Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. And by the end of this episode, please remember to subscribe, give a rating and a review. We focus so much on leadership and executive leadership coaching on this podcast. My guest today, Shawna Vassal all the way from Canada. She is the CEO and founder of Concave Leadership Company. She is also a host of the Scale to Grow podcast, is here to talk to us about all the facets, mostly empathy that go into successful leadership and creating a healthy workplace environment. And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show. Hi, Shauna. Hello. I'm so excited to be here. I'm excited that you're finally able to join us. Welcome. Thank you. So tell us a little bit about you. You're in Canada, which part? So I'm actually in Toronto. So the province of Ontario, but city of Toronto. Right. So tell us a little bit more about yourself. just as your intro. So what I do, I'm a leadership coach, but I also do business mentorship. So I work with coaches and creatives to help them with streamlining and just getting really stable growth in their business. But in terms of my focus, my focus is on how to help people develop their leadership capacity and their capability as a leader. When I work with my clients, I usually focus on a specific group, which is the middle managers and the middle managers are the ones that I always say they're kind of like the messy middle that people always forget that they're there, that they have all these things that are going because they have to do micro transitions every single day when they have to do the implementation, they got to do the direct report conversations, they got to do the upline, they have to do operational excellence, they have to do so many different things and it challenges them in so many different ways. So they end up being almost like a jack of all trades and a master of none, always in operations and strategy. But then at the same time, they carry a lot of the functional pieces of the operations or the business that sometimes they get lost in everything that's going on. So I work with that specific group to help them to not only identify their leadership style, help them to become more confident, but also to help them with overwhelm. We usually talk about leadership, but we never. put it the way that you just did that perspective of look how much they have on their plate and we always bring pressure them to be empathetic, be confident, run the team well, create a better culture, but we don't actually take the time I think to show a bit more compassion on how much they have to deal with. And before that, is this what you did after you finished your studies? Or did you have a career before that? Oh, no. So Before all of this, I was an accountant. So I thought for sure I was going to be an accountant. Definitely did not feel it when I got like midstream after my studies, but I did move into more management, so I did more strategic management courses after that. But my roles leading up to the switch into coaching was I was in finance. So I was doing a lot of financial analysts, forecasting various things in the financial side of the organization. And then. There was a time where my manager asked me to cover for someone. And there was an issue that was looming for like three years. And I was wondering, okay, why we have this issue? So I structured everything and got buying from the controller and a few other things that ended up creating a bunch of policy changes and a few other systems changes in order to make sure it doesn't happen again. And that kind of led me into more projects. When I got into project and project delivery. quickly got pushed into more of the strategic project implementation. What I was able to do was not only just take small continuous improvement projects and kind of pushed them out the door, but I was also able to kind of see the big picture because I had such a good grasp of the organization and the big picture allowed me to kind of be a part of like change initiatives. So I also became more of a change manager and I'm also certified as a pro-size change practitioner. One of the things I would do was go in and look at change impacts and then create the plan based on that. And then we'll do different strategies to implement in the organization. That's kind of where I was before coaching. And a huge part of the challenge that I saw, that's why I can relate so much to the middle management, the middle layer specifically, is because when you get like these nicely laid out roadmaps and you have to operationalize it, like either the director saying, okay, this is great. Yeah, I think we could do this. And then they pass it along. And then you get the next layer saying, there's no way we can do this. How are we going to do this? Are they crazy? Like, what am I supposed to do? Like, I don't have people. And then you have that gap in, you know, are we capable of doing it? Am I, you know, and then it's like that conversation, whether internally or externally, do they think I'm capable? Well, if I don't say yes, would I look incompetent? you know, and so many things happen. So in that moment, like I would sit with people and folks and just say, okay, look, this is what's on the table. You can't tell you how to do your job, but it can walk with you through what are some of the areas that you can look at. And over time I kept doing that. It just became something that I was doing just off the side of my table. So I just kept going. So realized that was pretty much coaching. It just kind of evolved into other things because I understand it from the side of the executive team that we need to change, we need to do this. But I also understand it from the side of the bottom up from an employee perspective. And I also understand it from the person who has to deliver it and then still has to try to figure out how to go home on time to pick up their kids. Change management. Listen, we are all humans, change is scary, it's uncertain, and we don't like the feeling, it's uncomfortable. Like you said, you focus on these middle managers who have so many, basically, dots being thrown at them from all different directions. How best should they deal with change management based on your experience? So I think a lot of them go into it with kind of the defense mechanism. I don't want to do this, like this is too much. And I think it's better that you accept what's come in and understand it, like dissect it for what it is and understand how you can learn how to communicate effectively to say no to it, or to say, let's prioritize this, or to say, I would like for us to move this off to this group as opposed to me doing this because it's best served on this side. And I think a lot of the change is do you work through it as opposed to just shoving it off or kind of getting overwhelmed by the fact that it's coming or something's happening? Because I think it's one of those things like it's not going to stop. Like the train is coming either way. So it's how do you prepare yourself to make sure that as the manager or the leader for that group, your people are building capacity or they're building the capability to do it. I had a crazy, crazy manager years ago and he used to do find random things to just throw us into. I used to say to him, why? Why do you keep doing this? At least give us a time to like breathe. And he would say, you know what? You'll understand later. Okay, sure. And then we would keep doing it. And the team, like he would always make sure we did training, we would do different things. He was always around. And because, you know, I was there, I was always supporting the team. And regardless of their struggling, we would always kind of work through it. So when they... a really big shift up. We were one of the functional groups because we were already building resiliency. We already knew what had to be done. We just knew, okay, calm down guys. Okay, what's happening? What's changing? What's not? And then we just build a plan and everybody knew what they needed to do. So we knew what was happening. So the resiliency for the most part, we already had it. We were already reading tea leaves. We're already looking at things, looking at what's changing, what's not a good sense of it. So it was just more of the conversation around how do we communicate this so that everybody understands what's going on next. And that was the gift he gave to us. The managing up part of what you did there, because we always put the responsibility on the leader to handle everything. How much of that responsibility is also like you did, the employees saying, hey, you know what, I think this is how we can do it, boss. What do you think? This is one of the things that, you know, as much as I've been in the shoe of any employee, it's always important to understand that as someone in the organization, you have a role to play as well. And one of the roles that you have to play is being open and transparent with some of the conversations that need to be had. That includes how you're feeling, what your thoughts are, and sometimes it's not always well received. And this is where the leadership needs to come in because This is where the leader needs to demonstrate a sense of empathy and also demonstrate that ability to listen. And a lot of times that's where we run into roadblocks, because at the end, as the person who is doing the work, you have more insights on certain things than the leader would. But then also on the leader's side, they have more insights from a holistic environment than you would. So you have a responsibility to share what's working, what's not working. and feed that up because they're seeing it from one angle. So how do you work with them to see it from the angle that you're seeing it from so that you can have that alignment? Listen, we live in a capitalist society and yes, companies exist to make money. We're not gonna run away from that. And we need them to make money so that we get paid. But is any leader that's listening thinking, wait a minute, I don't have time to deal with the mushy stuff. We have work to do here. We have money to make for the company so that we keep growing and we keep existing. What would you say to that? That's such a great question because I get the, I don't wanna do the touchy feely stuff. I'm not a touchy feely person. So I totally relate to it. I'm on the left brain side. But at the same time, in order to make any form of external changes, you have to be internally sound. So that means that you have to go in and do some internal work. So that means you have to do some touchy-feely stuff. You have to understand where your compass is when you're starting out. Because if you don't really get a good clear sense of who you are as a person, you're easily triggered and you're easily offended, or you're easily gonna create conflict or friction because you won't know how things will affect you. And everybody has different personalities. And this is a huge part of what comes up every single time when we have these kinds of conversations It's one thing to say, I don't want to do the mushy stuff, but how do you make decisions? If you're making a decision, you have to take everything into consideration. A good decision is making the best decision based on what you know in this moment. That's the best that you can do. What you don't know, you don't know. Because there's a portion of what you don't know, you won't know. You have to now pay attention to what do I know? What is in my realm of control? And part of that is understanding what your team has on their plates, understanding what's going on in the organization. And a lot of that is that communication is building that connection. Because you're not going to have those conversations if you don't have trust. And you don't have the connection. If you don't have the trust, there's no way you're going to get the kind of delivery and the innovation that you need to have. Because everybody now is looking for influence versus a broader power base. Because how we thought about it was more, if I had more power, I'd have more influence. But now it's almost flipping itself over because the more influence you have, the more power you're gonna have. It's now in reverse, the one fits the other in the opposite direction. Yeah, so when you're thinking about that, you really have to think about if you're all worried about the touchy-feely stuff, then you really need to ask yourself the question, how do I make decisions as a leader? Because results-based decisions really have to come from having all the information that you can have in that moment. to make the right decision. If you're not building the bridge to understand kind of why someone is not gonna be able to show up and do extra hours. And I'll give you an example. There was a particular marketing company and they were struggling with workforce planning because people were always jumping in and doing extra work and logging in on the weekends and doing all these things, but they were unrecorded. So when they were doing all their planning and they're doing all their strategic pieces for the year, they were issuing out specific types of mandates for different groups because they were going off a workforce plan that was working a specific amount of hours. When those people left the organization or if they got sick, they realized that the capacity for the new person was very different. Even if they ramped them up and got them onboarded, they were trained, everything was in place. that person could not operate at the same capacity. And when you can't operate at the same capacity, you won't get the same output. So what they were doing was they were going through a lot of turnover because they kept thinking that the person was the problem. But they didn't take into consideration that the staff member that was there or the people that were there, they were going above and beyond, but weren't recording anything. So now they had a deficit. Now, understanding the person who's in front of you, would give you some insights to know that this person was super intrigued with the organization, wanted to do the best job possible, was doing extra hours, was doing extra learning, was also in the back doing their own innovation, had their own tech stack that they had in place. They had a lot of things, little systems that were already in place. They were using it, they weren't sharing it, but it was already in place because they knew the organization had gaps. And they had built their own little siloed relationships to move things along quickly with the partners. And those are things that you wouldn't have known if you don't sit down and have those conversations. So the organization system was the one that was broken. Even though the person system was literally perfect in my desk, if it doesn't fit into the bigger one, you don't get the recognition. You are overworked. Yeah, it is quite a risk with disaster. And so how would that person have communicated that? to the leader. That's a good one. So there's layers to it. Depending on the size of the organization, you might have more of a structured approach to how information gets flowed up. If they're more of, I want to say small to mid tier, it might be a little bit less. You might have a director always in and out because their levels are very different depending on the size of the organization. But in terms of the... person responding to that director or that person who needs to make the decision, I think they would feel more confident doing that if that person was more open. And they gave more opportunities to have those conversations. Because what I find is we go into a lot of those performance conversations more like a checklist. And then they ask the blanket questions, how can I support you? You know, like most people just kind of said, no, good, you know, I'm doing great. It's such a broad word. Like, is there any specifics that you can mention if you were asked that question during a performance review? So when you're having one-on-ones and they ask, how can I support you? I would always say, well, is there something specific that you would like to cover based on what you know about my deliverables? And then we can take it from there and then you can start there. You make it specific. I think. They ask a blanket question in hopes that you give them as much as possible, because that's how they've been coached to coach. So the problem with coaching like that is it leaves it so generic. It doesn't have the trust factors built in. So you're not taken to consideration that person might not give you the permission to coach them. And even if they give you permission to coach them, their levels do it. So what level are you as the manager? Do you really want to hear what I have to say? Or can I really tell you what I have to say without you start micromanaging me? That's the other fear. That's right. Because also, are you asking this question as a formality because your job states that you should, but you really don't want me to tell you what I'm thinking in this aspect. Exactly. And a lot of times that's what they're doing. They're really asking that question they have to go back and update the talent management system. Depending on the organization, they might have monthly check-ins or they have individual surveys that they're being measured off of, or there's a quarterly report back that they have to do to say, how are we trending? Because it feeds into everything, right? There's a huge talent shortage right now. And a lot of the talent shortage is because you don't have a good pipeline of people because the expectation for the pipeline of people is that you're gonna come out with a a specific amount of skills. And what we're finding is those skills are not there because they need to be cultivated. So how much time do you have to cultivate those skills? What is the plan? But then you have the other portion of it where it's like, well, if I cultivate the skill, how long will they stay? So do I want to do that? Or do I just want them to absorb the cost on their own, do the learning on their own, and then come here already pre-baked? Yeah, already made product. You mentioned conflict earlier. So imagine going to work, you manage a team of 10, 20, 50 people. Obviously, there's going to be conflict. And when you talked about it earlier, you specifically mentioned doing inner work. Can you elaborate more on that? Okay. When you're thinking of conflict, conflict is usually its expectation not made in reality, for the most part. Like what you're expecting to happen didn't really go as planned and vice versa. So when you look at what that means, the expectation is your expectation. So you have to think about when you're going through a conflict situation, you have to look at what was the expectation. So that is the overarching like frame. What is the expectation? What were we supposed to get? And was it clear? Because If it's not clear, then obviously expectations not gonna meet with the reality of what you got. Now, when you get down into conflict, it's now understanding how are you communicating now that you're in the conflict? Because, okay, we're at the stage, it's not going as planned. Now the conversation is, do that clarified? And majority of it is communication. But under the layers of communication comes the personal biases. It tags in your own ability to have a connection or build that trust. It also tags into just how you feel about either saying no, your own personal boundaries around things. Because a lot of times we're saying things, but we're avoiding saying things because we don't want to get the person upset. And a lot of that is either conflict avoidance, or it could also be the people please inside. And that's usually based on a lot of different personal beliefs underneath it all. So if you chip it away, what was the communication breakdown? Did I say it or did I avoid saying certain parts or did that person didn't receive it, right? And if they didn't receive it, now I have an opportunity to have that conversation, but am I having that conversation? And if you're not having that conversation, let's talk about it because that's in your personal realm, like what's stopping you from having that conversation? So when you're thinking of conflict, we think of conflict as there's such a friction, this person didn't do it, but it all boils down to what are the facts? What was the expectation? Like, let's put that there first. What did I expect? What did you expect? Where did it break down? You didn't take it down. If you strip away some of the emotional pieces and then bring it back in after, how did I feel? Why did I feel this way? That can lead you into a deeper conversation because it's... It's about you because you can make a decision on how you're going to approach it. Now, give an example. I had someone who was struggling with someone who was very, very opinionated, said what was on their mind and they were done with it and moved on. Now, when they were distributing work, they believed they were very clear about it. So they said what they had to say and assigned it. When the results came back, they were missing pieces. And this piece was very important because it was part of their mandate to complete. Now when they got to the employee, the employee said, well, it's not my fault that you didn't say what you needed, what you wanted. Now the person took that as you're being insubordinate. Why would you say that? How is that my fault? You're the expert, you're the person who's responsible for this. You should have come back to me and recommended something. So now the conversation now turns into friction because there's emotions behind it. This person is feeling I didn't get what I wanted because it was part of my mandate. This person is saying, obviously I can't give you what you want because you didn't ask for it. Also not clearly communicated to her. So there's lots of layers there. So when that conversation came up, my first response was, were you clear in the initial ask? It's like, well, I did, but I expected them to know it. So I said, but you weren't clear. That's psychic. Yes. You're acknowledging that you weren't clear. Yes. Okay, so did you communicate that maybe you weren't clear? No, why would I do that? She's supposed to do this thing and now I'm on the hot seat because she didn't do it. And I said, but you weren't clear. Is it required? Well, it's not required, but it helps me to do X, Y, and Z. So were you clear about what you needed done? No. So the conflict was we weren't clear. Now the issue became My expectation didn't meet the reality, so now I have to bridge that gap. Now I have to communicate with this person to then understand what's the challenge for them. Will I be able to, now that we're already here, what am I willing to accept? And that's a big thing, because that means that you now have to have other communications with someone else who is expecting this, and that comes into play, because if you're not someone who's very good with having difficult conversation or having delivering bad news, these are things that, like I said, it could be because of your own personal beliefs. It could be your own development in terms of your own communication style, or it could just be you didn't develop this muscle yet. And that's something that you have to work through because a lot of times we jump into roles, we're only at level one and we never developed to level five, because we never get the opportunity to do it. Is everybody who is excellent at their technical skill supposed to accept the promotion because the company is rewarding them, it's gonna come with the company credit card and the car allowance and whatnot. Should they all be accepted? Because everything you've spoken about sounds like a lot of work, especially if it's not just something that comes naturally to you to deal with people to that extent. Absolutely. And this is why I say to folks when they go into like management, Just because they say you're supposed to be an empathetic leader doesn't mean that you're going to be an empathetic leader right out the bat. And that's okay, because there's different ways to exercise empathy and to show empathy. And I think you really have to understand what spectrum you're starting from and who you are as an individual. Because if you're not normally someone who demonstrates certain types of emotional responses, you're starting at a different start point. So you need to build that back end to then come up to say, I understand. I understand what you need from me as a leader in order to move forward to lead them effectively. So going back to your question, Esther, should everybody who raised their hand or gets tapped get promoted? I think absolutely not. It raises the Peter principle concept about raising people to a level of incompetence. And while we found even in the pandemic, people were realizing that there wasn't any alignment with the roles that they were in and their values and their interests. And a lot of times it's because they've raised their hand because where else do you go? What else do you do? So you take it, you think that's the natural progression instead of looking at, do I want my career to go to be broader in breadth, like in how much I know about different areas, or do I wanna go more in depth? in what I'm doing. And that looks different for everybody. So climbing the ladder might not be what you want to do. But if you're getting the stuff, a lot of people go to that level where they think, I'm going to go get promoted. But then they're in a new zone where they're no longer the expert. And when you're no longer the expert, that also brings up a lot of emotions because what do you do? Nobody's calling you. You're not the person who is the go to anymore. you have to grow. There's another stretch for you. So if you're not ready to do that stretch, then the person who is putting you in that role needs to be aware of that, because that means that your growth and your trajectory will be extremely painful. Because instead of putting in the work to do it because you want to, you're going to put in the work because you feel you have to. Is that the expectations as well being different from what you thought they would be? A lot of times. A lot of times people run into this thing thinking, we're gonna be a manager. Now I hear, I absolutely don't want my boss's job. He looks stressed all the time. I don't think I want to be anywhere close to this. I don't want anybody calling my phone after hours. I don't want any responsibility to talk to a board. I don't wanna do any of that stuff. All I wanna do is go in, do what I do best and leave. I hear that so often and I get it. because we're not making the journey to leadership easy enough or safe enough for people to go through those stretch opportunities without feeling burnt out, overwhelmed, or pretty much feeling that level of incompetence. Incompetence, yeah. You started your business before the pandemic. What changes have you seen, especially when you say people are saying, I don't want my boss's job. Before the pandemic, we used to say, everybody just wants to climb the ladder no matter the cost and they're willing to do the work, but then priorities do they seem to shift? Yeah, our values have changed. It's interesting because it's like one of the biggest change management exercise if you think of urgency for change. It's like everybody thought, oh my god what's going to happen to us? It might be our last moments. So everybody started having that introspection. So our values, it highlighted a lot people were doing a lot more of that self-discovery as to, what do I want? Does this still align with me? What is really important to me? Is it the money? Is it the job? Is it the functional areas? And then it kind of highlighted a lot of what the company structures were. And a lot of people realized that the places that says, well, you can't work remote, and then all of a sudden, yeah, well, you can work remote, and then. changed again and said, no, you cannot work remote. And it's like, okay, well, what is it? And we're seeing that based on the values, we're now asking different questions. We're asking more culture questions than we used to before. Before it was kind of like a great exercise. Okay, we'll just go through the exercise because there's value in it. We get people to stick around, but now people are asking different questions. They're going one layer deeper than a survey. And they're asking that in the interview because they want to know how they're going to be supported if there's a change. Are you going to put me on a chopping block just because your shareholder says we need you to cut costs? Because those things are very important to people. They want to know more about what the organization's responsibility is going to be to them because that's shifted over the years. Compensation plans shifted, gone from, well, we can't give you that to, oh my God, we need people. we'll give you whatever you're asking for plus 10% above. And then going back to, well, we're in a really tough time right now. So we're not gonna be able to give you exactly what you want, but we'll work up to it. But then costs are high. So people are looking at, okay, well, what does that mean for me? Lots of values have changed. Especially if you're not giving me what I was hoping you'd pay me. I'm not gonna miss my kids soccer games on Saturday just because I gotta be at work. Yeah, and a lot of people looked at ways live with what they have versus trying to chase a bigger paycheck. And then one last thing, Shona, is there anything I didn't ask you today you wanted to share with our listeners? I don't think so. I feel like I've covered everything, unless there's more. Yeah, but one thing you've touched on was more, there's got to be much more collaboration in the workplace compared to prior times. Like you said, everybody should manage up down sideways, all these levels, you know, let's not just put the responsibility on just the leader or just the employee. Yeah, we all play a part in the organization. As much as you know, you might not believe you have power in changing things, you can see shifts based on different things. So if you think of I just work here, I always say to people, ask yourself the question, would someone So what will not happen if you're not there? And you really need to think of your value piece in the organization. So whatever you're doing, if you're not there, it doesn't get done, which means it affects the organizations one way or the other. So really understand your value piece because like we all play a role. It's really you understand what role you play and how you wanna build on that to have more meaningful conversations for your manager. That is so true. If you are in the space of leading a team or responsible for mentoring someone who is in the workforce or looking to grow in their career, I would say one of the things that I would highly, highly recommend is that you focus on doing more listening to understand, because I think empathy will start with listening. And when you listen, you understand enough, your results will be better. So it's not about could just be in results focused only. It's about understanding enough to then make the decisions that's going to impact the results. Words of wisdom from Shona Basel, the CEO and founder of Concave Leadership, Executive Leadership Coaching, and host of the Scale and Grow podcast. Do you have a podcast to tell us a little bit about it? So I have that podcast, it's a scale to grow. I know some people say, why don't you have a grow and scale? But I purposely did it that way because one of the things that I noticed when I was working with small business owners was there's always that push to grow and be this big, big organization. And one of the values I found after being in lean and delivering multiple different change initiatives, when you focus on the little things and doing little incremental changes, it sometimes gets you in a better spot than going into a growth mode. because growth mode means you have to invest a lot more. You focus more on continuous improvement, you learn more about the organization, you identify bottlenecks, you look at areas that you can create efficiencies, and you do that over time and build on one step and then build foundations. So I always say before you go into any form of big high growth, start looking at implementing scaling measures first. Call them continuous improvement. but I think people can resonate with scaling. And what I do is I bring people on that are either business owners or experts in the online space or just serving business owners. And I get them to talk about how they can leverage certain skills. So whether it's soft skills, hard skills, I get them to come in to talk about whether it's marketing, operations, whether it's not communication, whether it's about leadership. So get them to come in and talk about different ways that you can build certain skills so that you can grow and scale your business. That is so important, especially there's so much focus on growth, but you find the processes are not in place, which will then affect the growth negatively over the long-term. Yeah. I always focus on mini scaling tactics before you go into like big growth, because at that point, you'll know what kind of resource you want. you know what kind of changes need to be made. You know what kind of systems and tech needs to be implemented. And you will have enough tracking and metrics and corrections so your team will even understand what needs to happen for the next phase. Because when you go into growth mode, it's usually there's a lot of change and you need to make sure your team is all aligned. And I find that when you go through that scaling and you do those scaling measures, it gives you those little edges that you normally wouldn't get if you did like a full growth. Less to manage too. Hmm, that's right. I'm going to put all the details of the podcast on the show notes. But before you go, where can we find you on the internet so we can connect with you after this? I'm on LinkedIn. So it will be Shauna VA for my handle. Socials, it's a concave coaching. So K-O-N-C-A-V-E-D coaching. All right, I'll put that in the show notes. Thank you so much for spending your time with us and sharing all these nuggets and let us share with us today. Yes, thank you for having me. Awesome, don't forget to subscribe, give a rating and a review and we'll be with you next time. The thing that I think with communication and Micro Steps is that it's almost like when you're a business owner, you have to understand who your audience is. And I think as leaders, we don't always spend the time to understand who our audience is. And when you think of microsteps, you're comparing an oak tree to a cactus sometimes. So you have to understand that if you pour water, some might need more than others. If you're also looking at growth, full growth to a cacti does not mean the same as an oak. So when you're thinking of microsteps, you have to know who your audience is. And if you're not careful of how you communicate and how you... put messaging forward. And this goes back to again, what I talked about with empathy. If you don't understand, if you don't know enough and build that bridge and that connection to understand the person and what they're going through and see things through their eyes, you can't make good decisions. So when you're thinking of communication, you have to think of how much of my team do I know? What do I know about them? Because a lot of times you reduce it back down to talent management. and we put it to those surface level items. But we don't look at, okay, well, this person needs X and if they get X, they'll be a superstar. I had one person who struggled with presenting. She was really good with one-on-one clients, very good on the phones. People loved her. She was pleasant. She was always friendly, but refused to present, refused to do anything and didn't wanna get promoted. because it means that you'll have to present it more. Yeah. And they kept writing her off because they're like, you know, she said, oh, she's good where she was and she's really good. So we're just going to keep her there and make her a trainer. And she was just training one-on-one and little buckets of people. And they were okay with that. And one day I sat down with her and I said, okay, let's talk about this. I want to understand. You're really good. But I feel like there's so much more here. And she went into some details talked about just her past and, you know, she struggled with it because, you know, she was always told that she, you know, she was ugly or whatever. And she was going into some details about life. And I remember thinking, so for the longest time, she's walking around with the fear that she's going to go up there and people are going to make fun of her. So she didn't want to go into a position because she felt that way. And she felt that because she didn't train or like finish university. people will think less of her. So I said, okay, you know what? I said, outside of my wheelhouse, there's a lot here, a lot to unpack, but here's what I'm gonna do. Would you allow me to help you become better at this, or at least be more confident? There's no pressure. And she's like, okay, sure. So I signed her up for a few classes and sent her like our mental health thing to get signed up with a therapist and stuff. And let me tell you, within a year, she moved into a new role. So she took the necessary micro steps to deal with how she felt about herself, her lack of confidence, and got the outcomes. When we looked at her position from a more strategic, okay, she's really good here because we're going to bring in new lines of business. So she's a stable person here. We're not going to have turnover. She's not going anywhere. And they were looking at it at that level from that perspective, as opposed to looking at the person going. She was actually really good with people and she trained someone to be like her here because this is more of like a mid-tier, just above entry level position. But they weren't thinking that, they were just thinking she's stable. And for her, she just wasn't moving because she just wasn't confident. Wow, look what a deterrent and a barrier the lack of confidence was. If you're looking at leaders in communication, we don't know a lot about it. the people that are underneath. But find ways to integrate yourself or to learn more about people. Make it one of the mandatory things that your managers need to report back on different people to give you a sense of who's who. Right. Shona Vassal, CEO and founder of Concaved Executive Leadership Coaching and a host of the Scale to Grow podcast.