EntreLeadership - The Keys to High-Impact Leadership with Kacy Maxwell and Vanessa Van Edwards

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

Join us as our host, George Kamel, talks with Executive Director of Marketing for EntreLeadership Kacy Maxwell. They sit down to talk about the different mindset shifts you need to make so you can grow as a leader. Later, George is joined by Vanessa Van Edwards, a bestselling author, speaker, and the founder of Science of People. Vanessa unpacks how to become a more self-confident leader. And by the way, you’ll want to stick around until the end of this episode to hear from Dave Ramsey about what to expect as he becomes the host of this podcast next week! You’ll learn: •      The crucial mindset shifts great leaders make •      The most misunderstood thing about confidence •      A key that will change how you delegate •      What the connection between body language and confidence is Support our sponsors: •      Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital •      NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre •      BELAY: https://bit.ly/351P9AE Links mentioned in this episode: •      The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast •      Sketch note of leadership sliding scales: https://bit.ly/3lews55 •      Register for EntreLeadership Summit 2023: https://bit.ly/3Uw3PMQ •      Vanessa Van Edwards’ website: http://bit.ly/3DkFiV3 •      Cues by Vanessa Van Edwards: https://bit.ly/3WBvAEJ •      Watch Vanessa’s TED Talk: https://youtu.be/cef35Fk7YD8 •      If you have a leadership or business question for Dave Ramsey, call and leave a voicemail at: 844.944.1070 •      Keep up with George on his Instagram: https://bit.ly/3Dxqnqu •      Listen to Smart Money Happy Hour: http://bit.ly/3Rpzz6p Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: •      EntreLeadership Summit: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipSummit •      EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipMasterSeries   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: •      Elite: https://bit.ly/3tI2fN8 •      Advisory Groups: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipAdvisoryGroups •      Executive Coaching: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipExecutiveCoaching •      Workshops: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipWorkshops Listen to all the Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download the Ramsey Network app: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq Learn more about your ad choices: https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, last week, we finished up our five-part series on the most important habits you need to develop as a leader. And if you miss the series, be sure to go back and listen and get your leadership off to a great start this year. On today's episode, we're talking about how to step out of your comfort zone when it comes to growing as a leader. And what to do if you find yourself struggling to find confidence. Welcome to the Entree Leadership podcast from the Ramsey Network, where we help you learn the proven principles for winning as a business leader. I'm your host George Camel, and each week here on the podcast, I sit down with some of the best leadership minds out there to help you grow yourself, your team, and your profits. Up first, we've got a segment with Casey Maxwell on the different mindset shifts you need

to grow as a leader. Then Vanessa Van Edwards, best-selling author, speaker, and founder of Science of People, will be joining me to unpack how to become a more self-confident leader. And be sure to stick around to the very end to hear from Dave Ramsey on what to expect as he transitions into the host role for this podcast next week. All right, let's get to our first segment with our friend Casey Maxwell, executive director of marketing for Entree Leadership. Casey, welcome back to the show.

Thanks, George. Glad to be here. So you've been in leadership now for over a decade, and you've seen some things. And with that, you've learned some things, and you've noticed what it takes to move from being a team member to now, oh, I have to lead people. There's this whole new thing I have to learn, a learning curve. and you've found there are five big mindset shifts that people need to make. Yeah. So most of the time, people are not born leaders, right? You don't start your career in

leadership. You start as a maker, a producer. And you're usually really good at doing that thing. And so you get a job doing that thing, and you do it with excellence, and you do it over and over and over, and you build a lot of trust with the leadership there. And then when a leadership position becomes available, you're the one that they look to, right? So you get pulled into this leadership role. The thing is, a lot of people aren't trained how to become that leader. And so they usually have a list of to-dos right before they jump into leadership. And then when they become a leader, they just add become a leader onto their to-dos. And they don't step back and ask themselves the question, what needs to change about the way that I budget my time, the way that I think about success,

the way that I spend and do things at the office? What am I spend? What am I spending? spending my time on. They're not thinking about this. They're thinking about it's a thing I need to do. And so what I've realized is that a lot of people don't realize that there are these key shifts that they need to make in order to really step into that leadership role. Now, there's a lot of them, right? There's a lot of things with leadership. There's a lot out there about leadership. There's five ones that I'd love to talk about today that I think are really, really important for anyone stepping into leadership or anybody that's been in leadership for a while to kind of tune up. All right, let's get to it. What's the first one?

So the first one is around thinking. Where are you spending your time thinking? Is it about today or thinking about the future? That's the shift that you need to make. We say at Entree leadership a lot that you've got to stop spending so much time working in the business and you've got to be able to get above it and work on the business. And so a leader, one of the most important things that they bring to a team and to an organization is vision. You have to be able to get above the business and think about what needs to be true of this business so that we can move forward. But a lot of times, leaders don't do that. They're in the fires of the day to day. They're thinking about, how do I make payroll? How do we get these things done today? And they aren't able to get above it.

And honestly, a lot of times, do you want to know what the number one excuse is why they can't? What is it? They say they don't have time. Right? We hear that all the time. We talk to people all the time and they say, I would love to think about the future. I just don't have time. Which then points to delegation and hiring and changing some of your calendaring if you don't have time to focus on that. Because we talk a lot about desired future and strategic planning. And that's the kind of visionary future thinking you need if you want to get to that next level. Yes. Versus just being a firefighter, putting out the fires of the day and going home exhausted, feeling like you didn't make any progress. Exactly. And when you are a producer, that's what your job is,

right? You are doing things every day to keep the business moving. But when you move into that leadership role, you have to be able to carve out that time to think about where the business needs to go, which kind of leads to the second one, and that is the mind shift from creating and producing to delegating. You kind of hit on it a minute ago, but we have to be able to bring the right people in and be able to take things off our plate and give it to those team members so that we will have time to think about the future. And this really comes down to the art of letting go. For a lot of leaders, they go, well, they don't understand how to do it.

Only I can do it this way. And so they just keep doing it and they won't let go of it. Right. How do you do that effectively? Well, the first thing you have to do is bring the right people in. You've got to get people in and you have to build that trust in order to do that. A lot of people are bad delegators, not just because they don't like the person. or because they only feel like they can do it,

but they just, they know how to do it, right? That's what they spent their career doing. And so what they do is they jump in to solve a problem too fast versus letting the team member be able to do it. They get back into that day-to-day all the time because honestly, it's where they feel comfortable, right? People don't naturally know how to do vision, don't naturally know how to think about the future.

And so it's easy. Our tendency is to go to what is comfortable. And so they go back and jump into the fires of today and say, oh, I'll think about tomorrow, tomorrow. But it is so essential to begin delegating so that you can spend time moving your business forward. And then the third one here is interesting, player and coach. What's the sliding scale there? Yeah.

And again, these are not step one, two, and three, but they all build upon each other. Right. So if you are going to be a coach, you are going to need to take. take yourself somewhat out of the game. If you think about a football game, a coach sits on the sidelines. What is their role? The role is to call the plays from the sidelines, right? They're supposed to be looking at the defense.

They're supposed to be looking at what's going on. What are the things that need to happen? Who needs to be in the game? Who needs to be out of the game? For us to get the objective of winning the game. They're not also on the field calling the plays in real time, taking the snaps running. they can't be in it because they need to be back watching what is going on around.

They've got a wider view. Exactly, exactly. But coaching is really, really hard. To be a good coach, it's very hard, especially if you were a player and a player that really was good and a player that really liked doing it. Because coaching takes a lot of time. And we just said previously that, like, people say they don't have enough time. So I've got to know to do coaching, which is going to give me even less time.

But the myth is that, like, if I go in and solve this today, if I go in and run that play, then it's going to go faster. But what happens is it keeps that reliance on you. And so you are never able to step out of the business. And so the work only moves forward as fast as you can be involved. And for a small business, a lot of the times you're in a player coach role, where you're having to still do some of the sales while also coaching other people in sales. And so as the business grows, the goal is to get away.

from the player mentality into that coach mentality. Exactly. Awesome. What's the next on the list here? So it's moving from focusing on yourself to focusing on the team. Now, I want to clarify that. You shouldn't bring in team members to a team that only thinks about themselves. They should be thinking about the team, the organization, the mission.

What I mean with this is that when you're in a maker role, a producer role, there is a set of things that you need to do. So if you're a sales guy, you have a sales guy. you have a sales quota, right? So you have to do a certain number of calls to hit that budget, right? Now, that goal rolls up into a greater sales team goal for the overall organization. So the leader of sales is focused on the team goal, not what his or her individual goal is. Right. So when you think of what winning looks like, winning is not, there's not winning for the leader unless there's winning for the team. right? Unless the team is just a set of pawns that you can move around to win. And so it's really

taking that view of success, what I should be doing and spending my time on so that the team can win versus what can I as a leader do so that I win. So it's not just, you know, a selfishness if I think about myself. It's do you have a team mentality? You know, we call it one team, one dream around here. And it's really about unity and sharing the credit and accepting the blame as a leader going, I didn't do a good enough job as a leader. I need to step up in this area. Right. And that's how you know you're really taking it to the next level.

Yeah, and if you are leaning into that coaching role, the coach does not sit on the sideline and just look at one player and say, I only care about that one. No, they say, what needs to be true of the entire team so that our team can win the game? It's not so that quarterback can win the game. All right. Last on the list here, what do we got? So it's moving from collaborating to empowering.

Now, this probably needs probably the most explanation around the word collaborating. Because if you walk around Ramsey, we are a very collaborative organization. Leaders collaborate all the time. What I'm talking about here is where you should be inserting yourself as a leader. So a lot of the team on the day-to-day is making things happen. They're producing things. Maybe it's being slow. They're not getting it across the line as fast.

a leader's natural tendency is to swoop and jump in and say, I'm going to solve the problem. So they jump in, they're like, all right, you move this over there, you do that, what do we do? And it creates a ton of confusion because that leader typically doesn't have all of the context of the day to day because they are focused on the future and moving around the organization. So they end up slowing down the process, but they think that they're collaborating. No, no, no, I need all approvals to go through me. Just let me see everything. And so you need to move your mindset to, I am there to empower my team.

So what does that mean? When you think of empowering the team, there are things like giving role clarity, right? Does everybody know what they should be doing on the field, right? Where are we going? What is the objective? How are we doing that? Are there hurdles that I can clear as a leader so that my team can win? So you're not collaborating in the day to day.

You're not getting into all of that. you are standing back there and you're kind of like a battery, right? You're powering this team and you're trying to look at, okay, how much they need? Where can I go in and make sure that that team can move faster without me and that I'm not the one that's actually slowing them down? Yeah, there's a difference between helping them get rid of the blockers versus doing everything for them. And that also, all of this points to, you know, the micromanaging leaders,

the bottleneck leaders where everything has to go through them. they're watching over your shoulder. And we want to move towards, you know, over time, sliding those scales towards the future visionary leader who empowers the team. And I think we all want to be leaders like that. But why do you think these shifts are so difficult to make? I think a lot of times, like I said,

people start off as really good players. And when they move in that to that coach role, there's a different type of success, right? You're thinking differently. And so the things that brought you success, in the player role, it's different. And so you kind of want to go back to that. You like turning in a project and getting an A on it. It feels good. Right? It feels really good. Well, you don't have that anymore. You're standing in the back and you see a team member standing up and they're getting the A.

And you as a leader, you have to redefine that success of saying like, no, I helped that. And it's not from like a credit perspective, but you feel valued when your team is succeeding, not you. And it's really hard because, again, people aren't training on this stuff when you're in the role. Like, that's why Entree leadership exists, right? So we can help people learn the stuff that you just don't learn in the office. You'll learn skills. How do I do this thing or how do I do that thing? But how do I be a leader? We don't teach that in corporate America out there. Yeah, that's a huge problem. So out of all of these different sliding scales, what do you think is the most important one if you could just pinpoint it? Yeah, I would say probably, again, they're not in succession. You don't do them in that order, but they all

kind of build upon each other. I would say the most important one probably is to get that mindset from player to coach. If you can make that mindset shift, you start running everything else you're doing through that sort of coaching mentality. And it'll help you be able to delegate. You'll be able to step back from that micromanaging because you realize I'm the coach I'm not supposed to be doing it right and as the coach if my responsibility is to provide vision well then I need to be thinking about the future and if I'm the coach I need to think about my team right I need not just me and if I'm the coach then I need to figure out what I can do to empower my team and so that's that's one that is really probably the hardest one is the one that I struggle with the most because I like to get in and do things

I've always liked that. And sometimes it's really hard to sit back and walk through it with a team member who it takes a little bit longer to pick it up than I think I would. But the benefits to the company and to our team is amazing. Yeah, and we've said before on this podcast, the best leaders are actively trying to replace themselves, and they're trying to help others win. And that's a hard thing to shift over to.

And so these sliding scales, it's not like you just get all the way to the other side. it shifts over time and there's some weeks and some seasons where you might be sliding back into the player role for a season to get something across the finish line. But the goal is that we don't live in those zones. Yeah. And the reason it's a scale, you're not jumping from one to the other. You never get to the point where you're in a role where you don't think about today. As a leader, you still need an organization to make money, to hit goals. The team needs to be moving forward. But the goal is to continue to move those sliders to the right. so that you're being able to think more about the future

than you did in the past. Well, we've got a great visual of this. We'll link it in the show notes. You created your fantastic artist on top of a great leader. Just wanted to give you credit there. So our listeners can check that sketch note out, get the visual of it, they can print it out, and use it with their team.

That would be really cool. So these shifts can be hard to make. What's your advice for someone listening who's going, all right, I want to work on sliding the scales this week? I would first go get that image, download it, and look at those. plot where you are. Say, where do I think I fall on each of these? And then whichever one is the lowest, just think about what are two or three things that I can do. So if the today versus the

future is your lowest, set a time next week, just say, I'm going to book an hour next week, or two weeks, or however far out in advance you need to do it to actually get time on your calendar, and say, think about the future. Just having that intentional time on the calendar is going to make you more likely to actually do something like that. Maybe it's coaching. In the next one-on-one, only ask questions. Don't give advice. Just sit there and ask questions to help them figure out where they need to go, right?

And so there's little things that you can do, but the first thing is kind of figuring out which one of these sliders needs to move first. That's huge. Well, super helpful stuff. I hope all of our listeners take it to heart, download that sketch note and start putting this stuff in action. and doing the hard work of working with their team, their leadership themselves to delegate, calendar,

do whatever it takes to move these sliders over and watch what happens for their business. Casey, always a pleasure to have you. Thanks for bringing us some wisdom today. My pleasure. Well, I always enjoy hanging out with Casey. I always learn something new. I appreciate him being on with us.

All right, let me ask you this. Do you feel like you never have time to invest in yourself? Do the weeks in the month just keep vanishing in your rearview mirror without any leadership progress? If that's you, it's time to break that cycle. And Entre Leadership Summit is the sledgehammer that will shatter that. You're going to be amazed by just how much leadership transformation we can cram into three days. It's happening in Nashville, Tennessee, May 30th through June 2, 2020, and you can go to

Entreleadership.com slash summit to stop letting your busy schedule rob you of incredible leadership growth. Coming up next, we're talking about how to become a more self-confident leader. Don't miss it. All right. Joining us now, our special guest, Vanessa Van Edwards, bestselling author, speaker and founder of Science of People. She's all about sharing tangible skills, including her insights on how people work to improve interpersonal communication and your leadership. Vanessa, we're so excited to have you. How you doing?

Oh, I'm so happy to be here. I can't wait to chat. So this idea of self-confidence, most entrepreneurs, most people in business leaders, they're going, Vanessa, I think I'm pretty confident. I run a business. How do you define self-confidence in the right way? Okay, so first of all, I love it. If you heard that and you're like, I've got all the confidence in the world, I'm so happy. If you heard that and you thought, I need a dose. I need a dose of confidence, then I also got you. My definition of confidence is very different. What people don't realize is that our confidence is not just for us. It's also for others. Research is very clear on this, that our confidence is contagious. In other words, we are drawn to people who have high confidence and high charisma.

Those are actually two slightly different words, but we can define them in a second, that we like people who exude presence, power, warmth, and competence. And so confidence, the way that I define it, the way that I like to teach it and bottle it and harness it, is if you are confident, you are more positively contagious. When you walk into a room, hop on a video call, chat on the phone, text someone, highly confident people are actually gifting confidence to people that are talking to. And there is no better way to be in the world. Wow. So this idea of confidence, I think a lot of leaders out there have what we might label imposter syndrome, where they're kind of like, I'm confident because my team

needs me to be confident. I don't really feel it in the moment. I don't really know what I'm doing, but if they knew that I didn't know what I was doing, they wouldn't trust me. And like you said, it's contagious. And so their nervousness and their lack of confidence is also contagious. believe in this like fake it till you make it mentality of just kind of faking confidence? Okay, so I am a recovering awkward person, which means that I will admit I am too. Oh, oh my goodness. Okay, so if this is you, you have, you know that you have abilities, right? You have some technical smarts, you have intelligence. The problem is if you have this internal awkwardness or imposter syndrome, depending on how extreme it is, our awkwardness can dress

up as things that get us in trouble. So if we feel awkward in a meeting, or with our team, or selling or speaking on stage, or pitching ourselves or ideas, what happens is, one, we can overthink. So I'm a social overthinker, right? Like, I lay in bed at night, replaying every conversation I had that day, right? So that's exhausting. What leader has time for that?

That's number one. Second is we can doubt our actual skills. So I know that folks who are listening, they have real skills. In fact, this is the problem of very smart people. Our awkwardness can make us doubt the action. skills that we have. And so what I want to talk about is, I don't love fake it till you make it, but I do like the idea of understanding how we can authentically harness our actual competence and showcase that, very clearly to other people, so that we're showing them, I know my stuff,

but also still being vulnerable, right? Like, I think it's still as a leader okay to say, I know this, and also I don't know this. It's a balance between both. So this idea on becoming a more self-confident leader, you mentioned it's not just for the leader, but it's also for the team. What is the ripple effect of really leaning into this? Yes. Okay, so there's a metaphor I love. Forgive me. I love a good metaphor. But I think it kind of grounds us here, which is, you know, there's a metaphor of the aspen trees. So if you see a grove of beautiful aspen trees, there's those tall white trees. They look like they stand alone. But actually, aspen trees have a shared root system. So what happens is in an Aspen Grove is if one tree is lacking water, a tree from the other side of the grove will get the water and pass it through the root system to the tree that needs it. Confidence works the exact same way. So if you're a team and you're in your virtual room or your actual room, it looks like you all stand alone.

But actually, in a good team, there's a shared root system. And a true leader is constantly looking to see who needs what resource, who needs more water, who needs more nutrients, who has. has an abundant amount of water nutrients. And so if you're confident, you're not only know your own resources, your own abilities, when your cup is overflowing who you can give it to, but you're also identifying the confidence of the people on your team. And that's an incredibly important aspect of confidence, because if you know where you stand and where each of your team members stand, it helps you actually be more supportive as a leader. And you mentioned the word charisma kind of tied to this idea of self-confidence.

A lot of leaders out there going, well, charisma, that's like a larger-than-life personality. Vanessa, that's just not me. I don't have that. Can I get it? Do I need to have it? What is your thoughts on that? Okay, so I had this mistaken belief.

I was trapped by it for many years, but to be charismatic, you had to be extroverted, or to be charismatic, you had to have the booming life of the party personality. And thank goodness, what research has looked at is that highly charismatic people are not more extroverted, they're not more attractive, they're not more athletic, they're not even smarter. That gives me hope.

Me too. Me too, my friend, me too. Here's the good news. They found that highly charismatic people, what makes them highly charismatic, what differentiates them from the control groups, is they rank high in two specific traits, warmth and competence. That highly charismatic people, the reason we're drawn to them, the reason why they are confident, is because they have off the charts warmth. So that's likability, trustworthiness, friendliness, and they are signaling to the world, open up to me, you can trust me.

But at the same time as that high warmth, they're also signaling high competence, high competence, capability, power, efficiency. In other words, for leaders who want to be more effective, the single most important that you can do is very quickly answer, in all your interactions, two questions. You can trust me and you can rely on me. So that way, people know, ah, I can trust and like you, but also I can depend on what you're saying. I know that what you're saying is reliable, so it will actually help me.

So when leaders are thinking about walking into a room, I don't need you to be a booming personality. I don't need you to be more extroverted. All I want you to focus on is sending cues of trust and reliability. We talk a lot about delegation on this podcast. That's one of the issues a lot of leaders struggle with, especially as they grow and scale their business. And it's not a control issue a lot of the time. It's a trust issue. And like you're saying, this warmth and this competence says, I trust you and I can rely on you. So if you have a leader on your team, you want to delegate to them, but they may not have that warmth and competence. Can you

coach that into them? Okay. This is a great question. So I want you to think of this as a framework. So what the research found is research out of Princeton University is that there are people, most of us who have an imbalance. So most of us are not a balance of perfect warmth and perfect competence. Most of us have a little bit more warmth or a little more competence. This should change how you delegate. So let's say, for example, you have a team member who is higher in warmth. So folks that are higher in warmth, this also could be you, if you're listening, I want you to think if you have an imbalance. Folks who are high in warmth are supporters, collaborators, great team players, cheerleaders. They want to be liked. So,

So their weakness is they are people pleasers. It's very, very hard sometimes to delegate to a highly warm person because they will always say yes to your face. And that is because they really want to please. They really want you to like them. So you'll ask someone, hey, can you handle this project? Oh, absolutely. But they don't actually do that mental check of, do I have capacity? Do I have the skills?

Do I have the energy? So for highly warm folks, if you want to delegate to them, you want to ask them requests in writing. And very specifically, in emails to them, you want to say, hey, I would love for you to take on this new project. It's about this amount of work. I think it will take about three weeks, and here's the support you can have. Could you take a few days or a few hours and really think about if you have capacity for this task? That allows a highly warm person to really think about, can I do this without having to please you? Right. So that's a very different way of treating someone. So that's for highly warm folks. By the way, if you're listening and you're a highly warm person,

You also need to ask for time when you are given requests. So if you are a highly warm person, your default is going to be to say yes. This also is funny for friends, highly warm friends and partners will say yes to every social engagement and then cancel last minute. Right. So they're the ones who are like, hey, you know, do you want to go to that thing on Saturday? Yeah, 6 p.m. on Saturday. I can't make it. I'm too tired or have some meal.

So for those folks, if you're a highly warm person, when someone asks, you something, you have to know yourself. This takes confidence. So truly confident warm folks say, you know what, let me check my schedule and get back to you. Or let me talk to my partner about it and let you know. Or, you know, would you mind putting this request in writing for me so I can really look at my to-do list and make sure I have capacity? That is confidence. That actually makes you more likable. So that's the warm side. On the competent side, so as a leader, you should know who on your team leads higher incompetence. People who lean higher incompetence love details. They love data. They love research. They love getting things done. They are super efficient and they are

less focused on being liked and they are more focused on getting it right. So you know that you are high incompetence if you are a Google fact checker. You know you are a relationship with someone who is high incompetence. If they are constantly like, I don't know, let me Google fact check. that for a second? Let me just Google it. And that is because they are focused on getting it right. That is much more important than than being liked. So for a highly competent person, you ask them for a request, you try to delegate to them. They have 15 questions. How long? How many hours? How much work has been done? I'm not sure if I can do that. What do you think about what XYZ says? They want to make sure that if they do it, they're going to get it right. So they're typically going to

default to know. And that's really important as a leader to know that your request to them should not be casual. If you're going to request something of them, you want to give them as much information as possible to set them up for success. Highly competent people, they thrive with wins. So if you know that you have a task where they can very clearly win at it, that is a gift. You are delegating them something that actually gifts them competence. If you are a highly competent person, you also want to make sure that before you say yes, you have all the details, because there is nothing worse for a highly competent person than getting it wrong. We do not like to miss the mark. We do not like to fail. We like to make sure that we can get it right. So you want to set yourself up

for success too. That was a very long answer, but hopefully that gives you an idea. No, it's great. And all of that points back to the leader going, did I communicate this properly? Did I communicate this in the right way based on who I'm asking this task of? And that really helps with delegation, and you can see why the leaders going, wow, they were actually really thoughtful about that, which means I can trust them because they're asking the right questions and they're digging in. They're not just trying to please me. Yes, and what you can do, a great exercise to do with your team is listen to this show, everyone on your team, I want you to actually place yourselves on this charisma scale. So do you think you have a balance of warmth and competence? Do you think you're

higher in warmth? Do you think you're higher incompetence? And actually place your team on this warmth and competence scale. The last section, there's actually one more, I call it the danger zone. The danger zone is for those folks who don't show warmth or competence. And this can happen with people who are afraid, with people who are withholding. And as a leader, we have to take special care of these folks. These are the folks that need us the most. So this could be someone on your team who their own awkwardness gets in the way of showing any warmth or likability or holding or hiding their competence. Those are the people who you have to make sure that you are finding whatever their inner or innate warmth is. You're finding whatever skills that they have

and you're stoking it like a fire. Remember, that's that Aspen Grove. We got to give them resources. And so the greatest gift that I think we can give as leaders is finding the folks who haven't quite found their warmth and competence and gifting it to them. That's huge. And those are the people who also feel the least seen in the workplace. They often feel forgotten and that they don't matter, their voice doesn't matter, their work doesn't matter. And so they may need that extra coaching. Yes, and they're the ones who are doubted, dismissed, and overlooked. They're also very often underestimated. So what the research finds, the research actually looked at each of these quadrants. And they found that, as we talked about, warmth, they're people pleasers, they focus too much

on being liked. Competencies are very smart people who often forget about the warmth. I think that their smarts are enough. Our danger zone folks are the folks that have a lot of potential. So much talent, but we underestimate them. We miss their talent. And so one of my favorite things is finding those people and stoking that innate strength that they have. Those are the people you go, oh my gosh, I had no idea. That's incredible. We had them on the right seat in the bus. We gave them the right level of focus and attention and resources, and they just flourish. And so we love to see that. So a lot of your work has to do with cues, both verbal, nonverbal. What is the connection between those cues and confidence? Yes. Okay. So when the research looked at highly charismatic or

highly contagiously confident people, right, people who exude confidence, they found that highly charismatic people send out a specific set of cues. So cues are the social signals that humans send to the world. And so what they found is they could watch videos of people. And by looking at their body language, identify who would rank off the charts on the charisma scale. So there's a very simple charisma assessment you can do about how charismatic you are. And they found that they could predict these based on these very specific set of skills. And the reason for this is because highly charismatic people are constantly signaling to the world very clearly, you can trust me and you can rely on me. And so my work has been trying to create a glossary or a dictionary of those cues.

What are all the cues? So I've found there are 96 different cues that we can learn that highly charismatic people use. And what highly charismatic people do, it's amazing, is they use them like recipes. So for example, a highly charismatic person will walk into a room, very quickly assess the room needs of their teams and say, today's a collaboration day, warmth. and they pull out warmth cues. And that signals high warmth, but it also infects high warmth. And so what's amazing about these cues

is that they can be used interchangeably. You can use them like a dial or a thermostat. That's impressive. And that takes time to develop that level of skill set. And I keep thinking of Dave Ramsey in my head. When you think about a charismatic leader who uses verbal, nonverbal cues brilliantly, it's one of the reasons for his success.

And I think all leaders are like, well, I'm not Dave. I can't do that on stage. I can't do that in my business. You know, what hope do I have? But you're saying these are cues that we can all learn and it becomes like a muscle as we flex it that we kind of use without realizing it. Yes, exactly. So what's amazing is that these cues are actually very quick to learn. Fasten you would think.

And by the way, there's four different options you have. So you mentioned two of them, verbal, nonverbal, but also vocal. So how we say our words, our voluble. our pace, our cadence. And the last one is even our ornaments. The colors we wear, the glasses we wear, what's behind us in our Zoom backgrounds, the pin on our lapel. Those are all, all of them are charismatic cues. I'll give you an example of the difference of how we can very quickly adopt these. So a lot of cues we send off in the first 10 seconds. First 10 seconds of a video call, interaction, or a phone call. And here's a very quick example. People who are high in warmth,

so signaling high trust, typically have their hands visible in the first 10 seconds. And this actually has to do with a brain response. So subconsciously, very charismatic people pick up on this, which is that if we were approached by a stranger, we don't know their intention. The moment we can see their hands, our brain goes, ah, they're not carrying a weapon, a rock, or a spear. And look, they're even greeting us if we have an open palm to someone. And so something interesting happens, if I were to do this entire interview without my hands visible, so if I were to keep my hands behind my back, a part of your amygdala where you process fear would be slightly activated, slightly elevated. That would make it very hard for you to open up to me. It would make it very hard for you to trust me.

But if in the first 10 seconds I say, hey, good morning. Hi, George. Hey, everyone. And I hold my hand up. That immediately deactivates your amygdala and it's a trust signal. Well, that doesn't take very long to learn, right? everyone who's listening to this podcast. If you walk into a room, your best bet, that's it. Hey, everyone, morning. You hop on a video call. Hey, good morning. Hi. Good to see everyone. Just that. You just signaled high warmth and that immediately disengaged someone's amygdala. So some of these cues are so simple, simple but powerful. Yeah. So a lot of times leaders sabotage that without realizing it and some of its bad habits. So what are some tiny tweaks leaders can make to their cues to have a huge impact on charisma, self-confidence, team culture, and, you know,

eventually business growth. Okay, love it. So building on the last one we just talked about, pockets, oh my goodness, pockets are just charisma killers, right? It immediately hides your hands. So a very simple one is if you can keep your hands visible in the first 10 seconds. The second thing is what can also happen is sometimes leaders have been taught the mistaken nonverbal, rule that still is better. And it's true that leaders are very purposeful with their movements. But taking that one step further, a very small tweak is if you're saying something important, you want to non-verbally emphasize it with a gesture. So what we found, we did a massive TED talk experiment where we analyzed thousands of hours of TED talks. And we found that the most

viewed TED talks use more purposeful gestures. So for example, the really good TED speakers will get on stage and say, today I have three big ideas, and they hold up three. What they found is that when we have gesture that aligns with our words, people are more likely to believe your words. So, for example, if I were to say today I have a really big idea, but hold up my fingers to be very, very small as if I was holding a penny, you're more likely to believe my gesture than my words. So a very, very small tweak here is you don't have to have lots of gestures. I want you to have purposeful gestures. So if you're talking about three things, hold up three. If you're talking about a big idea, hold it like it's a beach ball big.

The second one, so we talk about visible hands, purposeful gestures. The third big accidental mistake I hear is accidental use of the question inflection. So what research has found is that when we use the question inflection, people begin to doubt our words. So the question inflection is when we go up at the end of our sentence. So it sounds like I'm saying a question instead of actually saying a statement. And people do this most often on their name. You will hear this over and over again.

A leader will hop on a big important Zoom call or they get on stage for a pitch. They say, good morning. My name is Vanessa. Happy to be here. We'll wait a few minutes while everyone logs on. No, no. That actually is telling people, I am doubting myself and you should doubt me too. So one, make sure you say your name.

Don't ask your name. And this is also very important. We do a lot of sales trainings. and we analyzed hundreds of hours of sales calls. And we found that this was the biggest predictor of which agents couldn't close was people who used the question inflection on their price, on their worth, on their value.

So if you want to take a note out of Dave Ramsey's book is he says it. He doesn't ask. He states. So what we would hear is on these sales calls is a salesperson would hop on the phone, they'd be in their clothes, right? The most important part of their pitch, and it would go like this. We'd love to have your business.

We'd love to work with you. And the price of our package is $5,000. If you ask your number, you are begging people to negotiate with you. So that's the last one I wanted to share is making sure that on your important numbers, your important statements, your name, you are saying, not asking.

That's so good. We are just scratching the surface, Vanessa. And I know this is like the SparkNotes version. So I want to make sure every leader picks up your best-selling book called Q's, master the secret language of charismatic communication. You've got a fantastic TED talk as well. So much wisdom. I could just hang out with you all day. A brilliant communicator. You're practicing what you preach. And it's been an honor for you to share some wisdom with our leaders today.

Thank you so much. My goodness. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks for having me. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that interview with Vanessa. Now, as I said at the top of the show, Dave Ramsey's going to share what to expect as he transitions into the host role for for this podcast next Monday, February 13th. Dave, good to be in the new Entree Leadership Studio here. This is exciting. Change the scenery here. A little different look on things.

And, hey, it's a whole different world. I know. Same great podcast. It's still Entree Leadership, still for business owners, still for the leaders out there. But the format's changing, the vibe is changing. And of course, the host is changing. Well, that's right. We told folks back in January that we fired you, George.

That's right. So it's official today. Still hurts. You're out the door. The boot is in place. And in all seriousness, George has a bunch of wonderful initiatives that we need him for in Ramsey's solutions.

And I love talking to small business people. I always have. That's where Entree leadership was born. And I love taking calls from you guys. And so we're going to flip the format of this thing and do it to a caller-driven like it's a talk radio show type of a thing. as I'm very comfortable with that.

You guys like it. It gets real people on with real answers and real situations with your business. And so we're going to invite those of you that have businesses from 2 to 200 team members or wherever you are in business. It doesn't matter. You've got questions about leadership, questions about business to call in the numbers 844-9-44-1070. And I'm excited about doing this. And, George, you got a lot on your plate.

All kidding aside about firing you, we just, you know, you've held this thing together. on Entree podcast for a long time. We appreciate you doing that. You've done a wonderful job. And you've got some serious stuff on your plate coming up. What is it? Absolutely. Well, you know, Dave, when I started hosting the Entree Leadership podcast, I was in a host role hosting a whole bunch of things around here, live events, some other podcasts. And so it made sense to fill, fill in that gap to step in. I love interviewing a love leadership and business. And over that time, as I took that on, I stepped into a full-blown money personality role, co-hosting the Ramsey Show, hosting the Fine Print podcast, now co-hosting Smart Money Happy Hour, speaking at our events on money,

writing articles on money. And so that added a whole bunch to the plate. And so I'm going to just fully step into that kind of stuff now. And of course we have Smart Money Happy Hour, our newest podcast with Rachel Cruz, that has been so fun. But I'm also going to be starting my very own YouTube channel. And so that's going to be who knows what, but it will be a blast, focused on the money space, really leaning into all of the noise that's out there when it comes to money, as you've dealt with for 30 years now, and trying to help people, especially these younger generations, avoid so many of the traps that are out there when it comes to money. And hopefully bring a lot of humor to it, a lot of levity, and a lot of wisdom and insight.

Yeah, it's going to be great. Smart Money Happy Hour has been a big hit. You as a co-host on The Ramsey Show have been a big hit, and I'm sure the YouTube channel is going to be a big hit. We don't do anything around here. It's not a big hit. That's true. we're a big deal.

Dave doesn't settle for any less. You're a big deal. But, you know, it has been fun. I'm really jacked about getting to do this. I have never been on the Entree Leadership podcast in all the years. It's always been hosted by someone else. And it's always had, I've been a guest, but I've never been on. And we've never done this caller-driven idea.

I've always wanted to be able to just interact with you guys and just answer your questions, just be your own air coach, if you will. We've got Entree Leadership coaches and Entree Leadership Elite, of course. But, you know, I'll just be on the day. they're being sassy and smart aleck and loving you and telling you the truth and bragging on you and telling you I'm proud of you and we're going to dig into your stuff man right here and those of you watching and those of you listening or be able to listen in and and pick up all kinds of insights on business from and on leadership from the interactions I've got with the other callers and so

every caller is a learning opportunity for a viewer or for a listener so I know not everybody likes change as a matter of fact very few people do And this may not be a change for the better, but it is a change we're doing. It's me. And so, well, you're stuck with it. Here we go, baby. Dave, I'd love to mentor you as you step into this new host role. I can give you all the tips and tricks.

Can you? If you need. Okay. Well, if the, you know, if the ratings drop off, we may just drag your butt back down here. You know where to find me. I'll be 10 feet that way. Pull you back in. So one more time, if you have a question and you want to participate in the show,

we're going to go ahead and load the phones up, and we'll set you up to be a question. caller on the podcast, and we're going to do it just like it's a talk radio type of a thing, and it's obviously business and leadership questions, and they can be very hands-on. I'm running this business every day, and so I enjoy talking business with my friends, and I do love entrepreneurs in America. It's just a fun thing for me. So you can call leave a voicemail.

The numbers 844-9-44-1070. So George, again, great job. I'm proud of you. You did a great job holding this together, and I'm proud of all the work you're doing. It's the hardest working man in the building, and so we had to cut him loose from something to be able to give him some bandwidth to do this. So, George, you're fired. Thank you. Wow, what? I've never felt so good while being fired. That actually is a strange feeling. Well, David, can I give the people a taste of what to expect on the new Entree Leadership podcast? Can we play him a clip? Let's do it. So if you're looking for theory from a business professor who has never made payroll,

you've got the wrong show. You got questions about business, particularly small business. Kayla is in Evansville, Indiana. I'm calling because my business is growing and I'm thinking about adding employees. You want somebody to just talk it through with you? Grady's with us in Vermont. How do we save for future capital purchases without paying drunk Uncle Steve, which is what I call the IRS. or Congress, any extra tax.

I love you enough to tell you the truth, even if it sounds a little bit like I'm mad at you. Griffin is in Seattle, Washington. Bottom line, I guess my question is, what do I do? He's got to go, man. There are days that leadership just straight up sucks. Yeah. Because I want you to win.

We're not in this to lose. A business that does not make a profit is called a hobby. So let's fix this. Let's get her going, boys and girls. Well, if that's a taste, Dave, I am here for. I want the full entree of that, no pun intended. No pun intended. Well, Dave, that's why you get the big bucks right there. You've, you know, you've been in business now for 30 years, which is absolutely incredible. And the book, Entree leadership has helped so many. The brand has helped so many. I'm a

beneficiary of it. And the last three years specifically for business owners and leaders has been extra tough. And so I'm excited for you to dig in and help them with their real world problems with so many of the insights that you're living day in and day out as a business owner. I'm excited to get to do it, George. It's going to be fun. Well, folks, that brings us to my final sign-off. It has been the honor of a lifetime to be the host of the Entree Leadership Podcast. But the good news is I am leaving it in very, very capable hands. And I'm so excited for the future of the Entree Leadership Podcast. So if you enjoyed today's episode of the show, be sure to follow and subscribe wherever you're listening. And leave us a five-star review while you're there. The one-star reviews don't help, as it turns out.

and share this episode with your team, with your friends, on social media. All of that helps us spread the impact of this show. You can always follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. Now, if you enjoy this podcast, you want to hear more from me in the future. You can check out Smart Money Happy Hour, another show on the Ramsey Network, wherever you listen to podcasts. And now for the last and final time from me, keep learning and keep leading.