t help and the level of trust in your organization with both your team and your customers, that’s going to diminish.

So what does it look like when you actually do give people the space to process and meet their need for the truth and meet their need for being released to be able to bring the best of who they are to this situation?  Well, there’s a lot of really good that can come from that.

Rosanne:  Absolutely. Releasing control is not abdicating leadership.  We’re not suggesting that you should be passive.  You want to be assertive – you just don’t want to be aggressive.   Aggression is not going to help your team function well.

Andrea:  Yeah.   So, what do you get when you do that?  Look, your team is going to be healthier and they are going to eventually be happier, perhaps even in this moment.  They’re going to trust you more.  They’re going to use resources more efficiently.  If they’re given that space, even though you’ve given them extra space, and maybe it feels inefficient for now, eventually that’s going to come back around and really show up as efficient.  People are going to bring that innovative problem-solving energy to the things that they’re doing.  And ultimately, you’re going to have more goodwill with your team and with your customers.  Instead of grasping for control, you release and you give people the things that they really need.

Well, we want to close off today just by saying we care about you.  We are so sorry that you’re having to confront this.  We’re sorry for the world.  We don’t know what’s coming in the future.  But we do know that we are here to do whatever we can to help you.  So, if you would like to have a conversation about yourself and processing these things for yourself, or if you would like to have a conversation about how to help your team, please reach out.  Go to voiceofinfluence.net, hit the contact button and send us a message.  We would love to visit with you and do what we can to help you in this time of traumatic crisis.

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How to Assemble and Engage a Global Team with Dmitriy Peregudov

Episode 133

Dmitriy Peregudov Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Play here (the red triangle below), on Apple Podcast, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You know, pulling together a team and helping them all feel like they really are a part of your organization is a difficult job as it is.  But it’s even more difficult when you’re trying to do it on a global scale.

Our guest today, Dmitriy Peregudov is doing that with giftbasketsoverseas.com.  He has a team where they are servicing over 200 countries worldwide with the goal to build international personal and corporate relationships through gifting.

And today’s conversation – he’s going to share with us how he has really handled that challenge of assembling a global team.  He’s also going to share with us their core values and what giftbasketsoverseas.com really delivers to customers – how they use offsite meetings to develop relational connections.  And let me just give you a little tip on that on the front end, they go to a different country every single time they do an offsite meeting.  It’s very interesting.

And then finally, he shares two things that you really need to focus on as a business leader to have success.  We will link to giftbasketsoverseas.com on our show notes but you can also find them by just typing it in your search engine.  We are really, really thrilled to have Dmitriy Peregudov today on the podcast.

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

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Transcript

People of influence know that their voice matters, and they work to make it matter more.  I’m Andrea Wenburg, and this is the Voice of Influence podcast.

You know, pulling together a team and helping them all feel like they really are a part of your organization is a difficult job as it is, but it’s even more difficult when you’re trying to do it on a global scale.

Our guest today, Dmitriy Peregudov, is doing that with giftbasketsoverseas.com.  He has a team where they are servicing over 200 countries worldwide with the goal to build international personal and corporate relationships through gifting.

In today’s conversation, he’s going to share with us how he has really handled that challenge of assembling a global team.  He’s also going to share with us their core values and what giftbasketsoverseas.com really delivers to customers, how they use offsite meetings to develop relational connections – and let me just give you a little tip on that on the front end, they go to a different country every single time they do an offsite meeting.  It’s very interesting.

And then finally, he shares two things that you really need to focus on as a business leader to have success.  We will link to giftbasketsoverseas.com in our show notes, but you can also find them by just typing it in your search engine.  We are really, really thrilled to have Dmitriy Peregudov today on the podcast.

Here is our interview:

Andrea:  All right, Dmitriy, it is great to have you here on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Dmitriy Peregudov:  Thanks for having me.  This is Dmitriy Peregudov, CEO of giftbasketsoverseas.com.

Andrea:  Awesome!  And Dmitriy, I’m curious; first of all, what is giftbasketoverseas.com?

Dmitriy Peregudov:  Sure.  So, giftbasketsoverseas.com is the company that delivers baskets worldwide.  That’s just how the name calls it. The service area we have is around 200 countries worldwide and we work with both personal and corporate gifts for our customers in the US and overseas.

Andrea:  And as I was doing my research to learn more about your company, Dmitriy, I saw that one of the key things that’s important for people to know about Gift Baskets Overseas is that your gift baskets don’t have to go through customs.  You’re actually providing gifts from the country that they’re sending it to.

Dmitriy Peregudov:  Absolutely.  That’s one of the important parts of our business model.  We do focus on local gift delivery so that it sends quickly and reliably without crossing the border, and so that recipient would never have to pay taxes or duties fees.

Andrea:  So, where did this all start for you?  How did you get going with Gift Baskets Overseas?  Were you already in the tech space or where were you when you first started this business and why did you start?

Dmitriy Peregudov:  Yeah.  Well, actually, personally, you know, a software engineer at the time and had a lot of opportunities to send gifts to other countries.  And I, myself, an immigrant from Russia, and I’ve got a chance to connect with my folks there as well as friends in other countries. So, I’ve got a lot of cases where I need to send gifts, and I found that to be quite difficult and cumbersome.  And so, you know, one of those experiences led me to say, “Well, I’m gonna try that, you know, in several countries and see what happens.” So, my tech experience allowed me to, you know, come up with the first website, and you know, we’ve started doing it in a few countries at first and that kinda led us to the expansion.

Andrea:  And you’ve been going for how long?

Dmitry Peregudov:  Well, the first website was started back in 2002.  That’s been more of like a flower business and flower delivery space, and the gift basket itself, that space was sort of, you know, we’ve entered into that in 2007.

Andrea:  What amazes me is how you were able to build a team in 200 countries.  What was that like, you know, just sort of reaching out to people, finding people, bringing them on board?  Tell us a little bit about that.

Dmitriy Peregudov:  Sure.  So, you know, we’ve got an internal team that we call A team – the people who work for the company directly and represent the company with customers.  That’s customer service team as well as order processing teams, marketing, and so on. That’s internal team. We have around seventy people today, and that group has been found through personal connections as well as some external reaching out to the right people.  But, yeah, building a global team does come with challenges.

I think you asked about also, you know, deliveries network that we have, and that’s where 200 countries come into play.  So, yeah, that is sort of an external team where we have, you know, other companies or other individual entrepreneurs who are looking to serve a certain area for gift baskets and flowers.  And so, those are certainly also found through online connection. Today, we have a lot of choices so we need to just make sure we choose the right ones. So it’s mostly true, you know, do just some checking, and trying the particular provider ourselves that we end up selecting the best ones and working with them.

Andrea:  Okay, so your internal team, are they all in Massachusetts?  Is that where you’re located?

Dmitriy Peregudov:   Yeah, the headquarters is in Massachusetts, but the team is actually all over the world.  Internal basically means that they work for the company itself representing the brand. You know, a lot of them are initially freelancers who enjoy the work environment of remote employment and wanted to get a position to something more purposeful where they have a specific client or specific company they are working for.  So that’s where it kind of began, where we started hiring freelancers to help. And then they ended up, you know, staying or focusing on us as being the main place to work or the only place to work, I would say.

And some of them are from the US, others are from Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East, and so and so.  We have a team globally now sort of residing in almost all the continents of the world and in many countries.

Andrea:  Hmm.  So, I read that your company was on the Inc. 5000 list of Fastest-Growing Companies here in the first few years of starting your company.  What were some of the really hard things that you encountered when you were first starting? What was, like, personally difficult for you?

Dmitriy Peregudov:  Sure.  So, I think working with people, in general, is not easy when you have people that are from different cultures and backgrounds.  And those who value different things in their culture – that creates certain challenges, you know. And I, myself, being from Russia and from Europe originally and sort of growing up and professionally in the US, I got to have that mix where I could understand, you know, Western values combined with some of the Eastern European and European values.  So, that helped me a bit, but you know, a lot of other people who were from neither of these two areas were different.

And also, you know, even values aside, just people are all unique, and we all have to have our own stories to tell.  So that presented some challenges, especially working remotely when you haven’t personally met someone. We had a number of people who worked with us, and we never actually met them in person.  So that presented its own challenges, where you have no opportunity to have a coffee break with someone or you don’t just go for a little chat so that in itself had some challenges in the beginning.

Andrea:  Yeah.  You mentioned the challenges of having to work with people – and getting to work – but the challenges of working with people on that global scale and from different cultures.  What were some of the things that you did – tricks or principles that you lived by and still do, maybe – to help you bridge that gap and to understand different cultures and help them to acclimate to the culture of your company?

Dmitriy Peregudov:  Sure.  That’s a great question.  Well, one of the things we’ve done is getting to know the person on a personal level and trying to learn over time what it is that drives them.  And I think that helps a lot to understand whether they’d be a fit to the team. In the beginning, we didn’t really have any formal process to bring someone on board.  We just kind of looked at the skill sets, and if they worked out, we just said, “All right, you know, we’re going to give you a try.” And we’ve got some limited experience with that, limited success with that where we had, you know, maybe two out of three people ended up being alright and a fit, I would say.  And one out of three was really not a good thing and disastrous, I would say.

So, we were spending a lot of time in training these people and bringing them onboard and wasting about 35% of the effort, and that was a lot.  Also, it took a toll on some of the trainers where you had people really coming in to train the newcomers, and they were wasting lot of their time, and that was demotivational for the next time.

So, we ended up being much more rigorous and figuring out what it is that makes a right person for the team, you know, besides the skills.  And today – and for a number of years now – we’ve hired on our core values as opposed to on the skills. So that helped. While them being… flexibility that the person, you know, values.  They value flexibility. We value flexibility. We want them to be flexible with us in many ways, you know. In exchange, we offer them flexibility for working from home, working from any location.  If they were to be… you know, they want to go spend vacation or spend some time working elsewhere, they can.

So, a lot of those things we offer, you know, in exchange, we request that they are flexible with us.  And we have number of things we want from the person; such as some hours that we want covered in addition to the normal times.  And maybe sometimes when there is a hot season, we want them to stay, you know, and doing a double shift or things like that. There are a lot of things that we require that also would call for flexibility.

And the other one that the business, big one, is ownership, and I think ownership is a huge thing with us.  And a lot of companies realized that over time that ownership of having someone drive themselves to achieve certain results is super important.  With us, we don’t have a boss, you know, standing behind someone’s chair and tapping their shoulder to say, “Hey, how’s it going,” you know. So, we don’t have that, just kind of typical office environment isn’t there.  So, we rely on these people to be self-starters and to be at least carrying their weight or more. So that’s super important for us as well.

Andrea:  How do you know if somebody is a self-starter if they’re going to take ownership when you’re first interviewing them and you’re talking to them about the possibility of working for you?

Dmitriy Peregudov:  That’s a great question.  We don’t really know, and no one ever knows.  But I think having an understanding in general if this format of work works out and if the person has done something in their personal life that shows an ownership or a certain degree of independency in their own lives – that someone, for example, who immigrated to another country and had done things on their own there, so starting up from the ground – that kind of one slice of a person that might work for us.

It works out in our favor because skillsets sometimes where you have multilingual people who have, you know, two or more languages under their belt, that sort of shows.  And some of them would be immigrants, you know, naturally because they have known their own mother tongue and then they’ve immigrated to another country and they’ve learned – let’s say, someone came to Mexico and learned Spanish there and they might have picked up English on the way as well.  So that would a trilingual person, you know, working in Mexico who actually originally lived in Belgium or Russia. So that may be a good candidate for us.

And other things like, you know, what other ownership criteria, you know, are the people who are not afraid for opportunities.  You know, someone who’s talking to us, a company that doesn’t have an office; like, really doesn’t have a central location where people go to work, you know – and a lot of people today would find that… even today in the world where a lot of companies operate under that model – they would think, “Well, that’s kind of fishy.  That’s not…” So, we want the person to be opportunistic and taking a leap of faith, and you know, trusting someone. So, we want that opportunism as well in a person, and opportunism sometimes comes hand in hand with ownership as well. 

Andrea:  So, what are your other core values?  You mentioned flexibility and ownership. Do you mind sharing others with us?

Dmitriy Peregudov:  Sure.  So, customer focus is another big one for us.  From the very beginning, we realized how much customer experience matters.  Our customers, why they do business with us, in many ways, we are not the cheapest in service and yet, we’re often chosen against many other companies in the space because we do what we do very well.  And even when some issues may happen in the field, we always cover our customers and we make sure at the end that they are satisfied.

So, we realized that after, you know… my personal experiences were quite negative when I was starting the company with the experience of using some other companies was negative and also understanding how much the deficiency exists in the space of, you know, flower and gift delivery today.  If that was true back in 2002 and 2007, and it’s still true today, where a lot of companies out there exist and being created every day, but those who really can deliver on the customer promise – there’s only handful of those, and that I’m proud to say we’re one of those who are able to deliver on that.

Andrea:  Well, you don’t stick around as long as you have and service as many countries as you do without good customer service because that’s pretty much all it is.  Your product, of course, is important as well, but I mean, my goodness, yeah. I would think that you would hear if something didn’t turn out like somebody expected.

Dmitriy Peregudov:  Absolutely.  In fact, we realized that we’re not in service of delivering, you know, gift baskets or flowers – we’re actually in service of delivering emotions and connections.  So that really bring us to sort of the importance of a customer interaction and that’s far above just survivability. I mean, surviving in space, that is important and that’s where some people say, “Well, I’m gonna focus on the customer so that I’m better than others.”  But once you realize that, you know, you’re not really selling gifts, you’re selling relationships; you’re selling an opportunity for someone to build a relationship or to improve it. So, once you realize that that’s what you’re selling then, you know, the only thing that really matters is the customer experience with that.

Andrea:  Hmm, well, that’s such a deeper purpose than being here to make money.  And I’m sure that that’s the case for the people that work for the company as well.  I’m guessing that you communicate that with them; that you’re here to help facilitate or help build connections and help with relationships.  And that probably means something to them.

Dmitriy Peregudov:  Yes.  Indeed, it does.  And you know, one of the slices there is that when we do bring someone over, another important part is, “What is compensation like,” and then people do ask that question.  Obviously, that’s important for someone working to be compensated fairly. In the beginning, especially early on, we didn’t have a lot of funds available for compensating newcomers.  And we generally hired from, you know, very fresh out of school or someone who had related experience in what we do. And so, the offering salaries were generally on the lower side.

So, oftentimes, people would join us, not because they want a high pay or not because they want to have a high personal achievement record.  Sort of like, we deterred individually. So, we deter those who want to make career out of it necessarily. So, people who came in, they really sort of care about what we do and wanted to be part of it.  So that really sort of took away that… those hunters who came for the money. So that helped us as well, I think.

Andrea:  I can see how immigrants would be able to relate to this problem of wanting to connect overseas and being able to maintain those relationships in meaningful ways even with gifts and things like that.  I love that there are so much continuity in the values. You mentioned flexibility, ownership, and customer focus. Are there others?

Dmitriy Peregudov:  Sure.  So, besides those, we worked on finding other values, searching the keys for what they are because we really didn’t want to make any of those up.  You know, a lot of companies say, “Well, we have those values, and we’ll just put them on a poster.”

Andrea:  Yeah.

Dmitriy Peregudov:  For a number of years, we haven’t had any values formally decided on.  But lately, you know, about four years ago, our management team got together in one of the offsite meetings.  We do those every year, which I should tell you more about later. But that [was] really the time where we kind of reflected on who we are, and what is it we do, and we’ve understood that we value diversity.

And diversity is a big thing, right?  Diversity of customer base – we have all kinds of customers.  We have corporate and personal. We have, you know, those who prefer to order all out of the form, and those who prefer to talk to the Chatbot.  We have those who just want to order by email and those who just go to the website. So, we have, like, all kinds of different customers. So, flexibility is important for us to offer to our customers, and they’ll come from different countries, so different languages, different cultures, you know, religions, sexual orientations.

So, we try to go for gifts to all those groups and being as more flexible for all the different niche groups.  So, niche customer base is, you know, what comes with that flexibility. And internally, we’re also very flexible and diverse within the team.  So, we have people from all over the world working for us, and also, they have different religions and all that comes with it. So when it all comes together with the trips we take, you know, people from all over the place come together once a year to one new country.

So, every year, we pick a country, and we take our team there.  And that’s where we brainstorm. We learn about each other. We put little green dots in Google to faces.  You know, how _____.  So, we tried to kind of go away from that and say, “Well, now this green dot becomes a real person, a real face.”  And we learned about each other in those corporate outings. They are sort of semiformal, semi-fun, so we really educate each other in an informal environment and that’s really the focus of those meetings.

This year, we’re planning to go to Portugal and to Columbia as well because that kind of seems the places we haven’t been to yet.  We’ve got 200 countries on the map, so I’m not sure if we’re going to make it, but…

Andrea:  You’re going to need quarterly meetings instead of…

Dmitriy Peregudov:  Yeah.  This year, we have _____, so we’re making two meetings.  Usually, we do one. But this year, we’ve got exceptionally a good Christmas where we’ve got a lot of _____ during the season.  So, we decided that we can afford two meetings this year, and we’re going to send people to two countries this time.

Andrea:  Hmm.  So, who all do you have attend that meeting?

Dmitriy Peregudov:  Well, generally, it’s the management team is a core of that.  And in addition to it, you know, every year we have newcomers who join the team, and they don’t know about the company enough to really fully drink our Kool-Aid.  So, we need to kind of get them accustomed, sort of get them to learn about the company and about people more. So, those newcomers are first in line to be invited.  Of course, once we believe that they are a good fit. Usually after two or three months, you kinda know that’s a right fit. But generally, when we hire for the holiday then after the holiday, we’ve get to keep some of the people who were hired seasonally.  So that’s the time in spring when we get to keep people for good.

And if they feel like that’s a right fit for them, you know, a lot of them also realize that they may have enjoyed Christmas season, but they also have, you know, really burned out.  And those who were burned out after one season, they’re not really a fit because that means it’s probably not their type of work. It’s not their cup of tea to continue. So, we end up inviting newcomers, you know, most of the management team and also some of the people who also are sort of core team.

So, generally each trip is between seventeen and twenty-two people or so.  It’s a small group. We usually rent, like, a big villa or we rent a small hotel all for us.  And we do stuff like educational topics – everyone brings a topic to present. And also, we have sometimes some professionals who join to present certain topics.  And we meet our partners in each country. That’s a big thing as well. So, we have those who delivers for us in that country, they join us for the trip. We learn about them.  They learn about us. That kind of builds those relationships as well.

Andrea:  Hmm.  I love this.  I’m just kind of jotting notes as you’re talking about it and I’m thinking about how powerful that is for really building the team for them to be able to feel like they’re really a part of it.

Dmitriy Peregudov:  It’s very important.

Andrea:  Yeah.  You said educational topics – do you ever do strategic planning in these meetings or is that saved for a different time?

Dmitriy Peregudov:  We do.  To some degree, we would have strategic meetings during the year as well.  Those [are] kind of done usually after the season when we kind of look back and see what worked, what didn’t – and we continue on.  Now, strategy is certainly becoming more and more important, so those meetings are quite important. Each meeting has a theme of its own.  Like last year, we had a theme of Never Lose A Customer Again, and that’s a book by Joey Coleman.  It’s kind of a book that we decided that we will make our bible for a year or two.

The idea of that book is, you know, several strategies of how do you centralize all the processes you have around the customer – how do you make customer focus your core competency, and what do you do to never lose a customer again.

And so there’s a process in the book that defines a hundred-day process on how not to lose a customer.  So, we’ve started making changes in the company that would make us less likely to lose a customer. Of course, in reality, people do get lost is an issue for a lot of companies.  But we are not an exception in saying that, you know, it’s so much more expensive to attract a new customer, and it’s so much easier to keep an existing one happy.  So, once you start shifting your marketing dollars and your effort of the team to saving a customer, then you start realizing that you were wasting all these money to attract new-coming customers and you were really missing out on the golden opportunity of keeping your existing ones happy.

Andrea:  Yes.  It’s so much more expensive to acquire new customers, so it makes a lot of sense to spend a lot more time and effort focusing on the customers that you already have.

Dmitriy Peregudov:  Exactly.  And in fact, it’s actually part of the business that we have.  Especially with corporate customers where a lot of our corporate clients have realized that for them to keep a relationship with their own customers up and keep loyalty of their customers and grow their relationships with their customer base is through gifting.  So, what we do for them is, in a lot of ways, what we do for ourselves. So, you know, also realizing customer loyalty and keeping customers happy and also building the relationships by sending gifts, that’s what a lot of our customers understand.

You know, Christmas and year-round, they create birthday programs for their clients, for their customers and for their employees as well, so building loyalty with both employees and customers is in a lot of ways part of the strategy for other customers we service.

Andrea:  Yes, of course.  That makes complete sense.  Dmitriy, this has been a really interesting conversation.  I’m curious; when you think about the listener who’s out there wanting to lead a purposeful team, wanting to have a voice of influence, do you have any parting words for them?  Any last piece of advice that you’d want to offer?

Dmitriy Peregudov:  Sure.  The technical and financial parts of any business owner or a CEO is oftentimes calls us to look at the numbers.  And I think numbers are important, no matter what other things we have to look at. But I think the numbers will come together well and profitability will be realized if you start focusing on the right things.  I think that’s what I would suggest, you know, focusing on the customer and looking at how to make it right for the customer or how to design the business around your customer – making that work will make your numbers work.  And shifting more of your focus to the existing customers who have chosen you once and who have much higher chance of choosing you again really is a key to our success.

And as for the team, explain out to the team and letting them have a piece of ownership of particular area, no matter how small having someone to be heard.(26:54)  In our case, it’s very important that everyone who is part of the team has a chance to voice their concerns.  And we listen to our team very closely, and management team does not ignore those words. So that really makes everyone feel like they actually own part of that company and part of the process.  So, I think on the team side, I recommend letting people be heard. And on the customer side focus on that and make sure that you take care of those existing customers.

Andrea:  Great words of wisdom from Dmitriy.  Thank you so much for taking time to be a voice of influence for our listeners today.

Dmitriy Peregudov:  Thank you, Andrea.  Thanks for having me.

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How to Prioritize and Take Back Your Calendar with Paul Casey

Episode 129

Paul Casey Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Play here (the red triangle below), on Apple Podcast, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Paul Casey is an expert in time management and leadership and a professional speaker who has spoken for companies like McDonald’s and Subway.  Through his company, Growing Forward Services, he partners with corporations and individual clients to transform their vision, habits, and lives.

In this episode, we talk about the immediate and long-term things you can do to determine what your priorities need to be, how to tell when it’s time to reevaluate those priorities,  what you can do to take back your calendar, the four personality types he uses with his clients, how each type approaches important and urgent things on their to-do list differently, and his main advice for getting people to buy into your vision, which is a big piece of what we talked here at Voice of Influence.

Take a listen to the episode!

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Transcript

People of influence know that their voice matters, but they work to make it matter more.  I’m Andrea Wenburg, and this is the Voice of Influence podcast.

Do you ever feel like your calendar is just out of control?  Like, you think that you have things on your calendar in a way that it’s going to work for you, but then things come up – urgent things, fires that you need to put out – and all of a sudden, the things that you put on your calendar you have to move to a new day, put it on the back burner, and maybe it just never gets done.

Well, today, I’ve got Paul Casey on the line, and Paul is an expert in time management and leadership.  Paul is a professional speaker and has spoken for McDonald’s, Subway, and a bunch of amazing companies. He, through his company Growing Forward Services, really partners with corporate and individual clients to transform their vision, habits, and their lives.  And today, he’s going to share with us some very helpful advice for being more intentional with your time as a voice of influence.

We talk about the immediate and long-term things that you can do to really determine what your priorities need to be.  And we talk about how those shift; it may not always be the exact same thing. So, then also, what are those specific things that you can do to take back your calendar or to make those shifts that you need to make as your priorities change?  We talk about four personality types – they’re fun, very fun personality types – and how each one really approaches important and urgent things on their to-do list differently.

And then finally, he also offers a really valuable tip on how to get buy-in on your vision, which is a big piece of what we talked here at Voice of Influence.  So, I hope that you enjoy this conversation with Paul Casey.

Andrea:  All right, Paul Casey, it is great to have you on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Paul Casey:  Super to be here, Andrea.

Andrea:  Paul, tell us a little bit about what you do.

Paul Casey:  Yeah.  So, my mission in life is to…

Andrea:  I love it.  I love that you’re starting with mission because we’re so in sync with that idea of it all begins with a mission. 

Paul Casey:  It does, it does, yes.  My mission is to equip and coach leaders and teams to spark breakthrough success.  So, that’s my overarching, like, why I do what I do. And I do that through number one; leadership coaching, through team building seminars and workshops, leadership and self-leadership.  Got my own little local podcast here where I interview leaders, and I’ve written a few little mini books on leadership and self-leadership.

Andrea:  Okay, so, you help them spark breakthrough success.  What does that mean?

Paul Casey:  Well, I think that everyone inside of them has this spark that needs to be lit or maybe it’s the match that needs to be lit.  And as a coach, I can come alongside them, and by asking powerful questions, really get them re-familiar with themselves through assessment tools or just sort of probing deep inside them for what they really want to do with their life, or in their business, or as an entrepreneur.

Andrea:  And then it somehow breaks through?   What is it breaking through?

Paul Casey:  Boy, I love it.  Sometimes it’s just the day to day humdrum, you know, “I don’t know if I’m making a difference.  I’m going to my job. I’m going through the motions. I think I am, but I don’t know if this is my life purpose.  I don’t know if this is where I should be on this team forever.” And that breakthrough happens when that insight, like, “Man, I don’t know if I need to be doing this long term,” or “Maybe I should seek that promotion,” or “Maybe I should launch a business.”  It’s so fun to be on the front lines of that.

Andrea:  What kinds of things do you find that have made a difference in helping people become more self-aware, that sort of thing?  It sounds like you were talking about assessments and questions. Does that self-awareness then help them to understand who they are so that they can do those things?  Is that what you’re saying?

Paul Casey:  That’s where I start with people.  I think Ian Morgan Cron – he does the Enneagram survey – he says, “Self-knowledge leads to self-awareness.”  And I had never thought about it that way ‘cause I usually just start with self-awareness, but the self-knowledge piece is all those assessment tools – whether that’s Myers-Briggs or the Disc or I do the animal styles because I think that one is more fun, whether you do mapping of your aspirations…  Got a whole bag of tricks that I utilize with clients until they’ve got this sort of comprehensive snapshot on them, and the client looks at that and goes, “Wow, that’s who I am. So, this is where I need to go.”

Andrea:  Okay.  I know that you’re known as the Calendar Guy…

Paul Casey:  The Calendar Coach.

Andrea:  The Calendar Coach, the Calendar Coach.  Why is that? What is the Calendar Coach?

Paul Casey:  Yeah, I realized that when it comes to leadership training and just your own self-leadership, we live in a context of time.  And most of my clients, if not all of them, if you follow what they’re frustrated about back… you know, follow it down to its rabbit hole, you would find a time management issue somewhere there that they’re either not using their time to do their priorities, or they’re living out someone else’s script, so to speak, and they just don’t have control of their calendars.  So, I thought if I try to niche in this area, it might reduce anxiety in leaders, it might give them more peace of mind that all the priorities in their life are given the focused attention they deserve.

Andrea:  I love that!  What are some of the ways that you do that?

Paul Casey:  Well, I try to give them some structure.  So, I have a little model – it’s a mouthful, but the fulcrum framework for focus – a lot of F words, but they’re all positive F words.  And in this little model, it looks like a teeter-totter, which we all grew up with, which now I think they say is unsafe on playgrounds but I still liked it.

Andrea:  Right.

Paul Casey:  The little triangle in the middle where it balances the two sides, I like to think of that as work and life.  And we’ve heard of work-life balance, I don’t know if I agree with that. It’s more like work-life rhythm or work-life integration.  And a speaker I listened to years ago said, “It’s not balance. You just need to move that fulcrum, that triangle, left or right based on what you need more in your life.”  Do you need more time at work, are you slacking there? Your clients have big deadlines, or you need to move more into the life side where your spouse or plus-one needs more of your time or your children need more of your time.  Or you’ve got a parent that’s going into assisted living, and you’ve got to give that more of your time. So, my model is that fulcrum.

And so, my time management system is based on forming that foundation of what matters most, figure out how you’re going to work your ideal week in your calendar, then daily managing that – that’s the self-discipline part.  And then trying to avoid those barriers that are going to come against your beautiful system of time management when sort of life punches you in the face, and it’s like, “Oh, that didn’t work out how I like to do it.”

Andrea:  The need to re-evaluate comes to mind.  You were talking about how sometimes you need to spend more time with your kids or you need to focus on them more, or you might need to focus on your work more.  How do you know when it’s time to re-evaluate? Do you give people like a schedule, like you should do this on a schedule, or is there a different way that you encourage people to decide when to re-evaluate?

Paul Casey:  I’d say two things; one would be to read your own gauges.  We all have gauges sort of like in a cockpit or in your car on your dashboard.  There are gauges that run a little hot every so often. And for me, like, I’ve got ideas all over the place as an entrepreneur.  And when I go blank, like I just go dark and I have no idea, that’s the gauge for me, that’s like, “Oh my goodness, you are way into the workaholic mode, and you need to get some white space in your life, Paul, in order to get those ideas back”

Or when I’m more irritable…  When I’m usually a peaceful person and I’m more irritable or you know, maybe lash out at someone I love and it’s like, “Well, that’s not me or that’s not who I wanna be.”  So, reading your own gauges – everybody’s got their own gauge that they’re typically a peaceful person now they’re more angry. That would be a time to re-evaluate.

The second thing I would respond to that question by saying is you’ve got to build in these regular checkpoints.  So, I have a daily preview, a weekly preview, and a monthly preview. Actually, I’ve got an annual one as well that I do use around the first of the year.  They call it DWMY; daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. I love that little acronym – DWMY. So, you build in those checkpoints, and that is a time where you stop.  You get to quiet and solitude, and you say, “How am I doing?”

Andrea:  Yeah.  I think that that makes a lot of sense.  I love the metaphor of the gauges. I know that one of those for me is how much tension I’m feeling.  That usually comes out in my irritability like you mentioned. If I’m irritable or feeling tense, then I know that there’s something off, and I need to take a step back and look at it.

Paul Casey:  Yeah, your body’s giving you signals all the time, and that tension probably is one of those signals.

Andrea:  Hmm.  So, what kinds of things can people do to actually move the fulcrum?

Paul Casey:  I would say the first thing – and there’s a few that really move the needle for me as I was studying this for like twenty years – and the one I always start with is have that weekly or that daily review and preview in the last half hour of your day.  So, if you’re a nine-to-fiver and 4:30… I call it the 4:30 preview. And what you do during that half hour is you stop what you’re doing, sort of call the day a hard stop. If you’re an entrepreneur at home, you know, sometime before you go to bed.

And then you look at tomorrow and you decide, “What are my top three priorities for tomorrow?”  If you can nail those down today, there’s help in that work-life rhythm process to say, “I’m done with today.”  When you come in the morning, you’re like, “I don’t have to shift all this paperwork on my desk. I know what my big three are.”  And actually, research shows that your brain works on problems while you sleep. So, sometimes you come up with great ideas that will help solve the problems of the new day while you’re sleeping.  And in the shower you wake up with like, “A-ha, I’ve got the idea.” You know, it’s just such a wonderful feeling to think about like, “My brain’s been working on that while I sleep.”

So, that’s the first one would be the daily preview and that can be a super fun time… actually, it is for me; maybe I’m a nerd at this stuff – but I also use that to clean up my desk, and take all those nasty post-it notes and put them onto one list, and just basically call this day a wrap.

The second thing I would say what to do is to make appointments with yourself.  This was a game-changer for me. And this is where you take your priorities, and you actually build them in your calendar as if it’s an appointment with a friend or a client.  Because you would never stand up a client at a coffee shop and say, “Nope, I’m just not gonna come today.” You know, you would lose clients, you would lose your friends pretty quickly if you just sort of blew them off like that.  So, why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we not respect ourselves enough to honor these priorities? So, I find that by building them into my calendar as if it’s an appointment when it pops up, I either have to dismiss it or snooze it, and I don’t want to do either.  So, I just get down to work and do that thing at that appointed time.

Andrea:  Oh man, calendaring time for yourself to even just think about things that you need to think about, I think, is really, really powerful for somebody who wants to be successful.

Paul Casey:  Yeah.  Thinking time is huge.  And with my leader clients, I would say 100% of them say, “I don’t spend enough time in thinking.  Like when I want to put it on my calendar, that’s what I blow off. Like, I know I need to do thinking time, but then I just blow right through that and do more urgent things instead.”  But that’s where the breakthroughs actually happen is in that solitude, that quiet thinking time.

Andrea:  Okay.  So, people can… if they’re wanting to move the fulcrum, if they are wanting to make a shift, they know that they’ve identified that they need to do that, they need to shift in their focus or in their time – then they need to maybe check in with themselves once a day, maybe pay attention to these internal gauges.  I feel like there must be something else that you do that helps people to actually shift their priority.

Paul Casey:  Yeah.  Actually, to back up, you’re right, I was diving right into the tips.  But I would say that some of the activities that I get to do with clients… like Your One Year Vision for Your Life is a great activity to do.

Andrea:  Sure.

Paul Casey:  This is where people, they really wrestle with, “Well, yeah, a year from now, in 2021, I wanna be a better dad.  I wanna start my own business or a second business. I just wanna be different than I am now. I’ve gotta get more hobbies into my life.”  Whatever it is for them, it’s such a fun activity for them to envision out, and they’ve never taken the time to do it. That way we can back into all these strategies with, “Okay, how we gonna get there?  What’s the first step that we can take in that?”

The other activity I’ll do with them on the front end is what do I need more in my life right now?  I’ve got a list of probably thirty or forty words. It can be everything from affection to purpose. There’s like thirty or forty words, and I have them just circle all the things that when you look at that where you’re like, “Yes, I need more of that in my life right now.”  And those are motivators that sort of tap into your drive to say, “All right, I need to get my time management under wrap in order to get this stuff.”

Andrea:  Cool.  Those are really great tips.  So, how do you see all of this really impacting a person who wants to have a voice of influence?

Paul Casey:  That in order to have a voice of influence, you’ve got to be intentional with everything you do in life.  We all live in the constraints of time. We all have the same amount of hours in the day, we keep hearing that.  So, how are we going to use that? It’s not the amount of time that we have in the day; it’s the intentionality that we tend to use.

So, I find that persons of influence have this…  They live with this sense of intentionality, both in their personal life and in their professional life.  When they go to work, they think about, “These are the things I need to keep on my radar. Development of my people, gotta keep that on my radar.  The vision for the organization, gotta keep that on my radar.” And what I’ve found, Andrea, is it’s not the urgent; that becomes firefighting and that becomes exhausting.  It’s the important.

And I’ll even do that little Stephen Covey graph, you know, of urgent and important.  It’s called the Eisenhower Matrix. It’s a nice activity to make them think about Quadrant 2, which is the non-urgent but important quadrant.  If you do those things, you move the needle forward. If you don’t do them, there’s no immediate consequence, but over time, it’s going to kick your tail.  You’ve really got to put some emphasis on that.

Andrea:  Yeah, I’ve had clients that have really wanted to get into that Quadrant 2 and focus on the important things, but they really struggle because it feels like everything is urgent and everything feels that it needs to be dealt with immediately, I guess.  And the people that are asking them to do that, they feel responsible to or for. I found that there might be some internal stuff going on that keeps people in the urgent quadrant. Have you found that to be true?

Paul Casey:  Yes, and I know that may drift even into a little bit of therapy and counseling and then coaching and mentoring.

Andrea:  Right.

Paul Casey:  But you’ve got to wrestle with that stuff.

Andrea:  We do.

Paul Casey:  Because it could be that I am making excuses for something hard that I have to do that every time I approach something hard, I’m going to find a back door or chicken exit – you know, like in the roller coaster – that I tend to take that chicken exit because I don’t want to deal with that difficult thing because I had a failure somewhere in my past.  Or yeah, there’s some issue that’s holding me back.

Andrea:  Another one that’s come up for me that I’ve noticed is just that desire to be liked, the desire to please people, because it seems like that is more fulfilling in the moment with those urgent things.  If you can say yes right now to this person who’s in front of you, that feels better than saying no to them and saying yes to something that’s more important.

Paul Casey:  Huh, that’s a good one.  That’s a good one. Some of us are pleasers.  Like I said, I do the personality style, the animal one.  And it’s Lion, Otter, Golden Retriever, and Beaver. Yeah, the Golden Retriever style – that one is the pleaser style because they hate conflict, and so they do like exactly what you said.  They just want to please other people and make everything back to harmony again. But when they say yes to all these external people and circumstances, they’re saying no to themselves and their true purpose, and then they get little resentful over time.  And Golden Retrievers are usually pretty quiet, but they can turn into a volcano if they get resentful over time, like, “Man, I’m just giving my whole life away, and I haven’t said no enough.” And it really hurts their work-life balance.

Andrea:  Hmm and then they become resentful and that can be really damaging.  Okay, so Golden Retriever.  Take us into this assessment a little bit here.  What are the four different archetypes that you’re talking about?  Golden Retrievers, which I think we all kind of get it now…

Paul Casey:  Yeah, Golden Retriever – they’re the team players.  They love to listen. They’re everybody’s best friend.  People dump on them all the time, you know, with their problems because they have empathy and just stability and conscientiousness.  Of course, all of our strengths have weaknesses if they’re overdone. They hate conflicts; they hate change; they’re very slow into actions, slow into decisions; and they can become a little passive-aggressive when they get pushed.

The Lion personality style is the driver.  It is the bold, direct, courageous, good decision maker, action-oriented.  They love metric. They love getting it done. But when their strength overdone becomes a weakness, they can be too blunt.  They just blurt out stuff. They can be impulsive. They’re very impatient. They can put feelings to the side, like, “Yeah, we’ll deal with those later.”  And they can become workaholics. So, they really have trouble relaxing.

And then we have the Otter personality style.  I love the otters in the zoo or in the aquarium.  They’re always just playing eating off their chest, you know, having a great time.  These are the playful people. They love to have fun. They make smart-aleck comments a lot of the time.  They’re super creative, super spontaneous. They love the start of things. They’re great salespeople. But overdone, their strength turns into weaknesses by being maybe a little flighty.  They don’t like the details of jobs. They can get bored. They can talk a little too much or be on the drama train maybe a little too much.

And then we have the Beaver style.  Beaver is, of course, busy as a beaver.  So, they are organized, planned, structured, alphabetized, and color-coded.  They’ve got systems for everything. They love a good system. They love a sexy spreadsheet, so it’s all about data and research.  But their overdone strength that becomes a weakness when they can get down in the weeds too deep. When they can get too heady or intellectual, it makes people go like, “Are you okay?”  They can get very critical of themselves in their own head which makes them critical and frowning on the outside of others. And they have that paralysis of analysis. So, those are the four types.

Andrea:  Yeah, those are good.  I mean, I love all personality assessments, total assessment junkie.  But those are fun, and I think that people can probably look at that very easily and say, “This is who I am for sure.”  So, for each of these different people, you talked about the Golden Retrievers and how they’re going to tend toward the urgent quadrant that we were talking about before because they’re concerned about what other people think.  Do you see any particular pitfalls that you would want to point out about the Lion, Otter, the Beaver and why they would focus on the urgent?

Paul Casey:  Yeah, I think the Lion because they’re all about results – if somebody comes in with a problem, they’re like, “Solve it now.”  They’re like, “I don’t need this to they even go on a checklist anywhere. Like, get those people in this office right now.” I actually had a boss like that.  He said, “We need to make budget cuts. We gonna cut $100,000 out of this budget right now.” And I went, “Let me go get my notes.” He closed the door and he goes, “You didn’t hear me, we’re not leaving this office until it happens.”  Now, that’s a Lion on steroids, you know. It made a little scared, actually. So, they’re just so into solving it now because it’s just one more thing on their list.

The Otter deals with it because they’re super impulsive.  I mean, they go into an appliance store and say, “Oh, that dryer is red.  I want that one.” I mean, they won’t even think about the budget or the consumer reports of what makes a good one.  They’re just impulsive, and so they’re just going to deal with it and it’s sort of fun for them like, “Hey, let’s just solve that problem now and let’s come up with a brainstorming session to solve ten things right now.”  So, they don’t use a structure.

The Golden Retriever we said is the pleaser, so they’re going to say yes to everybody.

And then the Beaver – they don’t often deal with the urgent because they have systems for everything.  So, that one is probably the easiest one to apply time management principles.

Andrea: Okay, that’s fun, thank you for sharing that.  So, when you apply all these to leadership, to – again, having that voice of influence – what kind of advice would you give somebody who wants to have a voice of influence?  And maybe they do have a voice of influence, but their calendar is just getting in the way?

Paul Casey:  I think that’s what I said earlier of the vision.  You got to have a vision for yourself, you got to have a vision for your team, and you got to buy-in to the vision of the organization, especially for the middle management and not the CEO.  If you are the CEO, you need that vision for your business. You’ve got to keep that crystal clear in your mind, and it can’t be a binder on a shelf. It has to be in front of you at all times, because influence is only going to happen if you stay aligned with that vision that you have.  Not everybody’s bought into or if it’s on your own that you have to say, “This is who I wanna be someday and this is where my business to be.”

So, that’s where time management kicks in and then you align, “What I’m going to do today and this week and this month and this quarter and this year with that vision?”  And it’s pretty cool how then a year later, you wake up, you’re in a different place, a better place because of all the things you’ve put in place to get to that vision.

Andrea:  Hmm, and you just mentioned getting other folks to buy into that vision.  Do you have any particular tips or suggestions on how people can do that? 

Paul Casey:  Good segway.  I just wrote a book on that, Andrea, Leading with Super-Vision.  And so yeah, there are three things; you’ve got to, of course, have that vision on your own.  You’ve got to craft it and you got to cast it which I think is what you’re sharing and then you got to carry it for the long term.  So that casting has to be pretty strategic because in the crafting part, you’ve got to get your constituents onboard by listening. Listen, listen, listen – what are their aspirations, their dreams for this team and how does their job align with a potential vision.  When you make that vision, then you got to cast it.

I would cast it very strategically.  I would start with the number one influence in your company.   They’re on your team. You’ve got to win that person over first.  If you win that person over, it’s going to downhill from there. It will be good.  Then you’ve got to win over your core team and listen, listen, listen to see if there are roadblocks.  Because if you win over those closest to you, your inner circle, you’re probably not going to win over the masses – the rest of the team.

So, it feels like intrinsic circles working out.  Win over the one in the core team, and then the early adaptors, and then you go out to the whole team.  And by doing it systematically, I found that leaders that do that had better buy-in of the vision.

Andrea:  Hmm, I love that.  I love the idea of getting people to buy-in because how can one really have influence if others don’t truly buy-in.  You can certainly tell people what to do, but that doesn’t mean that they have changed internally about it. So, being able to get those folks who are closest to you first to make sure that they have bought in before you move on, I think – or at least as you’re moving – definitely makes a lot of sense.

Paul Casey:  You’re so right.  I mean, if you don’t do that, people are going to default back to their old habits.  And they’re just going to think, this is flavor-of-the-month and, “Oh, it’s gonna go away in a year.  They’re gonna come up with something new.” “I’m gonna outlive this leader at this company and I can go back to the way that I want do it.”  If they’re not bought in… it’s actually one of the five dysfunctions of a team, you know, that there’s no commitment then.

Andrea:  So true.  Okay, where can people find you and your books and your offerings?

Paul Casey:  Yeah.  I’m at paulcasey.org, not the paulcasey.com because that’s the professional golfer.  And I’m just the duffer, so don’t go there. Paulcasey.org is where you will go to find out all of my services, specifically for time management.  I’ve written a book called Maximizing Every Minute where I’ve put much of my time management hacks into that.  So, you’ll see that on the site. I also have a time management online course called Restoring My Sanity.  And sometimes just that gets people like, “Yes, I so want that.”

There’s entry points during the year to get in on that where I go through all these tools that’s I’ve shared with your listeners today.  And then finally, I’ve got a free gift for everybody. It is a Control My Calendar Checklist if you just want to embark on this journey of getting your life back on track.  And so, they can get that via takebackmycalendar.com or you can text the word “growing” to 72000. So, open a text to 72000 and text the word “growing”.

Andrea:  Excellent.  And does the capitalization matter on that word “growing”?

Paul Casey:  No.

Andrea:  Okay, fantastic.  Well, this has been great.  Thank you so much, Paul, for sharing how people can be more intentional with their time so that they can really have a Voice of Influence.

Paul Casey:  It has been a pleasure.  Keep growing forward, everyone!

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What to Do When You Feel Ambushed with Retired Navy SEAL Jason Redman

Episode 127

Jason Redman Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Play here (the red triangle below), on Apple Podcast, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Have you ever felt ambushed or something unexpected comes along and throws you off course so that the rug being pulled out from underneath of your feet?

Today, we have the honor of hearing from Jason Redman. He’s a retired Navy SEAL, a wounded warrior, veterans advocate, New York Times bestselling author, and acclaimed leadership and resilience speaker.

In this episode, we’re talking about what it’s like when we feel ambushed, how to overcome those moments of real crisis in our lives, how to see an ambush coming, the practice that separates elite performers in the way they handle these ambushes and help them overcome, a fact of life that we absolutely have to accept in order to be an overcomer, why it is so important to put yourself in uncomfortable situations, and how a voice of influence can be there for others who are in crisis.

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Transcript

People of influence know that their voice matters, and they work to make it matter more. I’m Andrea Wenburg, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

Have you ever felt ambushed, or something unexpected comes along and throws you off course so that the rug being pulled out from underneath of your feet?

Today, we have the honor of hearing from Jason Redman. He’s a retired Navy SEAL, a wounded warrior, veteran advocates, and acclaimed leadership and resilience speaker. He’s also a New York Times bestselling author for The Trident, and we’re going to be talking about his new book Overcome.

There are a couple of things you need to know about Jason before we get going because his story is remarkable, and we really don’t talk about it in the actual interview itself. So, I’m going to share with you a little bit from his website to give you an idea of who Jason really is.

On September 13, 2007, while acting as Assault Force Commander on an operation to capture an Al Qaeda High-Value Individual, LT Redman’s Assault Team came under heavy machine gun and small arms fire, and he, along with two other teammates, were wounded in the ensuing firefight. Despite being shot twice in the arm and once in the face – as well as multiple rounds to his helmet, Night Vision Goggles, body armor, and weapon – Jason and his team fought valiantly winning the fight, ensuring everyone came home alive.

So, when he was recovering at Bethesda, he wrote a sign for his door, which actually ended up becoming a statement and symbol of wounded warriors everywhere. This sign gained national recognition and earned Lt. Redman and his family an invitation to meet President George W. Bush in the Oval Office. In fact, that original sign was on the door was signed by President Bush, and now hangs in the Wounded Ward at the National Naval Medical Center Bethesda.

Jason is going to tell you what he wrote on that sign at the end of our interview. As mentioned before, today we’re talking about what it’s like when we feel ambushed and how to overcome those moments of real crisis in our lives, when we feel like the rug is pulled out from under us, specifically, we’re going to talk about how to see an ambush coming.

Jason is going to share a practice that really separates elite performers in a way that they handle these ambushes and help them overcome. We’ll discuss one fact of life that we absolutely have to accept in order to be an overcomer. Why it is so important to put yourself in uncomfortable situations, and how a voice of influence can be there for others who are in crisis?

One more note, Jason has a fantastic TED Talk where he talks more about his actual story. I highly recommend it, and we will definitely make sure that it is located in the show notes so it’s not hard for you to find. And you can find all of this information in the show notes of voiceofinfluence.net.

Here’s our interview with Jason Redman:

Hey there, it’s Andrea! Welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. I have with me today Jason Redman. And Jason, this is such an honor to have you on our podcast today. You have quite a story, you have quite the message, and I’m excited to have you here with us today.

Jason Redman: Andrea, thank you. Thanks for having me on. Honored to be here.

Andrea: So, Jason is a retired Navy SEAL who utilizes his training and the years of expertise to guide others in leadership and resiliency. And Jason just came out with a new book called Overcome, and it’s all about how to help people survive what Jason calls “life’s ambushes.” So, we’re going to talk today about overcoming, and I’m really, really looking forward to this, Jason, because I think that this is something that we found in our business too, and that’s that people kind of come up to those times when they are ambushed or the times when they are struggling and have a hard time knowing what to do with it. And so why don’t you tell us a little bit about why you wrote Overcome?

Jason Redman: You know, it’s kind of funny, over the years, my story had gotten out there. I mean, I was injured in 2007, I finished my military career, and along that path right about the time I retired in 2013 is when my first book The Trident came out. And, you know, it is an amazing story. It is a story about a young man, me, who had failed at one point and really failed at a point that a lot of people would have given up. As a matter of fact, I know other individuals who have failed in business or have failed professionally, and sometimes we create these lies in our head that, “Oh my God, I made this mistake or I did this wrong, and nobody is going to follow me again because of this.” And I’ll be honest, I bought into some of those lies too.

But for whatever reason, both through some trusted leaders who said, “Hey, we see potential in you so, you know, you need to keep going,” and through fate and fortune and all these other things, I decided to drive forward and stick with it and really turned my career around, redeemed myself. I got myself right back up to my career being on track and getting ready to enter the whole next level of my career when suddenly I found myself severely injured, which started a whole new process of having to deal with adversity and navigating the waters of overcoming once again.

Andrea: Can you share with us even just a snippet of how you got hurt and that sort of thing? I knew, we really don’t have to dwell on that, but for those people who don’t know who you are or haven’t heard, just a little bit of the summary would be great.

Jason Redman: Yeah. In September of 2007 operating in Iraq, I was shot eight times by an enemy machine gun, including a round to the face. So, pretty devastating injuries. It took four years and forty surgeries to put me back together. I mean, I’m very blessed and lucky that I survived. It’s a tribute to my teammates. It’s a tribute to God. It’s a tribute to the doctors and nurses. And in some ways, it’s a tribute to having a strong, overcoming mindset and a will to fight because there were several times in that process where I think if I had just let go and stopped fighting, I probably would not still be here.

And all of those things go into this new book Overcome, and I know right now there’s a lot of people that are listening and that are probably thinking, “Oh my God, there’s no way I can relate to this guy. I can’t imagine what he’s been through. He’s a Navy SEAL, and he’s been shot at.” You know, but here’s the reality – and this is the premise of the book and this is why it’s relatable to anyone – everyone in life will step into a point where you’re ambushed. It might not be actual bullets or bombs going off on a battlefield, but they are the bullets and bombs going off in your life. And they can happen physically through an accident or an illness. They can happen physically to someone we love, maybe one of our kids or our spouse or a boyfriend or girlfriend. They can happen physically through sexual assault. I mean, they can happen personally through relationship damages.

And then, of course, the big one that everybody sees is the professional ones that occur through business when something unexpected comes along and just crushes our business. And all of these things come back to the one focal point that I tell people, it’s that moment when all of us think it is The End. When those The End moments come along, the overcome mindset is that defining point that enables us to say, “Okay, it may be the end, but I’m gonna keep driving forward. I’m gonna keep driving forward. I understand that, you know, it may be the end of whatever happened there, but somewhere out there, there is a new beginning. It may not be the path that I originally set out, it might not even be close to where I thought I was going to go but no matter what, I’m not gonna stay in this incident point or in this point of attack.”

And that’s everything the book is really built around. I’ll be honest, I wrote it because so many people asked me how I did what I did, how did I build that overcome mindset, and I’ll be perfectly honest; I could not answer that question in a step-by-step format before I wrote the book. So this book lays it out. It tells people how to do that.

Andrea: So, you went on a journey then to even be able to kind of look back and say, “Well, what did happen, how did I do this?

Jason Redman: Absolutely. I mean, if anybody’s read my first book, The Trident, there’s a lot of introspection in The Trident, and Overcome was similar. And there are some people who have written me and said, “Wow, I really had to look deeply at myself and come to realize…” So often, you know, we are our own worst enemies and both the lies we tell ourselves and so often people talk about wanting to change, but they take no action steps to actually do it. And I will say that this book talks about the action steps. It talks about having to get uncomfortable. It talks about how we move forward and create that long term change. How we create structure and discipline in our lives to affect the things that we want to affect. Those things are hard and they’re uncomfortable, and sometimes we have to come to grips with we haven’t made all the best decisions.

And here’s one of the biggest things that people struggle with. Oftentimes, the ambushes and the incidents we get into – not always, obviously, there are certain things like accidents and illnesses and things like that that we can never see coming – but oftentimes there is a lot of life ambushes we get into that we have what I call indicators. We saw the signs and we either procrastinated, ignored, put off, delayed, or did what all human beings do, and then suddenly we found ourselves in this situation. And, you know, we all say the same thing, “Oh my God, I never saw this coming.” But when we take several steps back, we start to go, “Wow, I really did. I knew I should have taken care of this. I knew when the doctor told me last year that I needed to take better care of my health and I needed to watch my diet, start working out and then I didn’t and suddenly I’m here in the hospital with a heart attack. The indicators were there.”

Andrea: So, is that the denial that you talk about? Is that the point of denial that people just don’t want to have to face it?

Jason Redman: Absolutely. I don’t know what it is. As human, I’m guilty. We’re all guilty. I mean, your top elite performers are guilty. The difference between the elite performers who move forward the fastest are they move from that level of denial that something’s happened or were confronted with a crisis failure, you know, have to implement some massive change incredibly quickly. They come to acceptance as fast as possible, whereas other people, you know, there’s a little bit of, “I want to ignore it. I don’t want to admit it’s a problem. If I push this off long enough, maybe it’ll fix itself.” Unfortunately, life just doesn’t work that way. I mean, it is a true statement. Most of the time, things don’t get better with time. They only get worse.

Andrea: So, in your perspective, do you think that people can develop that ability to face the problems that they’re confronted with before they get to that point of The End? Can people really change in that way do you think? Have you seen it happen?

Jason Redman: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve gotten to watch it with a lot of different people, specifically wounded warriors. I mean, before I wrote the book, I was running a nonprofit to serve wounded warriors, and we ran a program called the Overcome Academy, specifically because we were having so many veterans and combat veterans who were struggling with this transition out of the military into the civilian world. And almost all of our wounded warriors had had this, literally, real-world ambush that most of them had been in some fact or fashion.

And then the secondary ambush, which was the ending of their military career, unexpectedly, of course. So, even put that on top of whatever injuries and now disabilities they were confronting; so much across the board. It’s a really hard transition for them and so many of them were struggling in the civilian world to figure out their new path. We put together a course on, “Well, how do we analyze this, how do we understand who we are, how do we understand what our new purpose and passion is and then how do we lay out a path to get there?”

And I’ll be honest, that main part of the curriculum – and when I write about this in the book from the Overcome Academy – is really the heart and soul of what this book is. So, I do believe anybody can do it. It’s not easy. I’ll tell you, anytime we have to go through a change any time or go into a crisis, it’s never fun. But if we can be honest with ourselves and, you know, I have given people some step-by-step processes. I know you mentioned recognize where people are in denial, and I created something called the React Methodology.

So, basically, if you’re in a crisis, you follow the React Methodology to quickly; a) come to acceptance, and b) go through the steps that you can evaluate; your resources, assets, identify the right course of action, and then move forward. These are all things that can happen. And then once you do that, if we accept the second part of life which is bad things are always going to happen. You know, it’s just one of the hard facts about being human that, you know, no matter how well we plan, no matter how we try to avoid risk, I mean, just bad things sometimes happen.

And if we already have an acceptance of that – not going around and being… you know, treading on eggshells in life but just accepting, “Hey, sometimes bad things are gonna happen.” – we can be a little more proactive in our preparation to deal with them instead of being totally blindsided for those things that, you know, are coming.

Andrea: It reminds me of a quote from your book; let me see if I can find it real quick. Oh my goodness. I loved this so much. It’s at the beginning. Well, let’s see, it’s on page 143. I’m not sure which chapter that is. It’s on my computer right now. So, it’s hard to flip through it, but you said, “Everything in SEAL training is built on adapting to the unexpected. If you come in thinking that life is fair, SEAL training will beat it out of you. So many that have never been through the BUDS talk,” – I’m not exactly sure – “About how physically grueling it is…” Yeah, go ahead, go ahead, why don’t you just respond?

Jason Redman: No, no, no, no, BUDS is an acronym. It stands for Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL training. So, in the military lingo out there, BUDS is SEAL training.

Andrea: Right, okay. “So, they don’t know how grueling it is or they talk about how physically grueling it is, they are absolutely correct. But those of us that have been through it know that it is 10% physical and 90% mental. And the reason it’s 90% mental is because the SEAL training is designed to screw with your head.” But why, why is it designed to do that? I mean, it seems that what we’re talking about here is that life just can’t be fair, and it’s not going to happen like you plan it to happen.

Jason Redman: And it never will. You know, life never unfolds in this perfect plan. I don’t care what you’re doing, there’s always going to be road bumps. There’s always going to be snags along the way. A good business mentor of mine, you know, he said, “No matter how great you plan, it’s always gonna take longer, it’s gonna cost more money and it’s gonna be much more difficult than you thought it was gonna be.” He said, “It’s just the way it is.” And that is kind of the equivalent of learning to build that mindset. As humans, we seek the easier path. We want that comfortable path.

Andrea: Right.

Jason Redman: But very rarely does it work that way. And so many people who don’t put themselves in situations that are uncomfortable, sometimes really have a hard time dealing with that. So, I encourage people, do things that make you uncomfortable. SEAL training teaches you, it wants to reshape the way you think. We have a tendency to look at certain things that we’re doing and expect a certain outcome based on those circumstances, and SEAL training turns all that on its head. So, a perfect example we used to joke about, you know, so SEAL training is called BUDS. So, we used to call it BUDS’ time, you know, this distortion in the space-time continuum. And if the instructors told you, you had a minute to do something, you would get it done in like 50 seconds but they would fail you until you didn’t make it in a minute.

And then to add insult to injury, they would tell you, “Well, obviously we gave you too much time, so now you only have 45 seconds to do it.” And you would kill yourself and make it in 45 seconds, but of course, you’d fail and then they’d tell you, “Well, now you only have 30 seconds,” and you would play this game for hours. And it was the guys who couldn’t accept the fact that it is designed to be unfair. It is designed to make you fail. It is designed to make you uncomfortable and mess with your head. And if you could just come to accept, “Hey, this is gonna be hard. It’s not gonna be fair, but no matter what I just keep moving forward.” And life sometimes can be that way and that is one of the lessons that I really want to talk about in this book.

We talk about movement is life; when everything’s going wrong, keep moving. So many people when these life ambushes happen whether they’re personal, physical, professional, we have a tendency to stop moving. We have a tendency to hole up in our house, to sit on the couch, and to just shut the world out. And it is probably the worst thing we can do. It starts that downward spiral of rumination. It is incredible how much moving and getting outside and with anything you do in life can make a difference. Being around the right people, positive mindsets, all these things we talk about in the book that you can do to try, and you know, the phrase in the book is to Get Off the X, the point of that incident, the point of that crisis.

Andrea: You interview and talk to and use the examples of a lot of different people who have actually gone through this process, who have at least been able to get off the X. Can you give us an example of somebody who really had a hard time getting out of that moment and moving forward but did it?

Jason Redman: I have several examples and we talked about several of them in the book. One of the examples that we didn’t talk about quite as much, but I’m going to highlight, was a young Air Force gal. And she came into the Air Force, she became a part of the security forces and even became a sniper, and she was a marksman, and she had two separate incidents. She had an incident of sexual trauma, and then she had an incident of a suicide bomber that almost blew up while she was taking care of things. It did not go off, but it really messed with her mind and she just really struggled when she came home.

And going through our course and showing her, “Hey, you have so much potential; you have so much to give back in this world.” And to find out her new purpose, she’s an amazing artist and she started taking her arts and teaching other veterans how to use art and art therapy, and oh my gosh, she is just thriving now. She’s just doing amazing. And for so many people out there, I try and convince them the same thing. So many of the other wounded warriors that I’ve worked with that those moments, the painful points that we have, the traumatic points, the failure points, so often they become our superpower.

If you can learn to get through it and get to the other side, suddenly you realize there’s power in what you’ve been through, and people are hungry to learn from you. If you are someone that has been through sexual trauma, it is such a hard thing to deal with. It’s such a hard thing for people to talk about, but for somebody that’s on the other side, we want to hear from them. How did you do it? How are you so strong? How are you thriving now because we want to know how to navigate those hard waters that we’re having to figure out how to navigate now.

So this is where I tell people that it can truly become a superpower and your ability to communicate to others that this is how you walk that path, it becomes an incredibly empowering thing. And it actually becomes very cathartic for the individual who’s been through it and now is on the other side.

Andrea: It’s a very redemptive perspective.

Jason Redman: Yeah, it worked. Well, it worked for me and it has worked for a lot of people that I’ve worked with. And this is the last thing, and this is something that I’ve been talking about a lot. You mentioned my TED Talk. It is the heart and soul of my TED Talk. You have a choice. You have a choice in how we’re going to deal with it. I just encourage people to choose positivity over negativity. Sometimes that’s hard; I mean, we have these moments that happen in life that just destroy us, that shatter us. And sometimes it’s hard to pick up the pieces and figure out where is the new path ahead. But there is a new path ahead; we just have to figure it out, and we just have to drive forward.

And that’s why I tell people, just keep looking forward, but make that choice. You always have a choice in how you’re going to deal with what happens to you in this life. And it doesn’t have to be choosing depression, choosing the rumination, choosing to stay in that point of incident or point on the X. That’s what I tell people, you got to choose to move forward, and when you make that choice, it is amazing how far you will move and suddenly look back and go, “I can’t believe I’ve made it this far.” And then new beginnings start to develop out of it as you continue to move forward.

Andrea: I mean, that really gets at the heart of what we’re trying to accomplish here at Voice of Influence. We really believe in agency, that a person can make a decision, that their voice matters – what they do and what they say – that it matters and that you can make that decision to move forward. It’s such a powerful line. It’s such a powerful message. Was there a point for you where… maybe you can share with us that pinpoint moment where you really had to make that decision for yourself?

Jason Redman: So, I’ll say it happened three times. And the three life ambushes that I’ve been through that decision point where I made the choice.

Andrea: That would be great.

Jason Redman: So, the very first light ambush I ever went through was a pretty high-level leadership failure. And it was driven by my own ego and arrogance as a young man just making some poor decisions that culminated with a bad decision that was made on a combat mission in Afghanistan in 2005. It is the heart and soul of my book The Trident. It follows this journey, and I viewed myself as a victim when I got myself in trouble instead of looking at, you know, “Hey, you know, maybe I didn’t make all the right decisions. Maybe there’s something I can learn from this.” Instead, I was bitter. I was bitter and I just focused on, “You know, everybody’s out to get me,” and a lot of the blame and all the things a lot of us do.

It all came to this point where I was telling myself these lies that it doesn’t matter what I do, nobody’s ever going to be willing to follow me again because of the mistakes and because of everything that happened. And probably one of the best leaders I know, he offered me this advice. He said, “Jay, people will follow you if you give them a reason to.” He said, “It doesn’t matter how much you mess up. It may take years to earn back their trust but if you are consistently setting the example, people can’t help but follow people that are doing the right thing and that are leaders. It’s just the way the world works.” He said, “Stop doing what you’re doing and start focusing on moving forward and setting the example, and come back and lead.” And it was that moment where I made the choice to stop feeling sorry for myself and looking at myself as a victim and to start driving forward, so that was number one.

Number two was lying in the hospital bed after I’d been injured. And even though I’d already been through some hard things, I will tell you – for anybody out there that’s ever been severely injured and facing both disability and disfigurement or individuals who have suffered life-threatening illness where they don’t know what the outcome is going to be – it’s a very intimidating place to be. To be in the hospital with doctors and nurses rattling off all these things, not able to give you a really good prognosis, really complicated medical injuries, they can’t tell you, “This is exactly how it’s going to turn out.” Instead, they give you a myriad of options and say, “These are all the different options. How do you want to go?” So, I was struggling with all of that.

And on top of all of that, I had these individuals that started a conversation off to my side, and they started talking about what a shame that all these young men, women go off to war. We were in a military medical hospital at Bethesda, so I know it is a very overwhelming place. There’s a lot of young men and women during war who are really battered in these hospital wings, and they had a very negative outlook, and you know, “Hey, they’re never gonna be the same. They’re never gonna be able to get back out in society. They’re never gonna be able to achieve their American dream.” And I remember thinking to myself, “Man, is this my future? Is this what I have left?”

Andrea: They were really hitting you if I remember right the way you were talking about.

Jason Redman: That’s right.

Andrea:   And that is a tough, tough thing to hear.

Jason Redman: That’s right. But I had a choice, and it was in that moment that I chose, “No, I’m not gonna be the victim.” I’ve gone down that path once before, you know, after I’ve made those mistakes as a leader and here’s the interesting thing I try and tell people. If I hadn’t been through that leadership failure, I don’t think it would have prepared me as well for the injuries that I sustained and knowing the path I had to walk. I had to walk this really hard path to build myself back up and through this very dark valley, but I tell people one of the greatest gifts you can have when you’re going through adversity is it will teach you and show you how to do it again in the future. So don’t shy away from it. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to suck, but someday there’ll be future adversity you encounter, and that’s what builds and overcome mindset. That’s what builds your ability to lead through those situations.

When I was lying in the hospital bed, I said, “No, I’ve walked that path once before; I’m not gonna do it again.” And this choice kind of led to a little bit of national notoriety because I wrote out this sign that I told my wife I wanted posted on my door and that nobody’s allowed to come in the room unless they read the sign. And the sign said, “Attention to all who enter here. If you’re coming into this room with sadness or sorrow, don’t bother. The wounds that I received I got in the job I love, doing it for people I love, defending the freedom of the country I deeply love. I’ll make a full recovery, and what’s full? That’s the absolute utmost physically my body has the ability to recover. And then, I’ll push that about 20 % further through sheer mental tenacity. This room you’re about to enter is a room of fun, optimism, and intense rapid re-growth. If you’re not prepared for that, go elsewhere.”

Andrea: It’s fantastic.

Jason Redman: But the great thing about that, by choosing and articulating, so not only did I choose I wasn’t going to be a victim, that I was going to drive forward with this positive mindset, I wrote it down. And now it became like a benchmark for me. It became, “Oh, well this is the bar that I set for myself and I’m gonna follow it.” So for anybody out there that is the power of choice, and you don’t know the impact it’s going to have on other people.

The third one was I got involved in a business lawsuit, and I talked about this in the book. You know, I was a young businessman and a little bit naïve, a little bit immature, and I didn’t do the things that I should have done. We talked about those indicators with ambush it’s like, “Oh my God, I never saw this coming.” Well, I did. I procrastinated. I didn’t do some of the things I should have done. I should’ve had a signed contract and all these different things. And it was a deal that kind of went south and turned into a big he said, she said situation that just evolved to, you know, kind of an ugly argument that turned into a lawsuit.

And taking care of myself over that year while I dealt with that, I wasn’t doing a very good job. And I went to the doctor in the fall of the year that it occurred, and the doctor said, “Hey dude, you know, you might be doing some good things but you’re gonna have a heart attack before forty-five if you don’t make some major changes in your health.” And heart disease runs in my family, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and all those things. So it was a wakeup call and I had to make a choice. I could’ve been in denial like so many people do, “Uhh, I’ll deal with that later, you know, maybe it won’t happen to me. What does this doctor know?” All the things, the lies that people tell me and I had to make a choice again how I was going to start taking care of myself. And I started really focusing on, you know, once again getting myself back in shape despite my injuries and the issues that I had.

So, I had to make a choice. I had to choose the positive path versus the negative path, and all of those things have had a great impact for me. And this is what I try and encourage others. It’s what I talked about in the book, how you can set yourself up for success, how we take care of ourselves so we’re proactively ready for those ambushes. You have that power, you have the power of choice.

Andrea: If you could give advice to somebody who wanted to see somebody else who’s been ambushed. Okay, we’re talking about the bystanders, the people that are on the sidelines who see that somebody else has been ambushed and they’re seeing that they’re getting stuck on the X. What advice can you give to the bystander about how they can encourage or influence or maybe they’re not supposed to at all the person who is in that position?

Jason Redman: Absolutely, give encouragement, give positive encouragement. What I encourage you not to do that I sometimes see is the negative encouragement where they’re like, “Oh well, fine if you want to lay here and die, then do it.” I watch that a lot, which I don’t know if that necessarily helps the situation. I mean, we always want to stay positive. You know, I recently had a friend that went through some dark times and, you know, I would always just, “Hey man, no matter what I’m here for you, I love you.” Because the reality is people can’t move forward until they reach that first step which is acceptance.

I’ve watched this happen several times with individuals that have been through trauma that if they are not ready and you try and drag them off the X of the point of incident, they’ll crawl back onto it. So, instead we just got encourage them. In the book, I talked about the React Methodology, use that with them, you know, “Hey, this is how we recognize. This is how we evaluate our assets so we can bring to bear to help problem. This is how we evaluate our options and outcomes.” You know, get them involved in the process, but at the end of the day, they’ve got to be willing.

So, you know, don’t give up on them. You know, definitely, I mean good friends and family will keep encouraging them. We look for different ways to try and get them off the X. We continue to evaluate what are the assets and they change over time. But hopefully, you know, the most important one is that they’re willing because that’s probably the biggest thing is that they finally; a) accept they’re in a crisis and b) they’re willing and ready to move forward and get off that X.

Andrea: That’s great advice. That’s great advice. So, okay, Jason how can people find your book and find you and just tell us about that real quick.

Jason Redman: Yeah, so Overcome is in all major booksellers. You know, Amazon, Books-A-Million, Barnes and Noble. We actually are getting ready. We’ve had a ton of people asking us for signed copies of the book, so we’re just now launching a signed version along with military challenge coins. We had a military challenge coin specifically made for the book, limited edition. We only ran a thousand coins. So when they’re gone, they’re gone. But that’s all on my website, jasonredman.com. Click on Store and the book will be there, and it’s on eBooks and you can get it, you know, Kindle and iBook. And it’s got a great audiobook, and I got to read the audiobook, so I’ve been getting a lot of great feedback on that.

Andrea: Awesome! You know, you are certainly a voice of influence in the world. I’m really, really glad that you have found a redemptive purpose in the things that you’ve gone through, that you are making a difference with the hardships that you faced the ambushes that you’ve come across and that you’re helping other people to do the same. Thank you so much.  Thank you for being a voice of influence for our listeners.

Jason Redman: Andrea, awesome! I’m blessed and hey good luck to everyone out there. If you find yourself in a life ambush, get off the X. You can do it, overcome.

Andrea: All right. Thank you!

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How to Build Credibility to Advocate for a Big Idea Heather Hansen

Episode 113

Heather Hansen has her psychology degree and spent 20 years as an award-winning trial attorney and is a trained mediator. She has appeared on NBC, Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, and Sirius Radio. She has presented in Kuwait, Ireland, Mexico, and throughout the United States. Heather is also the author of the bestselling book, The Elegant Warrior: How to Win Life’s Trials Without Losing Yourself, and is the host of the podcast, The Elegant Warrior. In this episode, Heather talks about her journey from being a trial attorney to where she is today, the difference between communicating and advocating, why you need to hire yourself as your own advocate, the value of owning your mistakes when it comes to building your credibility, how to build credibility when you’re in a position of power, how to build credibility when you’re not in a position of power, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

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Heather Hansen Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, Hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast, where we’re going to explore the intersection of human dynamics, communication, and service.  If you’re interested in growing your own voice of influence or the influence of those on your team, check us out at voiceofinfluence.net and contact us to talk.  I always love hearing from listeners.   Today, we have with us Heather Hansen, you know, facts tell and stories sell, but advocacy wins.  So, Heather has her psychology degree and spent 20 years as an award-winning trial attorney and is a trained mediator.  She has appeared on NBC, Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, and Sirius Radio.  Heather has presented in Kuwait, Ireland, Mexico, and throughout the United States.  She is the author of the bestselling book The Elegant Warrior: How to Win Life’s Trials without Losing Yourself.  I love the title, and is the host of the elegant warrior podcast.  

Andrea:  Heather, it is wonderful to have you here with us today on the Voice of Influence podcast.  

Heather Hansen:  Andrea, I’m so excited to be here.  I love your podcast.  

Andrea:  Oh, thank you so much.  I’m excited to talk to you because your book is so good.  I’m going to tell you this just to start with, I really love the fact that your chapters are bite-sized and then it gives people a chance to really just kind of sink their teeth into it real quick, take a bite and then know how to move forward.  So congratulations on your book!  

Heather Hansen:  Thank you so much!  That was on purpose.  I really wanted people to be able to open to one chapter, maybe read it before they head out into their day and have it as a little tool with them all day long.  

Andrea:  I love that.  I think calling those little chapters tool is a really good way to put it.  That really makes sense.  So, Heather, tell us a little bit about your experience in being a trial lawyer and how you came to where you are today?  

Heather Hansen:  Oh boy!  So, I have been at the same firm since I was in law school and I have had the fortune to represent tons and tons of doctors and nurses and people who work in hospitals when they’re sued by their patients.  And that work has been rewarding but also extremely upsetting, very emotional, and very stressful.  

And I learned pretty quickly the difference between communicating and advocating. I love communicating.  I started college thinking I was going to be a journalist and I majored in communications law, economics and government.  But when it comes to winning, you know, communicating is defined as sharing ideas.  And that’s great for relationships.  It’s great for teaching, it’s great for journalists, and it’s great for psychologists, which is ended up being my major.  

But when it comes to advocate to win, you have to publicly support your idea and you have to advocate for it   And I found in all of the years of teaching my clients how to speak to juries in a way that we could win, that I was teaching them how to advocate.  And I found that I could use that skill outside the courtroom as well.  

So now, I do work with CEOs, venture capitalists, environmentalist, and all kinds of people who have a big idea and they want to find a way to advocate for it.  And the book was really meant as, you know, as you mentioned, bite-sized tools that if you don’t have me in your pocket, perhaps these tools will help you be a better advocate for your big idea without me there.  

Andrea:  Hmm.  And do you find that people who do have a big idea that there are times when they struggle to actually own it publicly, I guess, to stand up for what it is that they’re trying to advocate for?  

Heather Hansen:  Yes.  It’s so funny because there’s sort of two things there.  One is to have the confidence and the trust in your idea and your knowledge to actually do it.  And then the second part becomes how do you do it, and I train people on both because first you have to know how important it is to use your voice and you have to be reminded that this idea, sometimes, especially, women were more likely to do things for other people or other things.  

So, sometimes when I remind people that this idea is a thing that needs you to stand up for it, they find it easier than thinking that it’s them putting themselves on the line.  And then once people are OK with stepping into being an advocate, then we can get to the “how do you use your voice?”  “How do you use the tone of voice?”  “How do you use your body language, or which questions to ask?”  But sometimes, Andrea, your point is very good one.  Sometimes the hardest part is for people to step into the role of advocate with confidence and with strength and with a true knowledge that what they’re doing is to promote that idea.  

Andrea:  Why do you suppose it is so hard?  

Heather Hansen:  I think that we doubt ourselves.  Oftentimes, we don’t know that we are the right person to do that.  We think that there’s someone better suited for the job and there’s not.  One of the things that I really work hard with my clients, on and also I do a lot of speaking to women and to children, because I think that we often say, “Well let me find somebody else who could do it.”  

And you know, I know that even in my job there’s a lot of times where I’m like, “Well, if I could just hire someone to do my sales or hire someone to promote me.” But truly there is no one who is a better advocate for your big idea and for you than you are, because you know it better than anyone else.  You’ve lived with it longer than anyone else.  You love it more than anyone else, and hopefully you know yourself, you’ve lived with yourself and you’ve loved yourself better than anyone else.  

So there isn’t anyone who can do it better.  And when you remove yourself from the situation, I often teach my clients to hire themselves to be their own advocates.  So to, you know, lay out all of the qualifications that you need and then advocate, and then lay out all the ways in which you meet those qualifications or get the skills you need in order to do so.  So that ultimately, the person with the most knowledge, the most passion, the most faith, the most background in this big idea is the one out there publicly supporting it.  

Andrea:  I really like the way you put that just hiring yourself as your own advocate.  And making the decision, it sounds like to not just rest on your strengths and the things that you’re already good at.  But to add to that the things that you need to be able to get your idea into the world.  I think something that a lot of people don’t realize that it’s OK to say “I’m not good at this yet, but I will be.”  

Heather Hansen:  That’s absolutely right.  And most of these things can be trained, you know, they can be learned.  You have to be curious though, and you have to be open to the idea that you’re not an expert in everything.  You’re an expert in your big idea that is for sure.  But some of these other things you’re not yet an expert in.  And that’s OK.  

We can make you an expert by training and tools and specific.  I mean, some of the tools are really easy, but things that you can remember just as you step out, like the idea of hiring yourself to be your own advocate.   And the nice thing about that, Andrea, is that there’s all kinds of studies that show that when we remove ourselves from a situation and refer to ourselves almost as a third person.  So if I were to say to you, “Oh, Heather is getting upset about that,” it sounds ridiculous but it helps us to see things from a different perspective and to take them less personally.  

So when you hire yourself, you’re able to sort of remove yourself and say, “Well, this new hiree is lacking in these skills.  So she’s gonna need some training there, but she’s very strong in these skills so that’s why we’re hiring her.”  And it removes you from the situation, so you don’t take it so personally if you’re lacking in one or two of the things that you need.  

Andrea:  That’s really interesting.  I guess I’m kind of wondering how it hits on value and how we value ourselves, how we value our own voice or not.  What’s your take on that?  

Heather Hansen:  I think that there are some people who are very centered in their value and they’re well aware of how valuable they are to their institution or to their boss or to their family.  But it’s interesting, Andrea, because I think a lot of people know their value in one area of life, but maybe are less confident in another area of life.  

So you may know that you’re a very good mother and friend, but less confident in your ability to use your voice or to get on stage and talk about your big idea.   And so I think that the thing that we need to realize is that you have value in all of these areas and a lot of the skills that you use as a mother and a friend are transferable and you can use them in advocating for your big idea.  Once you know your value in one area, it becomes a little bit easier to extend that to the other areas.  

Andrea:  Hmm, really good.  When it comes to having a voice of influence is telling the truth or having a good idea enough or what role does building credibility or serving as an advocate play in promoting change?  

Heather Hansen:  It’s funny that part about telling the truth.  You know, in my trials, both sides believe they’re telling the truth.  You know, both sides have a story and it’s the person who is the better advocate that wins.  It’s the person who tells that story with more evidence to support it.  And in the corporate world that ends up being data with more confidence and, to your point, with more credibility.  

So, it is very important to have and build your credibility, but you can do that in a whole host of ways.  A lot of people struggle with this idea of credibility because they say, “Well, I don’t have the corporate background.  I don’t have the education.  I don’t have those years of experience.”  But you do have this natural talent for communicating or you do have a natural way of holding yourself physically that’s going to be very effective when you’re advocating.   So, building credibility is an important part, but it doesn’t mean that if you don’t have the background you can’t do it.  

One of the biggest parts of building credibility is simply to set expectations and meet them and make promises and keep them.  And if you can’t, this is the most important part, if you can’t to own it and fix it.  So, you can build credibility in a huge way, very quickly, by doing that. And it’s not going to matter so much if you don’t have the years of experience or the education.  If you have owned a mistake and fixed it or set an expectation and met it, you are well on your way to building your credibility.  

Andrea:  Uh, that’s really important, this idea of owning where you’ve messed up.  Do you have any examples of that?  

Heather Hansen:  I have a lot of examples from my experience as an attorney.  You know, I often gave keynotes in my early years to doctors and one of the things I would recommend to them is that when you have a complication and they happen, you know, they happen to you and I in our day, we make mistakes where things happen.  

They happen in medicine as well.  But I would always urge my clients to run towards their problems instead of away from them.  Because studies show that when doctors sit down with a patient and own a complication, say, “Listen, this happened, I’m sorry, this is what we’re going to do to try to fix it.”  That prevents lawsuits better than almost anything else.  

So that’s a perfect example of building credibility in the worst possible scenario by that doctor has made a promise that they were unable to keep, they had set an expectation that they couldn’t meet but they owned it by talking about it with the patient in terms of the patient could understand and then they offered to do what they could to fix it if possible.  If possible and that really builds credibility quickly.  

Andrea:  It sounds like it builds trust that allows for credibility.  

Heather Hansen:  So trust and credibility are close siblings.  In my mind, trust just takes longer to build.  So you know, in my cases, sometimes I’m only in front of a jury for three days, other times it’s three weeks.  But three days, even three weeks isn’t time enough to build trust.  But it is time enough to build credibility and that credibility would hopefully someday lead to trust. The relationship between a doctor and a patient, if you’ve been seeing that doctor for a long time, you may have built that trusting relationship.  But if you haven’t, you can start with credibility and that can be a foundation for trust.  And sometimes it can be enough on its own.  

Andrea:   Hmm.  That’s really interesting.  Credibility sort of leads to trust then if you’ve been around long enough, that’s, that’s really interesting.  You say in your book on page 81, “When we build credibility at trial, we do it with evidence.  You need evidence too.  You can build credibility with evidence of honesty, patience time and hard work.”  Tell us a little bit more about that.  You’ve started to talk about it. I think that there’s more there.  

Heather Hansen:  Yeah.  I mean, you know, evidence is how we win or lose cases.  It’s the pieces of data that we put before a jury.  So evidence of your credibility is…so for example, when I step into the courtroom, I’m always dressed a certain way.  I always act a certain way.  I don’t tend to be like loud and laughing in the courtroom because my cases tend to be very emotional for the parties, oftentimes, very sad.  

And I want to set an expectation with the jury who’s wandering around in the hallway or sitting in the jury room, which is just next door that I am always going to act with empathy and with respect for them in the system.   And I set that expectation and then every day I do what I can to meet it..  And then as far as promises in my openings, I make promises to the jury, but I don’t make them until I’m really sure that I can keep those promises.  And so day by day you build.  You know, you set expectations by saying “I’m gonna be on time and prepared for that meeting.”  And then you meet it.

And by doing so you’ve started to build your credibility.  You make a promise, “I’m going to get you that proposal by Friday.”  And you keep that promise and with that you have started to build your credibility.   And again, if you can’t do it, then you own it on Friday afternoon, you call the client as difficult as a call that might be and say, “I can’t keep that promise that I made to you.  This is why I’m going to work on it all weekend and I will have it to you by Monday.”  And then when you do, when you actually follow through on that, you have built a huge amount of credibility, but it takes step-by-step piece of evidence by piece of evidence to build that kind of credibility.  

Andrea:  Can we, can we take a look at this from a couple of different perspectives?  I’m thinking about maybe framing this in terms of somebody that’s empower and somebody that’s in a position of power or authority where they are wanting to get people on board.  They’re wanting to build credibility with the people that need to get on board with the thing that they’re going to do and then also from the perspective of that person that maybe doesn’t have as much power but they’re wanting build credibility with the person who does so that they can sort of see their thing go through.  

When you see somebody who has from that perspective of I’ve got power, I’m in the position of power, and getting people on board; what kinds of things do they need to really be mindful of when it comes to how they look and how they act, just like you were talking about coming into the courtroom.  

Heather Hansen:  So, it’s easier for people who have already reached high levels of power and success to build credibility because we see their successes.  And that starts to create a feeling of I trust them in that respect.  But here’s the thing, Andrea, they may not have built any credibility when it comes to their relationships with you or their ability to follow through on a promise or the way that they treat their employees.  

So it’s important to look at this, not just from a very, sterile black and white like numbers proposition, but also a relationship driven proposition.   And the other problem that people who are in positions of leadership, people who have already done well, people who already have a lot of years behind them, they have what’s called the curse of knowledge.  They know things so well that they forget what it’s like not to know them.  And so they’re often talking in terms that the people that they’re trying to build credibility, “We don’t understand at all.”  

I’ll give you another example from the courtroom.  My doctors walk into the courtroom with a certain level of credibility simply from the fact that they went to medical school, they have done a fellowship.  They’re been doing this operation for 15 years.  That’s great.  They have credibility with respect to their expertise. But that doesn’t mean that the jury finds them credible with respect to their compassion or their kindness or their ability to tell the truth.  So they have to build that kind of credibility.  

And one of the things that gets in the way is when they’re talking in words, the jury doesn’t understand.  So, one of my jobs is to help them to remember what it’s like, not to know these things.  So for example, if I have a case that involves a vascular surgeon that’s a surgeon that teaches treats blood vessels, I will say to the doctor, say the blood vessel surgeon, why confuse the situation with words that the jurors might not know rather than make it simple, make it understandable, and allow the jurors to really get into the story that you’re telling so that you can build that credibility.  

Andrea:  That’s interesting because I can see somebody on the jury thinking to themselves, “I don’t know what that means.  Why don’t I know what that means? I feel like an idiot.”  

Heather Hansen:  You just hit something so important in the head that I worked so closely with my clients on.  If I say one word that the jury doesn’t understand, Andrea, they don’t even hear the next eight to 10 words I say.  Because doing that in their head like, “Wait a minute, what is that word?  What is she talking about?  This trial is gonna be hard.  

I’m not gonna understand this stuff.”  I can’t afford to have people not here eight to 10 words that I say and neither can any of you.  If you are advocating for yourself or a raise, if you’re advocating for your big idea on a stage, if you’re trying to get funding for your huge idea that’s going to change the world.  You’ve got to use words that your audience understands or else you will lose that opportunity for sure.  

Andrea:  Hmm, so good.  OK, so, so you have to use words that people understand.  What about the way that somebody acts in?  OK, we’re still talking about this person who is already in power.  How can they act around others who may be underneath of them in a sense in a hierarchical kind of a situation, or at least there’s, they don’t have as much power as they do for whatever reason.  I am assuming that setting people at ease is an important piece of it, but what are some other things that you would recommend?  

Heather Hansen:  So, setting people at ease is certainly an important piece of it.  Body language is an important piece of it.  I work a lot with my clients on their body language, you know, crossed arms.  A lot of these things are the things that sort of come naturally.  But I don’t know if you know about power posing and powerful poses versus less powerful poses.  There’s also ways to sort of use your body language to make people feel more comfortable around you.   And the other thing that we don’t talk enough about is tone of voice, the way that you not only use your tone of voice but also listen to others.  

And one of the most important pieces that a person empowered needs to know is that when you are the powerful person in the room, it is your job to do more listening and less speaking because you want to know what the people in the room need.  That is the opposite for the less powerful person who should try to do more speaking and be given the opportunity to do more speaking.   So for the person who is in power, it’s being very receptive and open and almost empty.  You know, they have all these preset ideas, they have all this training, they have all this knowledge, and they have all this experience.  And yet, in order to truly advocate, you need to know what the other people want, need, see, and perceived.  And you don’t find that out without asking questions, listening to answers, paying attention to body language, and looking around a little bit.  

Andrea:  Hmm.  So how do you help somebody who is maybe not in power or not as powerful in that particular situation, be able to advocate for themselves, you know, where they are speaking up more and that sort of thing.  How do you encourage them to do that?  

Heather Hansen:  So, a lot of that comes down to what we started this talk about with respect to confidence, you know.  So, we have to try to build the confidence to speak so that you can build the credibility by what you say.  

One of the hard things that I talked to a lot of young women about is because you can’t have credibility immediately.  You have to build it and that takes time.  You know, and I gave a talk to a group of young women the other day and I said to them, you know, “I don’t want to disappoint you, but you’re not going to have credibility tomorrow.”  You know, it is a series of expectations met and promises kept.   But if you prepare like crazy, you are going to have more confidence to speak up because you’re going to be secure in the knowledge that you have the information that needs to be shared.  And then the thing that I really tried to help people to focus on is you are now speaking for your big idea.  You’re not speaking for yourself.  You’re doing this for something else or someone else.  

Andrea:  There’s something at stake that’s beyond my need.  

Heather Hansen:  That’s exactly right and when that’s true, we all are more likely to step up to the plate when we know that if we don’t advocate for our big idea, people will be worse off for it.  There will not be this opportunity.  You know, I work with some people who are in the environmental fields and if we don’t get that big idea out there, this thing that could help us to clean the oceans will never be realized.  Or for women who are looking for VC funding, if you don’t get your big idea out there, you’ll never get the money that you need to create this product that’s going to change the world.  That is important.  And that means that you have to speak up for that thing.  It’s not for you because we oftentimes get more insecure about speaking up for ourselves.  It’s for that thing and that thing needs you.  

Andrea:  I think we’re a lot more willing, at least women, are a lot more to sacrifice for something else than we are for ourselves.  

Heather Hansen:  Gosh, you are innately brilliant, Andrea, because you’re a 100 percent right.  There is this study out of Harvard Business Review that shows that when it comes to negotiating, women are actually more likely to lean towards unethical when they are negotiating for someone else, whereas men will lean that way for themselves.  So, not that anyone should be leaning towards unethical, but you’re right in that women will do things.  I mean it’s the Mama Bear Syndrome.  

Andrea:  It is.  

Heather Hansen:  And I know this from my experience in the courtroom, I will negotiate for my clients in ways that I would never negotiate if I were buying a car like aggressively and confidently.  And there’s so many things that we’re willing to do for others that we aren’t always willing to do for ourselves, which is why it really helps to reframe the conversation to recognize what it is you’re advocating for.  

Andrea:  OK, so we’re in the midst of quite the interesting political climate and I don’t expect either one of us to talk about politics too much.  But I am really curious about the actual conversations or lack of conversation, perhaps lack of dialogue, that’s taking place.  And I’m curious if you have any advice that you would give to political leaders who are sort of vying for position and authority, who want to get people to believe that they are more credible than somebody else.  What kind of advice would you give them?  

Heather Hansen:  The most powerful person in the room is the one who’s doing the most listening.  When you’re listening to what your constituents want, what your audience wants, what your potential funders want, no matter what it is.  So if you’re a politician, if you’re truly listening to what your constituents want, you are getting the information you need to win.  You also have to be willing though to listen to those that are different from you.  You know, we can’t win by only having the choir that we love to preach to vote for us.  

So there has to be some level of compromise and some level of being able to move to the center, but you’re not going to even begin to have any sort of authority with people of the other side until you are listening to them and proving that you’re listening to them by repeating it back.  One of the things that’s really powerful, Andrea, in all aspects of advocating for yourself is mimicking the person you’re speaking with.  

So I used to be a waitress and I got pretty good tips and I always thought it was because I worked my butt off, but I recently read a study that explained it a little bit more.  When a customer would order, they would say, “I’ll have a swordfish with anchovy butter on the side, baked potato with sour cream, and a salad with Parmesan and pepper dressing,” and I would say “Got it.  Swordfish, anchovy butter on the side, salad with parmesan and peppercorn dressing and a baked potato with sour cream.”  I would repeat it back word for word, and people love that.  

Studies show that waitress and waiters who repeat back a customer’s order word for word get 73 percent higher tips because it shows that you’re listening.  People want to be heard and seen.  And I think in politics right now, I mean there’s so much going on in politics and so much that is wrong, but every single person in this country wants to know that there is a leader out there who sees them, who hears them and wants to get it right.  Just like I did with those customers at the Chartroom.  I saw them, I heard them and I told them what it was that I heard and they knew I was going to try to get it right.  

Andrea:  Hmm.  So, so good.  And I am sure that those customers, after you repeated that back to them, they could sit back in their chair and have a really good conversation instead of worrying about whether or not you were going to get it right.  

Heather Hansen:  That’s it.  That’s it.  They were confident that I was going off to do my job and they couldn’t drink their mudslide and have a great time.  

Andrea:  Yeah.  

Heather Hansen:  That’s right.  And in politics it’s the same.  I mean, you know, for yourself, Andrea, all you want to know is that there’s someone in politics who sees you, who hears you and is trying to get it right for you.  And I think that if more of our politicians were focused on that rather than fighting with each other and not listening to anybody other than the echo chamber that makes them feel more important then we would have a much better dialogue going on and we would ultimately end up with much better leaders.  

Andrea:  Wow, Heather, this has been a fantastic conversation.  It’s sad that we’re at the end, but I would like to ask, if the listener is like really intrigued and would like to connect with you, where can they find you?  

Heather Hansen:  Well, I’m in transition right now.  So right now the website is a heatherhansonpresents.com but the best way to reach out to me would be my email, which is heather@advocatetowin.com and the new website’s going to be advocatetowin.com and I said, in transition.  But direct email me is fine if you want a little piece of some of the tools that we’ve talked about, there is at my heatherhansenpresents.com website.  There is a webinar on picking people and I talked with the jury consultant on the tools that we use to pick jurors and how that can be applied in your life outside the courtroom, and that’s free at the website.  

Andrea:  That sounds fascinating.  I’m going to personally check that one out.  That sounds great.  All right, Heather, thank you so much for being a Voice of Influence for our listeners today.  

Heather Hansen:  Thank you so much for having me.  I really enjoyed our conversation.