Speaking and Communicating Podcast

This podcast focuses on improving your communication skills both professionally and personally

>> Robert Sandleila: Welcome back to the speaking and communicating podcast. I am your host, Robert Angela. 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. We are currently looking for professionals or entrepreneurs who would be willing to discuss their communication challenges on this show. All the details of booking a spot with me are found on the show notes, and by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a reading and a review. Now let's get communicating.

Now, my guest today, Dana, has a zulu surname

Now, my guest today, Dana, you know what's funny? I'm zulu, and we have a surname, Dube, but I know you pronounce it differently.

>> Donna Dube: No, actually, that's correct, Dube.

>> Robert Sandleila: That's a zulu surname. First, her name. I'm going to ask her where her surname comes from, because it's zulu to us.

>> Donna Dube: Yes, yes. So it is. Actually, it's my married name, so that is amazing.

>> Robert Sandleila: We will have to talk about that after the recording, but I'm excited to learn about you. So welcome to the show.

Bill M. is a certified director of operations and business growth strategist

Donna. Uh, tell us a little bit about yourself.

>> Donna Dube: Yeah, great. Uh, so I am in Toronto, Ontario, in Canada, and I am a certified director of operations and business growth strategist, which is a lot of words, but really means I work one on one with six and seven figure business owners who want to be able to leverage three their time, their talent and their tactics in order to grow their business to the next level, whatever that is for them, without working 24/7 without sacrificing their life, their family, their relationships, all those good things. So, really being able to leverage those three things, look at the data, make wise decisions in terms of the operations side of their business, is where I like to hang out.

>> Robert Sandleila: Decisions. It's funny, somebody yesterday was talking about how communication is decision making.

>> Donna Dube: M. Yes, so true. Yeah.

>> Robert Sandleila: So how did you come to the three t's and decide that that's what business owners need in order to be more efficient and productive, as you say.

>> Donna Dube: Yeah. So I started in the online space as a project manager, which meant I was coming into the back end of businesses to help them manage a project that they had going on, whether that was, you know, a new offering of a new product and they were doing a launch or they were writing a book, and they wanted some guidance in terms of managing that project and helping their team. And so I did that for quite a while. And what I learned from that is that on the outside, a lot of businesses look good and shiny but on the inside, a lot of leaders of small businesses are drowning. They're working too often. They're stuck in the weeds. Their decision fatigue is through the roof because they don't have some systems, some processes. Their team is not accountable. They're not sure. Do they hire? Do they fire? Do they even have the right people on their team? And so just really being able to dive deeper with those business owners and to help them in that area of how they use their time, how they use their team and their tactics or their strategies better so that they can grow their business to the next level.

>> Robert Sandleila: Here's the first thing I'm wondering. Sometimes when there are no systems in place, is it because the business owner doesn't trust that if I put someone here and they take over this responsibility, this thing I was doing before, they're not going to do it as well as I do?

>> Donna Dube: Certainly that belief exists. Yes. And we understand where it comes from, right? When we all start our business, we're solopreneurs, at least most of us are. And so we are doing everything right. We're wearing that CEO hat, but it's really chief officer of everything, right. And so we need to be able to expand as we grow and be able to say, okay, this is not my area of genius. I need to be able to pass this off to someone else, to delegate this to someone else, to let that person know what success looks like. Like, and then to let them run with it. Because the people that I hire and bring on to my business, I brought on, because they're experts in their field, right? I can't be an expert at everything if I'm the leader of the business. There are certain things I have to do as business leader. And so other types of tasks I have to be able to pass off to others. And, yes, there is a belief, well, no one can do it as good as me. But I'm here to banish that myth because it's not true. We hire service experts so that they can do it sometimes faster and sometimes better than you, because that's not your zone of genius. That's not where you should be spending your time as a business leader. And sometimes that's hard to hear. And so what I like to do then is work with my clients more on the objective data. So some will say to me, but I really like being in canva, making images, or I really like setting up a web page. And so there might be parts of your business that you really like, but then let's map out how much time in a week you're spending doing that task and multiply that by what your hourly rate is.

>> Robert Sandleila: Billable hours, please see.

>> Donna Dube: Whoa. That was fun making those images, but it wasn't worth the 3 hours that I spent there. I can pay someone at a much cheaper rate to do this for me.

>> Robert Sandleila: Because my billable hours are much higher.

>> Donna Dube: Exactly. Yes.

>> Robert Sandleila: When you say they don't know who to hire and hudo fire, earlier you said they must hire somebody, whatever zone of genius that is necessary in that position. So are they not able to determine that during the interview process if you say they don't know who to hire and who to fire.

>> Donna Dube: Right. So I think where this comes in, Roberta, is as they're growing to begin with, maybe you don't have any team members and you think, oh, I'll bring on someone to like a VA to help me with some of my maintenance tasks, maybe help me with some social media. And as that person is with you, you're delegating more and more things to them. Their role is growing, but their job description isn't changing. And so what we find down the road is that we now have people doing certain roles that we weren't set out to, uh, we didn't initially hire them for. And so we really do have to take that step back and analyze, do I have the right people in the right seats and adjust that job description as we go along, um, so that it is matching what they're actually doing.

>> Robert Sandleila: And I can understand while growing a business, there's so much pressure, sometimes those things are not at the forefront of your mind.

>> Donna Dube: 100% they're not at the forefront. That's right. So what I like to encourage clients to do is either at the end of the year or midway through the year, but at the time when you're kind of evaluating, how did my year go, what are my goals for the next period? Whether you do that six months at a time or twelve months at a time, and evaluate your team and the roles and where you want the business to go at the same time, because most of us have a time when we're going to be sitting down and really strategically planning the next few months, whether that's six or twelve. And so if we can take that same time and analyze our team and their job descriptions, it kind of fits together.

>> Robert Sandleila: Would that be part of the performance review process?

>> Donna Dube: Oh, definitely. But how many small business owners do a, uh, performance review process?

>> Robert Sandleila: Because then my next question will be, if he hired me as a VA and now I have more responsibility, I'm thinking, okay, so if we're going to have a performance review six to twelve months from now, at some point I will bring up and say, uh, hey boss, you hired me as a va. This is the five things I was supposed to do for you daily, but now there's ten.

>> Donna Dube: Yes.

>> Robert Sandleila: Do I have the liberty to say that?

>> Donna Dube: I think you do, but I don't know how many people do that. I think especially at the implementation level, less of that is happening right. As we move up, as people are doing more, uh, of management roles and more of uh, strategic roles, of course that will come into play. But I think when we are bringing on people to do the doing, if you want to say that there's less of that. And so that's where we as leaders can then be proactive and have that in our plan each year.

>> Robert Sandleila: Yes. Because part of that conversation is the pay as well. If you paid me a certain rate for just doing a virtual assistant responsibilities, when there's more, that would be an opportunity to negotiate more. If I bring up and say, you know, actually I do so much more now.

>> Donna Dube: Yes, yes, a hundred percent. Right. But I think that definitely is not happening in this, in the online space as much as we see in a.

>> Robert Sandleila: Corporate setting right now.

How do you help CEOs implement the three t's?

Back to the CEO side of things. He's busy. That's why he doesn't have time to do all these things that we've mentioned. How do you then help them implement the three t's?

>> Donna Dube: So it starts with a couple of CEO habits, and one of those is having what I call a power hour. So this is 1 hour in your week. It's going to be the same time every week and it's non negotiable, so nothing gets it pushed aside except for, you know, some life. Tragic event. Right. Um, but you treat it just as important as you would another important call. And this is really 1 hour for you to step back and do some reviewing, some reflecting on your business, and you do it every single week. The reason for that is that gives us that 1 hour of planning that I think Brian Tracy quoted will save us 10 hours in implementation. So during that hour, we're reviewing a little bit of our metrics. Where are we in terms of revenue? Where are we in terms of getting new people into our world? Are our strategies and our tactics actually working? Because so many of us layer on different strategies. I'm going to try this, I'm going to try that, I'm going to try this. But then we don't take the time to actually look at the data and see, is this giving me a return on investment? So we do some of that in that 1 hour, we do some reflecting about what's working. What's my calendar look like? Do I have my top three priorities as leader of this business mapped out and time on my calendar to do that? I want you to look at your week in a sense that you want to be proactive, not reactive. Right. M so I'll give an example of that. If we start work in the morning and we turn on our laptop and we go straight to our inbox, and there's 35 messages there, and we start reading through those and the phone's dinging and the team is on slack, we're now responding to everyone else's requests.

>> Robert Sandleila: Just putting out fires.

>> Donna Dube: Just putting out fires. Exactly, Roberta. Right. But we want to be proactive as leader of the business because we've got goals we want to meet this month and this week. And so we want to look at what do I need to do this week to reach those goals? And I want to make sure I have time in my calendar to do those. That doesn't mean you're going to ignore your clients or your team. Of course not. You're going to get to those. But if you spent a good hour, hour and a half first thing, hitting some of what your priorities are for the week, you can then go to your inbox and start looking at what you need to answer.

Is it also the fear of, if I don't handle the inbox, putting out fires, some fire might

>> Robert Sandleila: Is it also the fear of, if I don't handle the inbox, putting out fires, some fire might burn even further and damage more? Because there's always an anxiety when you run a business. And I'm trying for us not to undermine, um, how much anxiety CEO's have when you're a solopreneur, like you said, there's just so much that they constantly worry about.

>> Donna Dube: Yes, that is true. That is true. But again, I think we have to put things in perspective. Some of this might come from my background before getting into the online space, because I was an ICU nurse. So definitely there. There were life and death, uh, situations, right. Not much in our small business is a life and death situation. Yeah, we might have a broken link, we might have something that's not working, but it can get fixed. So let's put it in perspective. It's not as big of a fire as we think it is. And I think the important thing when we are putting out fires is not just to attack them one after the other, but to actually look at why is this fire coming to me? Have I had this fire already three to five times this month, because those are red flags to say there's something we don't have set up in the back end to allow our team or our, uh, clients or wherever this fire is coming from to be able to handle it themselves.

>> Robert Sandleila: There's something in the system that's not there.

>> Donna Dube: Yes. So it's possible that your team doesn't have a resource, and so they're coming to you asking, what do I do in this situation? Right. And so if this is a fire that you're getting repeatedly, then we want to take a few minutes and say, no, I need to be able to give whatever my team needs so they can be accountable and make this decision themselves. That's we go back to an SOP and we adding some things, whether we have a, uh, one on one with a couple members of our team and lay out the different scenarios, whatever that looks like. But we need to enable our team to be able to make those decisions for us now that fire is going to come less frequently.

Are you doing CEO level tasks during those times? Mhm

>> Robert Sandleila: How does time management play into this?

>> Donna Dube: Mhm. Yeah. So a big piece here is really what I'm doing with the time I have to work on my business. So whether you're working 20 hours a week, 30 hours a week, 40, 60, whatever that looks like for you, are you doing CEO level tasks during those times? I like to think of all the tasks that we have in the business can fit into two buckets, maintenance and growth. So our maintenance tasks are things that need to get done, but I will question whether they need to be done by you as, uh, CEO. So, for example, things like customer service emails, invoicing, bookkeeping, keeping landing pages up to date, updating email sequences, social media posts, all those kinds of things that need to happen. But if you have people working for you, you have to question whether they're there for you to do as leader. M the growth level tasks on the other side are things that you as a business leader, want to be focusing on. So things like JV partnerships, networking, reaching out and building a, uh, relationship with others, doing webinars, doing masterclasses in front of other people's audiences, sales calls, if that's something you're doing in your business, those are things that you don't want to delegate to someone else. You, as the leader of the business, need to be the face and need to be the one doing that. This podcast is another good example. I'm, um, here with Roberta. She has to be on here as the leader of the podcast.

>> Robert Sandleila: Are you sure? I could never sign my VA to interview. Who does a great job, by the way. Love her. Who does a great job. But. Yes, yes.

>> Donna Dube: Right. So she needs to be here, obviously, for the recording to ask the questions, bring the thoughtful answers, et cetera. But then there's other things behind the scenes that the VA, for example, and the rest of Roberta's team can help her with. With this process. Right. So we can use some automations to do the booking. We can have a VA help to make sure we have a headshot and a bio and all the things we need help us afterwards to do editing and then put it out in the world. M so as a leader, you don't need to be focusing on all those little pieces, but you do have to have a system and a process set up so that your team knows each and every week what they're supposed to do, where they find the audio, how they edit it, where they put it. All of those things need to be in place so that your team can take it and run with it.

>> Robert Sandleila: We always say that the major challenge is clear communication. When you think of your clients, what are some have been the challenges of them communicating to their teams? This is what I expect. And you find that the team doesn't do that because it wasn't communicated clearly.

>> Donna Dube: Yes, yes. And that's a big, big, big area and something that we have to continuously work at. Right. It's not an overnight flip the switch, but clear communication means they have an assigned task. They know what the task is. They have the resources to be able to go about and complete the task. Meaning if they need logins or they need access to branding or colors or whatever those things are, they have access to that. But most importantly, they know what success looks like. Right. So if you want them to design, um, an image in canva or making a landing page a certain way, they need to be able to look at what they did, compare it with what success is, and be able to say, does this match? Yes, it does. Right. So having clear criteria about what, uh, your expectations are allows them to then look at it and say, okay, did I meet the expectations? I need to fix this part. That part. And then they can hand it to you for review or whatever the next stage is in the process. And then on the other side of that, sure. Sometimes we may not be as clear as we need to be. So when they do hand us something to review, it's so, so easy to say, oh, uh, that wasn't done. Right. Let me just go fix it. Right. And that's the last thing we want to do as business leaders, because, one, we don't want to put our time towards that task.

>> Robert Sandleila: I'm about to say it sounds faster if they just fix it and we can move on.

>> Donna Dube: Yes, yes. We want the team member to be able to know where they didn't meet the mark and be able to make those changes.

>> Robert Sandleila: And it benefits the company, the organization, and the CEO, if he handles it, you know, the latter way. Because then the next time that happens, the team member would know what to do.

>> Donna Dube: Exactly. That's right. Right. And then we go, we, uh, update the SOP or whatever. We have to tell people this is how it should be done. We put those updates in there so it's there for next time.

How much do entrepreneurs struggle with delegation? Yes. Right. Another big one is timelines and deadlines

>> Robert Sandleila: Which then brings to my next question, how much do they struggle with delegation?

>> Donna Dube: Yes. Yes. Again, a big, big area, because I see a lot of entrepreneurs do what I like to call drive by delegation. When you drive up to the drive through and you want to order something, you quickly say, what do you want to order? You drive up to the window and you're gone. Right. The employee at, uh, the window could hardly tell the color of your car, what make of your car, whether there was only you in the car, how you paid, because you were just gone so fast. And that's the same thing we don't want to do in our business. We don't want to drop things on our team and be gone. So now they're lost. They're thinking, well, does she want it like this or does he want that? And that's when they're going to come back to you with all the questions. And that's when you get frustrated and say, uh, oh, well, it wasn't worth delegating because, look, it's all back at me, right? But again, we didn't set that team member up for success. We gave them something new. We didn't set what the expectations are. We weren't clear in communicating what we wanted them to do. And when we wanted it by another big one is timelines and deadlines. And so being clear that I would like you to do this, I'd like to have it done Friday, whatever the date is. And being clear on what success looks like really, then sets our team member up for success.

>> Robert Sandleila: Right.

When it comes to feedback, especially as a solopreneur

When it comes to feedback, especially as a solopreneur and these things that we've talked about since we started, do your clients who are CEO's, uh, realize that sometimes not only should they be open to feedback or that that's one area that unless they improve on it, things will continue in some aspects to deteriorate.

>> Donna Dube: Mhm. Yes, for sure. Because let's face it, what's the saying? It takes two to tango. And so we as CEO's have to be inward looking and saying how am I leading, how am I managing? Because it's not always the team member who didn't do X, Y and Z. We have a part to play in that as well. And so I think it's really important that as leaders we make that safe place and we allow time for our team members to give us feedback. It would have been really helpful if you had done this, this and this before I started this task. Right. And then we have to take that in. We have to learn and we have to try and then emulate that the next time we're handing over tasks. But if we don't allow that space for that feedback, our team members don't have a chance to give it. And that's when we will see a higher turnover. Right. Because they're frustrated. They don't think they can talk openly with us and so to them it's not a good fit and they're going to want to move on.

>> Robert Sandleila: How do you help your clients with what we call difficult conversations?

>> Donna Dube: Mhm. So I think there's a lot of pieces to this, but really important is making their feedback receivable. So by that I mean I don't want to come to you as a team member and say the work you did last week was sloppy just out of the blue. Right. I want to be able to get a micro yes. From them first. I want them to realize that I'm now going to talk about giving you some feedback. Are you open to that and ready for that? So instead I may say, can I have a discussion with you for about five or ten minutes about the work you did last week that's now cluing them into, okay, there's going to be some feedback here. I have to think about that work and how I'm going to respond. And now they're open to receive and to hear. The other piece of that is really focusing on the behavior, not the person, because it can become so easy to focus on the person and what they did or didn't like. This is not about whether we like them or we don't like them. This is about objectively, did they do what we asked them to do the way we wanted them to do it? So when we actually focus on the behavior, and we're clear when we say what the behavior is, we're now keeping an objective, we're taking the emotions out of it. So let's say your team member delayed and answering an email, and that affected other people. So you might say to them, I noticed that it took you nine days to respond to that email. That's facts. There's nothing there about the person. That's the facts. And then the next piece of that is we want to clearly say what the impact was on others or on the team or on the business or on the client, whoever was impacted and how they were impacted, because this really helps the team member understand why that behavior isn't the outcome we're looking for, because it's affecting others in a negative way. Yes, I noticed that. You know, it took you nine to ten days to respond to that email, and unfortunately, Susie can't move forward with that task until she gets a response from you. So that's delaying the process. Right. So we're making it clear it's not about the person, it's about how this is slowing things down and they'll be.

>> Robert Sandleila: More receptive that way. Instead of Donna, you're so sloppy with your work, why do you take nine days to answer emails?

>> Donna Dube: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Right. And if you come at me like that, we're all humans. The first thing I'm going to do is put my back up. I'm not going to be receptive and open to hearing what you're going to say. I'm going to immediately probably disagree and be angry.

>> Robert Sandleila: Exactly what you said. We are all human. So how do you make your clients be constantly alert on that fact that we work with humans? Because that's why we say the workplace is changing and evolving. It's human centered. How do you make them say, okay, we love the numbers and the profits and everything, but we work with humans.

>> Donna Dube: Yes. So there's three questions that I like to ask myself, and I try and get my clients to do as well before going into a difficult conversation so that we can keep that human side of things, a mutual purpose, I guess, there. And so I ask, what do I really want for myself out of this conversation? What do I really want for this person that I'm going to speak to and what do I really want for the relationship? Right. So when we take the time to actually answer those three questions before we go into the conversation, that helps us keep centered that we are dealing with a human. Mistakes happen. Things happen. That person could be going through a very difficult time. We don't know. And so just being open and being aware and being honest and having that open space for them to then say their side and their thoughts really makes a difference.

>> Robert Sandleila: It's good to be understanding, by the way. But the caveat to that is it doesn't mean it should happen all the time. Because I need to be understanding as your CEO doesn't mean make it a patent because, oh, yeah, my CEO has been trained to be human by Donna the coach. So I'm going to mess up every time.

>> Donna Dube: Yes, that's true. That is true. I mean, at the end of the day, again, you know why they say we should never do business with family members, right? But at the end of the day, we do have to remove that emotion. We do have to look at things objectively, but we can still have a conversation, human to human.

>> Robert Sandleila: Dana.

Donna Dubey: Look at the tasks you're doing and how many

Ah Dube, any last words of wisdom for any CEO, especially solopreneurs, who are still navigating the waters of how do I delegate and trust and have these systems in my business so that I'm not a slave to it? Because I think a lot of CEO's, especially solopreneurs, fall into that trap.

>> Donna Dube: Yes. Yes. So again, I would just reiterate, look at the tasks you're doing and how many of them are maintenance, and how can we automate, delegate, or even stop some of those maintenance tasks so that you have more time in your days and your weeks for the growth level tasks, because that's what's going to grow your business and move the needle forward and help you get to that next level that you want to achieve. So really looking at what are those tasks, can I delegate? And then what kind of person would that need to be in order to make it happen? And remember, it doesn't have to be a full time employee. You can hire a part time contractor for 5 hours a week, but that's 5 hours you now can devote to.

>> Robert Sandleila: CEO level tasks, to strategic tasks. Yes, growth tasks. Thank you very much, Donna, for sharing those insights sites with us. But, uh, before you go, please share with us your website and any of the socials that you'd like for our listeners to reach out.

>> Donna Dube: Yeah, sure. So my website is CEO amplify CA, and you can reach me on usually LinkedIn or Facebook. Um, on Adube is my handle.

>> Robert Sandleila: Donna Dubey with Azulu surname.

Speaking on communicating podcast features expert speakers on improving your communication skills

Thank you very much for being on our show today. Don't forget my pleasure. This has been an absolute pleasure and honor as well. Well, thank you for joining us on the speaking on communicating podcast once again. Please log on to Apple and Spotify. Leave us a rating and a review and what you'd like for us to discuss on the show that will be of benefit to you. We encourage you to continue to get communicating and let us know how communication skills continue to improve your life professionally and personally. And stay tuned for more episodes to come.