Tell me about your vision.
Where did this all come from? And you know, and I know that that's just like a very vague and blank question,
but overall, I'm sure you had a vision and I'm not sure if you knew all these five things were gonna come out of it,
but what did your vision start out as?
So, you know, I've been in the field of human resources for about 30 years,
combined with everything that I've done. I've been in the seat,
I've been, I have had the privilege of consulting over to over 600 different small businesses.
I've worked for six fortune 500 companies.
And
as the world has started to shift,
my environment shifted and
I kind of was, I was fried. If you really want to know the truth, I was totally fried and
I'm like if I have to answer one more question about unemployment,
you know, it was just like it wasn't fun anymore. And so,
you know, last year was kind of a, it was kind of a very interesting year. I went through a lot of personal trauma and
I'm like, you know, you got to come out of this at some point in time and
initially I had started to help HR professionals, but
again, it was like, I wasn't, it didn't feel like it totally aligned. So
while I was kind of unplugged in a little hiding, working quietly behind the scenes,
I started thinking it's like, well, like what are you good at doing?
And I just like, if I'm, when I come out, I want to come out like
just in total 100% alignment of what my gifts are.
And so I spent a lot of time thinking and like what exactly do I do well?
And one of the things that I realized is that I'm actually really good at finding patterns.
And the more I looked into this, I went, well, that makes sense because you know, I can see patterns of behavior.
There's a lot of predictors that are in that we might be onto something here. So
knowing that dealing with very difficult people and people that have very, very
like really challenging tendencies, like narcissistic tendencies, for instance, right?
People who love to argue and debate everything like, you know, it's like how do you deal with that?
Everything like, you know, it's like, how does a leader navigate that stuff?
And it is some. And then when I look back at my career, it's like,
those are the biggest questions that I ever answered and the most of them.
So I'm like, why am I not doing that?
So that's really where it came from.
And, you know, I've had the fortune of being part of high performing teams.
I've seen high performing teams come together.
I've built high performing teams throughout my career.
I've helped navigate them. So I'm like, there you go.
And, you know, Will and I have known each other for about four years.
And we got into talking about writing a book after we both spoke together down in Tampa
a couple of years ago. And that was the kind of what kicked it all off.
And so, yeah, it's pretty exciting stuff.
What are some of the biggest challenges you see leaders face?
So right now, my director of security is informing me something's going on outside.
So I see that leaders face is that when it comes to people issues,
there's like three things that if they make these changes,
then things are going to start to align a little bit better.
I think what happens is that leaders sometimes, you know, they're in their group.
I'm not even I think I know they get in their group and they they have to be in their group.
They have to make decisions with only a limited amount of information sometimes,
especially in business. But when it comes to people, when it comes to HR related things,
you have to go a little bit deeper and understand that when when you have somebody,
an employee or a co-worker or something like that, and they engage in conflict or they start
conflict or they're initiating or they're frustrated as all get out, there's always a reason why.
Always. It's not just because of who they are. I mean, if if that's just how they are all the time,
then they need help that we can't provide them. Right. But more often than not, somebody there was
an event that took place of some kind. And typically, leaders will set the expectations
that listen, I need you to just get this done. And they don't maybe necessarily realize the
challenges that the employee is facing. Conversely, the employee is not always willing to come out and
say, hey, listen, I'm stuck here or I'm having a problem. They'll just react. And, you know,
that comes with like, we even though we may be adults, there's different levels of maturity,
a very high mature person with high emotional intelligence is not going to have a problem
saying, hey, listen, I need to I need to take a knee here. I need to talk to you about what's
going on. I'm looking for a solution. I'm to a point here where either the solution is something
that I can't do or I just don't see it yet in front of me. That's a very high emotional,
high mature kind of employee. You're not so high. More immature employees are going to be the ones
that are going to be your passive aggressive people. Those are really hard to deal with. They're
going to be your narcissists. They're going to be your people who love to argue and debate everything.
Right. So that means that there's three things that leaders can do. The first thing is, is that
they can listen more and talk less. And when they do that, they're going to learn a lot. They're
going to hear what people are telling them. Their behaviors are because people will tell you what
they're doing. Those are behaviors. And if you listen for the behaviors and not dial in on the
attitude, which a lot of people think that if I just curve this person's attitude, it's going to
be better. Well, have you ever told a grumpy four-year-old that you have a bad attitude?
Yeah. How well did that work out? Right. Same thing. Not at all. So if we listen more and talk
less, we're going to learn a lot more, which means that we are now moving forward with whatever
decisions that we make based off of data and knowledge. Right. Then the second thing is,
is that when they ask good questions, they get good answers. Right. And that's a really good
thing. Anything that you do, if you ask good questions, you get good answers. One of the
things that you can focus in on is like, help me understand, how did we get here? Help me understand
what happened. Help me understand why this is now coming up. And when you ask that question in that
manner, what you're doing is you're actually taking the person out of it. And you're only focusing in
on the things that can be controlled, not the individual. And that you'll just, and that's how
you, one of the ways that you just cut through all that drama. Here's the key. If they can articulate
it, you got something to work with. If they can't, and they just take you around the cyclical thing
about how they feel and all these extemporaneous things without actually identifying the core and
the root of the problem. All that is ego and drama. Which means that that's when the leader can say,
okay, listen, we need to get this train back on the tracks again. Here's what I expect. Right.
And then the last thing is that the power of somebody's leadership will always lie in the
follow-up. So once a leader starts getting things moving forward again, after they've gone through,
you know, helping me understand, they see the behaviors, then what they need to do,
then it can't just trust that that train is going to go straight because you don't know if that track
has an infinite, infinite, you know, direction. It may have a cliff, the bridge may have been blown
off, right? Who knows, but following up and just like, Hey, just want to check in with you, see how
things are going. And by the way, did this, this, that, and the other thing get resolved. And if not,
let me know, let's figure out how we move forward. When you do that, wouldn't it mean what it's tells
him somebody that is that, wow, man, I'm important enough. Like I matter enough for this person to
take five minutes out of their day to see how things went after we had to go through all of that.
Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned into Vision Pros Live. I'm looking
forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward. This is going to get
more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll invite people to
participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and attention. Have an excellent time
building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.