The Ryan Leak Podcast - Anticipating Your Leader's Needs w/Chief of Staff Provider Catherine Berardi

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

Catherine Berardi is the CEO of Prime Chief of Staff, an organization that places, onboards, develops, and coaches high-performing Chiefs of Staff for high-performing companies. Highlights from this Episode: "As a follower, it's essential to help your leader carry the load."    "It's so important to listen and observe to be a good follower."    "You must be able to anticipate your leader's needs."    "Knowing someone and how they approach things helps you be able to anticipate their needs." "You don't blindly follow. You've got to understand who your following and why you're following them."  "It's important to understand the context or the why behind something that is asked of you. So you may determine what your leader truly needs." "Followers must maintain their own point of view."    "Active followers have their own emotions, thoughts, and feelings and know when to appropriately communicate them." For show notes and more episodes, check out ryanleak.com/followership.

Welcome to followership with Ryan Leake, a podcast designed to equip followers with the tools they need to succeed in the workplace. I don't know what kind of leader you have, but just so you know, regardless, if your leader is good, bad, or mediocre, that does not have to determine the type of follower that you can become. On today's episode, I have Catherine Berardi, who is the founder, CEO of Prime Chiefs of Staff, a firm that specializes in placing onboarding, developing, and coaching hyperboating. performing chiefs of staffs for private sector and nonprofit organizations all around the country. Today, we're going to be talking about how you can anticipate your leader's needs as a follower. Before we jump into that conversation with Catherine Berardi, I want you to know that the show notes to today's episode can be found on ryanleek.com slash followership. Again, that's ryanleek.com slash followership. Ladies and gentlemen, without any further ado, welcome. Catherine,

Marardi to followership with Ryan Lee. She is a speaker. She's a career advisor. And I'm so honored that she would take some time out of her busy schedule to be on followership with Ryan Lee. Catherine, welcome to followership. How you doing today? I'm doing well, Ryan.

Thanks for having me. Oh, yeah. Well, it's truly an honor. And everyone that I've spoken to about you just has nothing but great things to say. And I want our listeners before we dive into just a couple of questions. questions around followership. I want our listeners to learn a little bit more about your company and why you got into providing chiefs of staff for organizations. Yeah. So I'll start with my company. Prime Chief of Staff. I started seven years ago, which feels like a lifetime ago now.

But what we do is full service chief of staff advisory. And what that means is we help organizations assess their needs for a chief of staff. We will then place chiefs of staff in the role. And we also provide development for chiefs of staff in the form of onboarding and coaching. So we're kind of, you know, across the life cycle of a chief of staff, role in determining whether it should be considered for an organization all the way through determining what's the continued pathway for a chief of staff. And we also have a wonderful growing community of chiefs of staff in our network of many different backgrounds and experiences.

And we get together every year and host an annual Chief of Staff summit for them to learn, engage and connect with each other. So we're kind of all things, chief of staff. And how it came to be was I'm a former chief of staff myself. Nice. And even before that, you know,

I was somebody who I went to college originally for saxophone performance. Really? Yeah. So like, I wasn't, I was never destined to be a chief of staff. I never even knew about the role. before it, you know, it came to me.

And so I always like to remind people that, you know, your early career doesn't define, you know, what you end up doing. And, you know, especially like your college major. I think to, you know, how much an 18-year-old should really be deciding, you know, important decisions like that when they're wearing pajamas class. But, I mean, at the time, you know, and throughout my early career, I was figuring it out.

And there's some people who grow up and have a really great sense of what they want to do. And I didn't. You know, I liked a lot of things. I liked variety. I had different interests. And so I picked saxophone because it was something I was good at.

But, you know, I liked many things. And so I tell people that, you know, people who often find, their way to a role like a chief of staff. They have had a similar kind of hodgepodge of, you know, of interest and experiences growing up. And that's how I described my early career as well. I mean, I did, I did business development.

I did human resources. I did strategic planning, corporate marketing. I mean, I did everything and I loved it all. And I remember feeling like somebody was, you know, encouraging me to pick a lane to specialize. And I just didn't want to. And so I was in a corporate marketing job and a former boss of mine, Melody Hobson, called me up one day.

And she said, I want you to be my chief of staff. Wow. And I was like, what the heck is that? I didn't even know it was. So she said, basically, it's going to be an opportunity for you to learn. to learn everything that I do and I just need additional help because my my load is too much. And that to me sounded so appealing because I didn't have to pick a lane. You know, it gave me this kind of comprehensive purview of someone else's leadership.

And I could be multifaceted. I could be cross-functional in the position. So it really, really spoke to me. And when I found the role, it was the first time in my career, my professional career, where I felt like this is it. Like this is, this was meant for me. And that feeling of belonging, particularly, you know, in a career, it was very impactful for me. And that's what led to this idea of, you know, spreading the good word on the chief of staff role and helping more organizations understand its value. and then finding talent, you know, similar to myself in some ways who could, who could, you know, occupy this role and, and feel, you know, similarly to how I did.

I love that. Well, it seems to me like the chief of staff role, you know, you did it well and now you help organizations figure out how to do that well. and I love how melody, I love the verb which you use with you, bringing you in to help carry weight. I think that's huge. What would you say for a chief of staff role, you know, obviously, if you're going to be a chief of staff at any organization, it's going to require a high level of leadership.

I also think it requires a high level of followership because you're representing the CEO, in a lot of cases. And you're helping carry that load. So if I'm taking notes right now from you, I'm going, all right, if I want to be a better follower, I need to help my leader carry the load. Right.

Like that's the one thing I'm writing down. What's something else you think is vitally important? Maybe two things that are vitally important in that chief of staff role in terms of followership. Oh, man. Yeah. I learned so much about following. from my experience as a chief of staff.

And I think there's a lot to learn from followership. I mean, we spend so much time talking about leadership that we, and we look at it so binarily. You know, you're either a leader or a follower. And I think the chief of staff role, like you said, is a great position where it's a bit of both. I mean, you lead a lot of the organization, but you're following that principle, you know,

that executive, the CEO, or otherwise. And I think for me, I mean, the two things I would say that I learned in terms of followership was, you know, first, how important it is to listen and observe. You know, and I think particularly in the workplace, we don't really emphasize that a lot, right? I mean, we talk about achievement and getting things done, you know, and this role is no different. But when you're new to a chief of staff role, you know, the early days of this position are all about how you observe and listen to your principle to understand how they operate, to understand their thought processes. You know, understanding how they make decisions is critical to being a great. support, a great chief of staff to them. And if you go in and you don't take those moments to listen

and observe, it really doesn't reflect while in the position. So I think followership, you know, it's important to understand. It's still important to know what your role is, right? As a fault. And for me, it was very important that I understood that I need to be able to anticipate. anticipate Melody's needs. I need to be able, you know, to stay one step ahead of her or a few steps ahead of her. I've got to understand how she thinks. And I've got to play really close attention to that so that I can be that best support for her. So that's, yeah, that's the first thing I would say in terms of, you know, followership there.

And then, you know, next I would say, you know, you know, you know, still have to, as a follower, understand your own identity, right? I think sometimes, and we see this a lot with Chiefs of staff, when you're, when you're sort of encouraged to emulate someone else, it can be so easy to take on their style, their behavior, even their words. I mean, I would catch myself at times, like literally, you know, saying things like melody or my mannerisms would become hers. Right, right. I realize that I can't, I have to stay, I have to remain intact to my values and who I am,

even though I'm following this person and I'm an extension of her. I have to still have a point of view myself. And I think that's really important for followership. You know, you don't blindly follow. You've got to understand who you're following and why. and make sure that that, you know, those values they align so that you can do, again, the best job that you're supposed to do. And so that was an important lesson for me because this was earlier in my career when I became a chief of staff. And I think it was easy for me to just take on someone else's identity rather than become more comfortable with my own and understand the kind of person and the kind of professional I wanted to be.

Wow. I have so many questions based off of what you just said, and I don't know where to begin. Catherine, that was awesome. That was awesome. I mean, I'm trying to figure out, I literally just wrote down six questions, and I'm trying to figure out which one I should ask you next. Because what you just said last, what you just said last, I really want to hone in on. Yeah. But I don't want our listeners to forget and miss anything that you just said. So I want to, I want to, to back up just a little bit. Yeah. Back to where you recommend you anticipating needs.

I think it's huge for a really great follower. How does a follower do that? How do you understand your leader well? You talked about, you know, knowing how they make decisions. You talked about how you had to learn how melody would think. How does what I think happens with the, lot of followers is they're given a lot of assignments without a lot of direction. Yes, yeah.

They're given lots of projects without a lot of vision. And so it's like, go figure this out. And so a big part of followership is this big guessing game. It's like, what, what do I do? So how can a follower play that game well? How can a follower anticipate needs and really learn their leader well? That's a great question. I mean, I think like you said, it's so easy to take a directive at face value.

And instead, I think it works so much better if you can really understand the context behind a directive. You know, why are you being asked to do something as opposed to just what? So understanding the why I think is very important to great followers. and this idea of anticipating needs. And Melody used to do something with me. I'll never forget. My first day as a chief of staff, we had to go to a meeting. And she's like, you know, you don't need to say anything.

Just take copious notes and listen. And after the meeting, I'm going to ask you what I'm thinking. And you tell me what I'm thinking. And we're going to do this until we get on the same page. And you can imagine like me, you know, fifth week, you know, day one. I'm like, this is going to be terrible. I mean, I'm not going to have any idea what she's thinking. And I didn't, right?

I mean, I went to the meeting. I took all these notes. And I, you know, I don't even remember what I said when we debriefed afterward. But over time, with more exposure, time together, repetitions of being with her, you know, and my learning and observing her style, what she was going to say next, you can really start to understand, you can kind of get into the mind of somebody and understand, you know, again, like the thought processes they're going to take. And for me, that exercise of pushing myself to be aligned with her when we left a meeting was important. I wanted to, I wanted to get on

that same page. And, you know, I would say, honestly, it probably took me nine months. This isn't something you do overnight. You know, when we, we like to say we can read rooms quickly and we're great judges of character, but to really understand some of these things and how people operate, it just takes time and it takes a relationship building to do. And that's where the context comes in. You know, knowing somebody and the way in which they approach situations, that's going to help you understand, is this directive really what they want? Or is it something? else, you know, and that's why I think that listening and observing is so important. Wow. No, I absolutely love that. The other thing that I had wrote down is this idea of

understanding your own identity and not blindly following. I mean, we could talk about this for an hour. Because isn't that short of the name of the game when it comes to being a follower? It's just like you just kind of do what you're told. You just kind of, get in line. You just, sometimes there's this idea of a passive follower. What you spoke to a little bit ago to me was more of an active follower. One that has emotions, has feelings, has opinions, but can present those in a respectful way. How does one guard themselves from becoming a blind follower that is just following for the sake of peace,

following for the sake of salary, following for the sake of health benefits of just going, listen, I'm not going to ruffle any feathers. I'm just going to tell you what you want to hear. And as long as I do that, it seems that the people that tell you what you want to hear still have jobs. How does one protect their authenticity

and still remaining a good follower? It's difficult. I will start by saying that. And, you know, and again, I mean, I experienced it myself of sometimes looking in the mirror and going, am I Catherine or am I melody? I mean, you know, and I'll never forget to use a specific example here.

I had to write, I had to write something for melody once. And I showed it to her. So it was in her, her voice, her tone, all of those things. I showed it to her and she said, this doesn't have a point of view. And I was, you know, I was so focused on writing it like her. You know, you're seeing clauses like she did and the word she used and things like that. That it totally didn't have a point of view. And she said, I never want to be indifferent.

And she's like, most importantly, I never want you to be indifferent. You know, I never want to give you something and you just complete it. without thinking through what it really means. And it was such a good lesson for me to make sure that I maintained a point of view as often as possible. And I think that's so important for followers. Because again, I think when you blindly follow,

your point of view becomes theirs. It becomes the leaders. And it's not always the case. While often we are aligned, there are some things where we're not aligned. And that's okay. And that we need awareness. We need that self-awareness to understand

what are our points of view on things. And if there's a lot of friction there, when is it the right time to speak up and say something? You know, and chiefs know this well. You can't pick every battle, but there are certain battles that you are absolutely going to push back on because it's not jiving with you. And it's not jiving with you as a person or a professional.

And that's why it's so important to know what those values are and to know what your point of view is or else I think it's very easy to blindly follow anyone. Wow. I'm jotting down so many notes. And I just think that everything that you just said is huge for a follower. And I can't thank you enough. for taking some time out of your busy day just to spend some time on followership with Ryan League. I know our listeners are taking down copious notes as well.

And I think we all learned a lot today. I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Catherine. She's brilliant. She has so much insight. All of that was off the dome. Didn't send her any questions before. We just talked. And she had so many insights.

There's a couple of things that I wrote down that I want you to think about today. and the first thing is this. I want you to ask yourself, are you a passive or active follower? Are you a passive or active follower? Do you just go with the flow for a check, health insurance, so you don't have to rock the boat? Or do you have your own set of emotions, thoughts, and feelings,

and you know how to appropriately state them? If you are a passive follower, I want you to take some time to really think about what your own feelings, thoughts, and emotions really are. And then I want you to think about how you can start to appropriately communicate them to your colleagues, also perhaps to your leader. Hey, thank you so much for listening to this episode of fellowship with Ryan Lee. If you enjoy today's message, I encourage you to share it with a friend, rate it, review it, and always remember to subscribe.