Speaking and Communicating Podcast

They would micromanage, they wouldn't provide coaching, they wouldn't provide feedback, and that was our recipe for disaster. So I would often ask them to take a step backward, get you oriented to your new job so that they then are starting to think like a leader and not like a doer. Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host, Roberta Nleila. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally,
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This is the podcast you should be tuning into. Communication and soft skills are crucial in your career growth and leadership development. Whether you're about to speak in public, make presentations at work, pitch to investors or an entrepreneur looking to showcase your innovation to a wider audience, you'd be glad you joined us. By the end of this episode, log on to Apple and Spotify.
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Leave us a rating and a review and what you'd like for us to discuss on this podcast. Let's get communicating.
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My guest today is an author. He is a leadership coach. He specializes in mentoring managers to be high performers and is the host of the Management Development Unlocked podcast. Eric Girard, hailing all the way from Seattle, is joining us today from Girard Training Solutions. Hi, Eric. Hey, how you doing, Roberta? Thanks for having me.
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I'm doing fantastic. Thank you for being here. I was in your show the last time. So today we would love your insights and you're based on your illustrious career as well. All the stuff that you will be teaching us. But before we get into that, please tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so I think most importantly, I'm a dad to twin 14 year old daughters. And yeah, and I have an amazing wife who is an incredible partner in all that.
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We are relatively new to the Seattle area. We transplanted from the Bay area about three years ago. And professionally, I've been in learning and development over 30 years. 20 of that was spent in Silicon Valley in management development. And I own Gerard Training Solutions, which is a management development firm. And I focus on helping new managers make that transition from being great individual contributors to great people managers.
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When you were in Silicon Valley and you were doing the management development, what did that look like for anybody who's listening and wondering, huh, what do you do in Silicon Valley when you do that kind of work? So I would do a combination of internal consulting where I would help internal clients. For example, when I was at Apple or Nutanix or Applied Materials, I would consult internally, helping managers determine, okay,
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this is my current state, this is where I'm at, this is my desired state, this is where I wanna be, here's the gap and here's how we close it. And so sometimes I would help folks by offering training. Training is what I do most, facilitation is my superpower. Sometimes it was more organizational development, sometimes it was performance consulting. So I would do a variety of things to help managers just improve their skills and improve the way their teams functioned. So kind of a combination of internal consulting,
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some coaching and a lot of facilitation is what I did. Silicon Valley is known more for the tech. Most of the stuff that we use, usually that's its origin because they're very technically skilled, they're wizards basically. What did you realize were the missing links when it comes to the management and leadership part? Yeah, so I would meet folks who were brilliant engineers say, and because they were the best engineer in the team, they would get promoted to lead the rest of the team.
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And they would immediately go from, you know, top 10 high performer, absolutely killing it in their jobs to flailing at management because they hadn't made that mindset shift from, okay, I am an excellent individual contributor where I'm rewarded for doing tasks for checking off things that I'm responsible for doing to. I now get rewarded for getting results through other people and they would, they would not make that critical step. And so they would try to do everything themselves.
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They would micromanage, they wouldn't provide coaching, they wouldn't provide feedback, they wouldn't set goals, they would just sort of expect the team to do what they wanted them to do through osmosis. And that was a recipe for disaster. So I would often ask them to take a step backward and, you know, hey, let's first, you know, get you oriented to your new job. And then let's teach you basics like goal setting, delegation, coaching, feedback, and so on. So that, you know, they then are starting to think like a leader and not like a doer.
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I can imagine how challenging that must be. First of all, you were with your peers, all doing your brilliant jobs on your own computers, and suddenly you become their boss. So first of all, it changes the relationship. Oh yeah, and it happened to me. So early in my career, I had been managed by people who were in the situation I just described, where they were excellent individual contributors, and then they got promoted, and now they're in charge of people who used to be their peers, and it didn't go well.
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So I got fed up with that and didn't like it. And I knew that something was wrong, but didn't really know what to do about it. And then in a stroke of irony, I got promoted and got promoted over my team and was leading people who I was in charge of or used to be peers with. And I did everything wrong. I completely screwed it up. And so I walked away from that experience thinking, okay, never again, this isn't gonna happen to me or anybody else ever again.
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And fast forward to 2020 and I decided, do you know what? I'm going to make my own management practice out of this and help new managers avoid the missteps that I made and that so many others make. Because especially I can understand from their point of view, if you have been so brilliant at what you do and now the team's performance is going to be a reflection on you, that would make you nervous and hence the instinct to micromanage. Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's a very normal thing.
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It's not that these are bad human beings, you know, it's not that these are evil people, it's just that they haven't learned a better way. And so they go back to instinct. It's like, okay, well, I better get in there and really ride these people. And that is just the 180 degree wrong thing to do. Unfortunately, even though it's instinct to do it, it's the worst way to get performance out of people. And when talking about coaching and feedback, when you lead a team, first of all,
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Do leaders think in the managers that you coach, do they think, do I have time for that? Or we should just, our deadlines are beyond the 24 hours we have available in the day. I often hear folks push back, you know, cause they'll, they'll come and take my classes and say, yeah, listen, all nice, but I don't have time for all this. And I would say, well, you actually can't afford not to do it. So I always use the investment analogy. All right. So I'm going to invest.
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10 hours in teaching you how to do something, how to code this particular piece of code. I'm gonna teach you how to use the new cover sheet on the TPS reports, whatever it is. I'm gonna invest that time. And it's a big chunk of time. It might be 10 hours in a week. It's a big sacrifice, but it pays off because then not only can you do it and take that off my plate, but then I can ask you to teach other people and it becomes a flywheel. It just perpetuates.
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So it's worth the investment. It's just like you're investing in your 401k, where you put in a little bit of money and you get a lot back later, same idea. How does goal setting help, especially in those situations? Because if you think about how those who might be prone to micromanage, does it then help them step back a little when they can trust their team members to deliver on time? Because they've set that goal. Oh yeah, so I have a story from that, from one of the companies I worked at.
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where we had a manager who was an incredible micromanager and just was over our shoulders. And she was good at pushing us to perform because she would use guilt and shame and pressure to get us to move. And so stuff got done, but we weren't happy. She wasn't happy because she wasn't getting the results she needed because her boss was coming down on her saying, where are the results? We were working hard, but we were doing the wrong things because she hadn't adequately set goals.
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So an HRBP actually came in, asked a few questions, and then sat us down and ran us through a goal setting session. It wasn't magic, but it sure helped a lot because now we understood who does what, how much, and by when. And she used the Smart Goal Framework, which is fantastic. So it's specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound. And it helped so much.
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because now we knew what we were accountable for. We all had something to drive for. We had a shared document on a shared drive so we could check each other's goals and make sure that we weren't accidentally stepping on toes and so on. It helped a lot. As you were saying earlier, it's not that these people are bad. It's just that sometimes the pressure of the environment. I had a guest who talked about how, so she specifically coaches those middle managers. Because a lot of the focus goes to the juniors. Everybody's like, oh, let me coach you, help you progress your career.
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C-suite, but what about the middle who, if the team is not happy, they come to them. If the C-suite is not happy with something, they come to them. They are stuck in this, everybody is throwing darts at me type of situation. What can you say to any managers who are in those positions and how they can at best lead? Yeah, well, I think
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that managers need to pay attention to their own wellness, their own wellbeing and their self-care. We all do. I would especially encourage managers, starting from when you first get promoted and just make it a habit of practicing self-care. So try not to work on weekends if you can avoid it, or at least take significant time off to go sit in a hammock or sit in a hot tub or play with your kids. Do something to unplug and relax for a little bit.
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Do what you can to encourage your team to come to you with solutions or potential solutions to problems to sort of coach the team to say, look, don't come to me saying, hey, that's broken. Come to me saying, hey, that's broken and here are three thoughts I had to fix it. What do you think? And so the conversation is more about which of the three options is the best. So if you can train your team to do that, that takes a lot of pressure off of you. And then I would encourage managers to get coaches.
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Get a coach, get a mentor, have somebody, a trusted best friend at work you can talk to or a trusted coach who will give you advice. I've worked with coaches professionally, I've worked with coaches personally, and it just, it helps so much to get different perspective from somebody who's an expert in a field who can say, have you thought of this? What if you did that? Or, hey, I've got a quick fix for this, I can help you bail yourself out.
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of this particular instance. So getting coaching, getting a mentor, absolutely. And then remembering to take care of yourself because if you're not well, if you're overloaded, overwhelmed, stressed out of your mind, getting sick because you're working too hard, you are no good to your team. You are not gonna be able to effectively lead your team. And so then your team's performance is gonna suffer and that's all gonna look bad to the folks above you, right? And then they're just gonna put you in a corner. Yeah. I wonder if...
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Any leader knows this, but they're not expected to know everything. So the more they can encourage their team to come with potential solutions, the better for everyone. Yeah, absolutely. I say in my book that it's better to be a learn it all than a know it all. Early in my career, I was an absolute know it all. You couldn't tell me anything. I was a pain to be around because I knew everything and didn't want to hear it. And as I got older and realized that that approach was not serving me or anybody else around me very well, I started realizing, well, you know what?
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I don't know it all, but I know where to find it. The Google knows everything. Yes. That's one guy who probably knows everything. Yeah. So I can research something. I can find out. But being vulnerable and being willing to ask your team for help or being willing to let them know, you know what? I don't know the answer to that right now, but I'll go find out and I'll come back to you and then do it. Your stock goes up when you do that. Yeah. You don't have to know everything. That's not expected. Perfection is not required.
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No, not at all. Not that pressure is unnecessary. You talked about your book, Lead Like a Pro, and it's recently been released. Please tell us about what was the inspiration behind it? Yeah. So the book is called Lead Like a Pro, the Essential Guide for New Managers. And it's actually going to launch on the 20th, so on Wednesday. So Wednesday morning is when it's going to be available. And the whole premise behind it is exactly what my
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practices about. So my whole focus, my niche is around helping new managers make that step, make that next step. The book is just an extension of that where I'm helping, giving new managers a leg up. If you read this book before you get promoted or right when you get promoted, you're way ahead of folks who go in blind and you'll have the skills that you need, the self-reflection you need to make a conscious transition into your new role and do well in your first...
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30, 60, 90 days. And you said something about the first two chapters are the most crucial. Obviously the rest of the book is very insightful and valuable. What about empathy and transitioning to being a leader? Why do you think, as you said, those in your opinion are the first, are the most important topics from the book? Yeah. The first chapter is all about bringing empathy to the party.
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So as a new manager, as any manager, I would say you need to build your empathy muscles. You need to be an empathetic person or become an empathetic person. And there are ways that you can do that. So you can do some reading. For example, I mentioned Daniel Goldman's book on emotional intelligence. Fantastic reading. Anything Brene Brown writes is really, really good. Yeah. So there's lots of reading you can do, but you can also just think about, okay, wait a minute.
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Let me pay a little attention to myself. Let me focus on how I'm reacting to things, responding or reacting to things internally before I open my mouth and react verbally. Just doing a little inner work first. And then really spending some time getting to know people and situations that are different than your own. So for example, anything from hanging out with homeless and serving the homeless, you know, if homeless people make you a little nervous.
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go into a group of homeless people and serve dinner. If you're not really familiar, for example, I read this example of a guy who said there was a man on his team, a male executive on his team who was not very empathetic toward female executives, shall we say. He sent this person off to a two-day female executive offsite and had him kind of get.
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baked into the culture of what it's like to be a female executive. And he walked away from that really understanding like, okay, this is what it's like. These are the challenges that these people face. Very different than me, very different approach. I wouldn't have thought of that. And now I've been sort of immersed in it for a couple of days and learned something. So you can immerse yourself in a different or challenging situation in order to build your empathy. But all of that is important because in 2023, there was so much coming at us. So much coming at us.
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COVID is going to rear its head again any day. We've got the stuff that's going on in Ukraine. I just read that the Canadian Prime Minister accused India of killing somebody. It's just like, this is nuts. Like the world is crazy. So there's all these things going on in the world. And then we've got more and more and more demands on us at work and in our families, in home. So employees need...
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an empathetic manager to say, okay, you know what? I'm listening. I'm really listening to you. I'm paying attention to you. I'm on your side. I've got your back. Not to excuse bad behavior. If you're not performing well, then we need to take action. But I can still be empathetic while I am also making it clear that you need to perform differently, better and so on. But I can be a good human while I also guide you toward performing the way I want you to. So I think that those things are really important.
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The second piece is about making a mindful transition from individual contributor to manager. A lot of folks are not mindful about that transition. They just, they get the promotion and then go back to what they were always doing. And that's a recipe for disaster because your employees aren't being led. You're just doing more work. What you've been doing all along, yeah. Yeah, not helpful, not helpful to anybody, not helpful to you because you wind up with double work, not helpful to your employees because they don't know what to expect.
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And so making that mindful transition and learning how to set goals, delegate, coach, provide feedback so that you can be the conductor of the orchestra rather than, you know, down trying to play all the instruments. What are the cello players? Yeah. What about delegation makes us a little nervous? Cause I think even sometimes if I assign somebody to do something that I, I know I can do like.
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Oh, I hope they do it as good as that internally. Sometimes we have that nervousness. Why is that? Oh, it's, it's very normal. That happens all the time. I know if I want you to update my website and I ask you to do it, it's going to take you twice as long as if I just went in there and did it. But that means a, I get double work. You know, I'm not getting anything off my plate, so I can't be strategic. And B, you're not getting a chance to grow.
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So it makes us nervous because there's that control piece. I think a lot of us, especially managers, tend to be a little, not always, but often kind of a type A sort of controlling, I wanna do things well, I wanna do things right. And that reluctance to let go is natural and normal and you have to work through it so that you can empower the rest of your team to move along because your team can't move any faster than you. And if you're weighed down with everything,
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you're going to move awfully slow. Right. Your team is not going to move very quickly and you're going to wind up having your boss calling you into their office or their cubicle saying, excuse me, but now you're not performing. So it doesn't serve anyone to hold on and be in control all the time. No, but I totally get it. I'm a complete control freak. So and then when it comes to, uh, mentorship,
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Should you get a mentor within the organization you're in or somebody external? How do you pick what you consider the best mentor for yourself? Yes. Yes, get a mentor. I've had mentors inside the organization that were very helpful. For example, in Apple, Apple's a very different beast from other companies I worked at. And so I went and found somebody who could help me navigate inside of Apple. That was really useful.
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And for understanding how to navigate more politically in general, how to be more political and strategic, I chose a mentor outside my organization. And both provided excellent insight and help. So mentoring is not a fast one and done sort of a thing. So you may have to interview a few folks. It helps if you're really clear about what you want from mentoring.
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and have that crystal clear before you start talking to potential mentors, because chances are, if you're going to ask somebody to mentor you, they're probably more senior, they're probably busy. And if you don't have your act together and know what you're asking for, they may not appreciate that very much. So have your ask down. What do you want? And be clear about that. And have that conversation with as many people as it takes until you find a match.
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For example, I ran mentoring programs inside a couple of companies where I was the matchmaker, you know, and I would have people fill out survey monkey surveys and I would match them up in spreadsheets and so on. That's one way to do it. It's kind of a company sponsored mentorship. Other times is just talking to folks over coffee and just have a number of coffee conversations until you find the one. It's almost like speed dating a little bit. Yeah. Something you wouldn't have an idea what it's like.
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because you've been married to the same person. So that's speaking a mentor. Let's go back to the empathy part. The examples we talked about earlier were more where you can physically be present with people who have never been in your shoes. You've never been in before. But when it comes to these global organizations with people from different cultures, different countries and the
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a leader or a manager develop empathy and this understanding that you explained earlier? Yeah. I would suggest, so for example, in Slack, there's an app called Donut. You ever seen it? Not yet, no. The basic idea is that there's an app that will use an algorithm to randomly match folks and get them together for a 15-minute coffee chat or a 30-minute coffee chat. Okay. And it's an unstructured time where you just get together and get to know each other.
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So for example, you and I have never met in person. We've only met over Zoom. Right. Because we've met a couple of times, I feel like I have a little bit of rapport with you. We know each other a little bit. So you can still do that over Zoom where you can see each other. You can at least see your face. You can't see the whole body language, but at least see the face. You can listen to inflections in the voice to see how somebody may be feeling. So just having unstructured time to chat. 15 minutes over a cup of coffee.
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be a way to start that. So hopefully nobody would think, oh, there's so much work. We don't have time for those 15 minute chats. But yes, because there's a lot that goes unspoken, uncommunicated because there's this barrier of, oh, I'm from this country and these are American colleagues. I don't know what to say to them other than the work stuff and then keep quiet. So they never get to know the person. Right. Well, you know,
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You just reminded me, my family and I went and spent some time in the mountains in a cabin. And in the cabin were some cards that you could read questions from and just ask these questions of each other. And it was anything from what's your favorite memory from childhood to where did you grow up to you could even get into what's your greatest fear or things like that. There were just all these questions. It was a box full of questions that were just conversation starters. And you could do something like that.
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where you just start asking questions to dig a little bit deeper aside from who are you, what's your name, what's your title, what country are you from, blah, blah, blah. You can go beneath the surface a little bit. So literally be proactive about getting to know the different team members, especially not from your culture, not from your country. Have some proactive means of doing that. And then when it comes to your podcast, what made you get started?
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What is it that you hope your listeners benefit when they listen to your podcast? I wanna get the message out to as many people as possible that you're not alone when it comes to becoming a manager. So, you know, my classes reach a lot of folks, but that's just one channel. And so reaching folks through a podcast is another channel. And the podcast must be doing something right because it's a global top 10% podcast, which is...
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Wow. Congratulations. Yeah, I'm floored. Wow. But the message is all about, you know, how can I help new managers transition into their roles and then do well once they're cruising? Right. So that's what I was thinking of is how can I help? How can I help this particular group of people? And podcasting is just that's the medium these days. If it was 40 years ago, I'd probably be hosting a radio show. Right. Yeah.
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In college, I was a DJ. I helped found a radio station at my college and had my own radio show. So back then, 35 years ago, that was the media. Now it's podcasting and things progress. We'll just do the next thing. But, you know, how can I reach as many people as possible to help? And it's all about new managers. So I bring in lots and lots of different people who can come at.
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How do I help new managers? I always prep my guests and let them know who the audience is and ask, what would you say to my audience of new managers? And people say the most interesting things. And so that's how we go. Can you name us one of them? Oh, gosh. Now you're going to put me in the hot seat. I mean, I've had people talk about AI and chat GPT and how you can use that in management. I got into a vein where I've talked a lot about
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empathy with folks. I've had a lot of conversations around empathy with folks because there's something that's near and dear to me. I'm about to have a guest on the show who is an avid outdoorsman, mountain climber, rock climber, that sort of thing. And he's going to talk about leadership lessons learned outdoors. We'll bring the outdoors into it, which is great because I love being outside. So that's something that will be fun. So it's really
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span the gamut, it's been all over the place. And also a fresh perspective, because usually when talking about leadership, we just talk about the company, the team, the company, the team, the outdoors perspective would be a very interesting one. Yeah. Just the show is very conversational. I try to keep it succinct. So I have a chat with somebody, we chat for 25 or 35 minutes and get some good nuggets out of that. And then we sign off. For sure. That's what you did with me as well, yes.
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Very short, straight to the point. That's how the management development unlocked podcast is about. Eric Girard, any last words of wisdom for anyone listening today, especially new managers? The last thing I'd say to a new manager is that you are not alone. Seek out wisdom, seek out support. It's all around you, whether it's inside your company or whether it's outside your company. You probably are connected to people.
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who can weigh in and give you ideas on how to deal with situations, you don't have to deal with it on your own. You're not stuck. So remember that. Indeed. Words of wisdom from Eric Girard of Girard Training Solutions, the author of Lead Like a Pro, the host of the Management Development Unlocked Podcast.
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especially with training and development of managers. Thank you so much, Eric, for being here today. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. And where can we find you online if we want to continue to learn more of these nuggets from you? I am all over LinkedIn, so you can look me up on LinkedIn. My website is gerardtrainingsolutions.com. gerardtrainingsolutions.com and Eric Girard on LinkedIn.
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Thank you very much. Thank you for joining the Speaking and Communicating podcast once again. If you have a guest that you think would be a great fit for the show, please email me and my contact details are on the show notes. The Speaking and Communicating podcast is part of the Be Podcast Network, where there are many other podcasts that support you in being a better leader and becoming the change you want to see. To learn more about the Be Podcast Network,
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go to BePodcastNetwork.com. Don't forget to subscribe, leave us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify, and stay tuned for more episodes to come.