Speaking and Communicating Podcast

I had one client, and she was one of these people that was like, I like working alone, I don't want to manage people.

So I talked to her, I said, listen, you have some independent contractors on your team, talk to your manager and see if they'll let you manage one of those contractors.

So she did that.

And the work that she did was genius.

She got that experience with that one person.

She didn't know, but everybody's watching, like she ultimately began, actually got a real team of full-time employees, FTEs, and she was the best manager.

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Roberta Ndlela.

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 by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review.

Now, let's get communicating.

Now, let's get communicating with Lynell Green, who is a global transformation speaker.

She's an executive coach for authentic and audacious leadership, who specializes mainly in helping tech professionals, those the ones that we talk about a lot on this show.

Today, she's going to help us on how we can improve our communication, our active listening, and so much more that will help us become better leaders and better professionals.

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

Hi, Lynell.

Hello, Roberta.

Thank you again for having me on your show.

It's always a pleasure.

My absolute pleasure indeed.

Welcome.

Please introduce yourself to the listeners.

Great.

Well, my background, Roberta, is actually in accounting, finance, and taxation.

That's what my degrees are in, my certifications, etc.

And then I went to Harvard to get certified as a strategist, which I love strategy because I think it's really a rich component of leadership.

And then I taught leadership courses at Landmark for 15 years.

Ultimately became the leader of the city of San Francisco.

I was the city coach and in charge of the programs that were led there, and also trained other leaders across the country.

That's just a little bit.

And my fundamental background was corporate America.

And then I spun off and started my own.

It started off as a tax and accounting firm.

And then there was a day that came that I was fine if I never did another spreadsheet.

And I realized I was having more fun with my leadership courses, even though that was volunteer work for 15 years.

That was where I was having fun.

So at some point, I started to transition from accounting, finance and taxation to more strategy and leadership training.

Passion finding purpose, we say.

I think that's what happened.

Exactly.

And I still do a little accounting, finance, tax work consulting, but very little.

And that number, that percentage is getting smaller every year.

Yeah.

And so what was so exciting and so enjoyable about this leadership part?

Yeah.

Great question.

Fundamentally, I realize I love watching people grow and develop.

I love them, watching them discover their zone of genius, watching them do things that they thought they couldn't do.

So the particular course I led was four months.

So I taught it once in the beginning of the year and another time at the end of the year.

So, and within that four months, the mandate was they had to start some type of either community events, start a business, they had to start something.

It had to be launched in four months.

So it really did put a little bit of pressure on people, whereas many times we sit on our couch and do another spreadsheet, another analysis, another boat, and a year goes by.

So this way, on the first day, you have to say what you're going to get done, what your milestones are, and then you have a coach to help you every week.

But what I loved was watching people, because it was leadership in general, we might have the CEO of a mid-sized company, multimillion dollar company, sitting next to someone who just recently graduated from college and sometimes high school, but usually college.

So you have this room normally around 80 people of all of these people that are all these various levels of leadership.

So that also was, they cross pollinated, and watching that was also very fascinating to me.

So I learned that it's not just about what I say from in front of the room, but it's what they say to each other.

They're learning and growing from each other.

So I enjoyed that.

Like if I knew this person was struggling with one thing and I knew somebody else was strong, with that it's like you guys should get together, have coffee and help each other.

There are still some of the people that were in my courses that are now, I mean, 12, 15 years ago.

I still know them today and some of them I'm friends with.

I go to Burning Man with them.

Some of them I'm on their boards for the ones that have businesses and I speak at their companies.

I love watching people grow and develop.

And I love being the one to actually have them believe that they can do more than they say to themselves.

The very first day, I tell them that I'm going to interact with you like a global leader, no matter what you've accomplished.

I'm going to interact with you that way.

The coaches are going to interact with you that way.

And we will not be convinced of your mediocrity.

So don't try to tell us what you can't do because we're not listening.

So just setting the groundwork for that and reminding them when they start, well, I can't do like we don't do that here.

We don't do that.

I can't do.

Well, you can't fly.

There's some things you really can't do.

But going and having a meeting and doing a presentation, yeah, you can actually do that.

You certainly can.

Two things for me from that conversation.

One, the idea of self-leadership.

For instance, you said somebody from college.

What role does self-leadership play?

And like you said, they were accountable.

You made them accountable to say, we're not going to accept your I can'ts.

Yeah, well, that became critical.

And I think the principles that they learned, even the people that I talked to years later, they took it out into their life because every week you had to turn in, what did you do last week?

And what is your promise for this week?

There's no like sitting around, letting weeks go by, you didn't take action.

So that was one thing, being held accountable, and then being coachable because some people were human, they might get stuck, they get in their head, they really don't believe they could do something or that it's practical.

And having a coach, we would joke around talking you down off the ledge, like, yeah, come on, let's sit down.

You're standing there like this is the end.

It's not.

Let's just talk about what you can do, what you can't do, and help people navigate opportunities and options.

Because sometimes this whole thing of mastering the art of getting out of your own way, is a skill that we need to bring with us through life.

Because we would notice that the people that got stuck, it was many times had nothing to do with the thing that they were actually working on.

It was because they were reminded that their mom said they were a failure, or their cousin succeeded and they failed at something.

So there's all this old data that starts to play in their head, that has them tethered to some belief system that is not serving them.

That was the other thing I loved about those courses, is that the design of it was to drive some of those things up.

When you have four months and somebody's on you every week, like, what did you get done with it?

Then if there's anything that stops you, it's going to come up.

It's like, I know I'm afraid and what are you afraid of?

Well, I did this blah, blah, blah, and I failed, and now I feel like I need to be more cautious and this is moving too fast for me.

It's like, at the end of the day, what's at stake here?

Some of them could be a simple thing.

They want to take a plot of land that's not used in their city.

They want to get permission, turn it into a community garden, and it's going to need to get done in a few months.

And then they get the first no from city council, and they want to sit down and suck their thumb.

It's like, no, no, no.

You have to go back, then you're going to have to go petition each council member.

You're going to have to get your presentation together, and you're going to have to do it again.

So to have somebody telling you that, I think, also helps people, you know, who you have in your ear.

If you only have people in your ear that are telling you what it can't do or how to play it safe, you're going to have a life, and I'm not even going to say you're going to be miserable.

You'll have whatever version of life you have.

But I find if we arm ourselves with being audacious, doing things that we aren't comfortable doing, when we get to the other side of it, we can amaze ourselves in what we can accomplish.

And that's what I love about leadership in general.

If you take it on, you can amaze yourself and look back, wow, two years ago, I never would have been able to do this.

Three years ago, I would have been frozen in place, thinking about doing what I can now do with my eyes closed.

Here's the reason I love that story, because you work with a lot of tech professionals, and we always assume they take this identity of, I'm an introvert, I'm not good with people, I don't want to lead.

When you ask them the right questions, when placed in leadership positions, they realize, wait a minute, I can actually do this.

I'm actually not as bad with people as I thought I was.

Can you elaborate on that?

Absolutely.

Well, I mean, that's also back to some of the stories we tell ourselves, right?

Like somebody told them they were introverts probably long before they got that job.

Like they've been wearing that title for a long time and they have it on their forehead, and they believe that it's true about them.

And some of these people have three kids at home.

And I'm like, okay, hold on, you can't lead people, but you have three kids, two dogs, a wife.

You know, that's more work than the teamwork you're trying to get done at work.

You know, you obviously have some skills on leading people.

You've compartmentalized that.

Well, yeah, I'm a good dad, and you have that over there in that corner.

And then over here, I'm afraid I don't want to lead people.

Hold on.

What if the way you lead your children and actually help them be their best, what if it's the same skill?

You know, what if you can transfer that skill?

And then others are volunteering in the neighborhood, volunteering, coaching basketball, coaching baseball, and doing other things out in the community.

And they come to work, and they're still, I'm shy, I can't do it.

I'm like, hold on, wait a minute.

Didn't your team just win some championship?

How did you get that done?

And then you come at work and you're sucking your thumb like you're a nervous child.

No, like let's just look in your life and see where we can cross-pollinate those skills and realize, sure, some people are introverts, some people are extroverts by nature and nurture, whatever we want to, how we want to label that.

But I think most of us have a little bit of both.

Most of us, there are times we want to be alone and want to work alone, and there are times that we don't mind being with people because we get energy from that as well.

But I think fundamentally it's dangerous to put yourself in a box.

We give ourselves more options when we give ourselves permission to explore.

Yes, maybe my tendency is to be an introvert.

What if I pretended to be an extrovert today?

What if I just went out just to see how that felt?

You're not going to die.

Nobody's going to die.

Nobody's going to bleed out.

Like, just go and do it.

And same thing with supervising people.

People say, I don't like people, I don't want to supervise people.

And the first question I ask them is, have you ever done it?

And they're like, well, no.

Well, then how do you know?

And I do believe that some of the people that don't want to manage people make the best managers because they're very conscious of each individual's journey.

They know how they struggled.

So they're sensitive to the struggles of people on their team.

Whereas sometimes extroverts think everybody should behave like they do.

Like, just come on everybody, blah, blah, blah.

And it doesn't work that way for everybody.

And sometimes if the extrovert is too pushy and out there, the introverts are like, that's too much.

I can't even handle all of this water hose you're pouring my direction.

So I find that people that are introverts, if you care about people, that's really the fundamental difference.

Whether you're an introvert or extrovert, if you care about people, you can manage people.

Because managing people is about caring for people, in my view.

And caring not only about getting the work done, yes, that's important, but also caring about them as human beings, their own career growth and development.

I find if people know you care about them, they will work harder for you.

If they don't think you care about them, they're going to do the minimum.

And that doesn't help you.

If you want to make it selfish, you want to look good, you want your team to hit the goals and deliver, not miss launch dates, etc.

Then you have to find a way to be caring.

Yes.

You not only bring that light to the tech professionals you work with, but also that if they say, oh, I don't want to manage people, you always try to make them see far ahead how their career is going to be.

Because no matter what a wizard you are, no matter how brilliant you are, nobody works in a vacuum.

Would you agree?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I had one client, I started coaching her at Facebook, and she was one of these people that was, I like working alone, I don't want to manage people, and I just can't even imagine having that responsibility.

So I talked to her, I said, listen, let's play a game here.

You have some independent contractors on your team, talk to your manager and see if they'll let you manage one of those contractors.

Just one, just to give you a flavor of what it feels like.

So she reluctantly, kicking and screaming, did that and got that one contractor.

And the work that she did was genius.

She's like, well, nobody's ever taken the time with them to train them to actually understand what they're supposed to be doing in the end.

So they're just kind of winging it, trying to do their best.

So she said, I'm going to put together a training program for my one contractor so that he can understand exactly what he's supposed to do day to day.

Genius, brilliant.

So she did that.

She's like, he's doing so much better.

Shocking, because you've now given him the tools to win.

And now he trusts you, so he's telling you ahead of time, like, I don't know about this or that.

I said, well, what do you do when he has a problem?

She said, well, I know my job is to remove blockers for him.

If he can't get something done, I go and talk to so-and-so and talk to so-and-so and make sure he has a clear path.

I'm like, are you kidding?

Do you know some managers that are managing big teams don't have them figure that out yet?

Right?

So she got that experience with that one person.

She didn't know, but everybody's watching, like, look at what a genius job she's doing.

They're watching the performance of this one contractor who ultimately became a full-time person, by the way, because he actually started to shine.

So when a job opening came up, he got a job, a full-time job there.

And then over the course of the next couple of years, I coached her for years there, she ultimately began, actually got a real team of full-time employees, FTEs, and she was the best manager.

She had her own work ethic, and she understood that what's important is to get people to a place where they can bring excellent work, and that that was different and unique for everybody, because she always felt like, well, I work differently than everybody.

So she could bring that openness to the people that she managed.

She did well, and ultimately graduated, I call it graduation, decided that she was going to leave Facebook at some point, and start her own business, which she did.

And because she got the confidence over the course of that time.

So it's not even just about saying yes to managing people.

And you've said this numerous times.

We are not in a vacuum.

Everything we get done is being impacted by somebody else, and or influencing what somebody else does or doesn't do.

So when you look at it, yes, you're learning while you're working for this company.

And you want to take that skill to the next company if you choose to.

But you might choose to start your own company.

And then that skill is going to be needed.

And we talked a little bit ago about your family.

You need that skill to manage children and your community responsibilities and church and wherever else you find yourself.

The skills are transferable.

Transferable skills, indeed.

I love that.

Back to the one way you were for 15 years, the leadership course, you'd have a CEO sitting next to a college graduate.

They say that you cannot be a leader if you cannot be a follower.

So the CEO, were they willing or did they think, I'm a CEO, I know everything.

What's the high school graduate going to teach me?

Yeah, exactly.

Well, I think me as the leader of the course, really set the groundwork that the person sitting next to you knows more than you do about something.

No matter what their age is, there's something they know that you don't know.

So you want to be curious.

And that was really the whole spirit and context, is for everybody to bring curiosity about each other.

The organization was 80 people that are registered in the course.

Each one of them has a coach.

Each coach is coaching five people.

So they meet one-on-one with that coach, and they also meet together with the five people in their group with that coach.

They get both of those relationships, and then each coach has a coach.

So there's head coaches that only coach coaches, and then I coach everybody.

There was one group.

This woman took my course when she was 17.

Brilliant.

Did her project.

She did amazing.

And she wanted to come back and coach at 18, senior in high school.

I said yes to her.

She was coaching 50-year-olds, 30-year-olds, and they get in their group, and they're like, who's our coach here?

They think she's a child that's just in the course.

I'm like, no, no, she's your coach.

And some of them were like, how can she coach me?

But she was rigorous.

She's like, okay, what are you going to get done?

And by when are you going to get it done?

Okay, you didn't get it done, so you got stopped.

Talk to me about how you got stopped and why, and what are you going to do about that this week so you don't get stopped again?

They got their life out of being with her.

Because she didn't have all of this nonsense.

She wasn't trying to be polite.

She was about, no, everybody's going to get their project done and you guys are going to help each other and no gossiping, no backbiting, no making excuses.

They learned quickly this 18-year-old had a work ethic that had nothing to do with age.

They really blossomed with her.

So that bringing curiosity, I think is critical.

As a human being, that's the way we can learn from each other, regardless of titles, how much money you have or don't have, or even what your life looks like at different points.

Some people have had millions of bankruptcy and their life looks another way.

It doesn't mean they don't know all that they know from their journey, and they're rebuilding now, which is a whole other skill.

And there's always something to learn from someone else, always.

That is so key, especially our age, at least.

We started working in the 90s.

There was no internet.

There was no Google.

And we always assumed, okay, my boss knows everything.

He'll just give me direction.

But now, you can get the most innovative idea from an 18-year-old, right?

That's exactly right.

And you have to be open to that.

And now, with AI, you have all kinds of other tools to help you get bright ideas, right?

There's no limit.

You know, somebody says, why I didn't know that.

I'm like, ah, that may have worked in the 80s and 90s that you could get away with not knowing.

But now, on your phone, you can ask a question and get the answer.

So, yeah, not knowing is no longer a valid answer to anything, I don't think.

You could say that, but I haven't had time to research it.

But yet, I don't know.

It's not, yeah.

Yet.

But I will find out.

The information age.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Now, let's pass this one leadership myth that in order for my team to be respected, I should appear to have all the answers.

Wow.

That paradigm is back from the industrial age.

I mean, seriously, if I'm building a car, and today's my first day, and I don't know my role on the assembly line, I do need somebody.

I'm expecting my boss to tell me how to use this machine, and how many widgets I'm supposed to make a day, and show me how to do it so I don't cut off my fingers.

That was back in the industrial age.

We're not in that age anymore.

When we talk about knowledge workers, which is anybody that's white-collar, that is not making something, you can expand your knowledge based on your own pace.

You're not waiting for your manager to increase your knowledge base, especially nowadays.

They can listen to podcasts like yours.

There's books to read.

You know, there's no reason.

If you know you're weak or you're not as strong as you want to be in a particular area, you can go in and watch a YouTube video and take a master class.

So if you're waiting for your manager to bring you along, that's just naive.

Yes, you want to learn from your manager.

If your manager has certain skills that you don't have, you can learn by watching, asking great questions, all of that.

But that should complement your own journey.

If in fact you want to learn how to be a better manager yourself, and you have a manager but you want to be a better manager, you can put yourself in a class.

You can watch, like I mentioned, YouTube videos, podcasts, read books.

Our journey of personal development is our journey.

It's not contingent upon our manager, the owner of the business.

It's not contingent upon anything.

If I want to know something, like I have founders that have to do pitch decks all the time.

You can watch a thousand pitch deck videos on YouTube.

People that say, well, I don't know how to put together a pitch deck.

Well, just say, I need a three-slide pitch deck, and there's a whole world on YouTube of how to do a pitch deck and how to do it in three slides and how to do it in three minutes.

If you only have three minutes, there's a whole skill.

Now, I think fundamentally, Roberta, what we have to focus on is getting better at anything requires work.

There's no magic wand.

And the leader as well, as I said, the onus is upon them to not give this impression that I have all the answers, because then even when people have something to say or something different that they're thinking about, they're not bringing forward if, oh yeah, Lynell is my boss.

She expects us to get all the information from her.

If a leader creates that culture around them, they actually are not doing themselves this service, because creativity and innovation thrive when people feel comfortable bringing forth new ideas, and where the leader feels comfortable giving them credit for bringing those ideas, and they're not trying to take the credit, and they're not trying to know everything.

Because nowadays, you have people on your team that are double PhDs, etc.

They may be smarter than you.

They may have a higher IQ than you do.

So you as the leader, the skill is to bring out the best of the people around you, not to suppress or have them think you have all the answers.

Why would you?

Because the reality is you're lying to yourself.

You do not have all the answers.

You don't.

You don't.

You don't have them all.

So you do better having a collaborative environment.

Now, I want to distinguish between the answers and the power to make decisions.

Because the leader does, in most institutions and most organizations, have the final say.

If they have a collaborative effort, half the team wants to do it this way and another wants to do it another way.

The leader has the responsibility to make the final call.

And the skill for the back to your followers is like, even though I pitched my version, there was another version pitched and the leaders making the call that we're going to go south and not east.

My responsibility as an individual contributor is to say yes.

Yes, I would prefer that other thing, but I'm a team player.

I have on the same color uniform.

So now I'm going to get myself sorted out and I'm going to get on board with what the leader actually chose.

So even the best leaders that create collaborative environments still have to be responsible for the choice.

Because that's the other thing.

They can't say, well, I did it and it didn't work, but my team wanted it.

No, no.

You are at the front of the line.

You get paid the big bucks to make the call.

So there's the decision making, which is very distinct from, I know everything.

I still have to be the one to make the final call as a leader of the team.

But that doesn't mean I'm pretending that I know everything.

That's a very distinct separation indeed.

One last thing, if anybody is listening and they branded themselves as this introvert, I don't think I can deal with people.

I just want to sit in my cubicle.

How can you encourage them, first of all, to get started and to explore like you shared earlier with one of your clients who was given the one contract and she realized the genius that she had.

Well, I think it starts with understanding, where did that story come from?

Because it really is a story that I'm interested in.

Where did it come from?

It may have come from when you were growing up that you had other siblings and you chose to not engage the way that they did or in the neighborhood or with your cousins.

You want to get your arms around where that came from.

It doesn't mean you're changing it initially, but you want to understand yourself.

I mean, that self-awareness, I think, is critical.

So we don't start to feel like we're dominating ourselves to be extroverts or dominating ourselves to do something that we have resistance to.

That's the start, and I would spend five minutes on that.

I'm not talking about go see a therapist for five years.

I'm saying five minutes.

When did that start?

Out of curiosity.

And then look to see if you continue to behave that way, what does your future look like?

What career path?

What scope?

You're only going to get so much scope if it's only you.

You want more scope, more responsibility, more complex challenges.

You're going to need to develop that skill of getting things done with people and through people, which means leading people.

So if you want to declare you're an introvert forever till you die, do you ever plan to have children as my next, even a dog?

Do you ever plan to have a pet?

Because at some point, you have to come out of that shell.

But if you look down the road, most people say, well, no, I don't want to be sitting in a cubicle by myself at 55.

That's not what I want.

I want to be able to lead a team and have an impact and have influence and make a difference.

Well, that means the story you're telling yourself about being an introvert, you can still be that, but you can be an introvert that leads people with authenticity, sensitivity, and genius.

You can still declare yourself an introvert, but you can also do an excellent job leading people.

And what I find is that introverts listen, so they make great managers because they know how to listen to people.

People that are talking all the time have a hard time hearing other voices besides their own.

It's like, this is not a meeting.

This is a monologue.

Like everybody else could be at home while you're just talking to yourself about blah, blah, blah.

So, like, are you kidding?

So I would encourage people, if you want to own that title, own it, but don't let that be the thing that actually dictates and limits your career development.

Give yourself permission to learn the skills of what it looks like to manage people, to take on bigger projects, to expand.

We're on this earth as far as we know.

We're on this earth for one journey.

Now, if you believe we're coming back, are you coming back as you, are you coming back as a butterfly or what?

I don't know.

So let's assume for purposes of this conversation that you have one journey that you have.

Why wouldn't you want to live that journey to the fullest and stretch yourself, expand yourself, continue to do things that you haven't done, give yourself permission to actually elevate what your greatest sense of genius is.

But your zone of genius in kindergarten is not your zone of genius today because you kept growing and developing.

When we're in school, we grow and develop, but there's a curriculum, we're being driven to grow and develop.

But once we get out of school, we have to be the ones giving ourselves a curriculum, having ourselves stretch and develop, having ourselves learn new things, and take on new opportunities.

It's on us.

It certainly is.

I love the fact that you mentioned listening as a superpower of introverts, because I had a guest previously who says, whenever they go to Gala dinners with his spouse, he is the introvert, and the husband is the extrovert.

And when they drive home, they find that he has gathered more information from the people who were there, because he was listening.

And they take that information, it leads to more sales, more money for their business.

Look how valuable that is.

But the one who was talking so much, he needed to because he was running the event, but he relies on him in order to get the info.

Because when you're talking, like you said, you're hearing your own voice, but the information is not being absorbed from other people.

Exactly.

And that listening, it is a superpower.

And even if you're an extrovert, you have to learn how to listen.

There's times you need to be quiet, quiet yourself inside and out, and listen.

Any last thing I didn't ask you, Lynell, you were hoping to share with our listeners today?

Well, I'm a firm believer that we as human beings have the option to either just live a passive life or a life that is audacious.

And there's a scripture that said, I'd rather have you be hot or cold than lukewarm, right?

And many times we choose to be lukewarm.

We don't want to rock the boat.

We want to play safe.

And that's going to give you whatever version of life it's going to give you.

But I think we miss an opportunity if we're not audacious with ourselves.

So my encouragement is go do the thing that you think you're afraid of.

And I don't mean jumping out of a plane and do that if you want to.

I mean, I'm all about do whatever you want.

But I think giving yourself permission, like if you hear yourself say, well, I don't do that or I'm afraid, then step back and say like, what would the quality of my life be if I actually started to develop myself in that area?

Like I don't have to just settle for I'm uncomfortable.

Okay, but what would it look like for you to be comfortable?

So basically, living an audacious life means to make both choices.

That means be a risk taker even in terms of learning new things, and be unapologetic for your voice.

Because back to your point, introverts have something valuable to contribute.

And if they're not talking and not communicating, their contribution never gets heard, and they never get acknowledged for that contribution.

So that's the other thing, like make sure you're seen and heard and highly indexed for taking credit for where credit is due.

Words of wisdom from Lynell Green, the global transformational speaker, the executive coach for Audacious and Authentic Leadership.

I had so much fun with you today.

Thank you so much for this conversation.

Oh, my pleasure.

Thank you for the invitation.

I appreciate it, Roberta.

And the best of luck to you, and thank you for doing what you do and making a difference with the people that you are making a difference with.

Beautiful.

Thank you, Lynell, for such kind words.

And before you go, please tell us where we can find you online so we can continue this conversation.

Well, the best thing is to go to my website, lynellsplace.com.

That's lynellsplace.com.

And there you can subscribe to our blog and see what else we're up to on the website.

lynellsplace.com for authentic and audacious leadership.

Thank you so much, Lynell.

Roberta, my pleasure.

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

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