The Communicative Leader
On The Communicative Leader, we're making your work life what you want it to be. Do you need years of training or special equipment? Not at all my friends. Simple, yet thoughtful changes in your communication can make great strides in displaying your leadership ability. And why the heck should you care about leadership communication? Well, communication is the yardstick others use to determine whether or not they see you as a leader. Ahhh don't be scared, I got you. We will walk through common organizational obstacles and chat about small, but meaningful communication-rooted changes you can integrate immediately. No more waiting for the workplace to become what you hope it will. Nope. You, my friends, will be empowered and equipped to make those changes. Let's have some fun! Can't get enough?
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The Communicative Leader
Unlocking Career Fulfillment through Trust and Connection: A Conversation with Jeff Baldassari
On today's episode of The Communicative Leader, Jeff Baldassari shares his insights on leadership principles and the importance of culture, connection, mentorship, trust, and innovation. He emphasizes the power of culture in achieving organizational success and the need for leaders to connect with people at all levels.
Jeff also discusses the inspiration behind his book and how his perspective has evolved over time. He highlights the significance of mentorship in accelerating professional development and building trust within teams.
Some other takeaways:
- The ability to connect with people is crucial for motivating, managing, influencing, and inspiring them.
- Mentorship accelerates professional development and fosters a bond that contributes to employee retention.
- Trust is built through consistency, honesty, and respect, and it is essential for effective leadership.
Until next time, communicate with intention and lead with purpose.
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Hey leader! Thanks for listening. For more leadership communication tips, check out https://www.thecommunicativeleader.com/
Today, Je joins us. Jeff talks to us about his insights on leadership principles and the importance of culture, connection and trust in achieving organizational success. He also talks to us about his new book From Associate to Ambassador, which focuses on career fulfillment and professional development. Let's have some fun development.
Dr. Leah OH:Let's have some fun. Hello and welcome to the Communicative Leader hosted by me, Leah Omilion-Hodges. My friends call me Dr O. I'm a professor of communication and a leadership communication expert. On the Communicative Leader, we're working to make your work life what you want it to be.
Dr. Leah OH:Jeff, thank you for joining us today on the Communicative Leader. I'm really excited to learn from you and chat with you, hear about your book. But before we dive into that fun stuff, can you give us a little bit of background on yourself and your experience within the leadership arena?
Jeff Baldasarri:Okay, well, thank you, lee. I really appreciate the opportunity and I love what you're doing with communication, because that is the glue that makes things work and it's the disconnect when things don't work, you know. So it's a very close tie to outcomes. I've had a very diverse career. I started my career initially with practicing law at Baker Hostetler, a national law firm. Then I moved on and I served in two different manufacturing companies as CEO for a total of 21 years. I've served on six different boards, both in the private sector and the public sector, and for about a five-year stretch I was in consulting consulting spend optimization to the Fortune 1000 companies and so.
Jeff Baldasarri:I've seen a lot of different angles and been in a lot of different, worn a lot of different hats throughout my career.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, excellent. I always feel like these are the richest conversations because you're drawing from such vast experience and I'm really excited to hear more about it. Vast experience and I'm really excited to hear more about it. So this next question is a perfect tie-in to that introduction and thinking about across these industries, across these positions that you've had. Can you share with us some of those key leadership principles that you've learned as a C-suite executive and then maybe how they've guided your approach to leading teams, to achieving goals and being successful?
Jeff Baldasarri:It comes down to a couple, one common or one simple common denominator, and that is never underestimate the power of culture.
Jeff Baldasarri:I love that.
Jeff Baldasarri:Your ability to connect with people is everything. If everything else doesn't matter. If you can't make that connection the ability to motivate, manage, influence or inspire people those four things, nothing else matters. If you have the greatest strategies in the world, they won't work if you don't get the culture pulled together. My father, who was a very successful business person in his career, once told me gosh, back in. I was probably in my 30s. He said to me everything in life is easy until people get involved. And he was saying it where you know, if you can figure out that combination of how to connect with people from the factory floor to the boardroom and in between.
Jeff Baldasarri:That's the secret sauce for organizational success and sustainability too not in the pure sense of the term sustainability, but to have a sustainable outcome. Because if you don't have that connection between people and the inner connection amongst all the team members of the organization, the sustainable livelihood of whatever the idea is, the strategy, is the challenge you're trying to overcome, it will not last without that connection.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, and thank you for that thoughtful response, and I think culture is something that people will give a lot of lip service to but they don't, you know, dive into it and really figure out the ingredients of culture or what their culture should be, and contrast to others. So thank you for raising that point. I think that's one that, again, is too often overlooked. So go ahead, jeff.
Jeff Baldasarri:I was going to say to your point, leah, about the lip service or maybe it's a cursory statement.
Jeff Baldasarri:People flippantly say that, oh, culture is the most important thing or people are our greatest asset. Okay, that's fine and good, but it's getting down into the trenches of how to make the connection with people and I'd love to chat more about that. But how do you connect with people? Because even in my book, which we'll talk about, a little bit it's all about the connection you have with people, that being your support staff, your colleagues and your clients with respect to the book, but even within an organization.
Jeff Baldasarri:it's that connection. What are the daily activities you can do as a leader and to get others to do that? Create that connection and then transform that culture, Because people talk oh, I want to scale my business. Well, you have to start with the culture.
Jeff Baldasarri:If you don't infuse and transform that culture and solidify it. Nothing else matters, as I said before. But how do you go about doing that? And it's just not putting out you know fluffy bunny stories and all these you know statements, but it's daily, consistent activities that you need to do. The team has to do. That will achieve that outcome.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, bingo, I think you're right. It's a consistency in those you know. In my world we call it everyday talk. You know what is it that we're saying every day and what is? How does that? What does that say about us? Because, as you're saying, I think so many organizations either err way too much on the soft side, like you're saying, or once a year or every 18 months, they'll do something huge and forget about it for another 12 to 18 months and wonder why things aren't going the way that they had hoped.
Jeff Baldasarri:Right, absolutely.
Dr. Leah OH:So you've mentioned your book and I'd like to talk more about this, and I know that I want to understand the inspiration behind the book and then how your perspective has evolved since the original writing began in 1993.
Jeff Baldasarri:Yeah, the book that I wrote as you noted, leah, that I did write it in 1993, but I didn't have set out to write the book when I did initially.
Jeff Baldasarri:The inspiration for the book was you know I was at Baker House Settler.
Jeff Baldasarri:I was loving it there, you know it was a great time in my career and I wanted to become a corner office partner, so I started observing and noting well what made them different. You know we were the sixth when I left Baker in 95, we were the 16th largest law firm in the country. Okay, and by attorney count 16th largest law firm in the country by attorney count. And you know what I wonder about? The Cleveland office where I was practicing law was the largest of all the offices nationwide that we had.
Jeff Baldasarri:And we had seven floors. We're talking about 28 attorneys out of nearly 200. Well, what made them special? You know what made them different, and so that's what I started taking notes on. And it wasn't where they went to law school. It wasn't where their field of practice. I just started noting down their activities, their behaviors. I just made all these observations and then it just aggregated to a lot of stuff.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah.
Jeff Baldasarri:And noting like what did they do that was different than others, or what did they consistently do that was different than others, or what did they consistently do that was different than others. And so then I pivoted and then wrote the book. And then I you know if you can imagine back in 1993, the internet existed, but it really wasn't the tool that it is today. Email was more internal. You didn't externally email people, so if you can imagine writing a book. My secretary actually typed it up on a floppy disk.
Jeff Baldasarri:I printed it out, thank, goodness.
Jeff Baldasarri:He printed it out and I put it in the mail and sent it to publishers and waited for three to four weeks to get an answer. If they wanted to publish it, yeah, and so I had a few that did, but I didn't like the format they wanted to do it in, so I put it into storage and it sat for literally 30 years, until last summer. And what I found fascinating? You know the world had changed, but a lot of the points that I had written down and noted through my observations, they were timeless. They could have been written in 1963 or the year 2053.
Jeff Baldasarri:It doesn't matter, these were timeless principles. Again, they were people. Principles, directly or indirectly, that will never go out of style, because that's how people are. That's how you're going to again. We go back to culture. That's how you're going to make that connection with people, at different levels, within an organization or outside the organization. And so what was fascinating for me in the writing of the book, which is titled.
Jeff Baldasarri:I renamed it in the book's title From Associate to Ambassador. It's become something more than just a partner to be an ambassador to the firm, even though it's not a formal title, but it's directed towards law students, summer interns and junior associates the people that want to be more than just a partner in the law firm.
Jeff Baldasarri:They want to be doing something a little more special and also they have better career fulfillment and be less vulnerable within their career not just to be a subject matter expert, but to bring something to the table beyond just your expertise, because those expertise come and go and you're vulnerable in those roles and if you can take more control of your career, that's what will help you do. But what I found fascinating, it was like having a conversation with my 30-year-old self, 30 years later, and here's what I noted when I was doing it. I remembered literally the partners that I was observing when I wrote down these statements, what I observed about them and I'll put that in the book.
Jeff Baldasarri:but I do remember why a partner did this? Which partner did?
Jeff Baldasarri:that and what I found fascinating was I knew when I was 30 years old. This was important, but what I didn't appreciate was the magnitude of the importance or the gravity of the importance. Magnitude of the importance or the gravity of the importance 30 years later, having run companies and been on boards, all the things in between you know, consulting, um, you then live it and so you were. It's kind of the difference between observing from the stands at a football game versus putting a helmet on and getting in the game yeah in it.
Jeff Baldasarri:All those decades later, three decades later, having experienced these issues, then I thought, wow, wow, I get it now. I knew when I was 30 it was important. I didn't appreciate how important until I lived it or experienced it firsthand.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, how powerful and what a neat experience for you to be able to pick that up. And, like you said, when we're thinking about things like these everyday activities for organizational and personal success, for thinking about interacting with others, building trust, negotiating conflict, those are things like, yeah, early 1900s we can fast forward as well. They're always going to be helpful because they're not going away. So I'm really excited to read that book. I love reading anything related to leadership and organizations and I'm hoping, as we, yeah, one of the things that I think I should have noted was you know even though it's directed towards law students and junior associates, and summer interns, even though it's directed towards law students, and
Jeff Baldasarri:junior associates and summer interns 80% of this book could apply to any industry, any career path. It's about, again, career fulfillment and accelerating professional development.
Jeff Baldasarri:If you could learn this today you don't have to wait three years to get there. You know, you could learn it in your twenties or your thirties instead of your forties and again, it doesn't matter what the industry is.
Jeff Baldasarri:The vast majority of this book can be applied to any job, anywhere, in any leadership role.
Dr. Leah OH:Excellent and I'm hoping, as we go through some of these other questions, you'll kind of pull from the book to give us some previews and some insights.
Jeff Baldasarri:Sure.
Dr. Leah OH:So, jeff, when I was getting ready for our conversation, I was thinking about all of this incredible work that you've done and I found myself thinking about mentoring and empowerment, and I know that you've really excelled with empowering personnel around you, mentoring others. So can you talk to us about the importance of mentorship and leadership development and how it's impacted you as a leader?
Jeff Baldasarri:I think the two most important things about mentoring you know, or either receiving or providing one is it accelerates your professional development. And again, like we just talked about, if you can learn from someone who's been there and you can learn earlier, you don't have to wait If they tell you if you hit your head on the wall it's going to hurt. You don't have to trust them. You're not going to bang your head on the wall and find out the hard way.
Jeff Baldasarri:You don't have to wait 20 years or 10 years to get there. You can learn it now. If you can accept it and be coachable and be coachable, you know. If you can take what you're being told and respect the individual that's mentoring you, that will help you accelerate your professional development and then you're going to be able to learn more not only the compressed timeframe but the breadth of what you learn.
Jeff Baldasarri:You know you could take it another step. You know and go beyond that. The second thing is, I think the bond that's created is very important within an organization.
Jeff Baldasarri:Now you can have a mentor outside your organization, which that's just as good. But if you have a mentor within the company or firm that you're in, that bond is special and it creates a better retention to the employment. Retention within the firm, within the organization Again holds that closeness between the parties. There's something special about it and that's important for to have that again, that impacts the culture. So when you start seeing people around you, you're not the only one being mentored, if everyone has a mentor which a great organization will have that.
Jeff Baldasarri:That again affects the culture. It brings people together, maybe not directly but indirectly. We're all in the same boat. We're all learning from someone we're close to. We have that bond. We're accelerating our professional development.
Jeff Baldasarri:We're advancing the organization in some way, shape or form, as well as our own career. And again, it goes back to fulfillment as well. Because, if you know, if one of the quotes I have in my book is about excellence, and for something to be excellent, it has to be fun and profitable. And if we're not having fun and we're not, making profits. What the hell are we doing here? Yeah, exactly, and I think mentorship contributes towards that, it will be sharing best practices not the only practice when things do evolve we all learn better ways.
Jeff Baldasarri:You have to be dynamic but learning best practices, you know you don't have to again bang your head on the wall. The company or the firm can become more profitable and you're going to enjoy it and have fun because you're going to get a quicker positive reaction.
Dr. Leah OH:Or outcome by following the footsteps of others that have done that as well, and so I think that's what's really special about mentorship in the footsteps of others that have done that as well, and so I think that's what's really special about mentorship, yeah, and I think you've hit on so many important points, because mentorship is phenomenal. But you're right, you need the fit there. You need to be in a place where you're ready to be coached, where you can demonstrate respect even when you don't like what they're saying and recognizing. It's a feedback loop, so that leads us to trust, and I'm wondering how you have you know what you have found in successful, what you found to be successful in cultivating trust in teams and across organizations, and why you see trust as being such a critical component of excellence.
Jeff Baldasarri:Yeah, because trust is so important. Because if someone doesn't trust you, they're not going to listen to you, they're not going to believe what you're saying is the truth and you're going to have a hard time. We talk about a leadership role, getting those to follow and to become leaders. So trust, I think, boils down to three components consistency, honesty and respect. You have to be honest with people. You have to tell them the good and you have to tell them the bad. Now, the tonality that you use and the manner in which you do it is important, so it's received. But you need to be honest with whoever you're speaking with. You have to consistently speak with and communicate with people. You can't just be hot and cold, like you're mentioning at the beginning Okay, we're going to do this, for you know, we're going to have a pizza party and we're going to kick off this program and then next thing, you know you don't hear about it again for six months or a year or whatever it may be.
Jeff Baldasarri:It's every day, you know, consistently reinforcing messaging or extending the message, branching out, creating that labyrinth of information, and so that consistent, honest communication is key. And the last part is respect, and what I mean by that. How you earn respect is it's twofold. One is you're by your, as a role model. You're walking the talk. That's important, it's very important. You can't say do as I say, not as I do. You have to walk the talk that you're providing. But also and this is one of the things I've learned, you know, in my last role as a CEO- we had a large workforce.
Jeff Baldasarri:We were manufacturing rubber fitness floor and over one half of our workforce were ex-felons. So we had a very unusual workforce and yet we were scaling the business. We had more than doubled our business in one year. We were adding a lot of employees. But how do you gain the trust of this population? How do you get through to them? And this is what I learned it's not by. Just compliments are important either. Direct compliments or publicly complimenting someone versus privately complimenting someone. That's important.
Jeff Baldasarri:But what I?
Jeff Baldasarri:did learn, and this is where the trust comes in and in this environment it became very apparent, more so than traditional environments that I've been in before this, and that is ask somebody their opinion. What do you think we should do here? When you ask for someone's opinion, you're telling them implicitly I respect what you have to say. I believe you have something worthwhile to contribute. And that question, that simple question what do you? Think we should do. I watched it happen in my last role from the sidelines or when I was in meetings running meetings, but I also got our leaders to ask those simple questions.
Jeff Baldasarri:I watched how it empowered the culture, it empowered the people. It brought everyone together, because when someone's asked what do you think they understand that now they're being respected, their opinion?
Jeff Baldasarri:has value.
Jeff Baldasarri:And then when it gets implemented.
Jeff Baldasarri:You have the pride.
Jeff Baldasarri:Wow, they listened to me. They didn't do everything. I thought they did most of it or they did some of it, whatever it may be, and that really makes a huge difference in the collective trust and the direct one-on-one trust that goes on. So again, the consistency, the honesty and you know and the trust you know, or, to be, the respect of trust for an organization.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, and then you know you have that empowerment too and that engagement and, like you said, it's a point of pride but recognizing I can make a difference and I'm not a titled leader or I'm a lower ranking leader. So, yeah, really, really powerful example. I've also found myself wondering and again, you've worked in these, you know, across industries, how you find that balance of innovation and adaptability. So how do we maintain that core organizational values, our core leadership principles, but then also as an organization and helping our employees to kind of flex, innovate and adapt?
Jeff Baldasarri:I think the importance is you have to think in terms of evolution. You realize, we all know the world has always been and always will be dynamic. It's always changing. Maybe today it changes at a faster pace than it did 10 years ago or 20 years ago that would be true, and it may change even quicker or faster in the next 10 to 20 years. But it's always going to change. So you can't bring a static approach to a dynamic environment. It won't work. But to your point, Leah, we have to balance what has worked. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Jeff Baldasarri:So that's why you can't say, well, that worked yesterday, it won't work today. Rather than taking that dramatic or drastic approach, evolve, so, if it's not working as well, whatever it may be, whatever we're talking about, whether it's operational efficiency, or whether it's sales generation or reporting you know, reporting of information Look at it through the lens of how can we evolve, how can we make it better without completely tearing it down. Sometimes things have to be torn down, you have to move on, but that's more the exception. It's more of an evolution of using, you know, more tools, a slightly different approach. Maybe there's opportunities today that you didn't have five years ago, 10 years ago, and now, today it is available, it is accessible, it is affordable, and so you look at a lot of things today where bringing something to market, the cost of doing so is going down to almost zero in some cases, depending on whatever the topic may be, whereas again, 10 years ago, it'd be cost prohibitive to try and do something. Today we have that opportunity, but we're just evolving to accelerate, like again.
Jeff Baldasarri:There's some things that never change the content, may never change who we are as a company who we are as a firm will never change.
Jeff Baldasarri:It's our identity.
Jeff Baldasarri:That's how the market recognizes us and we've built that brand. People buy on brand, you know. Buy off of emotion too, you know. So they're driven by their emotion and they use. You know they will intellectually justify or rationalize their emotional decisions. You know that they will intellectually justify or rationalize their emotional decisions.
Jeff Baldasarri:But knowing that's the reality, and realizing that your customer base, but even the ones you aren't serving, that you want to serve, they're going to do it based off a brand, and so, if you can find better ways to evolve your brand or evolve extending your brand, either to your existing audience or a new audience, or again internally, don't forget the internal marketing you know, because you've got to extend there. But I think that's the most important thing is the evolution rather than the discontinuation of something Just because the world changed.
Jeff Baldasarri:We got to do something completely different, no, just slightly different.
Jeff Baldasarri:Usually, that's the answer.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, yeah, and I think that's a really accessible one, because I think for a lot of people, change equals scary, but instead of seeing it as a challenge or an obstacle, you give great examples of how there might be new opportunities. When we started this, maybe three, five years ago, this wasn't an option. Now it is so, recognizing that there's a lot of room for growth and other positives we might not have anticipated.
Jeff Baldasarri:Yes, that's true.
Dr. Leah OH:So, jeff, my next question is about communication, and I imagine you've seen a lot of this and you kind of pulled it up and raised it up in your book. So I'm wondering if you can discuss the role of effective communication and driving organizational success and maybe other communication strategies that you've used, or you've seen others use, to help people be successful in a team or across the organization.
Jeff Baldasarri:I think with successful communication there's a lot of components to it, as you know I mean, you're an expert on communication but active listening is very important is to listen and, I think, appreciative inquiry when AI, I know everyone talks about AI today artificial intelligence, but prior to that there was AI was appreciative inquiry, and giving voices and soliciting perspectives from throughout the organization is key.
Jeff Baldasarri:Again, we go back to that culture, the connecting with people. You know whether, when you're at the law firm, you're trying to, you know, build your career. It's like you can't take anyone for granted. Everyone is important and also nobody has an exclusive license on all the great answers you don't, you can't.
Jeff Baldasarri:So you know, if you have someone on the factory floor, they're going to see things different than someone in the C-suite, someone in the accounting department is going to see something different than the person in the sales department. And so you know, even in the law firm, again it's the support staff versus your colleagues, the attorneys, you know, fellow attorneys, or your clients, you know your client sees the matter different than you do.
Jeff Baldasarri:And you know, and so going back to an organization and through appreciative inquiry is if we're trying to improve something or change something, like we just talked about the last question how are we going? To evolve, to stay with the times or get ahead of the curve. You need to bring those voices to the table, and I don't care about titles you can't throw too much emphasis on titles because you need to listen, because, again, where everyone sits, they're looking at the organization, the problem and the opportunity through a different lens.
Jeff Baldasarri:Now maybe you as the leader have to connect the dots.
Jeff Baldasarri:You can't expect everyone to do that, and most people can't. That's not what the process is about. The process is about engaging in the solicitation of perspective information recommendations, frustrations, whatever. This is how you uncover. Like you know, sometimes organizations are held back and they don't know why they feel like they're doing everything right, do you?
Jeff Baldasarri:know why they're not going ahead? Because they haven't there's, they're unaware there's unknown problems they haven't solved. They need that input because you're not looking for the input, the person where you're asking a variety of people for information. You're not asking them to solve it, just share your observations. The next step will be let's collectively try and solve it, good or bad, but the key thing is to invite that conversation, invite that perspective. Start that process of communicating throughout the organization, involving people, and that's how things get done, you know, eliminating challenges or capturing opportunities.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, and I really like that idea. You talked about the leader connecting the dots, and I think that's such a powerful way to kind of show one of those I think it's invisible roles of leadership that a lot of times you know we don't necessarily see. But you're right when you're inviting the conversation, and then it's the leader, through active listening, figuring out what are these common themes, what is it that's holding us back? What have I missed or where can we go?
Jeff Baldasarri:next Right Absolutely.
Dr. Leah OH:Excellent. So, jeff, this question, I'm thinking about current and future challenges, so kind of looking ahead. And you know, especially just finishing this book, you know this leadership business landscape of today, you know what are some of these challenges that are ongoing. And then, what suggestions do you have for individuals to be effective in leading and communicating?
Jeff Baldasarri:I think you know, from the book standpoint and even today, the most important thing is don't rely on technology too much. I'm seeing, I have seen that over the years, where leaders rely too much on technology. And all technology does not all, but primarily it just accelerates the collection of data, the processing of data, but it's still data. And the reason I say don't rely on technology too much. And where the book goes again, the book is again managing, motivating, inspiring and influencing people. That's it, those four things Now.
Jeff Baldasarri:I'll mention that a couple times in the book, but when you're going through 188 pages you might if you take a step back and go. Oh, it's not always a direct connection to a people issue. It could be an indirect connection to people to a people issue. It could be an indirect connection to people, but what happens today is you see people trying to run a company by a work, by a spreadsheet.
Jeff Baldasarri:Well gosh, if we just do this, you know they start getting into the ratios and formulas. All right, my friends, that wraps up our conversation today.
Dr. Leah OH:Until next time, communicate with intention, be a good person or do chatting with you again soon we brought up the beginning of our conversation today, you'd say, oh, people are the greatest asset, culture is everything. Well, unless you get down in the trenches and figure out, how am I going to connect with people, how am I going to internally market and, again, consistently, honestly and in a respectful way, communicate with my teams and get my teams to do that throughout the organization, it just can't be you. This has to be compounded internally. That's how you change behavior. That's how you change outcomes, because once people feel empowered, they're going to do much more than you ever dreamed or even thought to ask them to do, because they emotionally own it. They emotionally feel connected to the challenge, to the opportunity, to each other, and if you can overcome that, then everything else will take care of itself.
Dr. Leah OH:Then your technology is going to show on your spreadsheets that the numbers are better, but don't play the game of sitting there. Academically, you know playing with these numbers. Because then you're being manipulative with numbers and ultimately, with people and nobody likes to be manipulated.
Dr. Leah OH:Nobody likes the, you know, the micromanager. Because that is the worst thing you can do, and typically you become technology because the spreadsheet tells me this, the data tells me that, the dashboard says this. No, get past all that. Get down to the roots of your connection to motivate, manage, inspire and influence people that will solve your problems, and then your spreadsheets and your dashboards and everything else in between will all look a lot better and you could be happy.
Dr. Leah OH:Yeah, I was thinking in your response of the power of empowerment, because I always think it's ironic Typically, if we have a lot more decision-making power, the further we are from being client-facing or doing that actual work being client facing or doing that actual work and so when we cultivate a culture where people are empowered, then we know that they can come to us with things that are going well, that aren't going well and the ability for them to make the decisions and, like you said, to perform in ways that we wouldn't have expected of them when we just put them in the small, small box.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And the thing is, when we talk about empowerment, you're going to bring out the best in people and you're not going to treat them like a disposable asset, yeah, like just something else in the organization. That's where you say, oh, people are my greatest asset. Well, treat them that way. And how can you treat them that way? Through again, empowerment, because then they're going to step up. If they're told what to do, they're going to do the bare minimum. They're going to punch that clock at eight o'clock in the morning and they're going to punch it out at five.
Speaker 3:They're going to do exactly what they're told and if things fall between the cracks ain't my problem. And you don't want that culture and a lot of companies have that culture. Or you have the contrast and the conflict within departments. You know, in manufacturing it's always between the sales team and operations. They have a love-hate relationship, but if you can find ways as a leader to empower you know interdependently within the organization that conflict goes down.
Speaker 3:It's always going to be there. I mean, you can't get away from it completely, but you can reduce it dramatically. And again you can completely transform the culture by getting people to cooperate and not think in silos. That's not my job.
Jeff Baldasarri:You get that mindset versus.
Speaker 3:This is our initiative. We are doing something versus. I am only responsible for this little corner of the world, and if it doesn't fall in my corner, I don't care about it.
Dr. Leah OH:You don't want that mindset. Yeah, yeah, so many important things to think about. And, jeff, this leads us to our two final questions and they are connected. And the way we end all of our episodes of the Communicative Leader is with advice or a tip or challenge. First for our friends who are titled leaders, our managers, directors, you know, anyone in, you know, has that formal decision making power. And then the second part is again advice, tip, challenge for employees across all industries, across all ranks.
Speaker 3:Okay, Well, I've kind of touched on for both of these but my answer is the leader. It's appreciative inquiry period. You have to solicit ideas, recommendations, complaints. You have to make it a safe environment in a company that someone can make a mistake. I mean, you want to prevent catastrophic ones? Obviously yeah, but let someone make mistakes. That's how people learn. We all have made mistakes, we all have learned from our mistakes. That's what experience is right.
Speaker 3:But you have to create a safe environment where people can speak up, because sometimes you'll have people on the factory floor or the warehouse or out in the field in sales. They won't say anything because they don't want to get in trouble, because your culture is shoot the messenger. You don't realize you have that, but the people that are working with you, for you, around you. That's what they feel and I don't want to get in trouble, I don't want to jeopardize my job.
Speaker 3:I'm going to keep my mouth shut and just do what I'm told. You want to make it safe where people can't speak up, so as a leader. My recommendation would be is invite input, all input good, bad and indifferent throughout the organization top to bottom, get different perspectives.
Speaker 3:Again we go back to that appreciative, inquiry, idea or approach that would make you a great leader, because when you're getting information from all angles of the company, you can connect the dots better. You can form a better dynamic strategy going forward, either to correct problems, to uncover those problems you didn't realize you had to seek opportunities to go into new channels of revenue that you couldn't get into, and you can keep adapting and keep evolving. So that would be my answer to leaders For the employees, this is where again, you go back to don't think in terms of just me, don't act or behave like you're in a silo, like this is my department and all I got to worry about is my little world.
Speaker 3:Now. I'm not, you know, advocating or instructing employees to think well, I got to pick out the responsibility of the whole company. That's way beyond my pay grade, you know.
Jeff Baldasarri:Whatever phrase is used to describe that.
Speaker 3:But you have to think about you know, maybe it's not your job to solve it, but it is your job to create awareness of it, not to get someone in trouble or to I'm going to be the big hero, but to raise again. If you have that safe, if you're working at a company where you have a safe environment where you can bring things up and you consistently have conversations again, not just a pizza party.
Speaker 3:You know once a quarter you know half time, once a year, whatever it may be, or a suggestion box where it's impersonal. You got to talk to people, you got to look them in the eye.
Jeff Baldasarri:I mean.
Speaker 3:Zoom calls are great and sometimes that's all you can do, but you've got to get in front of people. You've got to listen and, as an employee, you want to share perspective. Again about gratitude. Thank you for this opportunity. About, hey, this could make it better. Did you know we're screwing up over?
Speaker 3:here or this doesn't make sense to me and I think, internal marketing, if I can toggle back and forth between leader and employee internal marketing if I can toggle back and forth between leader and employee internal marketing is just as important as external marketing. People need to know what's going on. Don't keep them in the dark. Even if you have an appreciative inquiry approach where you're inviting 10 people to the table from throughout the organization but you have 100 employees or 200 employees or 500 employees, that's only a small subset. You've got to make sure the other people, the other 90, the other 490,.
Speaker 3:Whatever the number is employees know what the heck is going on and, more importantly, why are we doing this Now not? Everybody is going to agree.
Jeff Baldasarri:I mean, we're not all going to hold hands and sit around the campfire and sing Kumbaya. That's not going to happen.
Speaker 3:You want that friction, you want that tension, but you have to keep in mind you have these forces at two ends of the spectrum, you know, pulling in opposite directions, and you've got a whole bunch of people in the middle, the entire organization you're going to get. The battle is going to be won by. We're going to pull in this direction and go where, collectively, we all want to go.
Jeff Baldasarri:And you're going to get there too.
Speaker 3:Because you're going to get more buy-in. You're going to get more emotional investment, more emotional ownership by more people than just those 10. You're going to get 450. You're not going to get them all but you're going to get most of them and then, ultimately, when you get that massive shift in the right direction, the people that don't want to play ball, they're going to leave you know, or they're going to get on board.
Speaker 3:You know it's going to be one of the two, but as a leader internally, marketing is so important to get the word out Again, more than just we're doing this, why we're doing this. Here's what's coming up. Here's what's exciting about what we're doing here. Do you see the change? And again, things of that nature. And again going back to the employee side, look beyond just the scope of your job description.
Speaker 3:Don't feel limited. That that's all. Because, again, is this the only job you want at this company? Do you want to advance, Even if it's laterally? It doesn't have to be. I don't want to be the CEO. I don't want to be a vice president, I don't want to be a director. I don't even want to be a manager. I want to stay at the level.
Jeff Baldasarri:I'm at but maybe you want to be a different experience.
Speaker 3:But you love the company and you love what you're doing. You love the level of responsibility that you have. You love the level of contribution that you've been given. You love the fact that you take advantage of it, but maybe you want to do different things within the company down the road. So look beyond your job description and don't just think about yourself. Think in terms of teams, not in terms of silos, and that's kind of a long-winded answer to those two questions, but that would be my advice to both groups.
Dr. Leah OH:No, it's really helpful and I think when you were talking, seeing how much time we spend thinking about being good leaders, strong leaders, effective leaders, authentic leaders, but we don't spend that time thinking about the responsibility of being a good follower, of being a good employee and an effective employee, and what that responsibility looks like. So thank you for raising that point.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Dr. Leah OH:Jeff, it has been such a pleasure chatting with you today. I'm really excited to read your book. I know that our listeners will as well, because there's so many thoughtful, pragmatic tips that we can use now to be successful. So thank you again for sharing your time and expertise.
Speaker 3:Well, I appreciate it, Leah. And if people want to find out more about the book, I have a website from associate to ambassadorcom and there's a newsletter. I recommend signing up for the newsletter because if the newsletter you get every other week you get an excerpt out of the book, you get one page out of the book, essentially.
Jeff Baldasarri:And it gives you a flavor for what it is you want to purchase the book.
Speaker 3:You can get an ebook or there's a paperback right there. There's connections to. Amazon and Barnes and Noble and everybody else is on that website and you'll find a lot of information about myself and then the book itself as well. So thank you for this opportunity. It's been a lot of fun discussing this with you. I love what you're doing with communication because it is so, so important in this world. Again, it doesn't matter what you do the ability to communicate verbally and in writing and all the components that go into it.
Dr. Leah OH:There's a lot of them. It makes a whole difference. Thank you, I'm going to take you to classes and help me convince the undergrads of the world. Thanks again, jeff. We've really enjoyed having you and learning from you.
