EntreLeadership - #275: The Right (and Wrong) Stuff with Carter Cast

Episode Date: July 16, 2018

The path to success is seldom entirely smooth, but venture capitalist Carter Cast says that shouldn’t derail your career—if, that is, you learn how to recognize your blind spots. Tune in as Carter, who is also an award-winning clinical professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, details the personality traits of the five archetypes found in every workplace. With a little self-awareness, you can easily identify which archetype you are so that you can maximize your strengthsandimprove upon your weaknesses to keep your career on track. EntreLeadership Vice President Sarah Sloyan also joins us for a candid conversation about ways she works to overcome her own personal limitations and offers tactical advice for helping team members do the same. entreleadership.com/podcast Leadership Growth Assessment from EntreLeadership 14-Day Free Trial from Infusionsoft Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You've got to act like you're in a state of beta until you die. You're never a finished product. You're always in a state of beta. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders, by leaders, four leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation.

Here's what we have coming your way. Carter Cash is the author. of a book entitled The Right and Wrong Stuff, How Brilliant Careers Are Made and Unmade. This is a deep dive, and this is going to step on some toes, but toes that need to be stepped on. So that's coming up in just moments. A little bit later in the program, Sarah Sloane,

our vice president of Entree leadership will stop by. Gives some great context of what do we do with a book like Carter Cass, and what does she do in managing and leading and guiding and cajoling different personalities and people, in the business. And of course, we're going to give you some free resources from InfusionSoft. You don't want to miss this. This may be their best free offer ever. I couldn't believe it. I had to ask, Will the producer, to make sure that I wasn't reading a bunch of typos. That and some free stuff from Monterey Leadership, all coming your way.

Well, Carter Cast, the guys got a long, long resume working for some big brands like PepsiCo, Tostitos, and EA Sports. Spent many, many a night in my young 20s, EA Sports. It's in the game. You know, just great, great, great stuff. And this book is fascinating. How Brilliant Careers Are Made and Unmade is the subtitle, but it really is to pay off. And he did a lot of research. This is anecdotal. It's good stuff.

We walk you through the guts of the books. Let's get right to it. Here's my conversation with Carter Cast. Why this book, based on your background, what you've done, what you teach, what you write about. Why is this the book that you're coming out with now? Well, they say right what you know. and I had a couple of real zinger derailment events in my career. Whenever any of us is introduced

to the right or, you know, that speak publicly, they make it sound like we have this career that's up into the right. And the truth of the matter is, we're all bumping along and making mistakes and derailing. And I thought, let's write about this. Let's bring this up out to light. So I ended up doing a lot of research because I had the theory and it was sort of my thesis was that this is not handled very well by companies. They don't take talented people who are getting into trouble, and they don't help them through this. And so I went out and did a whole lot of research on this. I read everything academically I could find because I'm part of Northwestern so I can get access to a lot of the studies. And then I interviewed 100 people who got fired or demoted that were between the age of

25 and 55. And then I also interviewed a lot of executive coaches and HR vice presidents. And there were these five themes that came up as to why people that got game, that are really talented and motivated, what happens to them if they don't reach the expected level of performance that others think they should, others being their boss or the head of HR. So I dug into this and I found these five reasons. I wrote a white paper on it for school. And then other professors started using my white paper and I thought, yeah, maybe there's more here that I should pursue. So I ended up pursuing a book deal, and I turned it into Hachette, and they said, oh, God, this is a downer, man. Can you lighten it up a little bit, please? So I went back out and looked at the flip side as well,

the right stuff, and what high potential high performers do differently. And I found out, which is sort of heartening, it's not like they're great at everything. People that are high potential high performers are good at a couple of things, but they're consistently across the board, good at the same two or three things. So that's the book. I wrote. Okay. So this is great. So we're going to get into it. But I want to ask you, and if it's better asked a little bit later, we can table it. When you were doing the study and talking to those high performers who at some point fell off, or to use your term, derailed, but they had talent, they had what it took. Did you see a higher propensity for, was it moral or was it just professional

failure? What did you see there? Any patterns? The biggest pattern I saw was the number one reason they run into trouble is they lack self-awareness. They have an area of vulnerability, a blind spot, and whether it's that they aren't receiving the feedback, and so they are unaware of the blind spot, or whether it's just painful for them to reconcile with their self-conception, it's a blind spot that they, you know, if you can't address a blind spot, if you can't address an area of vulnerability, you're not going to get better. So the theme was lack of self-awareness, number one. And then the other theme that happened a lot was complacency. that we get in these positions, we get into a groove and eventually the groove becomes a rut,

and the next thing you know, we're out of date, you know, our code date is expired and our, you know, we're sour milk. And so you've got to stay current, especially in the age we live in, where, you know, five years ago nobody was talking about voice and AI and cryptocurrency and blockchain. And now that's what everybody in my community in venture capital is talking about. So how do you stay current so that you don't become a dinosaur was the second key theme? Okay, so that's really, really good here. Love the first one, self-awareness. So you had two groups there, those who literally couldn't see,

they had no idea what the blind spot was, others who actually knew what it was, but didn't want to take the necessary steps to confront that, because it's painful. You know, it's one thing to know it, but to accept it. Seems like that was a big issue, so that's huge. And then this idea of not continuing to learn. I mean, I have been able to interview so many winners like you on this show,

and they all have one thing in common, if not more, but certainly one thing, is that there's a continual desire to keep growing. And that is the antidote to complacency, isn't it? Yeah, as Reid Hoffman's, the startup of you, he said, you've got to act like you're in a state of beta until you die. You're never a finished product. You're always in a state of beta. I've had the opportunity to get to know Carol Dweck, and she's spoken at a company that I work with, and so I've taken her up for dinner a couple, three times. And her book, mindset and the research behind it is fascinating where people neatly can be categorized into having a growth mindset where you see life is a series of experiments and some fail and some succeed.

But when an experiment fails and you fail, you don't see it as a personal indictment of your character or your intelligence. You see it as something you learn that you will take with you to make you better. Whereas people with a fixed mindset, when they fail, they believe it shows that they don't have ability or talent or game. And so they shy away from challenging themselves. And I think her research there was also really influential in me digging into this topic. Yeah. Okay. So there's so much here. I'm just going to lead you through, given a summary of part one of the book, because of the research that you've already mentioned to our audience. You came up with five archetypes. And this comes from all your interviews. So I'll just tee you up

and let you teach however you want on these. The first one, actually, laughed out loud when I opened up the book and I saw it because when I read about the first archetype, I laughed because I thought, this is what I would call somebody who acts like this. You know what I mean? It's like I would almost see myself being sarcastic. So here we go. It's Captain Fantastic, which we all have an image right now of some just complete doofus right now. Captain Fantastic. Yeah, very, very impressed with himself. Very impressed with himself. Ego run am I, me, mine. Furthering his career at the expense of others, lacking self-awareness, talks too much, dismal listening skills, overly ambitious,

often lacks composure, lashes out, isn't able to accept feedback well. This person does really well early in his career, but often mid-career or later career, when the interdependencies become even more important cross-functionally inside of organizations, and you need to rely on the team to do the work, the team doesn't want to work with you because you're a pain. Yeah. And so, you know, I saw these at PepsiCo. I saw them, you know, you see them at these big companies and you say, how did that guy get where he got if he's this much of a jerk? Well, he's smart and he's self-promoting. But eventually he's going to miss his plan, miss his quarter, miss his year, and nobody wants him around. And they will isolate him. And eventually you'll get a red line that he's doing special projects. And then eventually he's not even in the company. Just kind of fades away. So what's interesting about this one, Ken, is, you know, let's say you're not this cat. Let's say you're not Captain Fantastic and you aren't, you know, big, big ego drive. There still is a high chance.

When I say high, like 98% chance, there is a dark side personality component to you that is impeding your ability to be effective at work interpersonally. And this is where I leaned on a lot of the research of a guy named Robert Hogan. And he worked off of a lot of research of a clinical psychiatrist named Karen Hornay, who found that when people suffer interpersonally, they either are moving away from others, becoming distant or skeptical, they move against others. They become bombastic and overly aggressive, overly assertive, or they move towards others by being overly compliant and ingratiating.

And she said, heck, this happens. Everybody I work with that has an interpersonal, issue, especially under stress, they have one of these three tendencies. So Robert Hogan took her research from the 1940s, I think, 40s and early 50s. And he found that underneath those three topics, there's 11 propensities that we have and the chances are about 100% that you have at least one of them. So I took this Hogan test. And you can see if you Google Hogan psychological inventory or Hogan assessment, you'll see these 11 traits. So I took it. this test twice, and sure enough, I had these two propensities that spiked that hurt me in my

career until I got them under control. And mine were being mischievous, which given our preamble before we went live, you can see, you and I chatting. Oh, yeah. And yeah, mischievous, which is sort of a smart alec. And then secondly, being leisurely, which is not following what your boss wants you to, kind of taking, picking and choosing what you want to work on if it interests you and not being a good soldier. And these things hurt my career until I got them under control. Interesting stuff. Okay. So that's number one. Yeah. Exactly. That's just Captain Fantastic. I want to stay here for a second because the scenario you gave us was spot on, but it was in the large corporation where Captain Fantastic eventually does run out of rope.

but what we've seen a lot in the small business world, Captain Fantastic becomes this almost 600-pound gorilla, 800-pound gorilla because the small business owner doesn't want to get rid of them because they're such a high performer. And they are the wrecking ball. Everything's the same as Captain Fantastic in the big company. But in the big company, he's a lot more easily replaced. In the small company, you and I know that once you get rid of them, everybody else is going to throw a party and you will be able to replace them. But we hear this over and over again from small business owners. They're worried. They're scared about getting rid of this captain fantastic because they perform, they're bringing in big numbers, but at the cost of causing a lot of angst around them.

Yeah. And entrepreneurship, we see the same thing, Ken. We invest in early stage software companies at my venture capital firm, and you will see some CEOs. I mean, I think you've got to have a little Captain Fantastic probably to be crazy enough to do a startup. Right. And succeed in landing big venture investors and convincing people to come along with you on this crazy journey. But you have to know when to pair it and you have to know when to shut up and listen or the team gets disenfranchised. And we see these Captain Fantasticics like you talked about in key roles, like maybe their chief revenue officer role or something. And if they are so objectionable that they alienate the rest of the team,

sometimes you make them elephant hunters, you know, go off and try to land big accounts, but try to isolate them. Yes, yes. Stay away from everybody else, please. Right. Go harass somebody else. Yeah. All right.

Number two, the solo flyer. Talk to us about the solo flyer. So the captain fantastic often happens mid-later career, and solo flyer happens early. It's when a really talented person that's an individual contributor gets promoted because they do such a good job as a contributor, and they get their first team, and then they try to continue to take the reins and do it themselves.

So the team becomes disempowered and feels like they aren't being leveraged. So this person overmanages, they micromanage, they don't develop others. They don't teach them to fish. They try to fish for them. And they don't understand that at least half their job is to go out, there and get resources for their team to be able to do good work. I did this analysis of Lominger, which is a talent development firm that looks at 67 different managerial competencies. And 67th in managerial effectiveness. Last place, developing others. It's the worst thing

managers are at. They're bad at developing their subordinates. And it's just, it means that you've got to develop yourself. And the solo flyer is suffering because she's not realizing that her job was to be a player. Now it's to be a coach. Just like Michael Jordan had a tough transition from being the best player on the planet to being a coach. Most great players have a hard time becoming great coaches because the skill set's different. Linda Hill of Harvard wrote this book called Becoming a Manager. And she studied kind of ethnographic research. She followed around 20 people that just got promoted from an individual contributor to a manager, and she found that they keep trying to do it themselves because becoming a manager going from me to we is literally a transformation

of identity. Boy, that's true. That's spot on. All right. The third one is version 1.0. You kind of touched on this earlier on in our conversation. What's going on here? Complacency generally, rigidity, not being open-minded, not being willing to learn, flushing your out of the office and making sure you're doing tours with the sales folks, you're meeting with suppliers, you're going to the manufacturing facility, you're doing competitive audits, you're watching the customer buy your product and use your product. This person usually gets stuck in their office doing process facilitation. And they aren't out there on the front line staying abreast of the changes that are happening around their product. And so as a result,

they become antiquated, and pretty soon, you know, they're considered to be dinosaurs. And again, this comes back to self-awareness. It comes back to one of the major patterns you saw. Some people don't even realize they are version 1.0. They think they're fine. They have no idea how far they are behind the patterns. They're saying, I'm in sales. I don't need to understand this digital marketing mumbo-jumbo. You know, you do. You do for lead gen. You've got to understand digital marketing if you're an enterprise salesman these days. That's exactly right. Okay.

The fourth one, the one trick pony. This seems to be, is this kind of a cousin to version 1.0? Well, there's a big distinction, but you have to sort of have to tease it out. The one trick pony goes up a straight and narrow line. They become very competent at something, like maybe they're the control of a company. And they want to become the CFO, but they don't have any experience with forecasting. They don't have any experience with strategic planning. They don't have any experience with working with the business units to optimize their performance.

And so they've found that they've become pigeonholed to be the accounting queen. And they're great at closing the books and they pass the audit with flying colors, but they've over-specialized. They haven't taken lateral moves along the way that will broaden them. And they hit a ceiling. And so it isn't that this person isn't competent at what they do. they've just over-specialized if they want to get one level further. They've got to pick a time, usually between the first five and eight years of their career,

to broaden and get cross-functional experiences. That's good. You know, I think I'm such a big sports fan. I have a hard time not pulling some type of sports analogy in on just about anything, but I think about this, you know, you're somewhat limited here. If you're a one-trick pony at some point, you might experience some terrific growth because of your skill set. But in today's economy, it's almost like you need a football player who can not just run. You know, the NFL wants running backs that can catch and run.

You know, somebody that if you can be a third down back, you get paid more. You know, if you can run the ball on first and second down, but then on third down, catch the ball. You're so much more valuable. I love that. That's a great analogy. Yeah. So next, the whirling dervish. I love this.

This is, this was the highest rated. So I, on my website, Cartercast.com, backslash resources. Nice plug, by the way. That was well done. Thank you. In my announcer voice, too. Yeah. I created an assessment with the Center for Creative Leadership on derailers, on these

five derailers to see if this is, you know, are you this? And I've had thousands and thousands of people take it. This is the number one self-reported derailer right now is the whirling dervish, which is they don't deliver on promises because they're overextended. They're too busy. They aren't well organized. They have trouble prioritizing their tasks. They can't say no.

They're a pleaser. And as a result, balls start dropping and people start distancing themselves from this person because their word isn't their bond. And this was the number one self-reported derailer and by far the number one amongst millennials. Why? I think they're inundated with technology. notifications and social media and tweets and emails and it's distracting. I teach, for seven years, I've taught millennials at Northwesterns Kellogg School.

And, you know, it's a challenge. There's so many inputs that trying to turn this thing off and so you can focus on your core responsibilities is rough. And I think you and I, a little bit older, we had it easier growing up without all these distractions. Yeah. But what about the rest of us? those of us who aren't millennials, this same pattern here as far as it's the number one reported problem here. So why is that? People that do well, and I'm referring now to Daniel Goldman's book,

Focus. People that do well have the ability to focus and to separate the wheat from the chaff and say, which of these 50 priorities, which of the three are really going to make plan, which of these are going to move the needle, which of these are urgent and important, and where should I spend my time versus working in response mode where you come into the office and you just mow through your emails. Your emails are somebody else's agenda, pretty much. That's right. So you, you know, you should check them every once in a while, but by and large, focus on those big projects that are going to make your company do well or make your, you know, individual business do well. And when you can get to the other priorities that are less important, batch your time around. I saw you had Dan Pink, who I

like and have worked with some. Dan talked about when you're most productive, do your heavy lifting work. And when you're in a sag in the middle of the afternoon, respond to emails. Yeah, but I want to stay here because I think we said is spot on, but I want our audience to lean in here and let's go deeper on the why so many of us

are dealing with this problem of overcommitting and under-delivering. I agree with you that focus is the fix, but I'm asking is, and correct me, I don't know that I have it, I'm just taking notes along with our audience. It feels like what you said about being responsive, so I'm going to say reactive. It's like we're reactive. And then you combine that with just people pleasing. It's hard for us to just say no.

I don't know what the deal is with us humans, but somebody comes to us and it's urgent to them. And all of a sudden we let their urgency or their emergency become our emergency. So is it a perfect storm, Carter, of being reactive? That's just a mode of operation. So you come in every day and you're just reactive. Then Johnny or Susie walks in and they've got a problem and we want to please them. Is it that perfect storm that creates this whirling dervish? Absolutely.

Because then the expectation is I always know that Carter is going to be able to respond to me within 30 seconds. And then I call on him even more when I need a quick answer. You're right. it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I like two, I'll refer to two really good books. One is the power of a positive no by William Urey, who wrote the book Getting to Yes on Negotiations. I saw him at a TED conference and said, man, I loved your book of powers of a positive no. And he said, I loved writing that book. Basically, his big theme is, remember that when you're saying no to somebody, you're saying yes to something else that's important to you. It could be that big project you have to turn in. It could be seeing your

wife or husband for dinner. It could be going to your kid's soccer game. It could be getting a workout for your sword back. But remember when you say no what you're saying yes to to gird up and be able to say no. And then the second book I loved was Adam Grant's give and take. And Adam talks a lot about the five-minute favor for givers that can get swamped by requests instead of doing the full Monty and saying, okay, I'll give an example. I was asked to fly out to San Francisco by the director of admissions and give a talk at Kellogg to prospects who are applying to Kellogg. And I was in the middle of finishing this book. I have two jobs, one teaching and one in venture capital, and I'm on a few boards, and I just didn't have the time. And I said to the director

of admissions, Kate, I would love to help you. I can't take two days right now to go to San Francisco. But if you can identify from that trip, the three or four people that are very entrepreneurial and interested in Kellogg, I'll call them and try to convince me. them to come to Kellogg. So I turned a two-day trip into three hours of phone calls. So how can you do a five-minute favor so that you don't do the big ask, but you still acknowledge the person's needs? Yeah. Boy, that's really good. Okay, so we just walked through the five archetypes based on the research. And of course, the book really unpacks all this. So it's great for you, the leader that are listening in for your own self-awareness and growth. And then

for your team. And I'm going to say this mid-interview. I think this is a great team read and team discussion. I just think it's really illuminating. But before we let you go, I want to end our time talking about the positive. So Hachette said, come on, man. It's like a rainy day. Give me some sunshine. And so you did. So let's do some of that for our listeners here. What is the right stuff? Yeah, this is great. This was fun because I thought, oh, man, And people with the right stuff are just, they're Willie Mays. They can bat. They can run. They can field. You know, they can do it all. And it's not true. Willie Mays is once in a lifetime performer, right? And so people with the right stuff are good at a couple things. And the way I got at this was, I looked at thousands of 360 feedbacks.

And I looked at the traits of people that were in the top 10% of their company. And there were three consistent traits. one, they're good at building relationships with others. They're good at listening. They're good at seeking to understand before being understood, which is St. Francis of Assisi. And they're good at creating trust by understanding the other person's point of view before they opine. So they build relationships and then they gain enlistment. So that's number one. Number two, they are good at driving for results.

They say, you know, if I, their word is their bond. If they say, I'm going to turn it down Friday, they're going to be up all night to get it done and turned in on Friday. So they have drive for completion. That was the second one. And those two together, you know, if you're good at enlisting and engaging with others and you're good at getting the ball over the goal line, that's a wonderful combination. And then the third one, not surprisingly, is they are learners. They have tremendous learning agility. And if I tried to unpack learning agility in the book, and it's things like they're reflecting.

They examine their performance and they're self-critical of their performance, so they try to figure out how to get better. They ask a lot of questions to others on how they're doing. Tell me one thing I did well in there. Tell me one thing I did poorly in there. What would you do differently in watching me? What should I have done differently? So they're reflective. They're open-minded.

They listen as objectively as they can to feedback, to criticism, and they get better by doing so. and then they don't put things off. They don't put things off that make a problem a bigger problem. They activate issues. They go after issues before they become big issues. And then lastly, they have tremendous discovery skills. This is part of all learning agility. And when I say discovery skills, I mean they're good at observing, they're good at questioning,

they're good at experimenting, creating little AB tests, building cheap prototypes, and testing them, and they're good at networking. They find people that are smart in areas that are becoming important in their industry, and they connect with those people so they can learn from them. So those are the three. Those are the big three. Learning orientation, drive for results, drive for completion, and building strong relationships with others.

You know, they don't have to be great analytically. They don't have to. It's just there's these three skills. So when you're recruiting, look for those three skills. when you're interviewing people. That's right. This goes back to the age-old adage that you can teach the right things to good people,

but you can't teach bad people to be good people. It's just really, really hard. You can. I know that's a generalization, but boy, you're talking about, it really is, I love how you describe it, the right stuff. They just have it. And now you can mold that and grow that.

That's what you're looking for. Yeah. The way you learn it, the way they can develop it, is just by being open-minded, open to criticism, open to the fact that you're not going to get it right. You're never going to get it completely right. So just keep trying to get a little bit better.

Yeah. This is such a good book. I want to give you the last word to tell folks about the wrong stuff derailment assessment. I think the book is so practical. But this is a wonderful resource at the very end of the book. How would you like our audience to engage with this? And then once they do, what do they do with it? I listed in the back of the book, I put it.

in the appendix of the book, the test I developed with the Center for Creative Leadership, which has 25 questions that will help you identify which of these derailment areas, Captain Fantastic, Solo Flyer, Whirling Dervish, One Trick Pony, Version 1.0, which of them might be an issue for you based on the way you answer the assessment? And then you can hone in on that chapter because in this book, I spend the majority of the time looking at corrective measures, not just describing the problem. I wanted this to kind of be a field guide for talented people, not just a book of theory. Yeah, it really is. You've done a good job with your mission. He is Carter Cass. The book is the right and wrong stuff, how brilliant careers are made and unmade. Carter, I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Thank you for being with us. I know you've got a lot going on, but we are much better for our time with you. Thank you. Oh, thank you. I had a good time talking to you. Thank you. Big thanks to Carter, for joining us. Great, great conversation. Fun guy. We had a lot of fun prior to recording. I told Will the producer needs to start giving you all that as bonus content. Let's go to, speaking of great content, let's go to our Entree Leadership tool for this episode. It's our Entree Leadership Growth Assessment, specifically designed to help you develop the leaders within your team. This is huge. Beyond growing yourself, you better be growing your team. And this is the perfect tool to help you coming off the conversation with Carter. There's four attributes to use to help

you begin assessing your team. Report, credibility, trust, influence are going to walk you through how to identify and use those attributes. Here's how you get it. Text episode 275. Spell the word episode. Text episode 275. Text that to 33444. That's 33444. Or you can get the link in the show notes, episode 275 at Entreeleadership.com. Always fun when Sarah Sloyne drops by. She's our vice president of Entree Leadership. Fantastic lady doing a great job. And I wanted to talk with her to get her perspective on how she works within the team environment and how she works on herself as well. You're hearing this in great context to the right and wrong stuff from Carter Caste. Here is my conversation with Sarah Sloy. Sarah, good to have you back.

I can't call you the Grand Puba because we gave that title to Daniel Tarty. So I need a cool title for you. Okay. Can you work on that? Yes. I've got by the title for myself. Well, no, yeah, you can't if you want for fun. Should we do a survey monkey?

Yes, maybe. Maybe we do that. We just seen a fun title for when she's on the program. Okay. It's good to have you on the program. And so I wanted to have you on because obviously we have these guests that come in all the time. And obviously, Carter gave us some great content. But all it does in my mind is it drags up a bunch of real life.

These people are going, okay, I can identify this person in my office. I can identify this person. I see it. Maybe I'm this person if they're being completely honest. That's what I think is always funny. Whenever people are giving talks, I'm like, I know 10 people that can benefit. And then I think, oh, no, I think I'm supposed to be thinking about this for myself. That's true.

It's not good. It's not a good thing. You're supposed to do. So I wanted you to come in to talk about this idea that we all have warts. We all have these blind spots, if you will. Hopefully we're aware enough to know what our top strengths and skills are. what our weaknesses are when it comes to skills. But then let's look at the personal side of things, the way we interact with people.

We all have some strengths. We all have some weaknesses. How have you now leading a good-sized team? What have you learned about the process of working with team members, whether it be a relational weakness or maybe it's an operational weakness in the business, the day-to-day functions? How have you worked with them on that? Well, I think the first thing is you have to kind of be ready to have that conversation. and part of that is making the brain space to really sit down and think about, I don't know about

you, but oftentimes I have several examples that have come up. And what's easiest for me as a leader is to go in and just address each of the examples and say stop being rude to people, you said this over here. But if you really give yourself some space to think about it, you can get down to like, what is the real source of that behavior, not the symptom, but what is the real root underlying thing that's going on here? because usually it all comes back to one kind of root thing, and that is really going to help them then solution it for the long run.

If I'm just addressing these kind of symptomatic pieces, then they're not going to be able to critically think for themselves in future situations. They're just going to go, okay, in this one situation, don't use this tone of voice. Does that make sense? It totally does. And so when you identify that, so I love the brain space. So you're sitting there as a leader and you're analyzing the situation, you're making a list. But then comes the part that is so hard for people.

And that's sitting down and actually having the conversation. And it's not fun. Conflict is one of the number one things that our folks have trouble with. Nobody really likes, well, I mean, maybe some people don't mind it so much. But most of us... Whoa, whoa, whoa. Yes, you're right. You know what?

You're absolutely on to something. There are people that with personality types that it's just not an issue. But I think it would be fun because where are you at on the scale of conflict? I naturally... You can handle it. But here's the thing. I have worked with two personalities very closely for the last five and a half years that are the complete opposite end. So what I've had to really do is go, this is the opportunity to actually avoid future huge blowups.

If we can have smaller. Stephen Mansville talks about this. If we can have smaller explosions, you know, lower level, low risk explosions, it actually, my S goes, because I know, okay, we're talking about this here instead of all of a sudden I'm telling someone you're about to get fired because I'm addressing it in smaller arena. is and I'm saying, hey, there's something going on here. And I like to bring them into the conversation. There's some things I'm noticing. Explain, though, before you go any further, explain your S. So the D-I-S, we sell the disc her.

What does that mean? I want people to understand if they're not caught up with you, what your S, what does it mean you're a high-out? Okay, so these are very high generalization. So jump in here and help me out. But like generally, I think high Ds are very comfortable with conflict. You know, they are ready to address things. They're going to jump right in and challenge things.

It's all about the point, get it done. Progress is the product. Exactly. And then you have eyes. Eyes are the life of the party. They're not super conflict oriented, but they're also not necessarily conflict-averse. But generally they want people to have a good time. S is like stabilization.

They don't like rock the boat. They just wants to get along. But it's a myth, right? Because on the surface, we may all be getting along. But below, we are very passive-aggressive and we're like, I cannot believe that person, which is not a healthy place to live. Yes, but you would prefer smooth water. Yes.

And you think maybe it'll go away. So how has your leadership style changed? So that S speaks to that core personality style. Right. So I like to refer to it as a default mode for those that are listening and watching. Okay. But you worked with Daniel Tarty. And I don't know who the other one was you're talking about,

but Daniel's fine with us talking about it. But he's the high D like me. So conflict for us is just a normal function of life. We don't even actually see it the way others see it. That's exactly right. It's just a context sport. But what happens is you delay the inevitable and then the inevitable is worse. Right.

Because you didn't have that. So what I'll give your real. example. Okay, well, this is what happened. You know, he would hire people and I'd say, I don't know, it kind of feels weird to me. Maybe we should talk, you know, a little more, but I wasn't being clear in my communication or firm enough. And so he was hearing, she thinks they're fine, it's great. You have enough situations like that go wrong. And then you're dealing with the clean. And that is so painful for an S because you think if I had just been clear up front, then we wouldn't have this very, very conflict-oriented situation. that we're now having to deal with. That's right. So as I matured, I realized I can save myself a lot of grief in the long run.

If I just address things as they go, it was a lot better for me. So it's better for you. So you developed a, okay, I'm going to have to be more direct with them because you can handle it. Right. Okay. So I interrupted you because I really wanted you to address that. So you were taking us on this path. So people, you start to see the symptoms.

So you've made the list. You sit down and you have the conversation with them. And you kind of go, okay, here's where we're. we sit. Once you address that, whether it be the first time, second time, whatever, but you've had full disclosure, what's your operational mode after that? Yeah. Well, let's even go back to the first time. My first conversation with someone, I'm under the assumption that they just don't know any better, you know, that no one's ever probably told them. Which I think is fair. You know, it's like they're probably doing this. They don't even realize they're doing it. So generally,

and I also don't feel like I have to have everything perfect in my verbiage. Like, I don't have to have it all together. I can just sit down and say, Ken, there's some stuff that's going on. And I've really thought about it. And I think there's maybe a root thing here because I'm seeing some examples and they all kind of tie back to this XYZ, right? And I wanted to get with you because I care about you and I want to see you grow here. And I feel like this might hold you back. Because you're probably not even realizing that this is how people experience you. And so it's kind of this benefit of the doubt. Let's just kind of talk about it as friends. And I'm. And I'm just kind of talk about it as friends, it also is very telling how they react. If I go in very like with my guard up because I

know they're going to get defensive, they're going to be immediately defensive. But if I'm kind of relaxed and I'm just saying, let's think through this together. It usually puts them at ease and we can talk through it, which is the goal, right? The goal is not for me to come in and lecture them. The goal is I want them to change their behaviors. And they're only going to do that if there's high trust built. And they're only going to have high trust if I come and approach it as, you know, a friend, and say, this is concerning to me because I know you want this goal, and this is going to hold you back from that. So let's brainstorm on how we can, you know, do you realize you're doing this? Or that is my first approach.

If that does not work as well, then we start to get firmer about it. We might even capture it on paper as part of the non-negotiables for working here. If it gets to where they're really not listening, you know, what I've found works really well is if I outline here kind of no more than five usually because that gets a little overwhelming. So three to five pieces of non-negotiables for someone working here. Maybe it's behavior. Maybe it's quality of work. And then I say, let's talk about on a scale of one to five, where do you think you are in each of these? And then let's talk about where I think you are on each of these.

And in some discussions you have to say where I think you're at is more important in this situation because I'm your leader. And so that's kind of uncomfortable for an S to say to somebody, but that's the real situation. Sure. Perception is real. That's exactly right. Okay, now I want to flip this for just a moment before we let you go. And that is for you to give us your experience in a leadership position where you realize what your weaknesses are. Oh, my.

And it's not so much, and I'm not looking for you to share the story of where you think you're relationally weak because I don't know that you are. I've seen you interact. You've really, really strong relationship. But you are leading. You have stepped up. You've done a great job leading. But now you're in a much bigger position. You have more responsibility.

Just curious how you try to. make sure that you're getting good feedback, 360 feedback, and then mitigating. Here's what I want leaders to hear from you. How you own your weaknesses and you're not ashamed of them. At least I hope that's the case with you because I think that is the case. Say, hey, this is where I'm weak. And so I'm going to mitigate that. I'm going to guard that over here so I can focus where I'm strong as opposed to being worried about all your weaknesses. Totally. Is that your approach? Yes, absolutely. Because if you're not like that, then you're constantly in this fear of imposter mode, which is exhausting. You're going to burn right out. And none of us are perfect. I mean, none of us are perfectly well-rounded

and have all these gifts. We all have gifts, but probably not all of them. I say the more comfortable you can be, now, there's no excuse not to grow in those areas. You can't just say, well, this is how I'm made and that's how it is. You have to lead the way. You have to then grow in those areas. So I'll give you some examples. We could sit here all day to talk about examples, but there's two things you're kind of asking there. One is, how do I ask? How do I ask? for feedback. So I'm sure there's blind spots that I don't even realize about. And then how do you address the blind spots that you do already have? Let's take a blind spot I know I have is I'm not great at having a digital background. So I know I've got to grow in our strategy for digital product,

right? I go out and I find out who's the best in that area. And you can apply that even if it's a soft skill, right? Communication, any of those things. You go, who is the very best at this? I'm going, and even if it's outside of your team, you know, so for digital product, I need to find other people in Nashville who are really good at this and who are willing to have lunch with me or whatever so I can pick their brain, I can ask questions. That's the other thing is you have to get very comfortable asking questions. And no questions, you know, you should have to own some, I haven't found a stupid question yet. I just ask them. If I'm curious about it, I just ask. I agree with that 100%. And people are so happy to share their experience because they weren't born great at these things. So they love to share, oh, this is this is how I love. learn to do that thing. People love to share that stuff. Now, the second thing you asked was about how do I solicit feedback. And this has been something I've had to practice a couple of different ways to get it right because I think people look at me, especially newer people, and they say, oh, she's the vice president. All of her ideas must be so great. Or she said, you know, like she must be so great. And I'm thinking, you've got to be kidding. I mean, out of ten ideas, I might have

one great one. And if we chase these bad ideas because the emperor has no clothes, but no one's willing to tell her. And so I just try to be very humble. And I ask, I constantly ask, how do you guys feel about that? Is there something I could have done differently in that meeting that would have gone better? And I ask people who are above me. I ask people who are peers. I ask people who are below me. And I just constantly ask. And then it's not perfect. But I do find more people are willing to say, hey, you know, this is kind of an area that you can improve in. So let's take podcasts, for example, came to me the other day and said, you know, you giggle a lot in the podcast and the recordings, it comes across, you know, odd. It sounds weird. I said,

well, thanks for letting me know. I had no idea. You know, I haven't done a ton of podcast recordings. I've only done, you know, maybe 10. So it's like, I want to know that. But I had to create that environment so they felt like they could tell me that. Okay. Well, I got to tell you, I've not noticed it, you know, because I, all of a sudden, I feel like I'm supposed to tell you. Well, well, now you can, now you can give me feedback too. I don't think you're a big giggler. I've got to tell you, but I appreciate that. I've really worked on it. Thank you. You really have. I guess so. I mean, well, you've got a great laugh. See, you're trying hard not to laugh because of the future. Yes, now I want to giggle. In the past, you would have laughed. There it is right there. Oh, it's fine. It's fine. We all love to hear good laughter. Okay, really, really good stuff. I want to give you the final word. I want you to encourage leaders. They've been listening in here. They've listened to the entire program. They've listened to you share very transparently about how to communicate, you know, on areas of growth, weaknesses, not just with the team, but with the,

themselves, just from your heart to them. How would you encourage them to step into this area, which is not comfortable, but it is there where the great growth happens? I mean, that's it, right? If you don't embrace it and step into it and look for those opportunities, and I would say the more you do it, the easier it will be. That's right. And so don't go out and just create chaos for the sake of chaos, but look for opportunities to grow yourself in that skill set and practice small, low-risk ways. So, you know, telling somebody, hey, I noticed you've been on your phone a lot. That's a really low risk way.

Like, look for opportunities to build your confidence in having those conversations where it's just a natural thing to give feedback and also to solicit feedback. Make that a natural part of your culture, your team culture. So then even your team members are both giving and soliciting feedback. And it really, that's how it should be. Peers should be giving each other feedback also. So create that environment so that that's part of the daily piece of it. Good stuff. She is Sarah Sloane, our vice president of entree leadership. We've got to come up with a cool nickname for her, something that is much more graceful than Grand Puba, which we gave to Daniel Tarty. Good to have you with us. Thanks for being here. Big thanks to Sarah Sloan for joining us in studio. Fantastic Lady. If you're coming to one of our Entree leadership events here in Nashville, do yourself a favor and make sure to say hi to her. Great lady and leading a great team here. All right, Infusion Soft is up. I told you at the top of the program.

that this may be their best free offer ever. Will the producer looks at me cross-eyed when I say things like that because, well, I don't know if I'm supposed to say the best ever, but why am I saying this? Because it's a 14-day free trial of their software. Did you catch what I'm saying? They're going to open up the entire thing that you get to use the InfusionSoft software, which is unbelievable.

I got a lot of small business friends outside of Ontario that use Infusionsoft because I tell them about it. And, you know, I pull a couple strings. They get a little extra attention, a little demo action. Well, they're giving you the whole program, 14 days for free. There's a 10-minute online demo, 45-minute live webinar demo, and a one-on-one personalized demo. This is what I get for my friends. So if you're a listener and you think I'm your friend, don't email me and ask me to hook you up with the one-on-one personalized demo because I'm not going to do it.

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episode show notes, 275 is the episode. Go to entreleadership.com, click on podcast. Go to episode 275 and click on the Infusion Soft link and it's going to do all the work for you. This is unbelievable. Shame on you if you don't take them up on this. I don't mind saying that at all. On behalf of Will the producer, Tim, the engineer and the entire Entree leadership team, it's going to do it, folks. What we want to say, thanks for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.