High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 300: Developing Your Leadership SkillKit® with Liz Uram, Keynote Speaker and Corporate Trainer

Episode Date: January 3, 2020

Liz Uram is a nationally-recognized speaker and corporate trainer who works with leaders who want to make a bigger impact, get better results, and motivate others to do their best. Whether she’s training onsite at a client location or speaking at a leadership conference, audiences get practical solutions to everyday leadership challenges they can apply in the real-world. After 20 years of experience practicing, studying, and teaching leadership skills, she developed systems that work. In fact, she created the Leadership SkillKit® and packed it full of tools to help leaders get real results, real fast. In this podcast, Liz and Cindra talk about: The 6 Most Basic Tools You Should Have in Your SkillKit Why Clear Expectations is at the Heart of Giving Feedback Her QQT Strategy for Giving Feedback Her Nickle and Dime Strategy Why Praising in Public is Important You can find a full description of the Podcast at cindrakamphoff.com/liz. You can reach Liz at http://lizuram.com/.

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. My friends, this is your host, Dr. Sindra Kampoff, certified mental performance coach and keynote speaker. And you won't believe it. Today's episode is episode 300. And I'm not even sure what to think about it. 300. It seems a little bit unbelievable that it's 300 episodes already. Today, I just looked back at when the first episode of the High Performance Mindset Podcast was and when we recorded it. It was August 26, 2015.

And I have to tell you a couple of things. First, I think I was so focused on process, process, process, process that all of a sudden the other day I thought, oh my gosh, it's episode 300 already. To be honest, I would have never believed I'd have 300 episodes starting in 2015. So thank you so much for listening. Thanks so much for tuning in each and every week to listen to topics about mindset. This week, I got a text message from Rich Gordon. And Rich Gordon is a leader within the field of sports psychology and performance psychology. He was on the podcast several episodes ago, and he said this. He said, Hi, Sindra.

Just wanted to talk to you and let you know thank you so much for the wonderful podcast. I listen quite often, and I always gain a valuable insight from you and your guests. Happy New Year, my friend. So I want to give a shout out to Rich and for all those people who are listening and listen each and every week. I'm so grateful that you're here listening. And, you know, the reason I do this is just to continue to grow the field and to help people out there learn more about mindset.

So I'm grateful that you're listening today to episode 300. It's also perfect that today's episode is 300 and I get to interview my friend. I am on the board of the National Speakers Association here in Minnesota, where I live. And Liz Yerman, today, who I interview, is president of the board. So I wanted to have her on because I love her content about the leadership skill kit. And I thought it would be really powerful for you to learn more about her and her work. And I know that you're going to learn some awesome practical things today by listening to this podcast. And we talk about how leadership just isn't about

leading other people, but it's about leading you first. And she actually wrote a book about personal leadership. I encourage you today after you listen to the interview is to go check out Liz's website and learn more about her work. Go check out her YouTube page. It's super good. And the other night before I was going to bed, I was listening to all of her videos, one after another, and they're super great, really practical and useful strategies. And I think that's what you're going to get today from the interview. And so Liz Yerman is a nationally recognized speaker and corporate trainer who works with leaders who want to make a bigger impact, get better results and motivate others to do their best. And whether she's training on site at a client location or

speaking at a leadership conference, audiences really get practical solutions to everyday leadership challenges that they can apply to the real world. As you're listening to this, you're going to hear these really practical, awesome strategies. So after 20 years of experiencing, practicing, and studying, and then teaching leadership skills, she has really developed systems that work. In fact, she created this leadership skill kit, which is packed full of tools to help leaders get real results real fast. And in this podcast, Liz and I talk about several different things. We talk about the most basic tools you should have in your leadership skill kit. So six of those we talk about. We talk about why really clear expectations as a leader and setting those for those people

who you do supervise is at the heart of giving good feedback. She gives her QQT strategy for giving feedback, love her nickel and dime strategy. And I've already used that once since listening to her video a few days ago, in fact. And then she talked about why praising in public is really essential. So I know you're going to love this podcast today with Liz Yerman. Here's a few quotes that I from the podcast, some things that I really learned and took away, kind of giving you a quick preview of the podcast before I bring on Liz. She says, you know, only 50% of people know what is expected of them on a daily basis. And then she said,

as leaders, we really need to wait, which means asking ourselves, why am I talking? All right. Thank you again for joining me for episode 300. I'm pumped. I would love to hear from you. You can head over to Twitter. I'm at mentally underscore strong. I'm also on Instagram at cindracampoff. And then always you can email me at cindracampoff.com.

All right, let's bring on Liz. I'm excited today to be joined by Liz Urim. Liz, how's it going? I'm doing great. So excited to be part of your podcast. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to talk to you about leadership today. And I have to tell you that you are, if I could list like the top 10 leaders that I admire, I really admire your leadership. And so it's pretty cool to be able to talk to you about leadership. And as I was kind of digging into your stuff, I was thinking more about now I know why Liz is such an effective leader because she practices what she preaches.

So Liz, just kind of give us a little insight on your passion and what you do right now. Yeah, so what I do, so my passion is really all about helping other leaders become more effective, helping managers and supervisors. Before I started doing this work, I do today as a speaker and a corporate trainer, a seminar leader. I spend about 13 years in the financial services industry, and that's where I stepped into my first leadership role. And when I stepped into my first leadership role, I was not equipped. I had no idea what I was doing. I got promoted because I was good at doing my job. And then I got put into a job as the supervisor of a customer service team. And I found out pretty quickly that I was going to need some more tools in my skill kit. And that's what I refer to all

these tools that we need, my leadership skill kit. I thought that being a boss, being a manager, a supervisor was all about just telling people what to do. And you know what, it works. When you tell people what to do, they will do it. But I found out pretty quickly that it is not a very good long-term strategy because they will want to work with you for very long. And so I was going around, you know, just kind of, you know, barking orders and things like that. And I was really lucky that I had a boss. I worked under a leader who pulled me aside and coached me. And she gave me feedback. And that was huge. And that's why I appreciate it so much today and really what this is my passion about.

Because most people don't know. They don't have the tools. They're just not equipped with, you know, the skills that they need. And she pulled me aside. She helped me out and got me the tools I needed to be able to continue in my career. Awesome. Tell us a little bit about like, how did she give you that feedback? And what are the kind of skills that you developed at that point as a leader? Well, I am the kind of person who needs very direct feedback. I don't do well with a beat around the bush and hint at it and let me, you know, kind of guess at what you're saying. And I was really fortunate that this leader I had,

number one, she wasn't afraid to just point blank, tell me, Liz, you need to be a little bit nicer. You need to listen to people. You need to work on your emotional intelligence. You know, she would just point blank, tell me, but she said it in a way that I knew she had my best interest at heart. I knew that she wanted me to be successful. And she was willing not only to tell me what I needed to hear, but then also give me the resources. So she would give me books to read. She'd send me to a seminar. She'd enroll me in leadership development programs. So she didn't just say, Liz, you know, you've got a problem. You need to go fix it and then leave it to me to figure it out. She told me what it was. And but the thing was, she always left it up

to me. She never said, you have to do this. And I really learned that that's a really great skill, because I think it's important that as leaders, we're able to give the feedback. But we leave it up to people to decide what they want to do with it. And that's what she did. She said, here's where you need to improve, and it's up to you. I'll give you the resources. I'll help you out. I'll support you, and I'll coach you. But you need to make the decision. That's the buy-in.

Yeah, that's really good. And so tell us a little bit about, like, your journey then to corporate training and keynote speaking. You know, how did you decide to leave the financial services industry and then do this about leadership full time? Yeah, so what happened was, so I had a really great career in that industry, and I was able to move up the ranks. I started as, I actually started that career as a temp doing, you know, typing and filing, and 13 years later, as a director of operations. And again, it was all really due to the coaching and feedback I had been given

and my willingness to actually apply what I was hearing and learning. And I went from a supervisor to a manager to senior manager to a director. And what happened was when I was in these senior level management roles and I was managing other managers and other supervisors, what I realized is that most managers have no idea how to lead other people. A lot of people are really good at faking it, really scary impression. What I realized was that I wasn't alone and I always thought I was the only one. I thought I was the one who, you know, was missing the day they passed out the leadership skill kits, right? And then, and everybody else knew it. So I got in one who, you know, was missing the day they passed out the leadership skill kits, right?

And then, and everybody else knew it. So I got in this role. I'm like, wow, they don't know either, right? But they wanted to learn. And so I was coaching these managers who worked for me, reported to me. And I would see them start to enjoy their careers more. I saw their teams performing better. And I decided that's just what I really loved was helping other people gain the skills that they needed to be successful in their roles.

Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. So now you do this full time. And so I'm looking forward to kind of diving into like this leadership skill kit that you have. And some of the practical tools that you can help, you know, we can apply to our leadership as well. And I can think about Liz, I don't know if you think about it this way, but I think about leadership is like, we have to lead ourselves first before we can lead others. And I think that we're always leading, right? Like even if we're not like in a supervisory role, we're leading at home, we're leading ourselves, we're leading, we're leading somebody, you know, our family, our sisters, our brothers, you know, do you see kind of leadership in that way as well?

Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I wrote a book called The Power of Personal Leadership. Ah, there we go. I think that if you can't lead yourself, it's really hard to lead other people. Yeah. And I think that being a really good leader, to excel at leadership really requires so much inner work. It's hard to be able to look at ourselves and say, where do I need to get better? I mean, I had to do that a lot when I was coming up in leadership because I had a lot of wrong ideas about leadership. And I had to look at myself. I had to do a lot of work on the emotional intelligence aspect. And that's a really interesting topic. Learning how to have

self-control and how to self-manage, understanding personality styles. There's so much into it. So I think the best leaders are the ones who are willing to have some interest. They're willing to be introspective, to ask for feedback. I would get, you know, 360 degree feedback when I was in my management roles and meaning getting anonymous feedback from my team. And no, I did not like it all the time. Right. You would hear, and I was like, what? No way. I'm not like that. But I had to listen to what was being shared with me because that's the only way you can really improve is to listen and then, and then work on those aspects. Yeah. And that's true.

And so I think sometimes people don't ask for that feedback because they don't want to hear the negative, you know, like sometimes I get, kind of fall into that as well. It's like, you know, I don't really want to, I don't want to hear the negative part. Just tell me what I'm doing. Great. You know? So what advice would you give for those people who are like, no, I don't really want that 360 feedback. because I don't really want to face the, maybe the reality or what the negative things that people might say. Yeah. Well, I think one of the things to do is to think about what do you want out of your career,

you know? And if you avoid the feedback, is it going to get in your way, right? Can you achieve your career goals if you're not um if you're not clear about it one of the things that I would get feedback on was I was told that I was unapproachable and I didn't see myself as being unapproachable so when I got this feedback um I really had to pay attention to it and no I didn't like that at all but I had to realize what it was was I I tend to be a very focused person and I can tend to be kind of intense and so when I was sitting at my desk doing my work I would have this look on my face that was you know putting out this vibe that said stay away

and that's not a good you know that is not going to work as a leader you need to be available and approachable. But one thing I would caution people with too, is that when you get the feedback, don't change and try, don't, don't jump on every piece of feedback you get. Look for trends. In other words, okay, just because one person says something, don't twist and bend yourself and get out, you know, try to make everybody happy. That's not what this is about at all. It's really just about knowing where you want to go and what's going to get in your way of achieving your goals. So just look for that overall. Okay. Some themes

and patterns. Yeah, that's really good advice because I know, you know, I teach it some classes at the university and sometimes when you get your course evaluations, I told my husband, I don't know why I look at them, because it's like I always, you know, 99%, you know, great, great, great, and then the one person that says, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, and then I'm beating myself up about it. So I like that, you know, just look for the trends, and take it as a way to learn. That's what I'm really hearing, is like, take it as a way to grow and learn. Absolutely. Yeah. So Liz, I like what you said about like, you know, that personal leadership is really doing the inner work and that inner work can be really hard. Before we kind of dive into the leadership skill kit, tell us a little bit about, you know, when you say the inner work, you know, how would you tell us to go about doing that? So I think, so I think that there, I'm a big fan of assessments. So there's the, I call it the trifecta, three assessments that I can really, I think can really help you grow as a leader. One is the DISC assessment, D-I-S-C.

I'm a big fan of that. I'm a facilitator, certified facilitator of DISC. That was one of the things that really helped me out when I got into my very first role as a supervisor. And I went through some leadership development to see what my personality style was and how that impacted my ability to lead and how it impacted the way other people saw me. That was huge because I have a very strong personality. And when I first started out, it was just a little too strong. And it isn't when you're taking something like that, don't look at it and go, oh my gosh, I don't want to be that.

I want to be this other style. You're not. It's really about embracing who you are, understanding what your strengths are, but then also identifying what barriers could it cause as well. So DISC is one. It's personality assessment. The other is strengths

finders. Oh, sure. The Clifton Strengths Finders. I think a lot of people have taken that. That gives you another insight into yourself. What are your strengths? What are you really good at? And the whole idea around that as well is focus on what you're good at and then surround yourself with people who have strengths that you don't have. And then the third assessment is an emotional intelligent assessment. There's a book called Emotional Intelligence 2.0. Oh, I like that. And you can go and take an assessment online, and it will show you again where your strengths are.

And that's really fantastic. So I think those three, those have always been my favorite three to really get a well-rounded look at yourself. Again, honing, not changing, not saying, oh, I'm terrible. That's not what it's about. How do I get better? How do I improve? That's good. And several of those, like the Strength Finders and the Emotional Intelligence 2.0 are things that you can do right now, right? Like you can just take them. You don't have to like have a certified person delivering them for you. So that's really practical. Awesome. Okay. So when you think about great leaders, Liz, what do you think that they do differently? I think that they're not afraid to give feedback.

Okay. And I'm such a proponent of giving feedback and looking at feedback as a gift. And again, that goes back to my own experience where I had a leader who was not afraid to give me feedback. Many leaders are afraid to give feedback. They're not comfortable with it. They don't want to talk to people about, you know, where their areas for improvement are because they're afraid of the unknown, they're afraid of conflict, and those types of things. But you can't grow. I think it's such a shame when leaders do not give that feedback.

So I think that's the number one trait of a good leader, someone who's willing to give feedback. But then also be supportive about it, right? Always, always, always going at it with the intent of helping the other person be successful. It isn't about, you know, telling people where they're failing. I want you to be successful. And here's where I see a gap. Now, what do you want to do with it and it goes back to that but the leader's job is to give them the feedback and I think that the best leaders are fair and when I say fair I mean treating meeting people according to where they're at so it's on that situational leadership vein that philosophy of situational leadership fair doesn't mean that I treat you the same way as I treat that situational leadership vein, that philosophy of situational leadership.

Fair doesn't mean that I treat you the same way as I treat everybody else. Fair means that I look at Sandra and say, Sandra, here's, you know, I'm going to lead you according to what you need from me. And then maybe I'm going to lead Jim according to what Jim needs from me. So it really takes a lot of time. And that's another trait of good leaders is a leader who's willing to take a step back to not get so bogged down in the day-to-day doing of things. Right. Observe and see what's going on and what, who needs what from them. Yeah. That can be really hard if you have a lot of responsibilities, right? But I like the idea of are you leading over doing? So really good. What do you think think when you when you think of leaders who

have a difficulty giving feedback like what holds them back are they worried about what people are going to think or you know are they worried about conflict like what's what's the kind of the inner um um the inner thing that really holds them back from like embracing giving feedback well i think it's the fear of the unknown and fear of how it will be received. Is it going to be conflict? Is the other person going to push back? How are they going to react to it? And there's a saying that I like to share with leaders. You are responsible for the effort, not the outcome. And what that means is that as a leader, that's your job. You have to be able to give feedback to people. You are not responsible for

how they react to the feedback you're just responsible for giving it and giving it in the most constructive way possible awesome you know people like that saying because it helps them remember that you know if there's just nothing you can do about it you know how people react and you can do you can do it all perfectly i'm a big fan of using scripts as well so a script is just a tool used to write out what you want to say in advance so that you can make sure that you're sticking to the facts you're being assertive you're not you know sliding off into either passive or aggressive communication styles and by using a script to prepare in advance that can really help a leader get the confidence that they need in order to

give good feedback. And is there a way that you might suggest like writing that script or is it just kind of like what we need? I use a formula I like acronyms for this sort of thing and I have an acronym called the core feedback formula CORE. It's just a four step process and the first step the C is for and I have an acronym called the core feedback formula, C-O-R-E. Okay. And it's just a four-step process. And the first step, the C, is for conversation starter. Okay. Or conversation opener.

And that's available. I have that out on my website. People can get a hold of that if they want that formula. But a conversation opener, it's all in how you open it. Because imagine this, if I call you into my office, Sandra, to have a discussion about something, you're coming in there probably with a little bit of anxiety, right? A little bit of like, oh, what does she want now? Right. So the conversation opener is really important. And that is simply saying, I want to get your perspective. Hey, I've got a problem.

I need your thoughts. I need your help. You know, just a way to let them know that, you know, it's not a bad thing. We just have something to talk about. The O is for observed performance or behavior. Okay. So you just say, I noticed that. Right.

So what have you noticed? And it should be concrete. I'm a big fan of having the facts. This is where having expectations come into play black and white expectations about um and then the observed performance hey i noticed that you know yesterday you only took 30 calls so you work in a call center or something like that you took 30 calls the r is for the required performance or behavior as you know the expectation is that you take 50 calls per day and then in the conversation with agreement in

other words I'm gonna find out you know what's going on right so what you should be taking 50 what's going on and then ending the conversation with agreement is you know can I count on you to take you know to jump in and make sure that you're taking the expected number of calls. And that's huge. The agreement is huge because that so when people are having when managers and leaders are having these coaching conversations that's what I call this it's a coaching conversation coaching conversations should not last an hour right and she was telling me that like oh I was in there for an hour they were going around and around and around

and I said well this should not be an hour you know here's where you're at here's where you need to be what's going on and can will you agree to meet the expectations that are laid out awesome yeah and and so it's just a formula and it just helps give people more confidence about And will you agree to meet the expectations that are laid out? Awesome. Yeah. And so it's just a formula and it just helps give people more confidence about how to tackle the conversation. Awesome. I love that. Thank you so much for like giving us some like real tangible things that we can put

in our leadership skill kit. And I'm guessing this is one of the things that could be in our leadership skill kit, right? So I love that idea of like a leadership skill kit because it's like really practical. And I also think about like, you know, I can kind of pull out these like tools in this toolbox and use them. So just maybe describe to us the leadership skill kit before we kind of dive in even further, Liz. Sure. So the leadership skill kit is just something I developed. And when I think about it, I think what are the six most basic tools that a leader needs to develop in order to be, you know, to have a good foundation? And so they are, the six are communication.

And communication is such a broad topic, but it really covers everything. You've got to have good communication skills if you're going to be a good leader. You can't. I mean, that's all it is. Leadership is communication. Delegation. Leaders have to be able to delegate because that's how you develop other people. Motivation.

How do you motivate people? How do you get other people to want to do what you want them to do and be excited about it? Time management skills, huge. You've got to have your time management, and that includes planning and meeting agendas and things like that. You have the coaching and feedback as well. And then I call it flexing your leadership style. So that's kind of about that situational

leadership are you adapting your leadership style to situations and people so those are the six either I can call them compartments really because within each compartment you take a deep dive and there are many tools within that that will help you develop so those are that's your basic skill kit and then of course you can add compartments as you advance in your career so that would be the emotional intelligence change management maybe project management things like that okay okay good but these are the six core that we most need that as that's what we need to start with that's what I'm hearing so Liz let's dive into like the coaching and feedback a little bit more and I know you've already given us the core acronym but I know that you know you believe that like at the heart of coaching and the feedback part is setting clear expectations which I really haven't gotten to yet so how do you think that we

do that as a as a strong leader so one of the most important things that people need to know is what's expected of me on a daily basis. And there was a study from Gallup that came out that said only 50% of employees know what's expected of them on a daily basis. Wow. And it's shocking. That means half the people are showing up at work and they don't know what's expected. Wow. I am a big fan of this. I think that because I was really fortunate

that I got to go to leadership development and workshops and training when I first stepped into my leadership role. This is something that's always been part of my leadership skill kit, if you will, is letting people know what the expectations are. So things around, there's three areas where expectations should be set and that's quality,

quantity, and time. Okay. So in other words, to what degree of accuracy does my work need to be done? Okay. How much work am I supposed to do in any given day and how timely does it need to be? And sometimes people will, and I'll ask somebody, you know so how much how much work you need to do today and they'll say all of it right that you you know most people's the work that most people get is not exact it's not stagnant every day you get different you know you get different volume and you have to be able to know whether or not somebody's performing. And this is one of the reasons why managers don't give feedback, because, Sandra, if you're not performing up to the expectation that I did not tell you, it's really hard for me to call you in and say, hey, Sandra, you're not you really slack enough.

You're really not taking enough phone calls. Your teammates are all having to pick up your slack and that sort of thing that isn't fair to you if um I never told you that you should be taking 50 calls a day you may thought you were a superstar you're like rocking it out at 30 calls a day and now I call you in I'm like nope sorry you've been failing and unfortunately a lot of people don't know until their performance review their annual performance review which is really unfortunate so if a manager would take time to figure out how much work needs to be done to what degree of accuracy and how quickly it makes it makes those coaching conversations a lot easier because if I stated for you on day one let's say you start a new job with me,

and you know that you're supposed to take 50 calls a day. Well, you know, it's gonna be a lot easier for me to talk to you about your performance, maybe, you know, maybe six weeks down the road, checking in, how's it going? Looks like you're at about 45. That's pretty good. You need to be at 50. What's going on? And then the conversations are a lot easier. Yeah, that's really good. And I think about, you know, when we, when I first got on the board of Minnesota NSA, the National Speakers Association, I remember the conversation that we had around that board meeting where you kind of really described your expectations for us. And, you know, when I think about that, it was really freeing.

Like it was really, like it took a weight off my shoulders because I knew exactly what you wanted as president. Right. And so I can see that like when, uh, when leaders do this, it's really, it helps set people up for success, but also like it takes the, it takes the unknown out of the equation. Yeah. People want to know what's, I think, most people want to know what's expected. They feel good about it. Now they know what they need to accomplish on any given day. And if you don't have the expectation set, it's hard to hold people accountable. And it just, it just, it's the basis. If you don't have, I've seen it time and time again, where it is, you know, it's clear communication. That's how it is. And so what do you think about

those people who are listening that are like, oh, you know, I haven't done that on day one. I think I'm not really clear on what I expect. What do we do now? So it's never too late. And I'm really glad you asked that question. That's what I tell people all the time. It doesn't matter if you've been managing the same team for five years, you've never had clear expectations. It's never too late. Figure out what the most important tasks are of the job okay because this is not about micromanaging and I want to be clear about that too it's not about getting I mean somebody a list of you know 100 things that we're gonna be checking on day one because that's just

overwhelming but what are the most important things and let me just give you an example. So I'm doing a consulting project with a company right now, and it's a customer service team. But one of the things that they do is they take orders from customers. Customers call in and they place their orders. Well, there's never been an expectation around the quality, the accuracy of the order form.

And that means that the fields aren't all being completed. So we put some measures in. We looked at on the order form itself, what are the most important fields that need to be filled in? And one of them was the PO number, right? So if a customer has a PO number, it's a reference field. If they have it, that should be entered. And if they don't have it, something, some other kind of identifier should be put in there. Because what happens is it affects another department down the, you know, in the whole sequence of events. So the customer places their order, they get their invoice, their account's payable, department has to call the collections division at the company and like who ordered this and nobody knows. And so it was creating a lot of headaches.

So we looked at that field and said, OK, it should be a 99 percent accuracy rate. When people call in 99 percent of the time, that field should be filled in. And a lot of people say, well, why not 100%? Well, because you have to allow for the human error. I mean, you know, you have people keying things in manually. You have to allow for that. So they went from a 65% accuracy rate to a 99% just by telling the team, well, first by identifying what that expectation

was, training the team, letting the team know they were going to be held accountable, meaning that this matters, telling them why it matters, training, you know, all that, and then letting them know that the manager would be looking at this. So 65% to 99%, that's pretty significant, which means that you always want to look at the downstream impacts of that. How much time does that save everybody else on the back end, not having to chase down information and customer satisfaction? You know, there's so many benefits to that. So that was just, that's just one simple example of how one number, one, you know, expectation can make a huge difference.

Yeah, awesome. So quality, quantity, and time. What about, maybe give us another example, because I'm thinking about like the people that I supervise in my business, right? And I might say, okay, the quality would be kind of coaches feedback or what the quality of what the athletes say at these workshops. And I would expect that you do blank amount in one month. Is that kind of like what you mean by quality, quantity, and time? Yeah. And so Ashley, so with your example of when you talked about earlier about getting evaluation forms back. Oh, right. Yeah. When you get evaluation forms, what's that expectation? Let's say it's a 10 point scale. If

it's a 10 point scale, the expectation would be that you should have what eight and a half at a minimum or whatever, nine, whatever, whatever that is. So that, you know, if on average, your evaluations come back at a rating of nine or higher you're in great shape okay you know exactly where you stand um productivity might be that how many classes do you need to teach in a given quarter um there's so many great sports analogies we can use to with this and let's do that i like, exactly. You know, to be a football player, a professional football player who gets paid a lot of money, they've got goals, they get bonuses that are based on how many, I don't know what all the goals are. I'm a huge football fan, but I'm not. I don't know what they would all be.

But you think about it, and you can see where professional athletes can get a little frustrated because their bonuses are based on their performance. Right. Maybe a number of touchdowns or tackles or sacks or whatever, football. And some of those things are a little outside their control, you know, so that's really interesting. Well, it is, and that's where it's important as when a leader is setting the expectations, it's important to factor that in as well. If I give you an expectation of either around quality, quantity, or time, you have control

over it. I don't want to give you an expectation for your productivity if it's not something you can control. So you should have 80% control over the completion of meeting that expectation. And here's what's beautiful about doing this. If I've been clear with you from the very start, and I say, expectation and here's what's beautiful about doing this if I've been clear with you from the very start and I say Sandra here's what the expectations of the job are and then I'm coaching you as we go along by the time that annual performance review comes along you know

exactly what you're going to get you know where you stand you're not surprised by it and there's a lot of people who get surprised at their performance review which is unfortunate. But you know exactly what you're going to get. You know exactly how you're doing. And, you know, it makes it a lot easier. Yeah. Awesome. Love that. You know, I did some watching of some of your videos, Liz, on YouTube. So I would encourage everybody who is enjoying this conversation to head over there and search Liz's name because I thought they were really practical and really sticky ideas. And so one of the ideas that you had was, and this might be around communication, I don't know. So maybe if I'm jumping a little too head, let me know. But

I liked the nickel and dime strategy. Tell us a little bit more about that. Because actually, since I watched that video, I've used it at least once. And I've thought about it quite a bit, you know. So tell us a little bit about that nickel and dime strategy. Okay, yeah. And then just so, yeah, so people know. So I like to use props to symbolize.

And that's where the skill kit kind of comes into play, right? So I have this when I'm doing my training and speaking, I bring bag with me I've got this big bag full of tools and I'll just they're just different just different objects that symbolize and one of the tools in there is the nickel and dime the five and dime and it's to protect your time it's time management because again it goes back to you've got to make the time because the bulk of the leader's job is to communicate. Well, but but first is to observe. You have to notice what's going on. If you're too busy, you can't do your job, which is to observe, plan and communicate. So I call it the Ben Franklin method. OK. And Franklin is if people aren't familiar, Ben Franklin, it's a variety store. They're frequently called a Five and Dime.

And they're usually in small towns around. We had one where I grew up. That's where we went, you know, to get anything we needed. It still might be there, actually. Yeah, you could get everything that you needed there. And so I call it the Five and Dime. And it's just so that the idea with it is maybe you keep a nickel and a dime on your desk, a visual.

I like visuals. It helps me remember things. And basically what happens is when you get invited to a got a minute meeting, those are the meetings where people pop in unannounced and say, hey, got a minute? A lot of leaders think that they have to be available all the time to everybody, but you don't because it interrupts you. Interruptions take a lot of time out of your day so instead of saying sure come on in knowing that it's going to be a 20 minute

you know discussion about something just say um i'm right in the middle of something but if you give me five minutes to finish up i can give you 10 minutes later on now you know give you 10 minutes to you know talk about what it is you need. And so it's a way of controlling your time instead of letting other people control your time. I think that's powerful because I feel like, you know, if you're really clear on, hey, got 10 minutes, you know, I can connect with you in five minutes, right? It's really clear on sometimes these meetings can go on and on and on. And, you know, we can actually say it in five minutes, but we took 30 minutes to talk about it when, you know, that's not always very effective. doing what they're doing. They keep typing away, answering emails. And that is really something that does not go over very well. So it's better to finish what you're doing and then give somebody

a full undivided attention. Because people, you can't listen. You can't listen to somebody when you're sitting there typing or responding to an email. And then someone's trying to tell you something and they know you're not listening. and that's actually the number one complaint that people have about their managers is they don't listen everyone a favor finish what you're doing um clear any boundaries say i've got 10 minutes for you and then then it's okay to say okay time's up right that's That's good. So Liz, if I go back up to like your QQT, right, your quality, quantity, and time, and setting really clear expectations on what's needed, and then being able to give feedback based on, you know, those expectations, would then be the way that we give feedback? Is that CORE, like CORE acronym? Is there any other ways that you would, you know, sort of

tips or tools or strategies you might give in terms of like helping people give feedback if that's really what people struggle with well I think you know and when it's also about thinking about what types of feedback there are so one of them is to just when you see something say something but be looking for people to do something right you know some of the times people don't hear anything or the only time they hear something is when they're doing something wrong and that's just demotivating for people. So catch people in the act of doing something right. So when you see it, say it on the spot, quick verbal, you know, acknowledgement. I always ask people when I'm speaking or trying to say, all right, is there anyone here who feels there is way too much appreciation going on in the workplace? No, no, no, no. Right. You're just watching for people

to do something right. And just a quick verbal praise. So, and quality verbal praise should be sincere, specific, and timely. Okay. Because the only people who tell me that there's way too much appreciation going on, they never look happy about it, right? And I'm like, well, what do you mean? What's wrong with that? You don't look happy. And they're like, ugh, all day long my manager's just running up and down the hall.

Way to go. Nice job. Keep it up. And it doesn't mean anything. It's so insincere. I mean, the managers are trying to do the right thing, so kudos for that. But be looking specifically for examples of what they're doing correctly. And then another thing is to have regularly scheduled one-on-ones. so you know the frequency depends on the type of work you do and who you're managing okay once a week might be appropriate but maybe it's once once a month it doesn't have to be a whole hour 15 minutes 30 minutes whatever it is but because here's the deal if i'm in there if i have a regular habit of meeting with you cinderella yeah if i do something that's difficult to talk about

it's going to be a lot easier for me to bring it up because you're used to us just having conversations. But if I only talk to you when there's something bad going on and then I send you a meeting request for Friday at 3 p.m., what are you thinking? You got a whole bunch of anxiety leading up to that meeting. Yeah. And then, you know, then your productivity is down all week and maybe I don't, there's nothing wrong. But just getting in the habit of having regular one-on-ones to talk about what's going right and where are the improvements to make, that just helps you get in the habit of being able to talk about these, the performance conversations. Then you'll be more comfortable with it.

Oh, awesome. Love it all. Okay, so see it, say it, but do it in sincere, specific way that's timely. Can you give us an example of, you know, a way that or just an example in've talked about is the importance of teamwork and taking teamwork, okay? And let's say that I noticed that you got done with your work early today. Your workload was a little light. You got done at 2 o'clock, and instead of just sitting around twiddling your thumbs or, you know, checking out YouTube videos or whatever, I noticed you went over to your teammate and said, hey, I'm done with my work.

Can I help you out with anything? What I want to do is say that to you before the end of the day, hopefully, and say, hey, Sandra, I really appreciate you taking, or I really appreciate you checking in with your coworkers and asking them if they needed help. It really means a lot. It helps everybody get their work done. Thanks a lot. So if I said that to you and I was specific right because I'm saying um I noticed that you completed your work at two and then you asked your co-worker

what are the chances that you'll probably do more of that right you probably will but the thing is I want to say it that day because if it I don't want to get in the habit of thinking well I'll just tell her on Friday at her can one-on-one. If it's Monday and I see you doing that and I think to myself, I'll wait until Friday. Well, it's probably not going to happen because I'll forget. Or what if you mess up during the week, you know, and do something else, I'm not going to want to give you the positive feedback. So that would be an example of that. Be looking for those things. Awesome. And do you suggest that like in the hallway, you know, just in a casual conversation? Like what do you think about when you're when you say like catch people doing something right? Yeah, it's always okay to praise in public. Praise in public.

And if you have anything constructive or negative feedback, that's always done in private. But it's always okay to praise in public some managers are hesitant to do that they're worried that other people will be jealous I don't buy into that at all I said no way you don't hide the people who are doing things right you know what it does for one thing is it sets a good example for other people these are the things that I'm looking for. I always think it's always perfectly acceptable to praise in public. Ah, love it. Awesome.

Really great advice. You know, one of the things that I really liked watching your videos is you had this acronym called WAIT. And it was about, I think it was related to communication and like listening. So tell us about that.

I thought that was really powerful. Yes, WAIT is why am I talking? Another way of just reminding yourself, again, number one complaint that people have about their managers is they don't listen. So especially when you're having a coaching conversation, you should be asking, right? So here's where you're at, here's where you need to be, what's going on? Right? They want to talk to you and find out what's going on. You know, maybe there's something going on that I'm not aware of. Maybe there's a really good reason why you couldn't complete or, you know, take more calls yesterday or whatever it is. So just, it's again, just a reminder. And you can put these little signs up on your desk. You can put your nickel and dime up

there. You can put the acronym WAIT. Why am I talking? You can put just these little visual symbols to help remind yourself to stop talking and hear what the other person has to say. podcast is to tell us about a time that didn't go so good for you and what you've learned from it. And I think, you know, it's particularly important, I think, to ask you that question, because you have so many, like, really practical things we've been talking about and some great, great tips and strategies. But I'm sure it hasn't been always perfect for you, right? So can you tell us about a story about leadership that you learned from? Oh, gosh, yes, there's so many. There's so many. I'm always, I'm always messing up, and then I'm always learning from it. I think, I remember a really difficult situation I was dealing with, with somebody who needed to have, I was giving performance feedback to, and it was very stressful having to, we were going down the road of on she was on a performance

improvement plan and it was very stressful and we had to continue to work together even though she was on this performance improvement plan and when she would come into my office to um talk um or we just have our regular meetings my I would get so stressed out that my face would start twitching. My whole face would start going into a spasm because I was so stressed out. I didn't know how to handle it. And that's not very good, right? That's a dead giveaway, obviously. And she was kind of a – I was bossy myself, but she was really bossy too. So you had these two bossy women in there.

And it was stressing me out so much so one of the things that I really had to learn was how to get self that self-control that was part of that emotional intelligence and to not um get too heated and over you know worked up because when you get heated and worked up you can't listen either you get so clouded by by what's going on and you're thinking more about you than the other person right which isn't very helpful like you're not you're not waiting to listen no you're really you're really not and then one of the other things that's been a big learning curve for me and I still do struggle with this today is I'm a very independent person

I am and then that's part of my personality style and so I oftentimes will forget to include other people and it's not that I forget I just don't think about it and and so again this goes back to having some introspection being self-aware and sometimes it's okay but oftentimes um you realize that well you know people get offended when you don't include them in things that affect them. And so that's something I always have to be on guard about because I can get a project done and I can get it done on time and under budget and then realize that, well, my communication was terrible simply because I didn't include other people in the process and not always realize that people, you know, remembering that people want to be included.

So that's just something I always have to stop and be aware of. Yeah, awesome. I'm saying awesome a lot, but I think that what you're providing us is so relevant and helpful. So I really appreciate how practical it is. I know you get a lot when you're training and you're speaking as a compliment. So here's what I took from the conversation, Liz, as a kind of a way to wrap up, but also kind of remind people of the things that we talked about. First, like I just said, really practical, really like things that we could use today to put on our desk or to, you know, keep with us. So I really appreciated that. I liked the acronym of CORE, like how do you actually give the feedback?

I thought that was really helpful. Your QQT, so like how to set up expectations. And that's really at the heart, you said, like quality, quantity, and time. I also appreciated that you talked about like praising in public and how that's really good for us to do. But then when we need to give somebody feedback and if it's negative to do that in private. So I think a lot of people, yeah, maybe question if they should praise in public. So I like your perspective on that. And then to when we, you

know, catching people doing something right. So when we see it, say it by giving people, you know, the SST, what you said is like sincere, specific, and timely. And then the last one, you're, you know, the SST, what you said is like sincere, specific, and timely. And then the last one, you're, you know, you're another part of your leadership skill kit is like, wait, why am I talking? So really helpful, really practical. How can people get ahold of you? I know you do, you know, corporate training, you do keynoting. So tell us a little bit about like what you offer and how people might be able to reach out to you yep so these people can find me at my website which is www.lizuram.com it's l-i-z-u-r-a-m.com you can kind of go out there and find out where uh what i what i speak about so i speak at conferences i have a really good keynote which is pretty fun it's called communicate like a boss

without being bossy and that's good for everybody so I bring my skill kit up and we talk about different ways to be a better communicator and then with my training I can do either I can focus on one of the compartments if there's a company that just wants to focus on a on a specific topic like delegation for instance I just did that recently we spent a half a day just working on delegation and again practical tools that's what I'm all about giving them practical step-by-step and basically what I try to do is give them everything on a solar platter and then all they have to do is go out and implement which of course is a little harder

but easier said than done but my favorite type of training to do because it's most effective is to lay out the skill kit in multi-session training. Meaning we do one module a week or one compartment a week for a period of six weeks because what they get is assignments and they have to go back and apply the assignments. And they're easy to do. Nothing too strenuous because I want them to do it so they're actually putting it into practice and then they come come back and each compartment builds off another compartment so that's really the most effective but I've got all kinds of different ways I work with people so they can go out to my website and learn more. And then are you on social anywhere? I could imagine you're probably on LinkedIn and other places. So tell us about that. Yeah, so LinkedIn mainly.

And that's a good place to go. So connect with me on LinkedIn. You can send me a connection request. I will happily accept the connection request. I've been trying to be more active. That's one area that I haven't been as consistent. But that's my goal for the year is to be a little more consistent on LinkedIn, especially in putting articles. And I do a monthly newsletter as well that has, again, practical step-by-step instructions on how to build the skills.

Thank you so much, Liz, for giving us some really practical, tangible advice today. So thank you. Thanks for having me. It was fun. Yeah, super fun. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you like today's podcast, make a comment, share it with a friend and join the conversation on Twitter at mentally underscore strong. For more inspiration and to receive Sindra's free weekly videos, check out drsindra.com.