The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Be Human, Lead Human: How to Connect People and Performance by Jennifer Nash

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

Be Human, Lead Human: How to Connect People and Performance by Jennifer Nash https://amzn.to/3Vt43b7 Drjennifernash.com What readers have to say: "Not your parents' leadership book" - Kaitlyn H. "Timely, well organized, and personalized" - Austin A. "A fresh perspective in an oversaturated market" - Peyton P. "A must-read for anyone aspiring to lead in today's complex business environment" - Dan P. In a post-pandemic world where adaptability, empathy, and human connection have become more important than ever, Dr. Nash's message is both timely and timeless. Be Human, Lead Human addresses a central issue facing contemporary workplaces: the urgent need for human-centric leadership that fosters engagement, creates connection, and powers performance. Be Human, Lead Human is more than just a book; it's a movement. It holds the promise of a new leadership ethos, one that disrupts the status quo and champions humanity at the heart of organizational effectiveness. If you're ready to lead with courage, empathy, and authenticity, this book is your starting line. Ready to transform your leadership approach and craft a more empathetic, connected, and effective workplace? Be Human, Lead Human is your indispensable guide. Discover how to bridge the gap between people and performance — because to lead humans, one must first be human.About the author Jennifer Nash, PhD, MBA, PCC is a leadership expert and consultant to Fortune 50 organizations such as Google, Ford, Exxon Mobil, JP Morgan, IBM, The Boeing Company, and Verizon. She is Founder & CEO of Jennifer Nash Coaching & Consulting, a leadership advisory firm helping successful leaders connect people and performance to deliver exceptional results. Jennifer’s 25-year resume includes serving in executive and leadership roles at Deloitte Consulting and Ford Motor Company and as adjunct professor at the University of Michigan. She contributes to Harvard Business Review, has presented her research at Columbia University, and is a Harvard/McLean Institute of Coaching Fellow.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. There, ladies and gentlemen.

That makes it official. Welcome to the show. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by. Thanks for tuning in, as always. For the show to your family, friends, and relatives, go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisvoss, chrisvoss1, the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the internet. Today, we have an amazing author on the show.

We always have amazing authors. You ever notice we've been doing that for 16 years? She's the author of the newest book that just comes out, May 5th, 2023. It's called Be Human, Lead Human, How to Connect People and Performance. Jennifer Nash joins us on the show as the author, and she's going to be talking to us about how we can be more human, darn it, and how we can lead more human. And everyone's a leader. Keep that in mind. If you're a parent, you're a leader.

If you're, you know, you could be a guy driving the bus and you're a leader. There you go. So she is the founder and CEO of Jennifer Nash Coaching and Consulting. She's a PhD, MBA, and PCC as the executive advisor, leadership development consultant, and author who helps Fortune 50 organizations prioritize people to power performance. She earned her MBA from the University of Michigan, her PhD from Case Western Reserve University. She taught over 700 rising leaders at Deloitte University and is a research fellow at the Weatherhead School of Business. She serves as an executive leadership and career coach at the University of Michigan and is a fellow at the Harvard McLean Institute of

Coaching. Welcome to the show, Jennifer. How are you? I'm great today, Chris. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for coming too. And give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Yeah, they can find me at drjennifernash.com. That's drjennifernash.com. There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview of your new book, Be Human, Lead Human. Yes. So Be Human, Lead Human is an invitation for leaders to think about and practice leadership differently for this new world of work that we're in. And I often get the question around, well, I'm not a leader.

I don't have a P&L. I don't have lots of people reporting to me. And like you mentioned in your intro, you know, everyone at some point at some place in their lives is a leader, whether you're a parent, whether you're a teacher, whether you're a, you know, a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, everyone has this ability to demonstrate leadership skills and help the people around them and inspire them and help them grow. There you go. And why is it important to be human? Why is it an important aspect when you put. And why is it important to be human? Why is it an important aspect when you put that in the title of the book and inside? You know, I put be human

in the title because I feel like so often we elevate leaders to a pedestal and we expect them to be perfect and we expect them to not make any mistakes. And, you know, the reality couldn't be further from the truth. and when leaders allow themselves to be human they allow everyone else around them to be human as well definitely it's it's right sometimes there's that kind of whole ivory tower sort of effect of being leaders it seems like a lot of leaders nowadays are embracing servant leadership and you know they're they're spending more time with people they're spending more time with people. They're spending more time wandering their corporations. I was watching, I think it was the CEO of HP, how he goes throughout his day.

And he spends a lot of his day mobile. And, you know, he spends his time meeting people on the front line, meeting customers in the lobby, you know, wandering about his organization, shaking hands, basically touching base with people, and finding out, you know, listening. And most of his, you know, what I saw, I don't know if he was doing it for show in the video, but most of what I saw was he was listening. And so he was going around asking people questions and listening to people's thoughts and inputs. You know, he wasn't going around barking orders at people and giving stump speeches, which I thought was really interesting because the fact that you would listen

and have empathy with people, that gets around. It does. And what we're seeing right now is we're seeing a shift in the role of a leader, right? Traditionally, the leader was commanding control. They barked orders. They told people what to do, they micromanaged. And to some extent, we still have leaders who do that today. But we're seeing that the role of a leader is really shifting from that old outdated model, to a role of a facilitator, to a role of a coach, to a role of somebody who, you know, actively listens and seeks input from not only internal stakeholders, but external stakeholders, gathering the voice of that customer to really have their finger on the pulse and understand what is going on. There you go. It's really interesting, the journey there.

So tell us a little bit about your upbringing and history. What got you into this field? What made you become a coach and consultant? And of course, lead up to write this book? Yes, you know, well, I have spent most of my life in two different worlds. So I've spent it partly in the, you know, arts and dance and music kind of space where I had a formal education growing up. And then, you know, as I got into the business world, I used my foreign languages to, you know, sort of make that segue into into business and it was a little confusing to me I didn't have necessarily that background so I didn't understand why people were acting the way they did in the workplace and you know what were the motivators and drivers for

that behavior that I really didn't understand and so it led me to really spend a lot of time observing and trying to make sense of this world that I was in because I grew up with an arts and a music and a dance background. So fast forward about 16 years, you know, and I was working in a very large company and I had a leader who for the first time in my career made me feel like I was seen and that I was valued, not just for the work output that I could provide, but as a human being. And, you know, that was so novel to me at the moment, Chris, that I still vividly remember that to this day. And I tell that story in the book in a lot more detail. And that experience really made me want to understand why are there not more leaders like that?

Why do we not have leaders who are maximizing that side of the equation to help people perform at their best? And then in turn, the organization will be successful. So that's why I wrote the book, to help people figure out how they can be leaders who bring out the best in others and who can maximize performance on individual and organizational dimensions. There you go. Now, it looks like you did a lot of interviews of different leaders in your book. I did. I did. I interviewed over 400 people for this book. Holy crap. That's a lot of people. I'm seeing Alan Mulally of CEO of Ford and a lot of great names here. Yeah. Yeah. Alan, Alan actually wrote the forward for my book. And there's a story about Alan that I kick off the book with. So if your readers are in, if your listeners are interested,

they're welcome to go check that out. We have a free download of the chapters of my website. Oh, there you go. People can check that out. So what, what were some of the surprising stories or insights maybe that you can tease out on maybe some of the interviews you did? You know, so there's so many.

I think one of the ones that instantly comes to mind is the story about a gentleman who was working. He's a military person and he was going on to an aircraft carrier and he noticed that the environment on that aircraft carrier was just toxic. And he, you know, did some digging to find out why that was. And then they had a leadership change on the aircraft carrier, and somebody new came in. And you know, we often hear that implementing change takes so long, and it's so hard, and it's so messy. Well, this new leader that came out of the aircraft carrier was able to implement change within 90 days on that aircraft carrier with 3,500 people. And so that was really striking to me how effective that was and how quickly that was done. And I included that story in the book because I felt like it was a great example to help other

organizations see that when they're facing this monumental task of changing culture or changing with the way things are done in an organization, it doesn't have to take years. It can be very quick. And so that's one of the stories that stands out to me. There you go. I imagine a lot of great stories in the book. With the numbers of people here that I'm seeing on this site, the website you have that are featured, what did you kind of derive from your conversations with people? Does it seem like this is a new horizon or new vision of where leadership is going on the arc of leadership, you know, that turnstile of what we've talked about going from, you know, barking orders at people to being a coach and being a facilitator.

You know, I think it's an invitation to think about a new leadership paradigm, right? This is not new. This is not something that I invented, but it's something that started a while ago. And we saw like little signals of that, right? If you remember the business round table, right? Where 183 corporations signed this agreement saying that they would look to support, you know, all stakeholders, you know, for the greater good, not just corporate profits and shareholders. It started around that time, but we also have indications of it back in 1970 with Robert Greenleaf and

servant leadership and things like that. So there have been elements of this all around, but I think really the straw that broke the camel's back with this was COVID. And if anything good came out of COVID, it was this, that it forced the human element to the forefront in business where it should have been all the time. Yeah, it's a whole lot different world when you're not barking orders at people, you're not using the stick instead of the carrot. It seems, you know, this being human and focusing on what people's needs are what their motivations are and it's it's it's in demand because evidently these younger

generations they they aren't willing to be like you know the older generations my generation and the one before it where it's just like we just go work dead-end job but not really dead-end jobs you know we used to work you know 40-hour work weeks at jobs we didn't really love, but we'd slave through them for life, get a good retirement program and a gold watch and a pat on the back. And that used to be good enough. Now they want to live with purpose. They want their lives to have meaning.

They want to serve a greater good you know maybe climate change or or you know work for work for companies that are making a difference in in paying back or giving back to to humanity you know they're just not we're just gonna hoard money oh yeah we're actually gonna help some people and and so they they seem to be more caring about that they just feel like their work is going to something more meaningful that's bigger than themselves, probably is a good way to put it. Yes. Yes. And that's actually, that's one of the drivers that, you know, Gen Z is looking for when they're out there in the job market, right?

So organizations that want to attract top talent, they want to attract the best and brightest. They have a vested interest in trying to think about and put themselves into, you know, these potential employee shoes. What do they want out of work today? And it's precisely what you mentioned, right? They want to have work that is aligned with their purpose, that feels like they're making a difference in the world, and that has something that serves the greater good. It's not just about them. And, you know, I take away from that message that if organizations shift to that perspective, you know, the world will be a much better place. Oh, yeah.

I mean, definitely. What percentage of organizations or leaders would you say have made this shift? How big is this shift? And is there still more to come? You know, I think there is no shortage of opportunity to make this shift. You know, I work with clients every day that are struggling with, you know, they want to go back to leaders in the organization want to go back to status quo, because that's where they're comfortable. That's what they know. And so breaking out of that and doing something different, you know, change creates loss and loss often needs to be grieved. And so there may be a space here where, you know, we need to,

you know, honor what was there, let it go, and then move forward into this new normal. Yeah. It's definitely a new normal i i think servant leadership is more where it's out it's interesting that book was written in 1977 it's taking this long what is that 20 40 yeah 40 35 some odd years and uh it's interesting it's taken that long to be embraced but you know i think part of it is the demand of the workforce and And part of it is, is us, I don't know, scaling to a higher sort of mindset or vision of, of where, you know, we understand these things and what goes on and how it works. Yeah, very interesting. What are some other aspects of the book we haven't talked about? So we haven't talked about the fact that the book has a human's

framework in it. And the human's framework actually came out of all of the research that I did. So the framework is a model for how people can adapt their leadership and lead in a more human way. And so there's seven dimensions of that. They range from, you know, hearing and understanding and mattering, appreciating, inspiring, seeing, and then relationships wraps all of that together. There you go. I, you know, I learned a long time ago that as a leader, you need to listen more than you talk. Because one of the challenges is, you know, I learned with my companies that I wasn't the purveyor of all the greatest ideas. In fact, some ideas were really awful and expensive. Like some ideas were really wonderful and then many were bad. And, you know, being able to listen to people, get their influence, get their thoughts, you know, see what's going on in the front line,

having a front line sort of, you you know it's very easy in the ivory tower to get locked inside your bubble you know where you just have this this loop of of people who are you know yes men going yeah you're right you're the smartest person there chris yeah you got this yeah we'll do whatever you say whatever you say you you're clearly right you know and that can isolate you and put you into really dangerous areas 100 my the ceo used to work for back in the day he used to say you know i used to i used to say why do we always have that one guy on the board who's negative nancy he's always he was complaining about stuff and he's always gotten whatever we put up. He's he's gonna shoot it down He's just he's always the where they call it. He's the

Opposite alternative guy. He's the guy Idea you come up with is a bad idea and any bad idea you come up with this for him is a good idea And I'm like, why is he on the board? because that's he's just so annoying and everyone just wants to choke him half the time. And he goes, Chris, you know, you've got to have that guy around you. Because most of the people around you are going to become yes men. And you've got to have that person who can pierce your bubble. And he goes, yeah, that guy is not right most of the time.

He goes, but when he's right, he's dead on. He's going to save you millions so you've got to listen to him because when he's right and and everyone else is wrong he's the canary in the coal mine he's the he's the he's the one who's going to tip you off that you know something is bad yeah yeah yeah it's so important as a leader you know to have that diversity of perspective around you and when you're the leader nobody wants to tell you the truth because they don't want to be shot right they don't want to be the master that gets killed and if you can rise above that and know that like if you surround yourself with people that can provide you those different perspectives even

when it's hard to say you know the truth or what's really going on that will help you get so much further there you go because your ego aside to do that. Now, how much more effectiveness? I'm noticing something on your website that talks about the senior executive coaching section that talks about how there's an increase of effectiveness in changing from these old style models of business to servant leadership and being more human. Tell us about how that works and how it becomes more effective. You know, the best example I can give your listeners of that, Chris,

is the example of Alan Mulally at Ford Motor Company. So when Alan came in in 2006, you know, things were very, very tough. The economy was not doing well. You know, the company was losing $17 billion and stock price was basically in the toilet. And so by the time he left, you know, eight years later, stock price had risen 1,837%. Now, I don't know of any other company that has done that kind of return using this kind of, you know, working together or, you together or human leadership kind of approach. But for people who say this is fluffy, it's woo-woo, it's never going to work, all I point you to is the evidence shows otherwise.

There you go. I mean, it really does. I mean, you tap into the spirit and the humanity of people, and that's when you get the most value. One thing I recognized when I was very young, you know, I grew up with Russia and the USSR and the Soviet bloc, and when I was a kid, I would analyze, okay, why are the Soviets not better than us, or maybe they are better than us, maybe communism is a better way. And so I would sit and look and compare the two models of governance. But it's also when you look at the two models of our democracy and freedom as opposed to, you know, living in a world where they shoot you if you try to leave.

Because, you know, it's so great there. Why would you want to leave? So if you try to leave, we shoot you. And, you know, they had the wall. And I would look at both of them, and I realized that the spirit that comes with entrepreneurship, America, freedom, is about the human spirit. And I think our authors talk about that in the Constitution, or at least in the Federalist Papers. And that's what they imply, I think, in the constitution and and it's it's giving it's it's it's not putting a limit on the on the on the reach of what the human spirit the human idea the power of the mind can do with freedom to do and then i looked at you know in russia like in russia it doesn't matter if you

want to excel if you want to be an entrepreneur it doesn't matter if you at least not in the old soviet ussr you know everyone got the same paycheck no matter what you did. You know, everyone stood in bread lines no matter what you did. And unless you worked in the party, I suppose, or for the FSB. But, you know, it was basically a cap on the human spirit because you're basically told, hey, why work harder, do anything more? You just get paid the same, so fuck it, just give up and go about your life. And so the human spirit, when it's tapped into, when it feels like it can operate at its highest level inside of a corporation, it's just not some sort of enslaved thing where no matter how hard I work,

no matter how hard I care, no one listens, no one cares what I think. So why should I? Yeah, and that's exactly right. People don't care until they know how much you care. People say that all the time, but it's so true. You know, I think one of the things that is so interesting with this approach is that, you know, it really relies on intrinsic motivators, right? That's the grip to this, to this approach. If you can understand what motivates someone and you can infuse that into

the work that they do, right? So you're doing a little bit of job crafting, you're doing a little bit of customization, you know, for each person to what they need. That is the sustainable fire that gets them out of bed in the morning and gets them excited about the work that they're going to do because it ties into something that is so important intrinsically for them that they can't help but not want to do it. There you go. How to get them fired up. you do with your executive coaching clients that you work with in case there's prospective clients out there, you know, listening and they're like, hmm, how do you, what is the sort of work you do in an overview? Yeah. So from an executive coaching standpoint, I work with leaders to help them get to the next level, right? So I help them improve their performance.

Typically they're always already successful, but they want to take it to the next level. They want to get to that next level. And so we work on the things that are perhaps not optimized that they could improve upon to get there, as well as looking at the strengths that they already have and expanding those even further. There you go. So how do people, what level do people need to be at do they need to be on a certain level of income or a certain level of expertise or i noticed you know when your bio was at the top of forbes 50 i think it was yeah so from a b2c perspective i work with i'll work with pretty much anyone who is a good fit right we need to be a mutual fit. And from a B2B perspective, I typically work

with larger organizations and director level and above executives. There you go. And what's the best way for them to reach out to you, find out more about you and take from there? Yeah. So if they'd like to learn more about me or have a conversation, they can reach out via my website at drjennifernash.com. And there's a contact form there. They can fill that out and I'll be in touch. There you go. So final thoughts as we go out, pitch out on people to pick up the book and work with on the back end here.

Yeah. You know, like Chris said, my book is out there, Be Human, Lead Human. It's available at Amazon or wherever you like to buy your books. I have an online course coming out next month, which is also all around this topic of humans, and it's called the Humans Masterclass. So I'm very excited about that. People can check that out on my website. It'll be up there shortly. And I think what I would invite people to think about is, you know, I had someone tell me the other day, you know, I really love this book. I'm reading it, but I'm not reading it as quickly as I would like, because I'm finding that it really makes me think. And I was so happy to hear that, Chris, because that is my goal with the book. I want people to think and challenge their thinking about the beliefs that they hold

around leadership and what could be different going forward. There you go. You know, I used to blast through books and I was doing, I think last year I was trying to get to 100 or 200 books read and so I had audible on two and a half speed and I was blasting through books and we had a author come on the show and he said you shouldn't be doing that and I was like well okay why and he brought up some really good points he goes you're not he goes you're not retaining any of that knowledge all you're doing is just it's going in one ear out the other he goes well it was last you know great book that you read that you remember and I go atomic habits and you'll sort of you remember from it I was like pretty much nothing crap you're right I'm just trying to I'm

focused on the number of learning all these listening to all this stuff but none of its's sticking. And so now I actually, books that I love, you know, Marcus Aurelius, I just started reading it again. And I remember blowing through meditations, Marcus Aurelius, like really fast. I think I did an honorable book, and then I keep a copy locally that I read.

But I didn't retain like a lot of it. And so now I'm actually reading meditations. And I've got a book that's got annotations with notes that explain the background of what he's writing on every page. It's pretty cool. And so I'm reading probably two or three pages a day, sometimes one page a day. And I'm really sitting there and focusing on those two pages and trying to understand what that means. And I've really come to the conclusion my understanding and comprehension and retention is just massively there. So that's good people are doing that.

Yeah, it makes a huge difference. And everyone has their own particular learning style. So that works for you. And if the Chipmunk version on two times speed is great, then that's fantastic. I do find a lot of people who really, you know, the pencil and paper still. Yeah, I find it so much better. So now what I'm doing is going back through books that I really liked and trying to spend more depth on them, if you will. There you go. Well, this has been very insightful. Give us your dot com so people, if you will. There you go.

Well, this has been very insightful. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah, so it's drjennifernash.com, drjennifernash.com. There you go. And Jennifer, thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me, Chris. There you go.

Thanks for tuning in. Order up the book wherever fine books are sold it's available may 5th 2023 it's called be human lead human how to connect people and performance and order it up pass it around get on the program people because the world's changing to a much more human place i like human stuff it's uh it's uh what's that song by van halen that i love i forget the name of it says something to do with being human anyway thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time and that should have us out great show is it out yep do you want me to take a screenshot

and i can post that if you want you want i'll let me smile for you and look