Speaking and Communicating Podcast

00:00

Speaker 1
I find this a lot with my founders. Some of them are incredibly great salespeople. To be a founder is they sold people on giving them money to start up their business, so on some level, they understand how to influence people, 'cause sales is an influence process. But then if I take that same person and I put them in charge of a group of people who aren't performing the way that they want and to get them to perform the way they want, that's also an influence process. They oftentimes can't do it. If you're gonna be really effective as a leader, you have to learn how to influence people.
00:30

Speaker 2
(melodic music plays) 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. 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 our guest joining us from Texas today. Andrew Poles is a three-time founder. He's an executive coach of over two decades, and empowers founders, leaders to build high-performance teams, and to realize that hard work comes at a cost, but there's a better way. He has coached over 10,000 leaders, and is here to talk to us about some of the qualities and the habits we can develop in order to be better leaders and more. And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show.
01:41

Speaker 2
Hi, Andrew.
01:42

Speaker 1
Hey, Roberta. It's so great to be here with you. Thank you for that warm introduction.
01:46

Speaker 2
I'm excited as well that you're here. Welcome. When you say that you're a three-time founder, what were the industries that you delved into when you were founding your businesses?
02:00

Speaker 1
My very first business, I founded in the late '90s, and that business was custom design and manufactured furniture and case goods. And I did that job when I was in graduate school as a way to pay my bills while I was going through school. And then I found out unexpectedly I was gonna be a dad, and I wasn't married, so I was gonna be a single dad. I thought the only way I would get to see my daughter was if I had my own business and I could take her with me to work. So I literally started my first company by doing what I did to make money on the side of what I was studying, graduate school, which was philosophy. And I started my own business doing what I did to make money, which was making custom-designed furniture so I could take my daughter to work. And I did that for the first five years of her life, and then I transitioned from doing that into running multimillion-dollar companies for some other businesses here in my local city of Austin.
02:54

Speaker 1
And those businesses were in the same field as mine, and then I got into, um, high-end residential construction, and then I got into, uh, services businesses that had multinational presences, a $70 million company with a global presence. And I did some consulting and leadership training for them, as well as leading programs for them for their customers. I founded my second business in l- 2019, and that did corporate training. So with that business, I got to work with some companies like NASA and Dell and, uh, Schwab, some larger enterprise customers. And we would train their teams in exactly what you're n- talking about today, which is communication, building high-performance culture, dealing with work/life balance, things like that. And then I founded my third company, which is the one I'm currently operating, in 2020. So I had two businesses going at the same time for about four years.
03:43

Speaker 1
My third company, which is my executive coaching practice, is the one I've had now for five and a half years, almost six.
03:49

Speaker 2
So your first business was started in the '90s, and these last two, in the last few years.
03:54

Speaker 1
Yeah.
03:54

Speaker 2
What have been some of the common themes that you saw were what kept your business not only successful, but that you were able to scale, you were able to not have to do everything by yourself as the founder?
04:12

Speaker 1
Well, if I'm speaking to founders, one of the important things about growth or scale has to do with how well you've accomplished your product-market fit. And when you have a product that really answers a need in the market, and that need is acutely felt, and the market is quite large, then it's a lot easier to scale. Some of the companies I work with like to differentiate between growing and scaling.
04:37

Speaker 2
Right.
04:37

Speaker 1
So for some businesses, to double their revenue over the course of, say, two years, is as big as they want to get, or as big as they can get their area, unless they decide to franchise or move out to another geographical area, 'cause they're geographically located. They're service-oriented businesses, and they only operate in a certain geographical area. Then you have other companies, like software companies, like look at OpenAI's ChatGPT. Well, that's a software business that can be used anywhere in the world, so that business can scale. It can literally go from six figures of revenue to 10, 11, 12 figures of revenue over a much more compressed window. So if you wanna scale, as opposed to just grow, then you need a product that services a market that's big enough that you can do that.
05:23

Speaker 1
But if what you're just interested in is growth and what allows you to grow profitably and grow powerfully, as opposed to trying to create, like, a- a unicorn, two billion or 10 billion or $100 billion company, and what you're after is growth, well, I think what allows growth is having a lot of attention on your customers, and really taking great care of those customers and understanding how to best serve their needs. And then organizing your company around what you're learning from the feedback you get from your customers about what's really working, and to then penetrate more deeply into the market you wanna serve. That's one side of the equation, so having something that people really respond well to.Some businesses where you, you get something one time and you never go back there again, hopefully. So like, gosh, if you're a heart surgeon and someone needs heart surgery, you hope you only see that person one time in your life, maybe never.
06:14

Speaker 1
You know, but then you have your dentist, and then maybe you see your dentist twice a year. So if you're a dentist as opposed to a heart surgeon, then, you know, a big part of your ability to grow is about retaining customers...
06:25

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
06:26

Speaker 1
... as you pick up new customers. If you're a heart surgeon, hopefully only gonna see someone once in their lifetime. Then part of your growth needs to be taking care of those customers with the hope that they'll tell other people about you as well, but you're probably not gonna retain that customer.
06:39

Speaker 2
Hmm.
06:39

Speaker 1
So I think, you know, what does it take to grow a business is really dependent on what kind of a business are we talking about, and how does that business function? So it's hard to answer in the abstract, but for sure one part of it is, do a great job of understanding and taking care of your customers.
06:54

Speaker 2
Because, as you say, there are some industries where you need to retain the customers versus hoping that, "I've done such a great job, they shouldn't come back," like the heart surgeon.
07:04

Speaker 1
Right.
07:04

Speaker 2
But when it comes to that as well, when you talk about understanding your customer's needs, is there a strategy, is there a process you go through, where you actually try to figure out what their needs are? What are the problems they need solving? And then design a product that will then come and be the solution to their problems?
07:29

Speaker 1
Yes. Well, so in the part of the business world that is called startups, where you're starting up a new business from scratch, you're always looking for what people call the product-market fit, for what is also called your minimal viable product. So I'll unpack all that. Product-market fit, for the longest time, was one of those things that people had a hard time defining, so they would say, "Well, you know, you know it when you see it." You know, when people really start talking about your product, and you're starting to get some inbound leads, because people are, are telling other people about what's happening, they would have this, you know, loose way of, of defining it, okay? But somewhere around 2015 to 2018, somewhere in there, they've come up with a really useful definition now, that you can measure.
08:19

Speaker 1
Measuring is always way, gonna be way more accurate than, "You know it when you see it." And so one way of doing that is if you survey your customers, your existing customer base, once you've got your product kind of o- out in the market, and people are starting to pay for it, and they're using it. If you survey your customers, and one of the questions you ask them is, "How would you feel if this product went away? Would you be very disappointed, somewhat disappointed, neutral, not disappointed, or not at all disappointed?" Okay? If, when 40% or more of your existing customers say they would be very, very disappointed if your product went away, that's now considered a good definition of product-market fit.
08:57

Speaker 2
Okay.
08:57

Speaker 1
So it's when almost half of your customers would be very disappointed if your product went away. So that's an indication that the need that they have, and the product that you've put out there fit so well together that people really want to keep using your product. That's product-market fit. Now, how do you get there? So now that we know what that means, how do you get there? One of the challenges of trying to figure that out when you're starting off early is cash. Most people don't have an infinite amount of cash to spend, to try to figure out if the business they wanna start is gonna work or not. You have a finite amount of cash, which means you have a finite amount of time. And likely, your thesis, the idea you're starting off with, like, "Hey, I just think people need this," so you have a thesis, or a hypothesis. You need to test it, and you need to get feedback from people to learn if the way you think about it, and the way they think about it, is the same, or different.
09:49

Speaker 1
And if different, how do you need to tweak the way you deliver your product or service so that people respond to it with product-market fit? So that means that you need the time to be able to put out your product, get feedback, change it, put it back out, get more feedback. You're iterating your way. So the best way to do that, and protect your cash, and protect your investment, is to come up with what people call a minimal viable product. Which means it's the smallest thing you can offer that solves the core problem your customer deals with. And this is a place where many entrepreneurs go off, is that they have this huge vision of what they wanna build. And it's robust, and they're inspired by it, and it's exciting, and they can see how it all plays out.
10:34

Speaker 1
And then they go and they spend all the time and all the money of building out this massive product or service offering, only to learn when they put it out in the market that most of it is not what people really want, or think they want. So they didn't test the waters soon enough.
10:48

Speaker 2
Hmm.
10:48

Speaker 1
So the best way to get there is to start off with this idea you have, and then figure out, "What is the smallest chunk of that that I could offer first, that I think hits on the core problem, the most painful part of the problem that customers have? And then I can tweak it until I hit that bullseye. Once I've hit that bullseye, they will tell me, 'What's the next adjacent problem they wished I solved for them as well?'" A great example of this is Uber. Most people around the world know Uber now.
11:18

Speaker 2
Yes.
11:19

Speaker 1
You know, Uber started off as an idea that they were gonna send black Town Cars, so like limousines and things like high-end transportation to high net worth individuals in the Bay Area of the US, so in San Francisco. This was the first idea.
11:34

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
11:34

Speaker 1
It was a terrible idea. But they just kept iterating their way to now what they have is a, basically Uber is a platform. It's not even a product like a car, a fleet of cars. It's a software platform that anyone with a car who passes certain criteria can jump on and begin offering rideshares to other people. So it's very different than having a fleet of like limousines and stress, you know, whatever, and sending them to high net worth individuals. It's very different. But they iterated their way to that based on the feedback they got from trying something out.
12:05

Speaker 2
Mm.So the limousines were the minimum viable product.
12:12

Speaker 1
That's where they started, yeah.
12:13

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
12:13

Speaker 1
That's where they started. Yeah.
12:15

Speaker 2
And they found that they weren't a fit, and then they created the app where, like you said, as long as the cars rode with and meets all the criteria, you can then sign up on the app.
12:27

Speaker 1
Right. And if you think about it, like, how- how smart were they? I mean, this is why Uber, in part, is such a successful business. They have incredible cashflow, because they don't own any of the cars, (laughs) you know?
12:37

Speaker 2
That is the best ... (laughs)
12:40

Speaker 1
(laughs) They don't have to buy any cars.
12:41

Speaker 2
Very low costs. Uh, salaries and wages, other than the software engineers, (laughs) who develop the product.
12:47

Speaker 1
Right. Exactly, exactly.
12:48

Speaker 2
Yes, yes. They don't have a fleet of vehicles.
12:52

Speaker 1
No. I believe that they're thinking about possibly making some kind of deal with, um, Waymo to have some autonomous vehicles. I don't know if that's true or not. I heard something about that. But anyway, the point is, they don't have to own any vehicles to be the Uber they are today. And they deliver rideshares, they deliver food, and they do it all through this incredible application that they built. For people who are out there thinking about starting businesses, it's really important that you understand those two principles, product-market fit and minimal viable product. And if you put those two things together, there are great processes that have been well-documented for how you iterate your way to a really great product-market fit.
13:30

Speaker 2
Those two things, product-market fit, minimum viable product. And then speaking of operating, you talk about how you moved from operations to being a CEO.
13:42

Speaker 1
Yes.
13:42

Speaker 2
What are some of the skills that they- you need in order to make that transition?
13:47

Speaker 1
So I think this will be applicable to lots of people listening who aren't necessarily looking to become a CEO, but they're maybe someone who, in the course of their career, has been a really strong performer, a strong individual contributor in some role in a business, and then they get rewarded for being such a strong performer by being elevated into a position of m- of leadership or management. And so, a lot of these same principles apply. It- there are special things that CEOs have to deal with as a function of that role that not every leader in a company has to deal with. But in terms of the basic skill sets of leading and managing people, I think a lot of this will overlap nicely.
14:28

Speaker 1
So the first thing people have to tackle when they make this move for the first time into a position of leadership if they've been a strong personal contributor is that the skill set that is required for empowering other people to produce great results doesn't look anything like the skill set that you built to personally be able to produce results. It doesn't translate at all. It's sort of like, if I'm an excellent English speaker, which I sure hope I am given it's my first language, it would be like saying, "Well, therefore, I should be able to just jump in and start speaking Chinese," which is not even a related romance language. It- and it just doesn't.
15:08

Speaker 2
Nope.
15:08

Speaker 1
I would have to start all over. So it's not quite that stark of a gap, but it's not too far off. So the first thing you have to just appreciate is that you have to build a new set of skills. You're gonna have to work at it. You're going to have to learn it. How do I empower other people to produce results, either individually or as a team, when what I know how to do is produce results as an individual, myself? So, that's the first thing, is just to recognize you have a gap. So then, you have to understand this really basic idea around performance. Uh, and performance, I think it's useful to talk about, like, actions, not like performance outcomes, things you can measure, like revenue or number of customers, or if you're a coder, like how much code you produced. So, there's a difference between actions and results of actions, so there's a difference between performance, which is someone's activity, their behavior, and what it produces.
16:04

Speaker 1
And this is really important, because for example, if you have someone who's really hardworking and they grind away and they, you know, they're willing to work more than everyone else, but they have the lowest output of anyone, well, they've got a lot of performance going on, but they're not producing the performance outcomes. So that's one type of leadership or management you have to- may have to provide there if you wanna keep that person and make them effective. You have to help them understand what about the way that they're doing their job is ineffective. Then, you may have other people who have the opposite sort of situation, that when they do take actions that they produce results, but they don't work enough for what's required. That's a totally different kind of leadership challenge than the first one we talked about. So, part of building the skill set of being a leader is understanding there's a difference between performance and performance outcomes.
17:00

Speaker 1
And as a leader or manager, part of your job, it's not the whole of your job, but part of your job is to ensure that the performance outcomes, whatever they are, lines of code, ads that are put out on social media, conversations that are being had with prospective customers, et cetera, that- that the right actions are being taken and the right results are getting produced. And so, you need to understand the relationship, kind of pulling back one more step, between your performance, your actions, which are things like having conversations, setting up performance plans, recruiting and hiring, training people, how your actions lead to their actions, and then how their actions lead to outcomes. So you need to start to understand this cascade from the actions you take, to the actions they take, to the outcomes they produce.
17:54

Speaker 1
And it gets even more complicated if the people that you manage are managers, 'cause then you're talking to them, and then they're talking to people who are then taking actions and then producing results, right? So the higher up you get in that ladder, the more you have to understand how this cascade of ac- activity works. You have to understand the difference between performance and performance outcomes.... and how they connect. You have to understand, what do the actions look like when they're effective that produce the results we need? And so, once you have those things sorted out, then you need to understand, well, when someone isn't doing that, how do I work with them so that they do start doing that, so that they do start taking those actions that are effective? So that means you need to understand why people act the way they do, and how to have a conversation with someone so that they change the way they act.
18:45

Speaker 1
And if you don't build that skill set, if you just think or you believe without really examining it, that you can get someone to change their behavior by just telling them to do something differently, you're not going to be very successful as a leader. And anyone who's ever parented children knows this. Anyone who's ever been in any kind of long-term relationship knows this.
19:04

Speaker 2
(laughs)
19:04

Speaker 1
You know, or anyone who's ever tried to manage team or people knows that you can't just tell people, "Don't do that. Do this," and then they go do it. It doesn't work that way. If it were that simple, you wouldn't need to pay managers much more money than anyone else, because they would just tell people to do things and they would do it. That doesn't work that way, right? So there's a skill-
19:18

Speaker 2
Not with humans, it doesn't. (laughs)
19:20

Speaker 1
(laughs) Exactly. So, so there is a skill set, and this is why when you said, you know, soft skills, I personally don't love that term, because there is a science to influence.
19:30

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
19:30

Speaker 1
There's an art to it as well, but there's a science to influencing people's behavior.
19:35

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
19:35

Speaker 1
Um, there are principles, there are neuroscientific principles, there are ways of understanding how people act that you can apply over and over again to become a very reliable manager or leader of people. So even though it's in the conversational domain, as opposed to like coding or creating compensation plans or whatever, it- and we call it a soft skill because it's more relational or communication-based. It doesn't mean that it doesn't have principles, it doesn't mean that it isn't a repe- something that you can do in a repetitive way and be effective with.
20:03

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm. It's funny you say that. I cannot tell you, Andrew, how many guests I've had where (laughs) they debate the terms soft skills, or some of them will come at me and they go, "I don't like how you make it sound like it's one of the easiest things to do. It's actually one of the hardest things to do." (laughs)
20:20

Speaker 1
Oh, soft as opposed to hard.
20:22

Speaker 2
Yeah. (laughs)
20:22

Speaker 1
Yeah. As in easy, easy or hard. Yeah, I get that, I get that, I get that.
20:25

Speaker 2
Right. (laughs) Yeah.
20:26

Speaker 1
Yeah.
20:26

Speaker 2
Yes.
20:26

Speaker 1
But I just mean, I think some people think of soft... I don't have a problem with that piece of it.
20:30

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
20:30

Speaker 1
I personally think when the term is used, some people will think that means it's not as principled or it's not as rigorous or it's not as repeatable as something like engineering, and it may not be quite (laughs) as repeatable as engineering, it is a set of skills, it is a set of principles you can apply over and over again with success.
20:50

Speaker 2
Totally.
20:50

Speaker 1
And I think it's important for people to know that.
20:53

Speaker 2
As you said, there is a science behind it. And therefore, when you work with your clients who are leaders, do they then get to start to understand the science behind it and how they can influence their teams? Because back to how you've just so eloquently explained the cascade of activity, do they understand the science on how, if they implement this principle, or if they start to make their team go this direction, it will then feed into that?
21:26

Speaker 1
Well, I hope so. That's my intention, so I hope they do. I think they would say that they do. You know, in terms of understanding what I mean when I say it has principles you can apply repeatedly, one of those principles is that... If I, if I can jump into that, and I, I like to use neuroscience, Roberta, to talk about this, because I think neuroscience is something everybody can relate to.
21:48

Speaker 2
Right.
21:48

Speaker 1
I think if we use something like psychology, some people can relate to it and some, some people can't. But with neuroscience, uh, my experience is most people are willing to consider things from that perspective without too much resistance or argument about whether or not that's a valid science. I think we all see it as a very valid science. So neuroscientifically, I think one of the fundamental principles of influence, which is therefore important for leadership and management, is that as human beings, we don't have direct access to the world. And what I mean by that is our perception, even our fundamental senses like visual input, auditory input, they go through processes in the brain that turn raw input, like photons hitting your eyes, into something that is contextual for us, that has meaning. So everything human beings are engaging with in the world is wrapped in meaning. That's the way our brains work.
22:50

Speaker 1
I think one of my favorite examples of this, that it makes this most telling, 'cause most people think, "Well, maybe that's true in relationships and the way I think about..." Oh gosh, you know that age-old debate, "Should I have to put the toilet seat up or should you have to put the toilet seat down?" You know, stuff like that. Like, you know, context-
23:04

Speaker 2
Do you squeeze the toothpaste from the middle or the edge? (laughs)
23:07

Speaker 1
Right? Which way does the, does the toilet paper roll go on the holder?
23:10

Speaker 2
(laughs)
23:10

Speaker 1
Is the... You know, all that sort of thing. But it... My favorite story of this comes from a book from a brilliant neuroscientist named David Eagleman, who I'm a big fan of, he's got, done great work that he makes available to the public. And he talks about, there was an Olympic skier on the US Olympic team who went blind at the age of eight, as a child, learned how to ski as a blind person, and then when he was in his 30s and he was a su- successful Olympic athlete, they had by then had developed a surgery to repair his particular kind of blindness. He was married and he had ch- two young children at the time, and so when he was in the hospital recovering from his surgery and they unwrapped the bandages from his eyes and he saw his own children for the very first time, obviously he knew their voices and had whatever experience he had of them, but he had no experience had he never seen them.
23:53

Speaker 1
When he first saw them in the, in the hospital room when they unwrapped his eyes, he didn't know what he was looking at. He couldn't tell that they were his children. He couldn't make sense of the flood of visual information coming into his brain, because his brain had not yet taken this flood of photons hitting his eyes and said, "That's a person, that's a floor, that's a desk."That's an eyeball. That's hair. His brain hadn't figured all that out yet, so he literally couldn't make sense of his own children. So everything about the way we, as human beings, interact with the world is wrapped in contextual clothing. There's no way to eliminate this. This makes us a very different kind of animal from other animals. You know, if you've ever had pets, those of you who are listening, if you've ever had a dog, for example, you never, like, throw the Frisbee for your dog, and then your dog misses the Frisbee. And they're like, "Oh, God. I'm such a terrible Frisbee catcher.
24:48

Speaker 1
I'm a terrible dog."
24:49

Speaker 2
(laughs)
24:49

Speaker 1
"This is all my father's fault because he was like this, and it was ... My mom left." And, you know, like, they're just like, "No, throw it again, throw it again, throw it again, throw it again." Like, dogs just don't do that stuff, right? (laughs)
24:59

Speaker 2
I've always attributed that to ... In defense of humans, I've always attributed that to they have short memories, so they forget that they missed it the previous time. (laughs) We remember our mistakes. (laughs)
25:13

Speaker 1
Dogs have very long memories, especially if you've ever met one who's ever been, unfortunately, abused. That memory lasts a very long time, and they will be skittish or afraid of certain things maybe for their whole life. So th- they definitely have long memories. And I know you were kidding, but they do have long memories. They just don't have the same use of language that we have. So, they don't do that to themselves the way we do. So, we use language differently than other animals.
25:37

Speaker 1
Why this is important is because all of the input people are getting from the world, through their senses, including, you know, reading information and hearing people talk, all of it-
25:48

Speaker 2
Hm.
25:49

Speaker 1
... goes through this set of machinations in the brain that add context to it. It gets related to past experiences and ways that you've come to understand the world, whatever. And so then the world, in qui- if people aren't, uh, watching this, if you're listening to this, I'm making air quotes with my fingers. The world that people are engaging with is not whatever the heck it is out there, so to speak, but it's the view and experience people have of that world that they're inter- interacting with. So, that's the first thing people must understand is that all human beings have a construct of the world they're engaging with. But for each of us individually, it doesn't seem like we have a construct. It seems like we're in a- engaging with the world the way it is. It always seems that way to us, that we're seeing the world the way it is, but we never are. We're always seeing a version of it, a- a- an interpretation of it.
26:41

Speaker 1
So-
26:41

Speaker 2
Our contextual interpretation of it.
26:44

Speaker 1
Correct. Our contextual inter- that's why you can have, uh, in a family where y- two children were raised by the same parents, they can have very different points of view about the very same people called their parents, even though they were both there when every, you know, pretty much everything happened. But that's just a part of our nature. So therefore, people have to appreciate, in positions of leadership, this- this fundamental principle. That's the first one. Here's the second one.
27:09

Speaker 2
Okay.
27:10

Speaker 1
People can only act in ways that make sense from their view and experience of the world. They can't act any other way. You can tell how people see the world, a lot of the times, by just watching how they act.
27:22

Speaker 2
Right.
27:23

Speaker 1
So if someone doesn't think, for example, if the way ... In a business, someone sees you as the new leader is that they don't think they can trust you or trust you yet, you might see that because they aren't as forthcoming with what they tell you about what's going on.
27:38

Speaker 2
Hmm.
27:38

Speaker 1
Their actions will always make perfect s- logical sense inside their view and experience of whatever they're dealing with, and they can't act any other way. People can't act in a way that is irrational from their point of view. Human beings don't act that way unless they're mentally unwell or something. We always act in a way that makes sense, that is somehow consistent with our view and experience of the world. Okay?
28:06

Speaker 1
So-
28:06

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
28:06

Speaker 1
... if people get those two principles, and you really, really let that in, that people can act in a way that doesn't make sense to them, then you start to appreciate that what it takes to be an effective leader, an effective manager, when people aren't performing the way you need or the way you want, is you have to first understand, how do they see the world which makes total sense of how they're acting now?
28:31

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
28:31

Speaker 1
And then, how would they need to see the world in order to be able to act the way I want them to act? And then when you get the two things peeled out, then the skill becomes, what's the conversation that connects those dots for that- for that person or those people? How do I get people to start to see the world in this new way so they can act that way?
28:55

Speaker 2
Doesn't that sound like ... 'Cause this is really powerful, what you're talking about right now, Andrew. Doesn't it sound like something that is gonna be this huge, I've got something on my plate, especially if you're a new leader and this is your new team? Isn't that a huge undertaking in addition to the work that needs to be done? Or, if you do take care of that when you are assigned a new team, then the work that needs to be done, all the things we talked about, about performance and the outcomes and the results will then be a lot easier and more efficient?
29:34

Speaker 1
Well, I think everyone has some intuitive understanding of what I just said, but it's what I call ... It's not my term, it's a term someone else coined, but it's a term I use in this case, called unconscious competence. So, people sometimes know how to do something, but they don't know how they know how to do it. They don't even know what they're doing. They're just doing it well. So for example, I find this a lot with my founders. Some of them are incredibly great salespeople.They can sell anything to anybody. That's one of the ways they got to be a founder, is they sold people on giving them money to start up their business and create their idea. So on some level, they understand how to influence people, 'cause sales is an influence process, for sure. You know?
30:20

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
30:20

Speaker 1
You don't just walk up to someone and say, "Gimme money." And they're like, "Sure."
30:22

Speaker 2
(laughs)
30:22

Speaker 1
Like, no, you have to, you have to give them (laughs) good reasons for why to give you money, right?
30:26

Speaker 2
Right.
30:26

Speaker 1
So, you have to influence them, okay? But then if I take that same person and I put them in charge of a group of people who aren't performing the way that they want, and to get them to perform the way they want, that's also an influence process. They oftentimes can't do it. They can't manage those people to act the way they want. So they can get someone to act in a way called gimme money, because they understand how to do that, but they don't know how to translate what they did there into the domain of maybe someone in HR, recruiting, that's not recruiting the way they want or whatever.
30:54

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
30:55

Speaker 1
So they have unconscious competence. So what's going to happen, Roberta, whether it's a big ask or a small ask or whatever it is, is that they're gonna get in this role of leadership, and they're gonna start leading and managing people, and then they're gonna get whatever results they get. And predictably, some of those results will be on, on par with what they want, and some of them won't. And where those results aren't what they need from people, they're gonna go and do what they know how to do, and that's gonna work as well as it does or it doesn't. If it doesn't work well, then they have to learn this. Whether it's a big lift for them or a small (laughs) lift, it doesn't matter. It is what it is. If you're gonna be really effective as a leader, you have to learn how to influence people.
31:35

Speaker 2
Right. Because you have to make sure that in your absence, they still, they have common sense, as you say. Their rationale still makes sense for them to do the best they can to display all their competences. It's not because, "Oh, my boss is standing right on my shoulders, and now (laughs) I have to show him that I'm doing my job." (laughs)
31:57

Speaker 1
I mean, if you never wanna leave the office, and if you wanna churn through people, that might be an effective way to do it. You know, if you wanna work every hour of your life and watch what everyone does and just be completely insane, you can do it the way, and some people do do that way, because they haven't cracked the code on how to influence people, and they are accountable for the results, and they take that very seriously. So the only thing they know how to do is individually produce results, so then they will step in and micromanage and intervene and do some of the actions or tell people what to do. And that's 'cause that's how they know how to take actions. That's going back to our first point, right?
32:33

Speaker 1
That-
32:33

Speaker 2
Hmm.
32:34

Speaker 1
... you may know how to do it yourself. But if you wanna have balance in your life, and if you don't wanna be micromanaging everyone all the time, then yes, to your point, you have to learn how to influence that person so they can independently and, uh, reliably produce the results without you having to manage everything they're doing. And then that gets you beyond just the subject of influence. So that brings you to another skill set leaders need, which is management.
33:00

Speaker 2
Yep.
33:00

Speaker 1
Management is a skill set. Part of management is training people. You need to learn how to train people. There's a difference between training people and developing people. Managers need to understand that too. There are nuances to this. You know, y- training someone is about getting them to repeat some activity enough times that they become competent at it on their own. And in the beginning, they're not, 'cause it's new, and they make mistakes, or they don't understand things. But if they do it 100 times, by the 100th time, they're like, "Oh, yeah, I can do that." That's training.
33:28

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
33:29

Speaker 1
Training is a skill set acquisition. Development is about working with someone to, to see the world a different way or to see a situation a different way. Let's take time management. Part of time management is skill based, and part of it is development. People need to develop themselves. So what's the development piece? Well, one of the key things to time management that people need to learn how, how to see is that there's never enough time to do everything.
33:53

Speaker 2
Yeah.
33:54

Speaker 1
And that is a really hard thing for people to accept. But that's a different way of seeing the world. And if your view of the world is either there isn't enough time to do everything or there should be enough time to do everything I think I'm supposed to do, and you just ignore the reality that there isn't, well, then I can train you as much as I want for how to set up your calendar or whatever. As long as you see the world that way, you will work yourself to the bone. You will never be a good strategic decision-maker about what to do today versus what to do tomorrow. You'll try to get everything done today. You will never be any good at time management. So I can't train you in that. I need to develop you, so I need to alter the way you see the world so that you can actually see for yourself, wow, when I do the math and I write down everything that I wanna do, and I write down a realistic assessment of how long each thing takes.
34:49

Speaker 1
Oh, and I include in that that sometimes I do need to go to the bathroom, and I do need to eat food, and I do need to sleep every once in a while. It'd probably be a good idea if I spent some time with my husband or my wife so they don't divorce me, and I put all that in there. It's like, oh my gosh, there's actually not enough time. It's like, you have to see that for yourself and be like, "It's true." It's not like a powerful point of view. "It's true there's not enough time to do everything that I want (laughs) to do." It's just, you have to see that. You have to see it, and once you see it, then you can't unsee it.
35:21

Speaker 1
So that's-
35:22

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
35:24

Speaker 1
... development. Development is about giving people different frameworks through which to think about their jobs or their accountabilities or their interactions or relationships. Training is about giving them skills to use to do those things. So once you're good at influencing people, uh, you have to know, okay, well, how do I need to influence them around this particular part of their job? How do they need to see that? And then what are the skills they need, and how do I teach someone to acquire those skills? So there is really a comprehensive but finite set of skills you need to build as a leader and a manager to be effective producing results through other people's action.
36:06

Speaker 2
Yes.
36:06

Speaker 1
And if you study it, you can become great at it.
36:09

Speaker 2
You leverage other people's skills so that-
36:12

Speaker 1
Yes.
36:12

Speaker 2
... you don't feel the need to do everything yourself. Because I think-
36:16

Speaker 1
Correct.
36:16

Speaker 2
... another reason leaders sometimes fall into that trap is thinking they won't do it as well as I used to do when I was the individual-
36:24

Speaker 1
There you go. (laughs)
36:24

Speaker 2
... contributor or wizard. (laughs)
36:26

Speaker 1
Yep. And by the way, sometimes that's true. Sometimes that's true. But you really do have to do the math and think, "Well, what am I accountable for? What, what is the best use of my being in this role?" And if I don't have the time to do that, because I'm constantly doing other people's work for them, or because I'm micromanaging them instead of learning how to build them up or power them, well, then you're costing yourself and your company a lot of opportunity. So sometimes it is true that you could do something better than someone else. But if you think about the overarching set of outcomes you're trying to produce, it makes sense to accept the slightly lower amount or quality of throughput to take the time to train someone else to be as good as you need them to be, as opposed to trying to do everything yourself, because then you've limited your ability to contribute, once again, to being an individual contributor.
37:24

Speaker 2
Mm. And that time management piece kicks in as well in that scenario.
37:30

Speaker 1
100%.
37:31

Speaker 2
You are busy giving us a master class on this, but (laughs) I know that we're growing closer to our time being up. And please, if you think that you, at least in your business schedule, you would like to return to our show and continue... Because there's so much that I think that we gloss over when we have these-
37:49

Speaker 1
Sure.
37:49

Speaker 2
... leadership discussions.
37:50

Speaker 1
Sure.
37:50

Speaker 2
And you've given us such a detailed version on some of the concepts we've talked about before. So thank you very much for this, Andrew.
37:59

Speaker 1
You're welcome. I hope y- your listeners found that useful, and I'd always love to come back and we can maybe take a topic and dive into it deeper, if you prefer.
38:08

Speaker 2
Yes. Yeah, like I said, with each topic, you just give carte blanche, and you give more practical examples. 'Cause I always say that listeners have heard a lot of the stuff before, especially now with ChatGPT, but the difference is, the reason they're going to remember Andrew Puls is because of the stories that you told accompanying the topic, the idea, and also putting it into a real-life scenario where they say, "Oh, yeah, I see how this works in my job." You know what I mean?
38:39

Speaker 2
So this has-
38:40

Speaker 1
Yeah.
38:40

Speaker 2
... been like a, like a real master class on leadership. So thank you very much for sharing these ideas with us today.
38:47

Speaker 1
My pleasure. It was great to speak with you. I, I hope you'll have me back.
38:50

Speaker 2
Of course. We are... Oh, absolutely invited back. Now, before you go, first of all, please tell us where to find you online.
38:58

Speaker 1
Great. So I'm very active on LinkedIn. You're welcome to connect with me there, and it's just linkedin/andrewpuls. And I'm also... I personally receive all the contact, requests through my website, andrewpuls.com, so you can contact me either way.
39:14

Speaker 2
Andrew Poles on LinkedIn and andrewpuls.com online. Thank you very much. 20 years executive coach, three-time founder, who has over 10,000 liters that he has empowered-
39:29

Speaker 1
(laughs)
39:29

Speaker 2
... and, and helping them build high-performance teams. And as you heard today, there's so much that Andrew has shared with us. So thank you very much for being here.
39:39

Speaker 1
Thank you so much, Roberta. Have a great day.
39:41

Speaker 2
My pleasure. You too. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify, and stay tuned for more episodes to come.