Speaking and Communicating Podcast

One thing that Disney does so well is again, how do we repeat it and how do we behavioralize it?

And so we were always asking about magic.

Did you make any magic today?

Tell me about a magical moment that you had with the guest today.

What has been your best piece of magic that you've done today?

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Rapetra Ndela.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

And speaking of leadership, this exciting month of April, we have a special leadership series where every single guest will be a leadership coach, a leader in their own organization, and they will be helping us become better leaders ourselves.

And to top it off, we have three episodes per week instead of the usual two.

We will be publishing three episodes per week, Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, instead of the usual two episodes a week in this special leadership series in April.

So stay tuned, become a better leader, and log on to Apple and Spotify to give us a rating and a review.

And let's get communicating.

Now let's get communicating with Summer Jelinek, who is in Big Texas.

She is a leadership coach who had such an interesting career involving working at Disney.

She recently published her bestselling book, The Magic Of Leadership, and she's here to talk to us about not only leadership, but storytelling and its impact thereof.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show.

Hey, Summer.

Hi, how are you?

I'm doing fantastic.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Very excited to be here today.

I'm very excited that you're here as well.

Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

Absolutely.

So I am a leadership speaker and trainer, and my personal purpose is to reduce the impacts of toxic leadership behaviors in the workplace.

So everything that I do is helping leaders uncover their unique magic and understand that leadership isn't a cookie cutter, one size fits all.

We need all kinds of leaders with all types of personalities and the way that they show up.

And I want to help them show how their unique skills can absolutely help their employees uncover their own magics.

The own magic, indeed.

How did you get started on this?

I would be what you would call the bossy kid on the playground.

I have always been bossy.

And I wanted to understand, even at an early age, I could see other kids that were just getting it, that the kids wanted to follow them and they wanted to be their friend.

They weren't considered bossy.

They were considered a leader.

And I really wanted to know what that difference was.

So everything that I did from the degrees that I received and the companies that I worked for and the coaches that I chose were all really trying to understand what that essence of leadership was.

Then I had the pleasure of working for Walt Disney World for almost 10 years.

And while I was there, I got to see it in action and also have the resources to be able to articulate what was happening.

So that was the beginning, but definitely not the end of the journey.

That's interesting that you were analytical about the different leadership styles when you were in school, because usually we're always tired to who's popular and who's not.

And we think about popularity.

Popularity really is, you know, once we get out of high school, it really is the who sees me, who makes me feel valued, who makes me feel like I'm important.

And the people that can naturally do that are going to be the people that we tend to move towards.

But that's not the only piece to it.

Because we've met those people that are absolutely charming, they shake our hand, and for that moment, we feel like we are the only person in the world.

But then they shift that amazing gaze onto somebody else, and all of a sudden it's like, what happened?

So with leaders, we're helping them understand that instead of this moment of intensity and connection, it is small moments built up over consistent and intentional time.

So that way, trust is built, true relationships are built, it's not just charm, it's I trust that you have my back.

When you're giving me difficult feedback, I know you're not doing it because you're mad at me, you're doing it because you want the best for me.

That tends to take time and effort, and it's not easy, but it's not as complicated as we make it either.

It certainly isn't.

Let's go back to you saying you were bossy in school, and yet now, which is funny because now your mission is to reduce toxic work cultures.

It's almost like you did a 180.

Well, and it really was because I've always been, as you use the word, I'm analytical.

When I see something that doesn't make sense, I use my superpower of learning to figure out how can this make sense?

How can we do it better?

And when we think about leadership and we think about trying to lead and influence others, it isn't something that we're born with.

It is a skill that can be taught.

And so it was breaking down what are those specific things that amazing leaders do that makes them a leader and not bossy.

It was a fun journey.

It's one that I'm still on and very passionate about.

And then when you worked at Disney, what were some of the things that you noticed before branching out to be a coach that you are now?

So some of the things that I noticed was when we think about, if I ask you to imagine an effective leader, just a generic effective leader, we tend to imagine somebody most of the time, white guy, 40s, maybe early 50s and charming.

But when we see what actually works in the workplace, there are so many other things.

And Disney was amazing at this because we had people from all over the world.

It wasn't just what I had been raised growing up in Louisiana thinking about as a leader.

We had people that spoke five, six, seven languages and people that thought differently from the U.S.-centric viewpoint that I was at.

And you could see that no matter their personality and no matter how they showed up, the thing that made leaders most effective were were they able to show their employees that they cared about them.

And if so, what does that look like?

Did they stop and have conversations with their people about how their day was going in their families?

Did they know them more than just for what they could produce for that leader?

And then finally, were they able to help the person be better?

So having difficult conversations, holding them accountable, helping the employee understand what makes them unique and special.

The combination of those is where, again, it comes back to those relationships.

Relationships were being built and trust was being tested in small ways, but it kept passing the test.

And so that's where you would see the leaders and the employees really start to connect.

Here's the one question we have.

One moment we are working and we're all colleagues and we're all on the same level.

When you get promoted and suddenly I'm your leader, speaking of tough conversations, what is the first thing that I say to address the elephant in the room, which is we used to be buddies, but now sometimes you're going to have to listen to what I say even if you don't like it.

Yes, I can remember when I made this transition and it was so hard and I really wanted to do a good job.

So Michelle, who was my leader, had promoted me into a frontline manager position and I really wanted to do an amazing job.

But like you said that how do I go from being a buddy to now I have to tell people what to do and it's uncomfortable and it's awkward and I still want them to like me.

And so I'm trying all of these things.

And if I'm being honest with you, Roberta, absolutely none of them were working.

It was just backfiring again and again.

And have you ever been in that position where you really want to do a good job and you're trying so hard to do a good job, but you know deep down in your heart that you're not doing a good job?

And you don't know what the alternative is?

And you don't know what the alternative is?

Yes.

Michelle, she comes in and she brings me in her office and she sits me down and she was like, I don't know what you're trying to do, but it's not working.

Can I help?

And I was like, yes, please, please, please, anybody help me, right?

And that was the first moment that I realized that having the difficult conversations, having authentic conversations, not based on Michelle, because I'm sure my actions were making her life extraordinarily difficult, but she was there instead to be there with me.

And what she taught me is something that I used again and again and again for any new position that I went to, is in the beginning, if possible, we don't always have this choice, but in the beginning, if possible, don't do anything.

Don't change anything.

Don't go in and try and make your mark.

Don't try and prove anything.

Just go in and get to know your people as their leader.

And when they were your friend before, work beside them.

Use the relationship that you have.

And sometimes it's okay to say, you know, going from your friend to your leader, this is pretty awkward.

I may make a mistake.

If I do, can you let me know?

Can we keep the conversation going so we can figure out what this looks like together?

And when we go in and we ask questions and we focus on the person in front of us instead of worrying about, we need to make a change, we need to make our mark, we need to make an impact, we can help those that we're leading in this new way understand that we're still in it for them.

It just may look a little bit different.

Here's the thing about Michelle as well.

Sometimes a leader, if you've been promoted and you're doing it wrong like you were at first, would the leader then be in a catch-22 situation of do I give Summer a warning?

Because she's really not doing a great job, but we had trust in her, that's why we promoted her.

Or do I step in and find out how can I help like she did?

She chose the latter option.

Because here's the thing, and we want to be understanding leaders also have a lot of pressure on them.

From the top, from everyone else, production and everything.

How do they navigate all those situations while producing, while doing what is expected, but also always remembering the human element of it?

We're going to bring Michelle back because I learned most of my leadership lessons.

I love her already.

She's amazing.

I'm not sure if you're aware, but Walt Disney World is unionized.

And so that added a completely different level for managers, new managers going in.

Not only were we dealing with status and tenure and cast members that knew more than we did in most occasions, but it's also dealing with the union.

So if you make a mistake, it can be a pretty big deal pretty fast.

So I walked into Michelle's office one day and I was really frustrated because Walt Disney World, one of the happiest places on Earth, things like smiling is kind of required.

And so if you have a cranky cast member, it becomes a problem pretty quickly.

And so I went in her office, I was like, I'm tired of asking these questions.

I don't think that we should have to do this.

And she said, just ask.

Ask the question.

Because if you have not shared with this cast member what your expectations are, it's not fair.

I was like, fine, fine.

And so I go up to...

You haven't communicated.

So they don't know what is expected.

I was making an assumption, as leaders do, I know that we need to smile.

So why doesn't this person know that we need to smile?

And as leaders, we do this all the time.

And I heard a quote a long time ago, and I don't remember who it was from, but it was that disappointment lies between expectation and reality.

And so if we're not sharing our expectation and we get disappointed with reality as leaders, that's our own fault.

And so if you see an employee doing something before it gets to the point where you're angry and you're upset, have a conversation.

I sat that cast member down, and I was like, cast member at Disney, we're a happy place.

Sometimes when you're super focused, your face does not show happy.

And they're like, oh yeah, you know, I know, it's something that I'm working on.

And we worked up a plan together.

So when the face got a little bit angry, we had a code word that we would use or I would walk by and do this so that she knew to smile.

And we started working on it together as a team.

Instead of I'm so frustrated, she should just know what she's doing.

And so that was one of the big lessons was always, always, always don't assume that they know the very first time you have a conversation, nobody's in trouble.

We are just educating to make sure that we're both on the same page with expectations.

And it helps avoid not all difficult conversations, but a lot of them.

Because there's so many things that we assume our employees know that they don't.

And with assumption comes another assumption.

So you assume that there's a different reason why she's not smiling.

And had you gone with that assumption, you would have created another assumption of she's not cooperative.

She's this, she's that.

She doesn't want to be a team player.

It just feeds into this bottom hole of assumptions.

Well, and that's one of the things we talked a little bit about storytelling, because storytelling is so powerful.

But what we don't realize is our brains are built for stories.

Which means, if you start telling a story, I immediately sync up with you.

They've done so much research and it's amazing.

But I immediately, our brain waves get on the same brainwave length, and we're synced.

On the other hand, if I see something, if I see a snapshot of a moment, my brain will immediately create a story around it.

And if I'm not paying attention to what that story, what that assumption is, I will believe it to be a fact when it is not.

And so it's understanding that because we are driven by stories, we are a species that's driven by stories.

Right.

We are driven by stories and all the science, everything points to storytelling being so important.

Like you said, you're a keynote speaker.

I can listen to a 45-minute keynote, and I can forget 43 minutes of it, but there's that two minutes story I'm going to work on.

You're living the story!

I'm going to talk about it with my family during dinner.

You're not the speaker today.

This is what happened.

Absolutely.

That ability for story to guide us and help us pass along information is so powerful.

And as long as we're aware that our brain is also telling us a story about what we see, and to not immediately take it as fact.

Like what you said, when I saw that cast member not smiling, oh, they're grouchy, or oh, they're having a bad day, or oh, they just don't like me.

Those are all stories.

But if I believe it is fact, then my entire persona around that employee will change.

And that employee may or probably may not understand why the change occurred.

Mm-hmm.

And speaking of clear, not just communication, clear communication, what do some of the struggles leaders face in assuming, but I told Roberta what to do, why didn't she do it?

Another favorite quote is by George Bernard Shaw, and it's that the biggest illusion of communication is that it has taken place.

And when we think about communication, we think that I'm going to say something, I'm going to say it one time, and only one time you're going to hear it and know exactly what it is that I'm talking about.

But we forget about the fact that as somebody is talking, we are playing different things in our head.

So if I ask you right now to picture a dog, so all of your listeners right now, I want you to picture a dog.

We take just a moment, we picture a dog.

Roberta, I'm curious, what kind of dog did you just picture?

A puppy.

A puppy?

And what color was the puppy?

You know, those brownish ones with hair all over the eyes.

Was the puppy sitting or was the puppy running?

Was the puppy playing?

Running on the grass.

Okay, so there's grass, the puppy's outside.

Catching frisbees and everything, yeah.

Catching frisbees.

When I think of a dog, I think about my best fur baby friend, Cricket, who is 13 pounds, 14 years old.

She's a pug chihuahua mix and I think about her laying in her bed.

So I'm sure all of your listeners also either thought about a dog that they know or went to a dog that they've seen.

But for the amount of listeners that are listening to this podcast right now, we all thought of a different dog.

For sure.

And that's what happens with communication is just because I've said it one way doesn't mean that you've heard it the way that I intended.

And so as leaders, it's understanding how can we communicate the same thing in multiple ways and we need to communicate it in multiple times.

So it gets to where it begins sticking.

We hear so much information throughout our day that if we only say it once, it's not going to stick.

So what are those ways?

Can we put it in a newsletter?

Can we send it in an email?

Can we say it in a meeting?

It's that consistent saying it over time.

That's where it's going to start getting sticky.

And would myself, if I'm in a team and my leader has said something once, there would be that fear of if I keep asking something he's already told me, I look incompetent, I look like I don't know how to do my job.

And then you sit in your cubicle, you're not sure that you're doing the right thing to not appear incompetent.

Yeah, that's one thing that when we think about adults, you bring up something that's so valuable for leaders to remember is adults have big egos.

Whether it's an obvious ego or not, that voice that's happening that's telling them what to do, that's their ego speaking.

And if they've asked it once, chances are they're not going to want to ask it again.

It's like when somebody mumbles something, we're like, oh, I'm sorry, what was that?

And then they mumble it again and we're like, I'm sorry, one more time?

If they mumble it again, we're not going to say anything.

We're just going to be like, oh, okay.

And so that same thing happens with communication in the workplace, that it's the leader's responsibility to communicate again and again and again, and open up for those questions, because not everybody's going to be comfortable broaching the subject on their own.

And how will he pick up on that as well?

Because if you have so much on your plate and you've said it once, then everybody must go back to their desks, sit down and do the work.

How will you just keep saying, by the way, did you guys do this?

I've already told you 10 times, like, how does that play out in a relaxed scenario?

Well, an excellent question, because as leaders, we don't want to sound like a broken record.

And so it is helpful if we already have touchpoints built in.

So let's say I have a team of five.

I meet with one person every week.

So about every five weeks, I've met with everybody on my team.

And I'm asking questions.

How's it going?

What are we doing?

Tying in those key pieces of information.

I'm not going to repeat every single thing that I've told them.

Choose the top three.

What are those three pieces that we're really focused on?

And then ask questions.

Hey, we changed our key performance indicator to look at customer data.

I'm seeing for you that your customer data is going up, going down, whatever that looks like.

Walk me through.

What has that experience been for you?

So giving them a chance to start tying in what you're asking and how it's showing up for them.

And then in meetings, one thing that Disney does so well is, again, how do we repeat it and how do we behavioralize it?

And so we were always asking about magic.

Did you make any magic today?

Tell me about a magical moment that you had with a guest today.

What has been your best piece of magic that you've done today?

And so tying it in in those conversations and giving the employees a chance to brag about themselves.

So when you're really focused, having those questions, having those conversations, and again, sending it out in different types of formatting.

So in an email, we would have weekly recaps and at the end of every week, we would choose our top three magical moments as a team that would get sent out to everybody.

So it's emails, newsletters, conversations, meetings.

If you think you have said it enough, you probably have not say it ten more times.

The illusion again, Cheshme.

Yes.

Now let's talk about toxic work cultures.

When you work with your clients, we have found that there's a disparity between what the leader thinks the work environment is like and what the team thinks.

Let's say they give each other ratings and the leader thinks, oh yeah, 90% we're good.

And the team goes 30%.

Why are they not seeing things the same way?

A lot of times it's because leaders are again, we tell stories based on what we're hearing and what we're seeing.

And we make the assumption that if somebody tells us everything is good, everything is actually good.

When we know being employees, if things are going poorly, most of the time we're not talking to the leader about it, we're talking to the other employees about it.

And so having these conversations, but also creating space where it's okay if somebody's having a bad day to say that they're having a bad day.

You know, we're known, it's a running joke that somebody will come by and say, how are you doing today?

And our response is, I'm fine.

Yes, I'm doing okay.

I'm fine.

How are you?

Whereas leaders, we need to dig beyond that.

Okay, when you say fine, what does that mean?

I want to know how you're really doing today.

And then we tend to have those employees on our teams that like to fuss a lot and we just start ignoring them.

That is also a skill set.

If you have members on your team that can see where the train is going off the track, there's value in having conversations with them, in listening to what they're saying.

We listen to it with a filter, understanding that it's coming from an area that may lean towards negativity, but we don't discount it.

You know, one of the things that I was told as an early leader is go have lunch with your cast members, go to the break room, see what you're hearing, take a cup of coffee and walk around, get out of the office, because that's where you're more likely to hear what's truly happening and be able to sense the feeling of what's going on with your employees versus just everybody saying, I'm fine.

I'm fine.

You're fine.

Everything's fine.

Because we assume that you're just asking me out of, you know, normal human courtesy, but you want to find out how am I doing with the cast member?

That's where you want to get to.

So let's just get the fine out of the way, because I assume that my leader, all he wants to know is how's the work going.

Exactly.

So dig a little bit deeper.

Ask a little bit more.

And let's talk about your best-selling book, The Magic Of Leadership.

Yes.

Unlocking The Magic Of Leadership just came out last week.

Yes.

Magic is in everything that we do.

You can order it on Amazon, but the thing that I am proudest of with this, is it really breaks down leadership in a way that's easy to understand.

I said in the beginning that leadership isn't easy, but it's not as complicated as we make it.

And so this is whether you want to be a leader one day or you're an established leader and you've been doing it for 15 or 20 years.

This book really helps uncover some of the myths that we have about leadership.

We think that it's common sense, but it's not.

And so this starts pulling it back and helping us understand why are we getting results that we're doing everything we're supposed to do, but we're not getting the results that we're expecting.

Why?

And this book is a roadmap to help uncover that.

So really, really excited.

It is a labor of love.

Been working on it for a long time.

So excited that it's finally out.

Unlocking The Magic Of Leadership, because everything is magic at Disney by Summer Jelinek.

Now, Summer, here's the thing about leadership as well.

Speaking of the myths, there's this, if I show my human side or my vulnerable side, and by vulnerable, we're not talking about your team, your dirty laundry, but just, you know, I once made a mistake at work too, you know.

If I show that, they won't respect me as their leader.

Yes.

This level of, we hear in leadership books and podcasts about how are we authentic, how are we transparent, but then we go to do it, and it's like, how authentic is too authentic?

Do they really want to know that I went out drinking with my buddies over the weekend?

So what is that line?

How can we draw that line?

I had somebody explain this to me a long time ago, and it's really helped me understand this concept of authenticity as a leader.

I had somebody ask me and they said, what is your favorite color?

I said purple.

And they said, okay, well, if you had to choose a color for yourself, a shade of purple, what color would it be?

I was like royal purple, like a deep, deep, almost black purple.

And they're like, okay, so that is your authentic color.

You are always purple.

But what we're asking you to do is understand that sometimes the intensity of your purple can be a little bit too much.

So if somebody comes in and you notice what their emotional level, that their emotional level is a little bit withdrawn, maybe you go more towards a violet.

You're not changing who you are.

Your core beliefs and standards and values aren't changing, but you're matching the emotional level of the person by either brightening your color or lightening your color depending on the mood.

And that visual always helped me understand authenticity, because we never want to use authenticity as an excuse for bad behavior.

We don't want to let our employees use authenticity as an excuse for bad behavior.

But it's understanding as leaders when we walk in, they still want the human version of us.

If somebody comes up and they've made a big mistake and they're feeling all of the shame and the guilt around that big mistake, we can share with them times that we've experienced it as well.

But I'm not going to share with them that I went drinking with my buddies over the weekend, because that doesn't have any place to be in it.

So when we're thinking about how we can build these relationships, it's remembering whatever your favorite color is, because shade of that color, that is your authentic self.

You will always be that color, but you can adjust the shade, depending on what's happening around you and what the person in front of you needs.

That is such a beautiful way of putting it.

I've never heard of that analogy before.

Adjust the shade of your color.

When that person told me that, I was like, oh, that makes so much sense, because I can be intense.

I can be a lot.

Sometimes I need to pull it back and need to be more violent.

But you don't change who you are.

You still stay authentically you.

So beautifully stated.

Please, Summer, share one more thing with us that you feel I should have asked that you were hoping you'd share with our listeners today.

So we talk a lot about magic.

And the reason for this is I talk about the magic of leadership.

I'm not talking about this thing that can't happen, like a magic trick with a rabbit coming out of a hat.

I'm talking about that moment that happens when somebody comes into your life, whether for 30 minutes or for 30 years.

And they say or do something that changes the trajectory of your life for the positive.

I think about a leader who I can't even tell you her name, but I was having a really bad day at Disney.

It was when I was frontline cast member.

I wanted to quit.

And she came up to me and says, you're doing a really good job.

I know this isn't easy, but you're doing a really good job.

And that convinced me to stay.

And that turned a six month career into a 10 year career.

And so when we're talking about the magic of leadership, that's what we're talking about is those small, small moments that we never think about, but have the ability to change somebody's life.

And I think that is really cool.

That's how it made you feel.

You knew that she really cared.

But how do we have that foresight to say, you know what, I can see that she's really trying, but she's frustrated, let me help her.

Let me make her feel better.

So I have a rule that I teach leaders that I coach and I use for myself as well.

If it's something I would want to hear, then I tell the other person.

So that's bad news.

If I am performing poorly, I absolutely want to hear that.

If I am struggling trying to do something and somebody sees that they appreciate that struggle, I absolutely want to hear that.

So that way it helps me get out of my own head and tell people the things that they need to hear.

So it's a good gauge to start with.

If you would want to hear it, share it.

Words of wisdom from Summer Jelinek, the keynote speaker, trainer, the bestselling author of Unlocking The Magic Of Leadership and Leadership Coach.

You have brought so many different insights and stories that we haven't had before on the show.

So thank you so much for that, especially the color one.

You are welcome.

And thank you for having me today.

And may I give your listeners a gift?

We love gifts.

So thank you very much.

We look forward to that.

And you're going to share with us where we can find you online so we can continue the conversation.

Absolutely.

So if you want to find me online, you can go to summerjelinek.com.

Summer, just like the season, Jelinek, jelinek.com.

And as a special gift, if you want the first section of the book, it's all about managing yourself first.

So the first three chapters, they are my favorite chapters out of the entire book, then you can go to unlockingthemagicofleadership.com/m-y-f.

Manage yourself first.

That will give you the option to sign up and download the first section of the book as a special thank you for listening to us today.

And a special thank you to you Summer for the gift.

We really appreciate it.

I will put all those details in the show notes.

unlockingthemagicofleadership.com/m-y-f.

Yes.

I love that.

They always say leadership starts with you.

So, self-leadership.

Absolutely, it does.

Yes, ma'am.

The Magic Of Summer.

Thank you very much Summer for bringing magic to our show today.

We really appreciate your insight.

Thank you very much for having me.

It has been a blast.

A total blast indeed.

My absolute pleasure.

Thank you for joining us on the Speaking and Communicating Podcast once again.

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