Influencing Clients Through Compelling Communication

As the second month of the year wraps up, so have the sales kick-off meetings.  Across all B:B sales teams, internal meetings have set the strategy and the revenue goals to supercharge the year ahead. New solutions and big expectations for what the sales team can accomplish. And at each of these meetings, salespeople get new product features and new demonstrations, but not always added support and coaching on how to advance client conversations. And that’s the most essential part of expanding relationships.

It’s the paradigm in relationships that every salesperson experiences.

You’ve got a group of relationships that you’ve developed over time.  It started by bringing the right solution to a problem. It continued as you delivered outcomes, and at some point, it took hold as you built trust.  Today, you have a base of clients who value your product(s) and trust your inputs. So much so that as time passes, complacency settles in.

Not because you aren’t earnest. More because you didn’t know how to get beyond your current reputation.

Unintentionally, as you delivered outcomes, your customers aligned those outcomes to your company’s brand. And so, you’re known by one solution, not a whole family of solutions.

Or in today’s environment, you have new solutions that weren’t even a part of your portfolio when you started the relationship. And the paradigm becomes the more you solve for one kind of problem, the deeper the impression sets as the company with that solution.

• If you sold a retailer a new e-payment solution…it may be hard to expand that relationship to offer security solutions.
• If you positioned an HR tool for tracking employee data…it may be challenging to reposition that same tool with marketing for tracking consumer analytics.
• Or if you sold a technology that simplifies finance functions…it’s hard to repackage it as an operational tool that simplifies supply chain functions.

But those are the common asks of most B:B sales teams today.

So, How Do You Solve It?

As companies expand their offerings, apply technologies to more complex problems and race to see who can embed the best AI solutions everywhere and in everything, capabilities and offerings are changing overnight. Yesterday’s go-to-market story has evolved so much that even the sales team isn’t quite sure how to tell it. And if they’re going to get to new buyers and drive increased revenue, they’re going to have to broaden the conversation.

We’ve seen many of the sales toolkits roll out this year, and that’s the tool sales teams need that’s missing.

“The methodology to broaden, expand or change a conversation”

Salespeople are armed with your company’s latest offerings and capabilities. But they aren’t given a lot of support in how to evolve conversations to get all those new solutions in front of the right people.

In the past, it happened organically over time. The more time they spent in an account, the more people they met. And they could leverage the relationship by being knowledgeable and responsive.

But time seems to be the only thing companies aren’t counting on these days. There’s an urgency to pull related capabilities together and introduce a broader family of solutions that reaches into multiple areas of a company. And that requires sales team to shift conversations faster as they compete with new players and different objectives.

That’s why we’re helping sales groups rethink how they leverage our storyline process.

Since it’s built from a listener’s perspective, the idea of setting perspective with insights is a strong starting point. It’s helped hundreds of sales teams learn how to frame expertise against a customer’s needs rather than their own capabilities. And we’re showing teams how to leverage the same concept to broaden and shift conversations. In many cases, we’re building templates for specific situations which helps a group accelerate faster.

If you’ve introduced our foundational storyline to your team, here’s how you can leverage it further:

• We coach teams to use outside insights to pivot inside beliefs. By doing this, we can help a group lift the altitude of perspective and broaden a conversation to get to other areas of a company.
• We coach teams to minimize a roadblock by setting broader alignment to an ideal state and positioning a roadblock as one element that they can resolve to get to that state.
• And we coach teams to create a bias toward action by bringing options and risks to customers rather than single recommendations.

The pace at which companies are eager to move starts with sales teams who are confident and capable of broadening conversations. It isn’t easy.  It’s a different conversation, and an essential one, to expand relationships quickly. If you’ve armed your group with new product capabilities and bigger revenue expectations, but you forgot about the communication essentials, it’s not too late.

Let’s talk about how to reset relationships and get your team in the right conversations.

We’re here when you need us!

Want a free 15-minute consultation with us to see how we can help you or your leaders? Book a call now!

Building a Business & The Power of Stories with Hodges Markwalter and Mary Scott Jameson

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Taking on the journey of entrepreneurship is not an easy feat and it’s not for the faint of heart. It takes passion behind your product or service and quite a bit of gusto on how you deliver your messages to investors and potential customers.

On this episode of What’s Your Story, hear from entrepreneurs Mary Scott Jameson and Hodges Markwalter about their journey to building a business, the power of stories when doing this, and how small things can have big impacts.

 

More about Mary Scott Jameson

An Atlanta native, Mary Scott Jameson, is Sitano’s co-founder and CEO/Creative Director. Mary Scott attended the University of Georgia with a B.A. in Art History and minor in Spanish. She began her career in fashion almost 10 years ago in the Neiman Marcus buying program. Since then, she has pursued various positions in HR, conference and event planning, and business development in various industries. She also spends time interviewing female founders on her podcast, She Had A Vision.

More about Hodges Markwalter

Hodges Markwalter is the Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Office of Atlanta-based VIVA Finance, a fintech upstart that provides working Americans access to fair and affordable credit. His responsibilities include overseeing VIVA’s growth initiatives, including digital marketing, partnerships, and revenue operations. Prior to co-founding VIVA, Hodges worked at Truist Securities as an analyst in their Equity Capital Markets group. Hodges earned a BA in Finance from the University of Notre Dame, graduating with Cum Laude honors.

 

Show Notes

LAUNCHING A COMPANY:

00:11:50– How do you get your first audience for your business? How do you get started into changing it from an idea to a business?

00:15:00- Mary Scott takes us down a different path from VIVA Finance.

GET BUY IN:

00:17:30– Fundraising with investors and getting buy in into the next phase.

00:18:29– Mary Scott describes her story of finding different spaces to include her brand and her product.

00:19:49– Hodges talks about the early days of pounding the pavement and tells us how he created his pitch.

FEEDBACK AND BUILDING A BRAND:

00:21:47– When a company’s story or brand is really compelling, when thinking about your company what was the feedback that was helpful in the early stages when building your story?

00:22:33- Hodges talks about being nimble.

00:24:00- Mary Scott shares the feedback she received in the early stages of building her company and the feedback she continues to receive.

INVESTORS:

00:25:52- What does it take to get an investor to back you? One key takeaway.

STORIES:

00:28:12– Stories shared by Mary Scott and Hodges about the early days of launching their businesses.

• • Mary Scott shares a story about when losing sleep became a best seller and solidified her commitment to her company.
  • Hodges tells us a story about how doing something so small was the make or break moment of his company’s success.

Like what you hear? Hear more episodes like this on the What’s Your Story podcast page!

Do I Need a Coach?

Last year, I spent a lot of time on airplanes which can lead to a lot of introductory conversations. And when you introduce yourself as a communication coach, most seatmates have questions. The most common one is:

Do you think I need a coach?

A complex question which always gets a broad response from me: “It depends.” And from there, I learn a lot about someone’s career path and aspirations to date.

If I were sitting next to you, I’d say:

If this is the year that you want to get beyond roadblocks that have held back your career advancement and visibility…coaching is a great option.

Or if this is the year that you’ve been handed a great opportunity and it’s getting bigger and moving faster than you expected…coaching is a great option.

Communications coaching can help you push through almost any obstacle or excel at almost any opportunity.

But coaching doesn’t make sense if you’ve earmarked this as the year you want to coast or stand still. The value of coaching gets diluted when you don’t have any expectations or outcomes aligned to it.

If our practice is any indication, executive coaching is up by almost 30% in comparison to other leadership development programs. And the reason is the urgency to get results and the desire for hands-on support across leadership levels.

Our practice is built on two formats: group workshops and individual coaching. So, we’re not partial to one over the other. But where workshops rely on hypothetical situations and commonalities across a group of people to coach new skills, 1:1 coaching shifts from hypotheticals to real situations and from potential outcomes to desired results.

And I think that’s why we’ve seen such growth in executive coaching. The pace of work and expectations from work have increased significantly. And people who are in positions that carry the weight of those expectations want individual support at their fingertips.

But back to the introductory conversation. If we continue to talk about coaching, I’m likely to say:

The question isn’t really whether you need a coach because most people find value in coaching.

The most important question is how to choose a coach.

And that’s a conversation we have every day.

Chemistry Comes First: A one-on-one coaching engagement is a lot about chemistry between you and the coach. And most people set an introductory call to test this. But a lot of people don’t know how to interview a coach or consider what chemistry really means.

An initial reaction to someone is pretty easy. But more important than finding a coach you like is finding a coach who adds value.

Having been interviewed hundreds of times, many people approach the interview by diving into all their challenges or sharing all the feedback they’ve received and asking for a “diagnosis.” And it’s helpful to give a coach some perspective and focus for an engagement. But the coach doesn’t know you yet, so they won’t have all the answers.

Instead, consider one specific situation to share with the coach and see how they coach you around it. This will highlight how the coach gains insights, approaches situations and leads a discussion with you.

Learn about Approach & Process: If you bring an example as noted above, you’ll see the approach illustrated. And it easily leads to discussion of what to expect and how to manage the engagement. And that leads to process.

There are many coaches who have “fallen” into coaching as a next step to their own career experience. Expertise and experience are not the same thing, especially in the world of communication. If you want to mimic the way someone else has done something, you may prefer to have a mentor in your field or organization.

But if you want to strengthen and deepen your own skill set, then you want someone who has expertise in skill development.

Balance Process & Priorities: There’s a balance between following a process and prioritizing someone’s situations. And the best coaches do it well. But a less experienced coach may lean too much one way or the other. The “process” coach builds a plan and follows it to the letter. Each session is mapped out against goals. But there is little flexibility to shift from it. And that means your discussions will stay hypothetical or in parallel to your work, not immersed in it. And that loses a lot of value the coach can have working through situations that are in front of you.

A coach without process will let you run the show which means they react to what you bring them. This may keep your priorities front and center, but it also puts all the impetus of preparation on you. And that often adds more work versus more coaching.

In communication coaching, our formula for coaching is a balance of skills and situations. So, we drive a process that flexes to your needs and priorities. That ensures you leave us with an expanded toolkit and confidence in the application of those skills because we adopted and adapted them to your situations throughout the engagement.

As my seat mate, you don’t really want the details of our process yet. So, I don’t map it out. Instead, I wrap-up our discussion with one final point.

At some point in your career, you will leverage a coach. It may be for a peak in your career to support added responsibility. It may be for a valley in your career to work through roadblocks. Or it may be for all the steps between the peaks and valleys.

You have to decide when the timing is right for you. Communication coaching is different than coaching for tennis or golf. It isn’t about when you have the time for it. It’s about when you have the greatest need. And when you do, it’s time.

We’re here when you need us!

Want a free 15-minute consultation with us to see how we can help you or your leaders? Book a call now!

Reigniting Ideas & Strategies with Teams with Keith Wilmot

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It’s safe to say we all wish we could wake up every day and bring everything we have to the roles we’re in. Each day would be a new day, every agenda a clean slate. But the reality is that many of us are in roles that are a little messier than that.

So messy in fact that getting to new ideas or exploring an out-of-the-box concept isn’t easy. In fact, with a pile of problems and challenges in our every day, new ideas can feel impossible.

Unless you’ve spent time with Keith Wilmot.

In our latest episode of What’s Your Story, Sally talks with Keith about how his agency, Ignitor, helps teams get unstuck by blending process and creativity to release new ideas and broaden the lens on most situations. And he also has a wild story to share about his own experience with getting unstuck.

 

More about Keith Wilmot

Keith’s successful career spans over two decades of leading innovation and creativity for global brands such as Coca-Cola, Listerine, Neosporin, Brach’s Candy and many more. Keith has extensive experience in global, publicly traded organizations, as well as leading small, privately held firms. He is described by his team as a student of leadership and disciplined operator with a unique skillset of money and magic.

Show Notes

• Coca-Cola Company – coca-colacompany.com
  • Built an internal agency called Ignitor https://ignitoragency.com/
  • Built innovation capability, behaviors, and mindset shifts in the organization to allow creativity to happen inside the organization.
• McDonald’s mcdonalds.com
• Nandos nandos.com
• Mercedes-Benz mercedes-benz.com
  • The first company to create the crash dummy and the crash dummy process
• Leaders get stuck in some core behaviors and mindsets that force certain types of processes and operations and organizations.
  • Impact efficiency
  • Impact teams and organization
• If they’re not intentional about breaking those patterns and looking differently at their organization, those areas of getting stuck can be pretty damaging to an organization.
• Decentralization of the innovation strategy – a decentralized approach to creativity in an organization and innovation, meaning that every single person that’s in your organization is responsible for and owns the innovation agenda of the company
• Virtual vs In Office workers
  • Ignitor believes it’s about engagement and collaboration, If meeting in person teams must make meetings more intentional. If teams are going back into the office, you’ve got a whole new cultural challenge.
• Salesforce salesforce.com
• It’s important to make sure companies are still bringing people face-to-face.
• How to clarify the challenge, and how do to clarify what you’re trying to solve for?
  • Several tools that go into helping organizations, brands, people, and leaders better clarify the challenge.
  • Insight and finding insight in places that you normally wouldn’t find.
  • Suite of eight behaviors and six mindsets that accelerate collaboration, and innovation creativity in the teams and the organization.
  • Growth mindset, and it’s the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset.
• What are the most important initiatives?
• What are the initiatives that we believe are going to deliver the most value?
• Coca-Cola Red coca-colacompany.com/press-releases/coca-cola-and-red-inspire-people-to-move
• The worst place for an HR leader in an organization to be is in their office.
• Why hiring a group like Ignitor for offsite and onsite training is more effective than having the leader of the organization add it to their list.
• Norwegian Cruise Lines norwegianvoyages.com
• We’re innovators that are powered by inspiration that powers us, but we’re measured by the realization of ideas. So a team has to come to a point where whatever they create together has got an output, and has an impact on the organization
• When did  Ignitor fail an organization?
• Ronald McDonald House charities org
• Animal Kingdom Lodge – disney.go.com/destinations/animal-kingdom
• What is your 600-pound white Siberian tiger story?

Like what you hear? Hear more episodes like this on the What’s Your Story podcast page!

Talent, Data & People: The Strategic CHRO with Kim Sullivan

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We all faced new dynamics and uncharted waters as managers and leaders navigating a pandemic, social unrest and different ways of working. But if you considered the corporate role that felt the most impact, the CHRO, Chief Human Resources Officer, would rank high in terms of the toughest leadership positions over the last few years.

And that’s why this episode is so timely. In this episode, Sally talks to Kim Sullivan, who has been an HR leader for three global companies, and a CHRO for the last six years. Kim guided HR teams pre and post-pandemic, giving her invaluable insight on what’s changing and what lies ahead.

More about Kim Sullivan

With more than 20 years in the HR industry, Kim Sullivan has had an extensive career, including a mix of strong business acumen and the desire to develop people, while also identifying the business drivers and complex issues of every organization she’s worked with. She has experience modernizing the People Solutions (HR) function by implementing new HR service delivery models; redesigning, eliminating, and repositioning roles; and implementing a digital HR strategy to address short and long-term business needs. Kim is a thought leader in all things transformation, including organizational culture. She is passionate about elevating HR team performance to ensure people and culture strategies enable a company’s value agenda. She holds a master’s degree in Human Resources Development from the University of Houston and a bachelor’s degree in Speech Communications and Organizational Psychology from Texas Southern University.

Show Notes

• CHRO – Chief Human Resources Officer
• What has been the change of the CHRO role over the years?
  • Typically tucked under the CFO
  • There is a heightened need for the CHRO role to be at the table helping to make decisions that support the stratic outcomes for the business
• CHRO in the Global pandemic
  • Continued to reflect on the overwhelming impact on the world
  • Defining digital transformation
  • Moving people from worksites to their homes in three weeks or less
  • Keeping the lights on
• CHRO continues to learn from March 2020
• Essential skills to be a CHRO
  • Understanding the business and how to business makes money
  • How to solve problems that positively impact the organization’s business goal
  • Understanding what are the people implications and cultural implications
  • Must be talent savvy, biz savvy, data-savvy – how do you use data to make decisions
  • Coaching and advising the leadership team
  • Engage with leadership and with the frontline staff
• Employee Experience – everything a worker learns, does, sees, and feels at each stage of the employee lifecycle.
• How do companies define reset?
  • Hybrid/ Virtual work
  • Plan what the “return to the office” looks like for their organization dependent on the organization and employees
  • People value flexibility – What is the why, and when should they come together? What happens when they get there?
  • Define what roles should be remote, in-person, or hybrid.
• Mid to senior career-level workers feel more productive and focused at home; recent graduates want more in-person networking opportunities but do not want to be in the office every day.
• How to define what is valued as work-life integration?
  • Collect data to find what is the desired work style
  • Use that data to establish the workplace strategy
• Leadership is culture; culture is leadership.
  • Be deliberate about the culture you want to create and who you are as a company.
  • Clearly define your values and be intentional about when you come together.
  • Define what your employee’s role is, make sure to check in with them, and have systems in place to support them
  • Mirror what you say you do as an organization at all levels of the company
  • Management needs to be international and consistent
  • Stay visible even in remote settings
  • Make sure you show up with these values to attract outsiders to your organization
  • If you are a people manager today and you are not equally focused on the business and the well-being of your people, you are not doing your job
• The Great Resignation – An ongoing economic trend in which employees have voluntarily resigned from their jobs in large numbers beginning in early 2021 due to low wages, cost of living increase, career advancement, seeking better benefits, and remote work.
• What are essential skills for new leaders?
  • How to have fun
  • Encourage employees to take time off
  • Not celebrating grind culture
  • Demonstrating that leaders care about employees
  • Prioritizing resources to make sure employees are taken care of. Want employees to be engaged and happy
• DEI – Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
  • Employees need to feel included and represented in the workspace
• Is there a talent shortage?
  • Value proposition – making people interested in working with your company
• Glassdoor – www.glassdoor.com
• Gig Economy – a labor market characterized by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work as opposed to permanent jobs: Fiver – www.fiverr.com
• How to factor these desires into our work models?
  • Determine which jobs can be a gig vs. remote vs. in person
  • Work on attracting different nontraditional talent
  • Focus on skills, not just job level
• Asynchronous communication- happens over a period of time—rather than immediately.
• Synchronous communication- takes place in real-time.
• Successful organizations invest in talent.
• Company Culture- describes the shared values, goals, attitudes, and practices that characterize an organization
• What is leadership’s role in Company Culture?
  • Set the vision
  • Clearly define what their desire is for the culture
  • Ensure their leadership team has leaders ready to model the behaviors that support your desired culture – a senior leader needs to hold their team accountable
• CHRO role in Company Culture
  • Partner with the senior team, and articulate the culture will be
  • Help to operationalize the culture through people processes or operational process
  • Coaching and being an advisor to the CEO
  • Own the measurement of an organization
  • People analytics and insights on what is going well vs. not

Like what you hear? Hear more episodes like this on the What’s Your Story podcast page!

Getting Down to Business with Kim Wilson of Lucy’s Market

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Small businesses have gotten a lot of visibility over the last two years.

As the world slowed down and dealt with a pandemic, we were more aware of the businesses on the corner that weren’t focused on five-year plans but were focused on next months’ payroll to survive. It brought front and center a look at how small businesses work and interestingly, as the world reset, it seemed to inspire a whole new culture of entrepreneurs and people who’d like to be their own boss.

But running a small business isn’t for the faint of heart. As the last two years have proven, the safety net looks very different for a small business than it does for a big company. And as we move beyond worries and reset with opportunities, we thought it would be fun to talk to a small business about success, resets and lessons learned.

If you’re in Atlanta, it won’t surprise you that we went straight to Lucy’s Market to talk to Kim Wilson. But if you’re listening from another city, here’s what you should know.

Lucy’s Market is the special place in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta where you go for fresh vegetables and leave with the makings of a party. Or you dash in for a bottle of wine and a favorite cheese and leave with the serving pieces that make it look like you worked harder than you did to create a setting. It’s a local spot with warmth, charm, a little spunk… and an expanded list of offerings that seem to have evolved effortlessly over the years.

In this episode, Sally talks with Kim Wilson, the founder of Lucy’s Market. Kim shares her story and more about what it took to build Lucy’s Market.

More about Kim Wilson

Kim Wilson has always had a passion for fresh produce and florals, spending a number of years growing an extensive vegetable garden in her backyard. However, she never considered evolving that passion into a career until she was ready for a change after working in advertising sales for over 25 years. At the same time, a gas station was abandoned on Roswell Road in the heart of Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood. Kim took over the space in 2009 and turned it into a farmer’s market, establishing Lucy’s Market. The market’s growth ultimately led Kim to move it inside the gas station before expanding and moving to another location. In 2017, Kim relocated to where the market stands today. Named after Kim’s love for her grandmother and daughter, Lucy’s Market still carries the same deep roots and many of the same customers since the early days. Over the past 12 years, Lucy’s has ripened into not only an admired farmer’s market but a specialty store, gift shop, and floral boutique.

Show Notes

• Who is Lucy?
  • Kim Wilson’s grandmother was named Lucille, and she named her daughter after her grandmother.
• Was Lucy’s Market a grand vision, or did it evolve?
  • The market began very small with Kim’s love for veggies grown in her backyard. Lucy’s started as a place to get fresh veggies Monday-Saturday, and then the business spread word of mouth. Kim had over 30 years of sales experience before starting Lucy’s Market started.
• Movement
  • The business moved around a bit and evolved, and the concept followed. Location and parking are the most important things when moving. She seeks wide-open locations with lots of space. Her experience in real estate has helped her understand the value of location.
• How did she grow this?
  • Using her sales experience, she got to know each customer by name and worked to understand what they liked and what they were looking to purchase.
• The Business Today:
  • Currently, 7000 sqft retail space, 8000 feet of office and storage to hold seasonal inventory.
  • 30 employees, many are part-time with a core full-time team.
  • Seasonal employees are hired in addition to the 30 consistent year-round employees.
  • Market is open Mon-Sat
  • They sell fresh produce, locally prepared food, wine, flower arrangements, gifts, and gift baskets.
• How do you decide what to offer?
  • Decisions are made based on customer desire.
  • 85% of the business are women.
• What has surprised you most in terms of what people come in to buy?
  • The generosity of her customers – lots of gift baskets sold daily.
    • • https://lucysmarket.com/collections/gift-baskets
• Lucy’s Market is about creating memories.
• Was the pandemic rough for Lucys?
  • The hours were changed, but they could stay open through the pandemic because they sold food – curbside and delivery. They made it easy for the customers to purchase, and Lucy’s Market grew. Prior to the pandemic, they had a solid customer base. They swiftly shifted the method but didn’t need to build the base.
  • They started doing a weekly video that became extremely popular and helped build an audience in Atlanta and nationally. In January of 2020, they took products online. Now they are completely online as well and open in-person. They promote things daily, and the users will go online and purchase.
  • Between 5 and 10% of sales online are predicted for next year.
• Mistakes that Lucy’s Market has learned from?
  • She’s made mistakes but continues to listen to customers.
  • When introducing new products, you have to train your customers to pick up products from Lucy’s.
• How do you know when the time is right?
  • Fresh flowers are going online.
  • Delia Designs for Lucy’s Market
    • https://lucysmarket.com/collections/flowers
• When have you learned about risk?
  • Many things work out. When it comes to risk, make sure you have something lined up and things to back it up.
• What is next?
  • Another location, being open and accepting new opportunities
• Kim Wilson’s BackgroundNo background in retail but 30 years in sales.
  • She knows what she likes, knows how to get it.
  • Pay people well to keep good workers. Because of great workers, they’ve been able to grow.
  • Kim understands marketing and learning to manage her team, putting the right people in the right place.
• Advice?
  • Marketing is essential – understand social media and utilize your online platforms. People get their information online, so you need to be online.
  • Lucy’s Market posts something every day, and they do weekly videos.
• Referrals and Hiring
  • Lucy’s Market used to employ friends and family but now referrals come to Kim through friends of friends – currently, no family working for them.
• 2-3 Golden Rules For A Small Business Owner
  • 1. Customer service is key – be nice to everybody
  • 2. Create an experience for your customer
  • 3. Always be positive – being positive is a key to life.
• “I’ve made something, and I think it’s going to be around for a while.” – Kim Wilson

Like what you hear? Hear more episodes like this on the What’s Your Story podcast page!

Resetting & Reducing Social Distance with Karen Riddell

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Social distancing is a term that took hold during the pandemic as a descriptive way of creating boundaries from each other. But after two years of distancing and now going back to offices and social settings with colleagues and friends, social distance may take on new meaning.

At a minimum, the re-engagement in groups feels awkward at first. We’ve forgotten some of the social norms and feel a little rusty at small talk. In a corporate setting, we realize that Zoom calls didn’t allow for much of a relationship with colleagues. So, we aren’t quickly at ease as a member of the team. Virtual events just aren’t the same as taking time for lunch or going on a walk with a colleague or friend.

And now, we’re somewhere between anxious about reconnection, stressed about being left out or lonely because many of our friends have moved on. Our social life and world didn’t just relaunch or reset to where it may have been two years ago. We continue to hear from managers and leaders who are trying to accelerate connection and strengthen relationships across new work settings. And I think we’re all looking for some confidence in connection and some new ways of getting there.

In this episode, Sally talks with Karen Riddell, Sally’s long-time friend and Positive Psychology Life Coach who has taken a special interest in social connections.

More about Karen Riddell
Karen Riddell is a Positive Psychology Life Coach, who started her business after her interest in friendship led her to become certified in applied positive psychology and life coaching.

In her coaching practice, she works with groups and individuals to find the sweet spot where their strengths, purpose and passions align. Karen partners with clients to clearly conceptualize their goals, envision the possibilities, and map out a concrete action plan for thriving. Karen’s practice centers on positivity, engagement, connection, purpose and vitality.

In December 2020, Karen published Friendship Matters, a book extolling the miraculous power of friendship to transform your life. The how-to book details specific, simple ways to find, make, and build new friendships as well as ways to enrich, deepen, and strengthen existing relationships. It also contains an easy-to-use workbook that allows the reader to create their own personal path to joy through friendship.

Prior to this, Karen received two degrees from The University of North Carolina, moved to Atlanta with her husband, where they had three daughters, and Karen became a prominent community volunteer. She is now writing her second book for mothers-of-the-brides sharing tips on how to navigate the complex process of wedding planning, and doing it with joy.

Show Notes

• Karen Riddell – Positive Psychology Life Coach
• After social distancing, people now feel awkward with re-engagement and out of the practice of social norms. They are anxious about reconnecting, stressed about being out, and lonely. Social distance is more than just physical space.
• For managers and leaders:
  • What are some of the most significant challenges with the limited socialization over the last few years?
    • The impact of social distancing is underestimated.
    • We are experiencing a double pandemic – Covid is threatening our physical health and social distancing is threatening our mental health.
    • Work is a structured social setting that fell through.
• Social connection strengthens us in all the vital facets in our lives. It brings us physical and mental health, stronger families and relationships, and success in the workplace. Social disconnections weaken us in all those areas.
• What about social anxiety?
  • Pre-pandemic – FOMO (Fear of missing out)
  • People now feel FOBI (Fear of being included)
  • Social anxiety can feel different:
    • embarrassed
    • awkward
    • uncomfortable in crowds.
  • Social anxiety can be felt physically:
    • heart racing
    • sweating
    • panic attacks
  • Negative emotions cause us to want to avoid social settings, so we are reluctant to jump back in.
• People who live alone or had smaller social circles to start have struggled the most with social distancing—singles or anybody residing with an immunocompromised individual have as well. People with larger social circles or a family did not struggle as much.
• What can most individuals do to reacclimate to social connection?
  • Start by taking a strategic approach to social interactions:
    • Before an event or activity, think of simple ways to ease its pressure.
    • Limit the time at the event.
    • Plan to go with someone else.
    • Think about who you will see and what you will talk about.
    • Plan how to recharge batteries after.
    • Plan at your own pace – start with people you know well.
  • Be compassionate and patient with yourself. If you start to have negative thoughts, try to reframe the thoughts.
• New ideas on how to bring socialization into a virtual workgroup?
  • Most success comes from communication, not how but what you communicate about—balance work-related materials with social interactions.
    • Internally and strategically interact virtually – using programs like slack
    • Collaborate and create with virtual programs in real-time
    • Grouping people in subsets and prompting group ice breakers
    • Host contests and challenges
    • Send humorous videos
    • Host a lunch and learn
    • Play up holidays
    • Talk about families and hobbies
  • Work to replace something spontaneous with something structured.
• What piqued Karen Riddells’ interest in this work?
  • • All the things she had done were not activities and jobs that she was particularly interested in, but she did them because of the people she enjoyed being around. This realization got her interested in the power of friendship.
      • Friendship Matters by Karen Riddell
    • Friendships are vital to health and happiness and are the key to physical and mental health.
• People with a strong network:
  • • have a better sleep experience
    • less chance of getting a cold/flu
    • teeth and skin are healthier
    • less likely to have stress
    • heal faster
    • better cardiovascular health
    • stronger immune system
    • more likely to take preventative health manners
    • stronger working memory
    • less likely to suffer from anxiety and depression
  • People with a solid social network will have up to a four times greater chance of survival. The hills and hurdles in life are easier to manage with friends by your side.
• How can you get a strong social circle?
  • Start by getting a friendship/positive mindset – you need to be ready to get in the right space.
  • Put your passions and interest in play.
• Introverted leaders- What if you don’t have time to develop strong friendships?
  • • Any leader in a business environment needs to make it a priority to develop friendships – Streamline your efforts to what will be the most successful.
• The formula of great friendships
  • 1. mutual respect and reciprocity
  • 2. trust and vulnerability
  • 3. devotion and commitment
• Companies struggling with employee retention – is friendship a retention tool?
  • Gallup organization research shows:
    • An employee with a friend at work is 7 times more likely to be engaged in their job. No friends, your chance of being engaged plummets to 1 in 12.
    • Work friends reduce stress and burnout – friendships at work increase job satisfaction by nearly 50%.
    • People with 3 or more friends at work are 96% more likely to be satisfied with their lives overall.
    • Create the moments and allow people to use them in a way that works for them.

*Please note the following story does contain sensitive material. If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Call 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255)

• Karen shares a story of being a new mother and getting out of a funk by getting active and developing a community. She then shares a similar story of her mother, who needed a community as she struggled with loneliness. She was suffering from postpartum depression in a new town.

Even just one friend has the power to make a difference.

Like what you hear? Hear more episodes like this on the What’s Your Story podcast page!

The Mastery of Skills with Olympian Kenny Selmon

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Every day, we talk to people about practice. And we explain that to become effective at communication, you have to work at becoming good at it. And we define mastery of a skill as those who become so good at a skill that you can count on their performance and outcome consistently.

And once you begin to talk about performance and outcomes, it’s easy to draw a parallel between mastery of a skill like communication and mastery of sports like the Olympics. And that’s what we’re going to do for you on this podcast:  connect the concepts of practice, mastery and outcomes. And accentuate the value of practice and the ultimate results of effort.

Because that’s what today’s guest has achieved.

Tune in to see what Kenny Selmon shares with guest host Hurst Williamson about the Mastery of Skills.

More about Kenny Selmon

Recently back from the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, Kenny Selmon represented the U.S. in the 400-meter hurdles. He began his track and field career just down the road at Pace Academy in Atlanta (where my claim to fame is that I overlapped in high school with him for one year!) and where he won the National Championship in the 400-meteres in 2014. Then he continued on to run hurdles at UNC, where he places 2nd in the NCCAA Division 1 National Championships in 2018 and set UNC’s record for the 400-metres.

After graduating from UNC, he won the 2018 USAF Outdoor Championships and the Athletics World Cup in London. And in 2021, he qualified for the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team.

Show Notes

• Mastery of a skill is an individual that becomes so good at a skill that you can count on their performance and outcome consistently. The podcast today will cover the practice, mastery, and outcome. Accentuate the value of practice and the ultimate results of the effort.
• Kenny Selmon, Olympic Athlete, USA
• What were some of the most difficult hurdles to overcome on the journey of being an Olympic Athlete?
  • Covid Impact
    • Lost sponsorship
    • No access to tracks to train
    • Unknow future of the Olympics
• What is the difference between intention and repetition behind the practice? How do you keep that intention when training?
  • Know your ‘why”, understanding why you are doing it. Your “why” gives you the full vision and picture
    • Know what you want even if you are struggling to find your “why”
    • When you understand what you want it makes the steps to get there easier and will lead you to your “why”
• What is it like to consistently practice even when you’ve mastered the sport? How do you keep going?
  • Every day you must perform at the highest level, even in practice.
  • You don’t know if it’s going to work, all you have is faith and knowledge that your work will pay off.
  • Have a coach that knows how to get you there
  • Prepare for disrupters (rain, heat)
  • Must always be ready to perform, there are no second chances
• What role does resilience play for the brand of an athlete?
• The importance of personal brand
  • Book referenced at 14:56, Disrupted! How to Reset Your Brand & Your Career
  • Genuine care to supporters – responding to text messages, listening, and understanding they are on the journey with you.
  • Everybody is competing with the brand and the personality next to you, how to stand out?
    • Understand that athletes are all people that have been given a gift. Always be a person first. It’s not about standing out, it’s understanding who the person is and being genuine. Be yourself.
• Is there a brand that stands out to you? (Kenny)
  • “Brand” is connected to success
  • Allyson Felix for her brand to work so must continue to do well, compete, and win.
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allyson_Felix
• Companies look for candidates that can show discipline and focus behind their experience. What are the parallels for an Olympic athlete?
  • Faith- What you can not see
  • Knowledge – You know knows what it will take, they’ve been through it
  • Delayed gratitude – Bad/hard days will be stacked up for one day of celebration
  • All of those experiences connect
• Stoke – a free platform where people connect to chat about Live TV
  • www.stokeapp.live
  • Mission: Our mission is to virtually connect the existing communities that watch Live Sports, TV Shows, and more. We strive to create a fun and active social communication channel for Live TV that streamlines all the different conversations surrounding it.
• Viewers pulled into the stories of Olympic Athletes. How has working alongside other Olympic athletes changed your perspective of storytelling and personal narratives?
  • They are all people and they have problems and lives, but their work is at a very high level. Understand they are all people at the end of the day.
• Favorite story from the Olympics
  • Watching his coach live his dream
  • Knowing all structures were built specifically for that event
  • Organization and technological aspects of the event

Like what you hear? Hear more episodes like this on the What’s Your Story podcast page!

Accelerated Leadership & Unexpected Risks

One behind-the-scenes consequence of the pandemic was the number of seasoned leaders who left the corporate world. Whether they were surprised by it with layoffs, guided toward it with early retirement or chose it of their own volition, the departure of seasoned leaders created a wide gap and broad opportunities for new leaders to step up.

It has brought new energy and fresh ideas to the leadership table…as well as some unexpected risks. In most companies, it was an intentional choice and an understood risk to pull forward less experienced leaders. And what we’re now seeing that companies didn’t consider was that the lack of experience could lead to a lack of confidence, which is paralyzing to a leader.

Here’s an example of the conversation that we’ve had with hundreds of these new leaders:

“In the last year, I moved up two levels and now run a region for our company. It has been an incredible opportunity for me and one that I didn’t expect to get for another five years. I’ve settled in with the five teams that now report to me, and we have begun to build a new way of working together. It was going smoothly until I dealt with a manufacturing delay. It happened a week before our senior leadership meeting where I planned to talk about the delay and ask for ideas for solving it. And that was a rookie mistake!

In less than five minutes, it was clear this was not the place to talk through “my” issue. The manufacturing delay, while not my fault, was my responsibility and no one in that room wanted to solve it with me. I felt foolish for bringing it up and embarrassed that I didn’t know how to resolve it.

And that’s when I realized the difference between me and the peers in the room was experience. I lost my confidence in that first meeting, and I’ve been trying to get it back ever since.”

For many leaders, confidence comes with experience. Every situation isn’t the same, but years of experience builds a repertoire of managing conflicts and bringing enough gravitas to discussions to drive toward a resolution. That isn’t easy if your repertoire is a few specific experiences vs. years of on-the-job training.

And it’s magnified by two other dynamics:

First, many corporate cultures feel “training” ends when someone reaches a director level. So, new leaders aren’t likely to feel comfortable seeking traditional training to strengthen their skills. And in many companies, it doesn’t even exist at the right level with the right focus.

Second, when these leaders were managers, they talked openly about uncertainty with their teams. They got kudos for being open and authentic. That has risks for a leader. It’s one thing for employees to know a  manager isn’t sure; it’s a very different feeling for employees when they know a leader is unsure.

And that’s why new leaders, and the leadership development teams who support them, are looking for new ways to strengthen personal confidence and expand executive learning.

There is an accelerated way to build confidence, but it requires a new leader to have good resources and make good choices in five key areas.

Here’s how we guide a new leader through the choices:

Reset Your Own Expectations – It may seem contrite, but many new leaders think about their roles as the next step beyond a seasoned manager.  It’s not. It’s a big leap.  When we engage with a leader, a common question is “Why does communication matter so much now? I’ve always had pretty good success influencing groups to date.” Well, expectations go up overnight. “Pretty good “ on a manager is “not good enough” on a leader.

Brand Your Superpower – While you may not have the experience of your peers, you do bring new thinking to a leadership team. Make sure this shows up quickly among your new peer group. Leaders are rarely subject matter experts. Instead, they bring a superpower that most companies are counting on to accelerate results and find new opportunities.

Build a Feedback Loop – As a new leader, you need to know your blind spots, and you need real-time insight on where you aren’t having impact.  No one is going to tell you. It’s risky to give a leader feedback, and even if you get honest input from a few, you’re relying on them to represent the perspective of a large group. Add a feedback loop into the communication process you put in place. Make it easy and safe for employees to provide feedback and reaction.

Know Your Skill Gaps – As I mentioned, you may not “learn” what you need to know in the traditional training format. That’s OK; you can find other ways and resources to continue to build out your skill set. But recognize that you need to continue to build it out. We help new leaders build a development plan that includes a blend of training for specific tools and 1:1 coaching for personal guidance.

Create a Support System – While it gets harder to ask for “help” internally, you can find a lot of support among peers in similar functions outside your company. Whether you get to a peer group through an industry cohort or you build your own cohort less formally, there are peers who are also settling into accelerated careers. A good sounding board and shared experiences builds trust and support quickly.

The concept of accelerating leaders has brought some unexpected gaps within organizations. But the gaps don’t have to widen. In fact, the steps above can narrow the gap quickly. There is unlimited opportunity for today’s new leaders; they just need a little help jumping in with momentum. Today’s leaders will gain experience in new and different ways, and it’s a topic we’re passionate about.

If you’re a new leader or you’re trying to help a group of new leaders build confidence, we’d like to share more about our approach.

Call us when you need us!

Want a free 15-minute consultation with us to see how we can help you or your leaders? Book a call now!

“Said the CISO to the Board…”

Information security is a standard agenda item for most corporate Boards, and an area of focus that continues to get their attention. As it should. Fraudulent activity and security incidents are up more than 20% as workforce settings expanded and new work models took shape.

It’s not just a change in how employees work. It’s also a major shift in criminal activity. Security teams have gone from tracking bad characters to monitoring criminal enterprises, and from blocking breaches to managing every dimension of risks. There is no greater threat to the livelihood of a company than a breach in data security. Breaks in security efforts can put a business “out of business” overnight. And every Board member is well aware that’s a lot of liability and risks to manage.

That’s why they often say: “We want to hear from the CISO.”

They ask for an overview of the security strategy, a view of risks and indicators, and a brief on security governance. And every CISO will tell you there’s nothing brief about it.

The world of a CISO today looks a lot like a NASA command center with dashboards, indicators and a small army of resources deep in the trenches of multiple things on any given day. It’s monitoring, assessing, measuring, building, reviewing, testing, and reporting – all in a day’s work.

And it’s one of the toughest communication challenges in companies today.

Because if you’re the CISO, you have to figure out: What do they need to know?

Every CISO has presented to the Board this year. Some more successfully than others. And all CISOs are finding it’s becoming a significant part of their role. So, understanding how to communicate complexity in a clear and concise manner is an essential skill.

And that’s why we’ve helped hundreds of CISOs find the right approach and altitude with Boards.

The focus varies from one company to another, but we use these general guidelines to help CISOs cut through complexity and develop effective Board presentations.

Know your Board – The starting point is to gauge the current perspective of your Board members.  A review of backgrounds and involvement tells you where current inputs on security may be coming from. Do they sit on other Boards or are they currently leading a company with high risks? Most CISOs face a mix of perspectives with some Board members having a decent amount of insight and others having very little. Your content will need to focus on those who know the least as you can’t dismiss the perspective of anyone in the room. But you can leverage the insights and experiences of the more informed if you know their perspective in advance. This gives you a few supporters during the presentation and can identify the more informed questions that will come your way.

Understanding vs Knowledge –  Most CISOs approach their content with a desire to educate a group. And that leads to confusion, a boatload of details and information overload. Unintentionally, the CISO causes this by trying too hard to impart knowledge on a group. Boards don’t seek knowledge; they seek a high level of understanding. And there’s a difference. They want to understand enough about your priorities and strategies to trust that you have the knowledge to run a complex enterprise. But they aren’t seeking to become experts on security topics. So, tell them less about what you know and illustrate more about what you’re doing with that knowledge.

Outside-In View – The Board perspective will be influenced by the latest event or report that has hit the newsstand, other Boards or their colleagues. Leverage external events and security topics to align quickly to how a Board may be thinking and what they’re hearing as current priorities or shifts in the corporate environment. Relate those topics to your internal perspective. This helps them easily contrast the two and consider what may or may not be relevant as they engage with you.

Define What & Why – The hardest discipline to learn is staying away from HOW you deliver on things. They asked for overviews, but they really mean a broad view of what you’re doing and why you’re focused on those areas. They want very little of HOW your team literally does it. That’s too much detail. And it’s when their eyes glaze over. Boards don’t think confusion comes from their lack of understanding. They view it as your inability to be clear. Avoid talking over their heads because the response could knock you off your feet.

Illustrate with Examples – The only place for a little detail is in examples of programs or initiatives. These should be shared as stories or illustrations of a specific program that yielded impact or outcome. Think about these as stories and examples that a Board member might remember and repeat. The detail comes in the set-up and context, not the detail of how the solution was implemented.

Repetition and Structure – These presentations aren’t going away. Just ask the finance group! They’ve got the most experience keeping Boards informed. And they’ve learned to do so with a repeatable structure and high-level enterprise view. CISOs need to find a repeatable structure that allows them to present information in a consistent way. That’s the fastest way to engage and build trust with a Board.

It’s also where we can help. We’ve developed a format and a storyline structure that has helped hundreds of CISOs define the right overview for their organization. And I bet we can help you!

We’re here when you need us.

 

Want a free 15-minute consultation with Sally to see how she can help you or your team prepare for these conversations? Book a call with her now!