The Ryan Leak Podcast - The Benefit of Check-ins w/Debbie Mitchell

Episode Date: October 10, 2022

It's one thing to figure out what to do after you've been fired. But what Debbie Mitchell encourages us to do is to think through what we should do before it ever gets to a point of termination. You can learn more about Debbie Mitchell's executive coaching on our new coaching platform at https://www.ryanleak.com/coaching.

Welcome to the followership podcast with Ryan Lee. It's a podcast designed to talk about the other side of leadership. So many organizations, you know, they could have hundreds of thousands of employees, but how many of those people are leaders? Well, that's a pretty small percentage of people are actually leading in that organization. Whereas most of the organization is going to find themselves doing a lot of following, and that's what this podcast is designed to. help people understand a little bit more.

Today, I've got a really good friend of mine. Debbie Mitchell is on the podcast today. She is an HR executive. She has great expertise in the area of human resources. We've been having some coaching conversations over the past a couple of episodes. And Debbie is also an executive coach and has helped many people kind of grow in their career and whatnot. And so we are honored and delighted that Debbie would take some time out of her schedule to spend some time with the followership crew. Debbie, welcome to followership with Ryan League.

How are you today? Ryan, I'm so excited to be here, finally. I'm good. I'm good. I'm so looking forward to this. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be great. You know, I have, I feel like I have like a hundred questions for you that I'm not going to get to exactly. But I just, I think to kick it off, you know, you sat in that HR seat for the majority of your career. What's the craziest thing that somebody has just, what shocked you? Because because the reason I love HR executives. They're some of my favorite humans in the world because they get to see a side of the world that people just never see. Like they get unbelievable resumes. They get unbelievable phone calls and it complaints. What's the thing? Like they've been there. They've done that. I don't want to say

they've seen it all, but it takes a lot to shock an HR exec. That's why I like this. So tell me, what's something that you just made your mouth drop. You could not believe this person said that, put this on their resume, said this in an interview. What's something that shocked you? The one you didn't see coming.

Okay, I could tell you, it's funny, because as soon as you started the question, I knew exactly what the question was. So, you know, funnily enough, it did not come from one of the orders, organizations where I would have expected, right? Like I've worked in casino gaming. There's plenty of crazy there.

Worked in sports. Some crazy there. It was not that. It was in a tech company that I worked at. And we had to lay somebody off. And I always have the manager in with me because the manager gets to speak to the employee about what it was specifically that went wrong. Okay.

They don't work for me. They work for that manager. Okay. So the manager was delivering the news of this particular individual that he had been, he's being laid off, he was being terminated. And he explained the circumstances and why, which is that part I don't remember. But I remember sitting in this small conference room, the three of us, and the employee stood up.

and he pointed his finger at his manager and he said this proves what I knew for sure you are possessed by the devil he went into this whole apostolic and literally jaw on the table wow

and so I just possessed by the devil You are possessed by the devil. I had not trained for this one. You had the manager leave. Let the man finish. Bring it back down to you. Okay, can we walk out?

Yeah. Did not see that one coming. Wow. I didn't see that would come in either. Right? I didn't know what you were going to say. Oh, that's the craziest. Wow.

Yeah. That is absolutely amazing. Yeah. Well, from your seat, working in different organizations in that HR role, what do you think is a distinguishing characteristic of somebody that you watched come into an organization one way, but they grew? They stepped into some new things. And maybe to contrast that, what are some characteristics that you see? saw you go, this person remain the same their entire time there. Can you compare and contrast a little bit

of what you've seen just from your seat? I want to help our audience today that, you know, they may be at a job that they tolerate, if you will. You know, what are some things that you would say distinguish the people that are growing versus the people that stayed stagnant? Sure, that's a great question. You know, Ryan, the people that stay stagnant are typically, in my experience, the people who come in and they know everything. Right?

They are so kind of shut down from learning or wanting to grow whether that's learning how this particular company does what they do or about their role. They're just, they know it all.

Right? And in fact, there's, well, I should be teaching you because I'm so good at this. Wow. And when you come in with that mindset, it just puts up a wall between any potential learning and growth that you have. And I feel like leaders and your colleagues they don't want to help anymore. Right?

Well, I can't talk to him because he knows it all. The people who on the flip side that I've seen really grow and thrive have a certain level of confidence balanced with humility, right? They're confident in the fact that they can do what's asked even if they don't understand it all right now. I know I'll be able to do it. I'll know I'll be able to do it well, but I may need you to teach me how you would like it done

or I'm not so confident in this particular spot. The other thing is that people who are willing to be vulnerable in terms of, I don't know, I have no idea. Show me. I'm sorry. I made a mistake. Help me to be better.

They took ownership. Yeah, exactly. And they are willing to learn. They want to get better. And they're just open. They help. They help their colleague. They're not,

not everything is a constant race to the top. Right. I'm going to shut you down so I can shine. No. Here, let me help you shine, and I'm just, I'm happy with that. I'm excited for you. Those are the people that get watched, and they don't even know they're being watched necessarily. Yeah.

In your seat, there are people that, obviously, there's all sorts of challenges that we see all across the country in terms of hiring, firing, furlowing, all of that stuff. Some people, some companies just, they have to let people go. because of just their business, their supply chain, all sorts of different challenges that small and large businesses have faced over the past three years. For people that you have been in the seat where you've had to let people go, not for downsizing reasons.

Like, they got fired because they weren't good at their job. Yep. For those people, what do you wish you could have said to them? How would you have coached that person a month before they're firing? That's a good question. Like if you could go back and say, hey, before we get to this place, if you would just learn, if you would just, is it self-aware? where you, what do you wish you could go back?

Because I'm sure you sat in front of somebody and you just wish, I wish I could have saved you. But it was too late. So if we could rewind the clocks back. Yeah. I, you know, of course, circumstances are so specific for specific individuals. Sure. In general, what I would say is, I wish that you, would check in with your manager, supervisor.

And the reason I say that is because no matter how much leadership training and coaching and education and skill a manager has, they've got limited time in the day. And a lot of times, they just don't want to have that difficult conversation. They're not going to approach you and say, hey, you need to adjust this, change this, do this, stop this. Okay, let's put a pin in that. Let's put a pin in that. Okay.

Because that's big. That's big. I want you to talk more about that. Because what you're saying is for people that are listening today, for the people that are listening today, most likely their leader has a tough time having difficult conversation. So would it be safe to say? We should assume that our leader wants to have a difficult conversation with us,

but either doesn't have the tools to do that or there's some barrier that's keeping them from being honest with us. A hundred percent. And therefore, it's our job to check in with our supervisor, our leader, to pull some of those things out of them to make a difficult conversation, which is difficult both ways, but it will be a lot easier if the follower initiates the conversation

that says, hey, how can I get better? Exactly. If the follower can go to that leader and just open the door, in any hard conversation with your story, spouse, with your kids, with that person that you think is really cute that you want to ask out, the hardest part of that is getting that conversation started. Yep.

Once you start talking, things will flow, right? And it doesn't have to be some big speech or some, there's no format. Yeah. You can stop by their desk or in the world of COVID. you could hop on at Teams or a Zoom or whatever and just say, hey, I wanted to check in, is there anything that you think I could do a little bit better? And just leave it open.

It's not threatening. It allows them to say, okay, well, yeah, there is. This is that one. Here's the perfect opening for me to bring up that thing that I've been wanting to talk to you about. It's also good practice. Yeah. Follow her as looking to become the leader someday.

Yeah. Be able to initiate those conversations. It's good practice. I 100% agree because there's always two sides of a difficult conversation. And unless you have the empathy to know what it's like to be on the other side of that conversation, sometimes that makes it even more difficult. but I think the more that the more that we engage

in those kind of conversations, I think the more that you prepare yourself as a leader for having more more difficult conversations. I'm wondering about when it's too late for a person.

I wonder, you know, for a person that has lost their job, you know, what would what would you say to somebody that for whatever reasons, good, bad, indifferent, downsizing, furlowing, there's lots of job transitions.

What would you say to that person that just lost their job? I'm so glad you asked me this question because it's at the root of how I started to realize that I loved coaching people. Just sitting at that table or at that desk having the conversation

with someone that you have just upended their world as they know it, right? And I just think that just because you do this one thing today does not mean that you were intended to do this one thing forever and ever and ever and ever. You wanted to grow and change. and stretch. And you may not have thought you were ready to do it right now,

but this is going to prove to you that you're capable of more, that you're more resilient than you thought, that you're happier, that you are smarter, that you have a better network, that you really needed a rest, whatever it is. So this is one moment in a huge life, in a huge career, that you're going to have. Absorb it, think through it,

and then, you know, if you need to cry, you can cry. I told people, you get one day. I tell my daughter, you get one day to wallow. Yeah. Any more than that, you start to get stuck in it. You get one day, and then you get up, and you start thinking through what comes next.

What do you want to see next? And I've seen some amazing transitions. Really? Like what? So early in my career, I worked at an outplacement center. We shut down a division of an aerospace contractor, right? These are very niche employees that were at the time, like, old enough to be my father, telling them that they were going to lose the job that they had had for 30 years. I mean, to see a grown man sit before sobbing.

That was, I was like, you cannot cry, Debbie, you cannot cry. You're the only girl here. You cannot cry. You're the younger person in here. You cannot cry. And to be able to just extend a little empathy and call and check on people, I have, there was a guy, Ryan, called one day. And he said it was over. He was going to end his life.

Wow. And I'm on the phone and trying to get people to say, somebody needs to call 911, this guy, and they told me I stay on the phone with him. He eventually came back. He got a new job. I don't even know what the job was. But the thing was, he saw the darkest moment of his life. And he figured out a way to do the thing that he had always wanted to do.

you know, and I think about him and I think if he could go for wanting to end it all, he's finding something that made him happy, surely the rest of us can do that. Yeah. Right? That's awesome. Yeah. I've seen people start businesses. I've seen people do just complete career pivots.

I've seen people go get a better job at a competitor, sadly come back and say, look at me, look at what I said. Y'all kick me to the curb. Boom. Don't you wish you had kept me, right? Right.

That's funny. That's awesome. Well, Debbie is joining our coaching platform. And Debbie, I want you to be able to explain to people, kind of what is your coaching structure? What's your rubric? What's the thing that you kind of hang your hat on when someone enters into a coaching relationship with you? So at at ryanleek.com, you'll see a tab there for coaches and Debbie is one of them. And so if someone were to

click on that today, what would that? what would that practically look like, you know, over the course of six months to a year? I know you've got various, various deals that you do, but what would something like that look like with you? Sure. Well, I'm a people person. I'm empathetic. But I try to get to know my clients.

I don't know you. Not just what kind of work you want to do. I want to know you. Yeah. What you're happy? Who's in your family? family, where are you from? Yeah.

Football team, basketball team, all the things, right? I want to know you. Yeah. From there, you know, I'm a big believer in the fact that all of us have gifts and talents and strengths. Most of the time, we don't even realize that it's a talent or a strength. We can do it with our eyes closed, right? Right. It's just what you do.

Yeah. Not everybody can do that. There's somebody who admires that, somebody who really needs that. And you just think that's breathing. So trying to help people really get a view and understanding of what they bring to the table. And once they are good with that, once I feel like they really understand what they have to offer, then we go see what table we're going to offer it at. Yeah.

I know what I bring. Who needs it, who wants it? Who do I want to share it with? Yeah. I love that. And because I've worked in so many industries and I've worked with recent college graduates up through, you know, executive level,

I can see pathways. It's just kind of, in careers. Like, you did this. Do you know how transfer? it is to this career over here. Right. You don't always see it. That is one of my strengths.

I could see it. Yeah, and I was going to echo that. I would say, like, you are a career path expert. Like, you can help people not just get from A to C. I think you help them see it. Like, I think, like, part of what is your gifting is you're able to help people see things that they couldn't see in themselves and help them, help them see that path. So I think that's awesome. Debbie, thank you so much for being on followership with Ryan Lake. I think you helped a lot of

people today. And I hope people get connected with you on our site as well. Wanted to just introduce you to our audience. And I think you're going to add a lot of value to a lot of our clients. So once again, thanks for being on followership with Ryan Lee.