Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast for you. And by the end of this episode, please remember to subscribe, give it a rating and a review. Today I am joined by coach Jackie. She is a career development coach who has a lot of experience in human resources.
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and some DNA of therapy running through her. And before I go any further, please help me welcome Jackie. Hi. Hi, Roberta. Thank you so much for inviting and having me here today. Thank you for being here. I'm excited for our conversation today. I think it's gonna help a lot of our listeners. So first of all, tell us a little bit about yourself. Sure. Most folks refer to me as Coach Jackie. I actually began my career in the world of mental and behavioral health.
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My grandfather was a psychiatrist in the 1920s and 30s. Unfortunately, he died young, but I do believe innately ingrained in my DNA has just been this natural curiosity about humanity and people. So when I graduated college, I actually started working with youth, teenagers who had emotional and behavioral issues. Since we've all been teenagers, we understand, or if you have had teenagers or have them now.
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We know that that age is tough and they can be extremely belligerent and challenging. And I have to say that they taught me far more than I ever taught them. And so I worked in that arena for about 10 years where I was eventually overseeing and running some large treatment facilities. And I encountered my first really bad boss, which I know many folks have encountered. My current coaching clients and previous ones
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We actually work on just that particular relationship. At the time I was young, I was uncertain what avenue to take. And I decided I was gonna go back to school. And I went to get my master's in management focusing on organizational development. And I shifted my whole career focus to the world of HR. Really for the better part of the last 20 years, I've been in all different areas of HR from recruiting to staff training and development.
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to dealing with employee relation issues. I also spent all of my HR work in the DEI space as well. Really, HR is the place where issues come to live and be resolved. And so a lot of what I did was I helped employees navigate workplace issues, relationships, and also helped managers become more effective leaders. And in essence, I was really coaching.
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My supervisor at the time said to me, and this is going back 2006, she said, "'Jackie, you would make an awesome life coach.'" At the time, I honestly had no idea what a life coach was, so I Googled it that night, found some inspirational coaches like Tony Robbins. And when I looked at what the nature of the work was around coaching, it really spoke to me. So I immediately went to research coaching programs, got certified.
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opened up my coaching practice, really where I felt that I could offer and serve folks the most, and where people were the most attracted in working with me was in this career development realm. So folks who are looking for their next position, whether it's in their organization or outside of their organization, whether they're looking at starting a business, but most of my clients come to me because
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Number one, they're ambitious professionals. They're often riddled with self-doubt and confidence issues. That's kind of the overarching thing that I see. And they wanna ignite confidence. They wanna be able to bring their authentic selves to their workplace and do that in a way so that they don't have to become someone else. And that's often a lot of the work that we do is around how do you own who you are?
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appreciate and embrace all the amazing talents and gifts and strengths that you already have. And how do you 10X those? How do you show up in a way that feels real and authentic, shows the world really what they're here to do? So that's kind of the work that I do, as well as bridging this mental fitness training through positive intelligence and really integrating how can you manage and handle life stressors.
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in a way that's healthier and more positive. Let's talk about showing up authentically and feeling like you have to be something else. A friend of mine, this is her theory, she always says, listen, I am not money. Not everyone is gonna like me. So why do we have this thing of, there's something I think I need to be so that everybody at work and in society likes me. What is that about?
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No, it's a great question. We have socially these images of what leaders or effective leaders really are. They are these outgoing, gregarious, like highly social individuals. And oftentimes I work with professionals who are much more modest, right? They're the behind the scenes folks.
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They're the ones who are not necessarily the first to respond. And often they become intimidated by this world of extroverted, outgoing individuals. And they often feel like in order for me to be recognized, in order for me to be visible and effective, I must become that type of person. And it's not a fit, right? It doesn't feel natural. It doesn't feel good. And so a lot of the work.
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that we do in coaching is how do you be your best without feeling as if you have to put on a mask and become somebody else? I can understand why they have that fear. And the reason is we started this podcast, we talk about how people in corporate who are not the smartest are the ones being promoted because they speak more. Yes. Which makes them more visible.
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It's funny, I'm working with one woman. She works at a very large tech company. That's really what she came to me for. He felt like she was invisible. She would attend these meetings. Folks would monopolize them. She hasn't necessarily injected herself.
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aggressively in meetings. But what she's done is she's developed these other networking skills outside of those meetings. Yes, she does use some different techniques in those meetings now than she did before. So she might agree with things, get back after a meeting by email about an idea. Because oftentimes, in the moment, like for myself, I'm an introvert. So I usually have my most brilliant ideas after the fact.
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after the meeting or maybe a day later. Digest and analyze, yes. You don't just blow smoke. That's it. And so it is okay. It depends on the culture of the organization if that is embraced. But oftentimes it's not in those meetings. It's figuring out once you've recognized that there is some idea or contribution that you wanna make, how can you inject that in a way that then can be seen and heard?
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And another area that this particular woman is working on is really about how does she network outside of that meeting per se? And so what she's found is a lot of one-to-one interactions with folks have produced far greater relationships. So her level of credibility has increased. Her visibility has increased.
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In the meetings, she's not the monopolizer, but she's found all these different ways to do it in a way that's more comfortable, fits her person. That's wonderful, because that's the thing we emphasize. Your brilliance should not be kept quiet.
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that your program, what it does is it helps people to find different ways to not completely forsake their personalities, but for someone out there who's relevant to know exactly how brilliant they are and the ideas that they bring to the table that are productive. Absolutely. Yes. Speaking of networking as well, you say you bring your personality and your ideas. Is there anything else that you need to bring to be effective in networking and build those long-term relationships?
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It's a great question. So a lot of effective networkers will talk about really listening to folks. As introverts, oftentimes you are really good listeners. And so really paying attention to what are people's needs, pain points, and taking note of that. Networking is really about building and sustaining relationships. And relationships take time to build and nurture.
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And so if you have an idea and understanding about what it is that someone needs, you could figure out in what capacity could I provide that? It may not be solving their entire issue, but is there a connection, an introduction that I can make to them? Is there someone on my team that can help support them? Is there someone I know in my larger networking connection that would be a good match? I would say paying attention to what people's needs and pain points are. Right.
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The listening part is very key. Two ears, one mouth, using proportion. Working with teenagers, if you can just share with us some of those experiences. Oh my goodness, working with youth, it was the most rewarding experience ever. So the kids that I worked with, these were kids who were in different state agencies. So they were either in the...
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being served through child welfare, the juvenile justice system, their families may have been involved in the state, and they were struggling managing their safety to themselves, safety to others, getting into trouble. It was NFI Massachusetts, we built communities, and it was really fascinating because we did this work over 30 years ago, and the essence was that we were all there for a common purpose and mission, regardless of...
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whether we were working there or whether we were receiving services. The expectations were the same across the board. Just because I was an adult didn't mean that the expectations for me were any different than from the youth that we served. And so it was really about do as I do, not do as I say. And so we built this community that really thrived on mutual respect.
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responsibility for ourselves and each other, and really there to maximize our potential. This philosophy or this way in which we really ran our programs is so aligned. I think that's really where I developed my coaching values and a lot of my base in how I work with folks because we always believed everyone should be treated with dignity and respect. We always believe that people have the capacity to change.
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You know, second chances. Absolutely. And it was really important that we valued diversity. Every part of the human experience and what people brought to the table, there were some of the kids who would wrestle with mental health issues lifelong. So it was one of the most challenging experiences, but the most rewarding. And it's really funny that you asked because not long ago, literally about three weeks ago,
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I got a message on LinkedIn from a former client, and this is going back over 25 years ago. Wow. So she's now like in her 40s, has a family, is working. So you never know the impact that you have on someone. Something that can seem so insignificant to you at the moment can just really be what someone may have needed at the time. And you just may not know that.
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I think a lot of my base as a professional really came from the tenants of building that community. We were there to plant seeds. Anything like nugget that any one of them could have taken that had an impact was good. I love that planting seeds and not expecting the results to show themselves now. Exactly. You know, professional boundaries.
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I would always say to my staff, yes, you have a personal life and that's critically important. And it really matters what you do outside of work. So for example, if you're driving a car and you get cut off by someone, don't flip the bird, right? Think about the way in which you're going to respond to that person because you never know is that a parent of a child who we may potentially serve or is that.
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someone else down the road that you may need that relationship and would this interaction negatively affect that? So on the flip side, thinking about what you're saying, really bringing your best self to interactions each and every day as small as they can be, you never know the impact that that could actually have. It certainly does. Speaking of someone contacting me years later, I knew we would have forgotten about the incident.
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this person reached out to me on Facebook. We used to go to the same high school and we used to take the bus. And you know how back then they used to clip the bus ticket. Wasn't as electronic as it is now. They clip the bus ticket. And it was a little paper. So, you know, as a school kid, half the time you lose your stuff, your shoes, your jersey, everything. And she had lost a bus ticket, so she couldn't go home because we barely had pocket money either. And so what I did was...
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I don't remember it and I consider myself someone with a very good memory. So imagine for her to remember we're in our forties now and I have no clue. I just remember her as a schoolmate. She says, apparently I went in the bus, clipped my ticket. It would have 10 numbers. So then when those are done, your parents buy you a new one. I went inside the bus. I went to the back window and I gave it to her. I said, Cindy, here it is. Come. And then she took my ticket and she went and clipped it.
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to this day. She's in her 40s and she remembers that. I don't know, because I've completely forgotten about it. That's wonderful. You said you helped me get home that day. That's amazing. It probably stood out as an act of kindness that took away probably her concern or worry. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Now let's switch the flip side to your terrible boss. If people are going through that right now, how they can handle those situations.
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That's great. Actually, if folks subscribe to my website, which is coachjackyross.com, I actually wrote an ebook on managing up how to manage your manager. There is a continuum in terms of looking at the relationship and the issues with your boss. So I work with people who are able to look at various strategies and really look at what is it that I need to know about this individual? You know, what's their personality like?
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What's their work style like? What's their temperament like? What's their communication style like? And it really takes a lot of investigative work to really look at how do I learn as much as I can about my manager in order to figure out how can I best work with them and pivot around some of the issues that might come up.
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And there are absolute strategies to do that. Certainly, I had one of my managers was extremely detail oriented. Like he needed to know every nuance of every detail. So in order for me to present something to him, and I'm the exact opposite, I'm a little bit more visionary, I'm more bigger picture, I can more zoom out. When I get hung up in the minutia, that's a struggle for me.
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However, I knew that when I needed to present to him, he needed that level of detail or else I was going to be running back chasing that information. So I think having as good an understanding as you can about what the needs are for your manager, how do they work, what are their communication styles and finding out is there a way to be able to deliver that.
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The other piece is figuring out, you know, oftentimes, you know, we're working within our scope and our manager has areas of focus that we may not even be entertaining. And so if there's any way that we can find out what some of their pain points are, what is some of their biggest concerns, what keeps them up at night, not that you can solve all those issues.
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But if there's any one thing that you can do to help alleviate that, to take things off of their plate rather than put things on, those are some good strategies. There could come a point where, and just like any other relationship in our lives, that it's not a match. I've encountered that where anything I tried to do just did not work at all. Oftentimes what I found with my clients is that,
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it starts to eat away at you, right? It starts to dampen your sense of confidence. Your effectiveness and productivity may be impacted. Your stress levels may be higher. Taking work home, you know, bringing it to your family and your loved ones, that may be increasing. So I think you have to evaluate, is this a relationship that can be worked on and developed in a way that's conducive and workable for you?
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And are you at the point where this is just not working out? Another client very recently, he worked for this high tech company, super brilliant guy, had an extraordinary work experience, revered by all of his colleagues and managers and had a new boss that it just went south. Everything that he was trying and doing.
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was not producing any good results. He came to the conclusion that this is not a match, like a marriage, like a relationship, like this. This dating apps, it's either a match or it's not. That's it. I believe that when your saboteurs that come up, like the things that get under your skin or create stress and overwhelm for you versus what it does for them are misaligned and mismatched, and you're just triggering each other. And happens in any relationship.
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That's it. And it's okay. I've had several clients that have made the decision to kind of break the relationship to say like, look, this relationship is just not working. And that I've worked with them on finding either another position within the organization or changing organizations completely. It's not worth the impact and the way that it taxes us. Because then they take that energy home as well. And it affects the people that they love.
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Absolutely, absolutely. And we know stress affects every part of our being. And today, people are more stressed, more overwhelmed, more burnt out than ever before. And so finding those strategies to be able to deal and manage and knowing that sometimes you have to end that relationship and that's okay. That does not mean that you failed. It just means that it wasn't a match. We call it the platinum rule on this podcast.
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communicating in the way that the other person wants to be communicated to. Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't know if you're familiar with Simon Sinet. Oh, of course. He talks about the great resignation and he says, we were first thrown into this unknown world. A lot of people losing their jobs and now suddenly remote work, all this uncertainty, which shakes all of us. I've had to learn to not be so regal fight, but
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All this uncertainty at first was very frightening. Yet it came to a point where we said, wait a minute, I survived this. I'm still here. I'm okay. And so now you see a whole lot of people who've had to put up with bad bosses and healthy work environments saying either the miserable job or the uncertainty.
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Before, you would take the miserable job without a doubt. I need to pay my bills, I need to pay my kids, I need to pay my mortgage. But now, he says people are saying, miserable job, uncertainty. I'll take the uncertainty. I know I can get through with it. And that's why you see those, people don't wanna go back to work. So I was supposed to go speak. They cut off my flight because they don't have enough staff. People are not going back. So the upside is that people have really reclaimed.
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what's important to them. And I think this time has allowed folks to reflect and really revisit what are the values? Where do I wanna spend my time? Who do I wanna spend my time with? And I think you're absolutely right, Pete. The workforce is challenging organizations to rethink the way that they are building and developing their cultures.
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Because really that's the essence, what your experience is like within an organization. What does it feel like to be there? What are the norms that exist within that organization? And folks are deciding to leave and looking for organizations that really are going to embody the values that are important to them. So, absolutely. Do you think current leaders are taking note and working on changing? You know, leadership,
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is one of the most difficult roles and one of the most important roles because you have the ability to impact the work experience of your entire organization or your team, your department. That's an awesome responsibility. But what I do wonder is that, are those folks really self-reflective? Because in order to be...
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one of the best leaders and most effective leaders, they're folks who really work on themselves and really understand, you know, Brene Brown talks about being vulnerable. You know what I mean? Like bringing your vulnerability, owning up to mistakes, owning up that you don't know everything, even this level of uncertainty. Yes, as a leader, you wanna be able to convey and exude a level of.
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confidence that people will believe that even if things were to fall, you would be there holding it up. There does need to be that level of confidence. At the same time, I think that folks really wrestle with their own self-awareness. And so when I think of my bad bosses, I think of people who really are and whether they choose to be unaware. I don't know. If they even open to the feedback. That there's something that is too scary for them.
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It's a scary place to be that vulnerable, to admit that you don't know, to admit that you're wrong, to be able to share and collaborate. My most recent bad boss, I think that I have real empathy for him because I could only imagine how the weight that it has when you know everything, have to control everything, have to be the go-to person for everything because you know what's going to happen.
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that's going to crumble at some point. Because it's not real. And this front, imagine walking around with the front, which sometimes you do in society. Let me be honest, sometimes I do that. Sometimes we have this mask, you talked about it earlier, of feeling like there's a persona we have to wear in order to be seen, valued, and recognized. But how does that boss feel like that's just their 24-7 mask that they have to wear?
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It's a huge burden. Unfortunately, it has so many negative impacts on a variety of people, because people then work in fear, right? They work in fear, they work in stress, and that can produce in the short term, but it's not sustainable, and it's not gonna get you there for the long term. I remember being in those situations and hearing clients in those situations that...
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There is that tipping point and that tipping point for us is going to be very unique for each individual person, like what your threshold is and what you're willing to tolerate, right? It's going to be very different. Some of us, you know, have a much more expansive level of tolerance. Others, their tolerance level is much shorter, especially when it's around a work situation. This is your livelihood.
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Right? Right. This is how you feed yourself. You put a roof over your head. You feed your family. You take care of all the important people in your world. And so it's no easy decision to just say, I'm gone. I'm out. I'm leaving. Yes. Yeah. Coach Jackie, this has been amazing and very helpful to so many listeners who are going to benefit from it. Just give us one last tip when it comes to your career and being self-aware, as you mentioned.
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What is the one thing that people need to always remember? You're not alone and you're an excellent company that all these fears and doubts are universal. So if you think you're different than others, yes, you have your uniqueness. And our commonality is such that we all experience these same worries and concerns. Sometimes that's comforting to know that we're not alone and that there are ways to move past those fears and doubts.
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Thank you so much for having me here. I appreciate it. Is it okay if I just share my website? I'm about to ask you actually. Okay, wonderful. If folks want to reach out to me, you can go to my website. It's coachjackieross.com. And if you subscribe to my website, you can actually, which is free, you can get a free copy of my ebook called Manage Up, The Ultimate Guide to Managing Your Manager. Or you can email me at Jackie at
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coachjackyross.com. Wonderful. Let's reach out to career development coach Jackie, if we want to upscale our careers, deal with the kind of work environments that you're exposed to, and bring out our best talents and skills. Thank you so much, coach Jackie, for being here. Thank you, Roberta. I appreciate it. Have a great day, everyone.