More Money Podcast - The Art of Being a Good Boss - Author of You're the Boss and CEO Coach, Sabina Nawaz

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had one or two terrible bosses during their career. And I remember thinking "If I had the chance, I would do everything differently." But how do you become a good boss when you finally get the opportunity and avoid repeating their mistakes? That's what I discuss in this episode with CEO coach and author of You're the Boss: Become the Manager You Want to Be (and Others Need) Sabina Nawaz who has decades of experience working with C-level executives and teams at Fortune 500 companies and mega-institutions around the world.Starting her career at Microsoft, she went from managing software development teams to leading the company’s executive development and succession planning efforts for over 11,000 managers and nearly a thousand executives. Needless to say, she knows how to lead and what makes a good manager, which is why she wanted to share the guidebook on how to be a good leader, the pressures that can lead to bad management behaviours, and the importance of empathy in leadership, and so much more. For full episode show notes visit jessicamoorhouse.com/428Follow meInstagram @jessicaimoorhouseThreads @jessicaimoorhouseTikTok @jessicaimoorhouseFacebook @jessicaimoorhouseYouTube @jessicamoorhouseLinkedIn - Jessica MoorhouseFinancial resourcesMy websiteMy bestselling book Everything but MoneyFree resource libraryBudget spreadsheetWealth Building Blueprint for Canadians course Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to the More Money podcast. I'm your host Jessica Morehouse and also the author of the new book, Everything But Money. Make sure to grab your copy now. But in this episode we are going to be discussing rising through the ranks, getting that promotion, or leaving your workplace for a leadership role somewhere else. And this is what most of us aspire to do so we can earn more money, get that higher salary, and just get to that next level in our careers. But there's a lot to know when it comes down

to becoming a manager or executive, which is why I've got Sabina Nawaz on the show to walk us through basically everything you should know to excel. Now, Sabina is an elite executive coach who advises C-level executives and teams at Fortune 500 corporations, government agencies, nonprofits, and academic institutions around the world.

And she gives dozens of keynote seminars and conferences each year and teaches faculty at Northeastern and Drexel University. And during her 14-year tenure at Microsoft, she went from managing software development teams to leading the company's executive development and succession planning efforts for over 11,000 managers and nearly a thousand executives advising Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer directly. And she's here on the show to discuss how to be

a successful boss with her new book, You're the Boss, become the manager you want to be and others need. So we've got a lot to get to in this episode. So many great gems to learn from Sabina. And also, I should mention I am going to be giving away a copy of her book. So listen to the end of this episode to learn how to enter to win. But without further ado, let's get to that interview with Sabina. Welcome, Sabina, to the More Money podcast. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks, Jessica. Excited to be here. Me too. This is a new topic for the show, but I think a very important one because we do often talk about money, but also careers because successful careers lead to more money. So it's kind of important to know how best to navigate the landscape, especially getting

into that position of manager or boss or executive. And I think that's often a trajectory that we all aspire to and often don't really know actually what to do. A lot of us know how to start, I certainly have, you know, in that kind of, you know, maybe even getting to middle management. But most of us have no idea how do we get to those upper levels? What should we know? And, and also when we're there, how do we succeed? How do we sustain and become a really good boss? Because I'm sure lots of us, myself included, I've had some good bosses and some not so good bosses. So we really want to make sure we are in the category of good boss. So before really diving

into the topics in your book called You're the Boss, do you want to kind of share a little bit more about your background and expertise for everybody? Sure. My formal education is in computer science and computer systems engineering. And I started my career, Jessica, and had it for quite a while in software development at Microsoft, managing teams and shipping software. And then I switched into executive and employee leadership, management development and succession planning while at Microsoft working with Bill Gates, Steve Bomber, on creating the professional development, management development track for all 90,000 employees, 11,000 managers,

about a thousand executives, and running the succession planning process for the company. For the last 20 years, I've been working on my own. I coach CEOs, university presidents, senior executives, as well as do leadership training, keynote speeches, and write for Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, and of course, I've just written this book, You're the Boss. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no kidding. Wow. You've been busy. You've been doing a lot and I bet you've seen a lot in your extensive career. So kind of the first question I bet most people have on their minds is, you know, what is

a good boss? What does that actually mean? What does that look like? Because I think we can all pinpoint what not a good boss looks like. And it is almost sometimes like a rare unicorn to find that really good boss. So when we are aspiring to do that, or we're getting into that position, we're transitioning into, you know, manager or executive or a leadership role, what should we really be aspiring to attain? Jessica, I'm going to answer this question sideways because I actually don't believe

there is such a thing as a good boss or a bad boss. We are all human, just like there's no, with very rare exceptions, there are no purely good people and purely bad people. We embody both aspects of good bossness and bad bossness in our very same selves. It's the circumstances that change how we show up. A key tenet of the book is that it's not power but pressure that corrupts us. And by corrupting, it's those bad boss behaviors. So it's rarely a bad boss.

It's bad behaviors as a boss forged under pressure. So to determine when you are under which, and by the way, I have been on both sides. I was a lousy manager at Microsoft, but I didn't start that way. I always got best boss ever feedback first. And then when pressures rose, something different happened. So to determine, and I think your question is a really good one, which is a diagnostic question, a proactive question to say, how can I get ahead of the game? And one way to do that is to better understand what are the pressures I am under and

how do I show up under pressure. Because you have a choice point that kind of reveals your character under pressure. Am I gonna show up unmindful, untended and do things that may not look so good if they were reported on Glassdoor or on YouTube, or can I be mindful about it? The fact is that there is, success is not about being pressure free. Who doesn't have pressure? Boss or not? The higher you go, the more pressure you have.

So success is not about being pressure free, it's about being pressure proof. You can use a few tools. You don't have to get a personality transplant, but by using a few tools mindfully, you can get on top of that. And I guess you also have to want to be a good boss because I feel like there may be that point,

especially when you're under such duress and pressure that you get burnout and then you kind of lose that motivation. So I guess that's another question is how do you ensure when you are in a really high pressure environment and that's just the situation it is, especially when you are, you know, one of the higher ups, so one of those Fortune 500 companies, how do you make sure that you don't get burnt out and then, you know, there's no room for growth. There's no room to change or, or, you know, just, um, be, be better. What a great question, Jessica, because one of the ways to ensure you don't get

burnt out is to mind your boss behaviors. Because here's the thing that happens. If you are not spending a lot of time being clear on your direction, if you're not appropriately using delegation, which by the way, nearly 100% of my clients do it wrong. And we talk about a very specific technique to address that. If you are not taking the time to connect with the employees, they're not going to do their best work. And when they don't do their best work, guess who's sucking all of that work up on a Sunday night right before a big presentation. You're having to redo everything. So the most common way to burn out as a boss is by not minding good boss behaviors, by saying, oh yeah, there'll be time for all that stuff later.

That later is not going to come. And in the meantime, you're not going to get the results you want. That's interesting that you mentioned that because yeah, the bosses that I thought were really good, like I look back and like, wow, they were really impactful. To me, they were the ones that were very good at delegating, very clear on this is what I want you to do and tell me, oh no, that's not the way I want it. This is the way. And you know, it would be very clear and they were very good communicators. The ones that, you know, weren't so good, either they were, you know, the ones that were the micro managers, which again, no employee wants, or I think because they transitioned from the place of employee or peer to manager, probably without much direction or guidance, they never learned how to really

delegate. And so often I would be, I mean, I was a pretty good employee, so I was pretty good at like, I don't really need direction. I can figure it out on my own. Hence why I now work for myself. I'm like, actually, I don't think I was ever meant to be an employee. But I would often see some of my bosses and my last job, I had multiple bosses, and they would be just running around so busy.

And I'm like, what are you busy doing? You're doing someone else's work. You should be being clear on what we should do. Because often I would find I had nothing to do. And so I guess when that's probably, I would assume that's probably why a lot of bosses, maybe especially new bosses, have a hard time delegating because they made that transition and no one really showed them how to then be a boss. So do you want to kind of share a little bit, you mentioned like the leadership skills or

the boss skills. What does that really mean? What should you be adopting or what kind of skills should you be working on developing? Yeah, I think the skills fall under two tracks, if you will. One is around pressure and managing pressure and the other is around reducing this gap between you and others because you're in a power position, reducing the size of that power gap. One tool that you can use is called mapping. And mapping is simply giving someone a sense of who you are and how you operate. The minute you become boss, people make up more stories about you.

And the stories they make up are usually personal and more dire than they are. So, for example, I have a kind of a severe thinking phase. I frown when I'm thinking. And as a boss, I remember one time somebody saying, oh my God, I thought that I was just going to get fired on the spot. And actually, I was so absorbed in what, this was a design director, and I was so absorbed in what he was presenting. I was really thinking, I was really embarrassed, and I'd gotten into a zone, and my frowny face had come out. Now, if I had simply given him the map of me, which said, look, frowning

is my thinking face. If I'm frowning, it's actually a good sign. Or I am not a morning person, don't have meetings with me before 10 o'clock. Or somebody, one of my clients said that he had some reading challenges. So when people gave him long messages, he simply ignored them. And people thought this guy is unresponsive, doesn't care. He cared a lot, but it would take him two hours to read a whole page. So he gave people guidance to say, give me short texts or no more than five lines per message so I can process that topic and then do something else. So giving people a map of your terrain, whether that's how you process emotion, do you like

to start meetings with chit chat or get straight down to business, whether you're a morning person or not, or what your facial and body language says about you is incredibly helpful for people to not spend all that time after the meeting with you in another meeting to figure out what you're saying and what you're meaning and losing sleep because they're thinking, oh my gosh, here goes my paycheck. So reducing that power gap by using the tool called mapping is a really helpful way. Yeah, no, absolutely. Since you mentioned meetings, that's another thing I feel like as a boss or especially like newer bosses, they love meetings.

I don't know why, but they think that that's what they have to be doing is being in meetings as bosses do. They're always in meetings. And I know as an employee, most meetings I went to could have been an email, right? They could have been a phone conversation or an email. They were usually like never set up in the proper way. I think a lot of people who aren't really familiar

with how a meeting should be, they think that that's where we decide what the meeting's about. Or this is just like, oh, we're just gonna talk and figure it out, but really you should have a plan. So I kind of wanna dive into that just particular thing because it is like so important, especially in this digital age where some of these meetings are now virtual. You know, as a boss and you're like, okay, we need to have a meeting. What is the actual proper way to set up an effective and efficient meeting. Wow.

It's the vein of so many people's existence. First of all, the question is whether you even need to have the meeting as you were saying, Jessica, and many bosses have these meetings where they bring in their direct reports, but it's really a hub and spoke model. they bring in their direct reports, but it's really a hub and spoke model. It's you're the hub and people get activated when their department or groups stuff comes up, they speak and the rest of the time they're on, they're playing games or doing whatever it is that they're doing. They're not talking with each other, they're just doing a solo tennis match with the boss and each employee in this very hub and spoke fashion. One of the tools that I recommend people use in managing pressure is called the time portfolio. So I'm sure you talk a lot with your audience about a money portfolio. Yeah, it's no

different in a time portfolio deciding what is your current asset allocation, if time is our most precious asset, where are we going towards and what's an intermediate stage. So if I say I'm spending 55% of my time in meetings and I want it to become 35%, it would be a mistake to try and go from 55 to 35 overnight. But you might say I'm going to go to 50. And in order to go to 50, I'm going to do an audit of all my meetings. Or the meetings have to meet certain criteria before I have them.

So going back to your question, first is deciding whether you want to have the meeting or not. If it's simply information sharing, you're right. It can be done over email or other methods. You do not need to have a meeting. So have three to five criteria on whether or not this meeting is needed. Another is preparation. So if people have not provided the background reading or haven't given you an agenda, get rid of the meeting. Now, when you have the meeting, there are five ways to frame the meeting. And this can work both downward and upward, which is first context.

When we last met, we agreed on X, we discussed Y. People often hesitate to provide that context because they think they're wasting time. You're not, you're actually reminding them, especially when people are spending so much time in so many different conversations, it's easy to forget. Second, what are the goals for this meeting? Today, we want to discuss the branding of the product. Okay, third, what are the outcomes you want? Because the goal is very broad.

What are the exit criteria? What does success look like? What do we want to leave this meeting with? We want to leave with a decision on this or whatever it might be. Number four, what do you want from your audience? Do you want them to play devil's advocate? Do you want them to brainstorm?

Do you want them to decide? Do you want them to give you feedback? Especially in the online world, you have to give each meeting participant a job. If you do not give them a job, you have lost them. So I'm going to come to you at the end of this meeting for a decision. Or I'm going to ask you at three specific points

for your feedback. And I want you to give me your toughest feedback before we take it out there. What is the role of the audience? And the number five, is there anything you would like to add? Another reason meetings get derailed is because I've got my own agenda in mind and I'm distracted because I want to figure out

how to wedge that in. I'm worried I'm going to forget it. So just get that out. You may or may not be able to fulfill their wish list, but even if you don't, you can say, is it okay if we come back to it in the next meeting? Now I can rest easy and be fully present. So those are the five things to do to get everybody present and on the same page for a meeting.

Oh, that's great. Everyone should write those down because those are helpful for whether you're a boss or you just want to give your boss some feedback on meetings so they can be more effective. I think that would be really helpful. I want to, you talk in your book about there are some myths out there about being a leader, being a boss, and I feel like we've all heard them, especially when it comes to, you know, you want to look strong, you don't want to look weak and you can't be your employees friends because you're their boss. But what are some myths maybe that we can be like, actually, that doesn't make a good leader. Actually, that's like an old way of thinking

we need to toss that away and we need to replace it with something new. There are so many myths and I'll just pop up a couple of really important ones. First is this myth that business is not personal. I know. I'm like, but it's personal. It's very personal. And especially these days. Look, your entire livelihood depends on this. Exactly. I had this person where they had a great team, but the organization got acquired by a larger entity. And they were fine, but other groups were starting to get merged with the bigger entity, and they believed that they would be able to remain relatively independent to do their work. But people were starting to worry. So he said, you know, I'm just gonna tell them not to worry. And I said, that'd be like telling someone just ignore gravity. Of

course they're gonna worry. First you cannot tell people how they how to feel. They're gonna feel. Yeah, it's like telling someone to calm down when they're, you know, that never works. In fact, it backfires when you do. Yeah. And so that's one. And I said, so instead of telling them not to worry, what if you did a judo move? What if you acknowledged their worry? What if you actually even further spun that out?

You might show up and say, look, I imagine some of you are worried. Some of you are excited. Some of you are excited. Some of you are hopeful. Some of you are scared and everything in between. This happens. This is normal with change. So now you are giving people an acknowledgement that business is personal, that once you can acknowledge when people feel seen for their feelings, they're able to park them better, they're able to manage them better, they know, okay, my boss gets it, and he or she is holding this for me.

Now, here's what I can tell you, here's what I cannot tell you, this is how I'm planning to communicate with you going forward. He did this with his team. It worked so beautifully. People were so much more productive after that. Once they knew, all right, okay, this happens with every acquisition. We're not special. This too shall pass. And I can trust that my boss is going to be as transparent as he possibly can be. That's so helpful. I actually, what my last job did go through that kind of similar scenario, we merged with

another company and I feel like for a while we were told, don't worry, nothing's really going to change. Everything changed. Everything changed because basically we were combining with another team. They were based out of a different country. That made things confusing too. We were like, so there's two of us. What does that mean? Am I getting demoted? Is someone getting promoted? And it was not handled. It wasn't handled great. I don't work there anymore. There's a reason for that. I'm like, you know what? I don't

see this transition in this. It's not going to work out for me. I feel like I'm going to get absorbed. For a lot of employees, they may think, well, I was on a certain trajectory to maybe get a promotion. Now, if we're getting merged and now there's more people, how on earth am I gonna stand out? So yeah, I think that's so important to acknowledge. This is what's really going on.

Yes, and this is not a myth that I've stated in the book, but it's so true is whenever there's a merger or an acquisition That email that goes out about they're gonna be no further changes and I think that is just such a load No, yeah, everything is gonna change We all know that's crap exactly exactly. Oh my gosh Well, it sounds like what you're also saying too is and you talk about this in your book as well, is how important empathy is in leadership, which again, that I feel like never gets talked about because like you said,

most people think that business is not personal, it's completely separate. That's not true. Most of us, our friendships are at work. We have a whole, we spend all of our time at work. And so why is it so critical as a leader to show empathy and make sure, I think a lot of people are probably worried about doing that because they are afraid it'll show some sort of weakness. When they're showing empathy? Yeah, yeah.

Not just weakness, but they're worried that it'll take time. That's the number one reason. People tell me, oh, I'm a very empathetic person when I have time. And my question to them is, and when exactly do you have time? Because that's the best time for you to show empathy. And which person comes to me and says, oh, I have plenty of time. We don't. So how do you make time for it? So I often say that if you want to be a hard ass, start with empathy. If you want to hold, there's this false dichotomy that people, many people operate under, which is if I'm empathetic,

not only will I look weak, but I will weaken their performance. They will take advantage of me. They will feel entitled. They're going to slack off. The reverse happens. The reverse happens. So when you are empathetic with someone, when they see that you get them, when they understand that you understand different experiences, not just your own, they are much more willing to put in that extra effort to be more mindful about

quality, to take more initiative because they're feeling seen and appreciated and heard. Yeah. And I would assume too, this is the way that you build respect with your team is by showing them respect and empathy. Whereas, you know, I have had bosses where they were kind of like the hard ass and you're like, oh, immediately I don't want to they were kind of like the hard ass and you're like, oh, Immediately, I don't want to go above and beyond for you because I think all you just work with, you know, negative motivation and consequences and

Punishment and that's not my language. And so I'm gonna do the bare minimum Exactly, right. I'm gonna take and's Jessica, there's tons of research that supports that. That when, when employees don't get treated well, they take it out, they, they even deliberately sabotage results. Now think about that. They sabotage their own results just to get back at the boss. Yeah, there's definitely, I think a lot that people can, can learn and not do. And I'd say one place probably too is if you do want to transition to that place into a boss to find some people that you can emulate.

And how important is that to find, I guess, a mentor or someone in your industry? And that might be someone that you don't know yet, but when you're making that transition, this is the time to find that person to really connect with so you can learn from them. And it's not just a transition into boss, it's transition into senior and senior bosses. In fact, the more senior you get, the more important that is because there's fewer people who really understand that space and who've walked in that space. What's really important is to get someone very much outside of your sphere. This is a reason people come to me as a coach, because I don't have a dog in the race. So I'm not,

you're not competition. Exactly. Or, um, I don't benefit. I don't have consequences or rewards based on what you choose to do. And I'm not saying come to me as a coach. I'm saying find people who are as neutral as possible yet who get that space. So mentors are unique and wonderful in that sphere. But if you're choosing a mentor who is already in the organization

or somebody who's very connected to the organization, it's a little bit harder because they have an agenda. And that's gonna be difficult. How would you go, like besides hiring yourself, but how would someone go about trying to find someone outside of their sphere? Is that just kind of maybe asking some people, you know, that they can connect you with or what's the best way to go? For sure. That working your network is great. The other thing, you know,

we have a much bigger network hiding in plain sight that most of us don't realize, which is our past connections. Do you have a boss that you worked for before that you really admired and you've lost touch with for the last five years? Well, go talk to them. They know you, you have a base of trust and you feel you can learn something from them. I want to talk more about what skills you need. Because I know you talk about in your book how some of the skills that you developed are used in order to get the job, to get that promotion are also essential in sustaining that job. And I think a lot of people are, it's one thing to be kind of a

subordinate, but then when you're in that leadership role, you do need kind of a different toolbox. So what are some of those really essential skills that you need to really make sure that you're nurturing and you're growing? Or if you don't have them at all, start making sure you're learning how to get them. One skill is or a power gap that gets created is this singular story. And I'll illustrate this through an example. is this singular story. And I'll illustrate this through an example. Let's call her Teresa. And Teresa was brilliant, absolutely brilliant,

right almost 100% of the time, lots of great ideas, very, very strategic. Naturally, her career ascended on a pretty sharp, steep curve. And she was, when she got promoted to about middle manager level. This very strength started to backfire, which is people thought, well, Teresa's got it figured out. So I'm, I'm just going to dial it in. Why do I even bother surfacing ideas? Or any idea I surface is not going to be as good as hers, or she's going to shoot it down. And so first of all, it disaffected the employees.

But more importantly, there was a rare occasion where Teresa's thinking was not right. And she comes in super strong, super confident, super convicted. Everybody else has taken a step back. So there's this two way dance. The more she pushes, the more they push, stay back. Uh, nobody tells her that there might be issues with this because they're beaten down into submission. They make a very expensive bet.

A few hundred thousand dollars. And 18 months later, they realized they're on the wrong path. The skill to use is called multiple meanings, which is when you are starting something, pause and ask for multiple different meanings, multiple different ways to define what might be the problem. If she had done that, she would have noticed, she was responding to a direct competitor threat. She would have noticed that there was this key customer segment that didn't care about that, that threat was about to become obsolete

because this customer need, this other need was arising in that industry. So if she had taken a moment to gather multiple different perspectives, multiple ways to make meaning of what the problem is before even going to the solution, they wouldn't have had that waste of time. Do you think there's, when I think of the reason why I've had those experiences where there's just no room for anyone to actually add their two cents. And there's some valuable perspectives from your subordinates who are probably in touch with different parts of the business that you just don't touch anymore. And do you think there's a, the reason that a lot of bosses are resistant to doing that

is again, just, well, I, I should, I'm the leader, so I should be the one that has the ideas. Otherwise I may be seen as a less valuable. Yeah, what's my value add then? Yeah, yeah. They might also do it out of a false sense of over responsibility. My team is really struggling right now. Let me just jump in and rescue them.

The problem is that you're gonna jump in and rescue them all the time, and you're not gonna build any of their capabilities. The other is, I know the answer. It's going to shortcut things. Let me come with a first draft. We were talking about meetings earlier. First draft meetings are a kiss of death. It's not a draft. When it comes from a boss, it is an edict. Nobody else is going to put their great thinking in there. So you lose it for a number of those reasons. And here's a skill to build. Here's a muscle to build. It's called your shut up muscle. Yeah, listen. Yeah, I honestly can't think of too, too many bosses in my past that were

good listeners. But as a podcast host, that's a skill that I had, because I used to be, I mean, I am a talker, let me tell you. And I used to talk a lot more on this podcast until I got feedback, honestly saying, you should listen more. But you know, I just, I had exciting things to say, I thought. And that was, it was hurtful criticism at first, but then it was valuable because I realized actually that's really important because not only will the listeners get something more from the guests, but I as the host will actually learn a lot from my guests by just listening and not saying. And I think a boss, anyone in a leadership role, you can get so much out of doing nothing

or saying nothing and just listening. Absolutely. And it is a way to add more value. We started with this myth of, oh, if I don't over speak, I'm not going to add value. You can actually add better value because if you listen, say as even as a podcast host, you're listening to all these speakers speaking and you can add, instead of adding things along the way 50 times, the one thing you can add that the speaker didn't land is gold, because it's a unique contribution versus what everyone else has thought about. One thing we haven't touched on, but I wanted to talk about

this. So we've been talking about leadership and being a boss in kind of a more general way, but there's obviously a difference between being a female boss and a male boss. Because I know, definitely as a woman, you know, looking at some of the advice on how to be successful in business, some things, oh, this will work. And I'm like, I tried it, it didn't work for me. And I think that's because I'm not a man. So if I did that, wouldn't get the same reception. Do you want to kind of talk about if you are a man or a woman, what are some of the differences that we need to acknowledge? Because, you know, it's not, there's no cookie cutter advice, basically. We can't just all do the same thing. It may not work for all of us.

Absolutely. That is such a great point. And I don't think it's, it's simply gender. It could be any many different ways in which that can be sliced. And of course, gender has been most commonly researched. What I found really interesting, Jessica, so one of the ways this book came about is through 12,000 pages of verbatim data I collected from employees about what they actually thought about their bosses. The thing that surprised me was that there weren't gender differences into the trouble bosses get themselves into. So the common power gaps or pressure pitfalls that bosses fall into seemed gender agnostic. Interesting.

However, how they tackle it definitely needs to be specific to who you are and the role you're playing. So I think it has to do with both, whether it's gender or other identities, as well as the level of seniority and the culture in which you're operating. Yeah. I bet culture and environment is a really big factor that also, you know, because I think we've all seen, like you've been at a job for a while, you get a new boss and they're just like, all right, I'm going to change the whole rules. We're doing things differently. And you're like, Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Get used to the lay of the land first. What would you say to someone, especially entering a brand new organization instead of, you know, going up that ladder to really pay attention? I would assume one of the things is maybe don't change everything right away. Absolutely. Don't change everything right away. Don't make decisions right away. It's the't change everything right away. Don't make decisions right away. And the organization is hungry for you to make decisions. We love putting all our problems at the feet of the authority figures.

So what can you hold off on? I often tell people take margin notes. And what I mean by that is you take the notes in the body of your tablet or piece of paper, have a big margin and write down your own ideas in the margin that allows you to park them there and go back to fully listening. The other problem is actually a power gap that I've named for people who come in new. it's called the past experience divide. And this is the, well, where I was, this is what we did. And it worked so well.

And your audience in the current organization is going, you have no idea. You've been here for five minutes. You have no idea whether we've already done that, what we do well. You're comparing us to somebody else. It's just about as appealing as going on a first date and talking on and on about your ex. Yeah, that's true. My gosh. So I guess what would be like the timeframe? I would assume that if you entered a new organization as the new boss, you would want to make sure

that you're spending a good chunk of time, like weeks, months, I'm not sure, basically just understanding and listening and getting to know the situation before making any shifts. And then I guess in that timeframe, what should you be actually doing? Because I feel like you feel like you should probably do something, otherwise people may question why you're there and why they need a boss. Exactly. Exactly. If you can get away with it, to me, the sweet spot there and why they need a boss. Exactly. Exactly. If you can get away with it, to me, the sweet spot is about 90 days, three months. Okay. And first of all, it's really important to set that expectation.

A lot of this is about expectation settings. So people don't go, well, why did we hire this person? What are they doing anyhow? No, repeatedly state that this is what I'm doing. I'm here to listen. Give it a name. Say you're going on a listening tour. One senior executive of a Fortune 50 company

when he first became CEO, he had a yellow legal pad and he identified a hundred people and went physically to the offices of these 100 people, sat down and took notes on his legal pad for 100 people and stated that publicly, I'm going to listen to 100 people first. So go on a listening tour. On the listening tour, have a set of questions that are uniform across the board. A huge value add you can provide before you make decisions and provide answers is simply playback what you are seeing.

You have that benefit in that three month window to present an outside in view of what might be going on. And connect it to facts. Let's say you were talking to a hundred people, you might say 87 out of the hundred said such and such thing. You can argue with those facts, but it's a great way for the organization to see itself

from the outside. Then bring people together and say, given this data that we have, if you were to vote on these things, which would you choose to address? This doesn't mean you have to agree with them on everything, but just get the feedback. Now you might convene a smaller group and say, let's brainstorm together. What we might do to address this? You know the culture, you know what will fly here. I might have some ideas as well. Be the third,

fourth or fifth person to speak, not the first, as you have those brainstorming sessions. That's another way to use your shut up muscle. Kind of a different scenario. Let's say you've been a boss for a while. Like there's some managers, they've been in that role for five, 10, 15 plus years. I know you talk about in your book, doing a selfview, which again, I feel like you'll be in a position if you're not jaded or burnt out and you're still actively always wanting to improve yourself. When you've been with a company for say a couple of decades or a decade, that must be really difficult to assess yourself because you want to assume that you're doing a good job.

How do you go about taking a good look, doing an audit on yourself as a boss to see, are there some cracks here? Are there some areas we need to really fix? Right. And absolutely, you're doing a great job. Let's take that off the table. You wouldn't be here. No company is going to tolerate you for 20 years if you haven't been killing it.

So you're doing a great job. It's what you don't know, that blind spot that's going to catch you. Here's the catch with that. Nobody's going to tell you because you're in the position of power. Especially not your employees. Yeah. So you kind of screw them. There's a power dynamic. Right. Yes, exactly. It's the power dynamic. My book at the end has a list of 42 questions and you can take that as a self-test. Here are four of those questions if you don't wanna go through the 42

as an early warning signal. Number one, nobody disagrees with you or pops up an idea after you've popped up an idea. That's your singular story power gap in action. Number two, you think you're working harder than everybody else. You're bringing in all the idea, initiative. You're setting the agenda for meetings. Nobody else is providing anything. That's a pressure pitfall gap. Sole provider. Number three, people say you're smarter, faster, funnier than you know you are. They're not telling you the truth. No. And number four, you use ya but to justify a lot of your

actions. In other words, you really know, but you're yeah, butting your way through things. There's something else going on there. In fact, the more righteous you are in your yeah, but the more opportunity there is for a yes. And instead of a yeah, I like that. Yeah. It really should just be, yeah, pause, think about that. Right? Instead of, but we are, I mean, I think in any kind of position, you immediately want to justify whatever the heck you did because no one wants to look like they did something wrong or someone could have done it better. Right? You're always trying to justify yourself and your role.

Right? This happens to all of us. And it's so brilliant and so simple and yet so difficult to do, Jessica, what you just said, which is just say, yes, leave the meeting, give it some soak time, and then come back. And maybe then you can justify if you still feel the need to do it. This happened to me just last week. Somebody is helping me a lot with how to frame certain messages and what to put on LinkedIn and so on. And I sent her this thing that I thought would be an article on LinkedIn. And she said, you know, this is not an article, this is a post.

So if it's a post, you don't need a title. I'd gone to her to say, hey, what kind of catchy title can I have for this? She said, you don't need a title for a post. I said, no, I don't want to make this a post. I want to make this an article. Round two she goes yeah it's just not substantive enough for an article it really needs to be a post. Now I'm getting irritated I'm like look I'm paying you to give me a title just give me a title. So I go back and go nope this is going to be an article there's no debate about this. What am I doing?

I'm shutting her down, first of all. Here are five ideas, what do you think? So she finally goes, next morning, she goes, oh, okay, well then choose this. And next morning, I sent her an email and I said, I hate it when you're right. I am so glad I had that overnight soak time because when I went back to her and I said, I hate it, but not really. I'm actually really grateful because I thought

about how hot and bothered I was yesterday. And the more I thought about it, I couldn't come up with a reason why this needed to be an article instead of a post. When I realized that- You just didn't like it was someone else's idea. And you're like, well, I already thought it was going to be like this. So yes. It's hard for us to unlearn and go off our own track. And thank goodness she was someone who was comfortable enough to argue with me. That brings me to actually a question. So I talk about this in the terms of finance and investing all the time,

how we need to take the emotion out of it because emotions should not be anywhere near our money. That is when we make those mistakes. I would assume the same goes for being a leader. And that's maybe usually when, yeah, when there's a big thing, you're like, ooh, that was probably not so good, it's usually emotionally charged.

So how do you keep your emotion, like, you know, make sure you're open and you've got empathy and you're, you're doing that kind of stuff, but you're also not letting your emotions drive your decisions or, you know, exactly. Like you get too emotional. You're like, no, we're doing it this way. And you actually don't have a rational reason why you just, you know, you just want to. You're just attached to it. And emotions can go both ways, Jessica. So absolutely be grounded in your emotions. Use your emotions to inform things. Like, why am I feeling so irritated? Because that helps me understand. Well, is it coming out of just pure ego and righteousness,

which was my example? Or is it coming out of some facts and, and this is important to be heard or communicated, but reacting to emotions versus getting informed by emotions. So what do you do to capture that time is your best friend if you have time. For me, it was that overnight and waking up the next morning going, I actually don't have a good reason for why I'm doing this other than wanting to be right, right now. So time can really help soak that in. Talking to somebody else, if you have the luxury of, again, somebody who's not invested in that issue, who's neutral, that can be super helpful.

A third one could be making up, going back to multiple meanings, making up multiple meanings about why something is happening. For example, if you have a colleague that says, oh, what about this idea? And let's say that idea is in your area. So your emotionally reactive self can go, oh, they're trying to one-up me. They're trying to take over my turf. Don't they know I work on this?

There they go again strutting around. Those are all that single-track stories that we can make up. But what if another story is they actually admire what I'm doing and they want to support it and they're giving me an idea to try out? What if they're actually thinking they might be able to give me some resources to noodle with this? Those are very different stories. So that's another way to get ahead of your emotions is to make up multiple stories about why something might be

happening. Yeah. Don't always come to the conclusion that, yeah, everyone's out to get you or something's negative or, well, you know, I can't trust this information. Yeah, multiple stories. So you can see it from multiple angles. That's always the best course of action. I feel like I could just keep on talking to you, but there's so many, like you said, there's so much great stuff in your book,

like specific action steps that anyone who is either in a leadership position or hopes to be, this is a really important book. And I'm so glad that you came on the show and were able to share so much of your, I mean, you have such a wealth of knowledge. So I really appreciate you coming on. Was there anything that you wanted to leave listeners with? Like one idea I had was, was there any particular leader you've worked with that was a really great emulation of, this is a great representation

of what good leadership looks like? I don't know that anybody I've worked with has done it consistently over time. Okay, yeah, fair enough. No pure good leaders or bad leaders. No, yeah, that's true. But there are some very, very specific things people have done, and some people do it more consistently.

This is somebody who grew up on the factory floor of their organization. It's a manufacturing company and now is in the C-suite and still sees themselves as one of the guys. For him, he said, putting on a belt in my wardrobe was like a, it doesn't feel like me. I'm not the kind of guy who does that. He did a beautiful job of bridging the two things by embodying the values that were important to him to stay connected and rooted in his people while also having to make some really tough decisions, including layoffs, from his perch in the C-suite. One of the ways he did that was always making time

to stay connected. So he did not reschedule his one-on-ones very often. He really checked into the well-being of his people. And as a result, his people were willing to tell him more about what was really going on on that factory floor and helped him get ahead of the curve of any problems that might be coming down the road. That's amazing. That's a great story. Yeah, that's wonderful. Well, again, thank you so much for coming on the show. Where can people find a copy of your book? Your book will be out by the time this airs, because I know we're recording it beforehand, but where can people find more information about you and grab a copy of your book? Thank you. Anywhere books are sold, you're the boss, become the manager you want to be,

and everyone needs and others need. And it's anywhere books are sold. You can also go to my website, sabinanoas.com. There are a number of resources and tools that you can download in addition to the book. And I'm sure you're on LinkedIn as we all are. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you so much for coming on the show. It was a pleasure having you. Thank you, Jessica. And that was my episode with Sabina Nawaz. She's the author of You're the Boss, Become the Manager You Want to Be and Others Need. You can find more information about her and her book and her coaching at

sabinanawaz.com and also make sure to follow her on LinkedIn and you know, make sure to also follow me on LinkedIn. I'm on there. Jessica Morehouse, find me. I'm on there. And I'm being more active and I'm liking it there. I don't know. It's a safer space than some other social media platforms lately. So LinkedIn, find me. Jessica Morehouse. Thank you so much for listening.

And I said at the beginning of this episode, I'm going to be giving away a copy of her book. So if you go to jessicamorehouse.com slash contest, you will see I've got her a book. I'm going to be adding more books. More authors are going to be on this season of the show. I'm going to be giving away copies of their books too. So check it out, enter to win, and I wish you the best of luck. So that's really it for me. Just want to reiterate, got a book myself. It's called Everything But Money. And if you are like, yeah, I know, I already have my copy, oh my gosh, you know what you could do if you haven't

done it already as well is give me a rating or review online. Goodreads, Amazon, Indigo, those are kind of the best places to put it to tell the algorithm to push my book into the feed of people so people can see it and hopefully find the book that they have always been looking for. You know, not another book about budgeting, one that will get to the feed of people so people can see it and hopefully find the book that they have always been looking for. Not another book about budgeting, one that will get to the root cause of maybe why they've always struggled with money or why money doesn't make them feel so good.

So if you would just take two seconds, and also as a little incentive, if you go to jessicamorehouse.com slash book, there's more information on how, if you do give me a rating or review, you can access the exclusive extras I made for the book. It was originally just for people who pre-ordered the book, but now I'm giving you access if you give me a rating or review.

And you just have to fill out your name and email and a screenshot of your review and you get access to videos, audio, worksheets that will help you just go through some of the exercises and just get a little bit more out of the book. So we can find all that information at jessicamorehouse.com slash book. Well that's it for me. Thank you so much for listening and watching and I will see you in my next episode. The More Money Podcast would not be possible without the amazing talents of video editor, Justice Carrar and podcast producer, Matt Rideout, who you can find at mravcanada.com.