Each week, business strategist Kathie (De Chirico) Stuart and I host the "Drink Like a Lady Podcast," designed to help women leaders get a seat at the bar--and a seat in the boardroom.
In Season 3 Episode 9, we talk about the 6 tips to help women leaders get the best performance out of their teams as we transition back to the office.
1. Make space to lead. Make space for learning.
2. Be able to anticipate and get ahead of problems.
3. Communicate, communicate, communicate
4. Keep the team goals in mind, Help them see the big picture
5. Role model values and encourage feedback
6. Have vision. Be decisive.
Kathie: (18:21)
Well, they can. There's the email [stuartkathie @gmail.com]. I love that. So I don't have to spell Stuart and Kathie are two names that are often this spelled based on how I do it or directly at my, um, line number, which is (609) 933-7600. I forgot what my number was
For all other episodes, go to www.joyadass.com>Podcast
Joya is currently enrolling members for international (Europe) and domestic (NYC) strategy days. She also leads a year-long intensive mastermind of C-Suite level women, which is accepting applications for 2024.
https://www.joyadass.com/
info@joyadass.com
Each week, business strategist Kathie (De Chirico) Stuart and I host the "Drink Like a Lady Podcast," designed to help women leaders get a seat at the bar--and a seat in the boardroom.
In Season 3 Episode 9, we talk about the 6 tips to help women leaders get the best performance out of their teams as we transition back to the office.
1. Make space to lead. Make space for learning.
2. Be able to anticipate and get ahead of problems.
3. Communicate, communicate, communicate
4. Keep the team goals in mind, Help them see the big picture
5. Role model values and encourage feedback
6. Have vision. Be decisive.
Kathie: (18:21)
Well, they can. There's the email [stuartkathie @gmail.com]. I love that. So I don't have to spell Stuart and Kathie are two names that are often this spelled based on how I do it or directly at my, um, line number, which is (609) 933-7600. I forgot what my number was
For all other episodes, go to www.joyadass.com>Podcast
Joya is currently enrolling members for international (Europe) and domestic (NYC) strategy days. She also leads a year-long intensive mastermind of C-Suite level women, which is accepting applications for 2024.
https://www.joyadass.com/
info@joyadass.com
Hey, Kathie, how are you today? How are you doing? I'm
Kathie:Good. I'm good. Plugging through the week. I've realized that today. One of my lessons is to show myself a little more grace, because I've just been running from thing to thing, and that is not the equation for health. So that is my mantra for today.
Joya:Right. Good. I understand that very much. So. Well, I got our little packaging up here so that everyone can see our logo, our snazzy logo as we're doing our thing today, but this is Season Three, Episode Nine of Drink Like a Lady. This is our podcast designed to teach you how to get a seat at the bar and get a seat in the boardroom as a female leader. And today, Kathie, we're talking about how to lead your team and get the most optimal performance out of them, especially as we are transitioning back to the
Kathie:Office. Yeah. It's a very interesting subject because what is really important is to make sure you have the right players in the right functions, in the right departments and how are they working together and to do that, there's very much a synchronous synchronization that goes on as well. You
Joya:Like it it to a marching band. I actually didn't even know you were in a marching band.
Kathie:I was in high school. So that's a million years ago. What was interesting to me as I was putting the story together because I become very like in tune to what can I do to help people understand? I remember as the drum majorette, um, you know, it was that you had, you have this entire band and by the way, we are invited by, um, Dublin to do the, uh, the March in Dublin, the big, uh, St Patrick's day parade there. And to actually go back in history, I looked at that and I thought we were an amazing group of individuals pulling it all together. And we had a be in that world that actually amazed people. So in doing so I did a little bit of Googling and I said, what does a marching band actually do for anyone? Um, in terms of pulling it together. And, uh, that was some of the ideas I shared with you.
Joya:Yeah. And so number one was to teach responsibility and accountability. So the band is not necessarily just one sort of amoeba like thing, there's individual
Kathie:Parts, right. And everyone has to be, I re you know, the whole thing is you have to have the same step in the same left or right. You have to make sure that you're not jumping, you know, I'm bumping into each other, but you have to understand that you are part of a bigger team and your part is very important.
Joya:And then discipline course, and not only towards your instrument, but to show up is a big deal.
Kathie:Yeah. And of course, I, I was the woman with the whistle and I was the woman with the big, you know, that big ton, I guess it's still called the Baton. Um, and I was the one who basically said, here's where we're going turn around. The whistles would actually tell people what they had to do.
Joya:Dreamwork makes the teamwork. That was the next one.
Kathie:Yes. And of course, if you've seen a, um, a band bumping into each other, you understand the difference between a well synchronized band and something that is not
Joya:Okay. Endurance. This is something that people think, especially in TV that I go, that should be so easy to do so glamorous, but it's not the first of the third or the fifth time it's hitting it out of the park. The thousands of time that you're on TV,
Kathie:We used to practice and, you know, really brought me back so many years. We used to practice two to three hours a day. So when someone says, oh, you weren't in athletics. I definitely wasn't athletics. That's for sure.
Joya:And then what is it losing gracefully have to do with being in a band? And more importantly, as we're talking about our topic today, being an on team.
Kathie:Yeah. W what's important is we we're competing. And as a band, you compete, we were pre competed in. So, like I said, we were invited to dumb the Dublin St Patrick's day parade. And if you lost, you still had to put on a good face. And it's a great way to teach professionalism, even when you're not winning number one.
Joya:And a little bit of humility probably goes along. And then where was the leadership role? Were you in a leadership role in the marching band?
Kathie:I was, I was the one who was telling everybody what to do, you know, because I think I still do that in terms of it's a very natural fit for me, but also there are subgroups, there are squads and in that squad, there's a leader as well. So then you have the sub leaders part of it. So I love this. If individuals don't understand the dynamics of how to put together a team or a company, take a look at the marching band and understand that synchronization
Joya:Well, we dovetail into, you know, six or I believe yes, six tips for how we, as leaders can bring our teams back, be sensitive, create a culture of understanding and get the best performance out of them. So the first piece, the first piece, and I love this one because I can't stress this enough. If you're going to be a leader, you're going to assume that torch, um, you got to make space to lead. You've got to be able to always be learning.
Kathie:Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things I just said to someone, the minute I learned that it was okay to say I made an error, even to others underneath me. Um, what happened was it became much easier to lead. It became like it wasn't tough. There wasn't any resistance on my part.
Joya:Well, even creating that space, this is something I'm being very intentional about making time to read, like mark Cuban reads like three hours a day and all of that knowledge comes back to my community. It it's what I pour back into my members. And so really making, being intentional about that space to lead and really strategically thinking about my week and the team that I now oversee. I have to make space for it. It's not
Kathie:Going to happen on autopilot. Well, I, I wish I had talked to you yesterday morning when I got up to the floor and at nine 30, I was still in meetings. And I was like, okay, you know, what do I do? But sometimes that happens and it's okay to take that energy. But definitely I love the fact that this reading for me is also, it's, it's an obsession in the way of learning, but it's also a way that I relapsed. Um, and we've talked about that as well. And that's the space that you're talking about.
Joya:So tip number one, make space to lead, always be learning. Number two is being able to anticipate and get ahead of problems. And by this, I mean, like if you do make a mistake, rather than let it fester or wait for somebody else to recognize it, to get ahead of it and say, you know what, I made a mistake, and this is what it's going to cost us, but this is the solution.
Kathie:What's, you know, what's important for everyone to understand. We live in a very complex world. Um, and in that complexity, we have it, we have operations, we have global operations. Now we've got marketing digital, you know, versus, uh, you know, ad space in, you know, in, you know, the newspapers, magazines, that's all different. You, you go back 20 years ago, we didn't have this. So it's important to understand that you are going to need perspective from other people 360 degrees and be open to the complexity and feel that, you know, you've got to lean into others to help you make that happen.
Joya:Do some FutureCasting to really look at, you know, what's down the line that could upend the whole apple cart, you know, so, okay, great. We're bringing everybody back into the office, but what haven't we anticipated that could come up, come the fall, or it could come up in the winter, you know, what are some of those problems and what can we do to get ahead of that?
Kathie:And that's important, but I will say there are not a lot of people who can manage both the day to day, meaning take what's going on in the future and address it to what's going on today without understanding that that there's a, um, there's a magic to it. And, uh, the magic is being very present to what you're doing, but understanding that you have a focus on where you're going.
Joya:So number three is communicate simply and clearly. And I love this one because I just had a conversation with somebody about this, this weekend.
Kathie:Well, this one is, and I've said this to people who are experts. Sometimes they're such experts. They accumulate everything. They do a data dump on you. And I've always said to people, you've got data, information, insights. I want the insights. All right. And if the insights don't seem, um, credible, okay, let's go back to the information. And then we would tear through that information. If that's not credible, you go back to data. Um, and then you make sure you got that right, but it's very important, especially in high functioning, working executive teams that you bring the insights first and then work backwards
Joya:And communicate, communicate, communicate. I was having a conversation with someone this weekend who used to work for the world bank. And he, his, his expertise, his knowledge base was very much technical. And now we've pivoted into a role where he's client facing and he's also in front of the C-suite and he has to sell ideas. And so, while all that technical knowledge is at his fingertips, that is not the data dump that you're going to give to your CEO, your CFO, your COO, or even a prospective client, you have to be super simple. And you have to really be thinking about what this person's motivation is for being across the table from you. So I think that that's where like communicating as a leader, so simply and clearly can becomes tantamount because you have to sit through all that stuff that you really want to talk about and make sure that you're only speaking to the three things that the person on the other side of the table needs to know.
Kathie:That's, that's so critical because in today's world, you know, especially there's so many different individuals that are trying to get their own perspective across. You've got to make sure you make it very simple for them to make a decision. You have a story
Joya:About this, right? You had a player who was, who's excellent at, uh, you know, in terms of knowledge, but really was poor at being able to relay the most salient point.
Kathie:Well, and I'm in the middle of this. So then it's, how do you manage this, uh, uh, on a very dignified basis, but knowing you have to go forward and what's important is he was excellent at what he knows best. Excellent. And, uh, you know, the point is, and I shared this with you is basically what he could say in two sentences. He said in, you know, two pages, what that does is it's overwhelming now in the beginning, you think, okay, I'm going to read everything cause I'm missing something, but really that's not, what's working. Um, even the people that he's leading. So it's very clear for them. Um, what we've done is we realize he's a B player when it comes to also being collaborative, because he wants everyone to know what he knows and he thinks that's more important, but he's actually working against the team. Um, in terms of
Joya:One of the things I teach my public speaking clients is that if the world were ending tomorrow and you could only get 10 words out of 10 words to summate, what the most important takeaway is about your knowledge base? What would that be? In fact, I was coaching someone last week who was, who had written an article, but was going to be on TV. And the article was really about the top 10 places for LGBTQ people to live in the United States, a place that they could live that was affordable because statistically LGBTQ folks were not homeowners, but they could also be themselves. And so you can only imagine when you've got 10 studies to list off that there needs to be just one big salient point. And it was exactly that statistically, they're not homeowners. So here are the top 10 cities and here's the criteria that we based it
Kathie:On. That is very interesting. I think that we should do that almost every morning, even for ourselves, no matter where we are and where we're going, five
Joya:Is, or sorry, number four is to really keep the team goals, mind, help, help the team see big. And this is so important because it's so easy to get into the tactical, but you got to really think about what the end goal
Kathie:Is. And along the way, what happens is people become distracted. All right? So they're, they're on the same road, they're all going the same direction and something new pops subs, and all of a sudden, it's like a sidebar and they're gonna stop. And, uh, you know, start working on that. I'll look how we can add that, but they've actually lost what the really primary objective is. And that's really important to keep them, uh, you know, straightened forward
Joya:Leader. You touched on this earlier. Sometimes our egos get in the way our insecurities get in the way. So now more than ever, it's important to think about the big picture and make sure you keep that in mind, as you're maybe starting to hear those niggling voices in
Kathie:Your head. And, and the other thing besides the ego and the self-confidence and all of that is, well, if someone has always done something the way they've done it, they bring in their old model and especially, and I love having new young individuals, um, as part of the teams, because they have a different way of working through it. So you've got to, you don't want to give up what what's best for the team, but you have to look at your model where sometimes it may not work anymore
Joya:Of that next generation, because they are great at putting up their boundaries in a way that we feel like our generation is not.
Kathie:I agree with you on that one.
Joya:I, to role model the values and encourage a culture of feedback. Uh, I have so many thoughts on this, but I'm going to let you go first.
Kathie:Well, we've talked about this in some prior episodes, creating what we call a value system within an organization. When I go in, someone says to me, I've got, I've got to pull it together. And you know, I want to make sure that it's going to be a solid company brand, et cetera. We do a value. We do vision. We do mission, but values are really important because that's what attracts the individuals that are going to work alongside of you and where you want to go. So, um, trust is a key value of mine, my own personal, but within a company, if you have that trust value, it is so much easier to be able to say, I can't trust this person. What's the problem with that person, perhaps they lie. And, and you know, part of what we find sometimes that happens is you find out all of a sudden they're rubbed within the rest of the team. And you've got, it's like a, it's like a rash. You got to get rid of that rash. I think.
Joya:So I have another way. And I encourage my members to think about this. Um, what are your deal breakers like for me, I'm a time Nazi. I need you to be able to show up on time. If we're going to work together, I need communication. There needs to be a level of like responsiveness, even if you don't have the answer. So for me, like, I think those are deal breakers when I'm thinking about who I'm going to bring onto my team. And so it's set another way. I remember there's a member who brought her family on a retreat every year. They would go, you know, rent an Airbnb somewhere and sit down and talk about their family. And so everybody got to speak up and put it on the table, what their values were. But guess what? This also opened up space for feedback, to be able to happen in a way that in your day to day, when you're running from chore to chore or basketball to, you know, school drop off, like you just don't have time to get that feedback in a, in a gracious way.
Kathie:And you know w hat, it's really important. As you're saying, I love this whole idea o f, o f a family retreat and talking about each of the individuals. But you think about a brand like Amazon w o ne is their key is that, you know, they deliver on time. If they say they're coming today, t hey, they come today. I f t hey're s ay they're coming tomorrow, if there is someone who says, oh, that's okay, that package doesn't have to be delivered t ill next week. You know, basically they're going against the rub of what that business value is.
Joya:There's a great, James Clear who wrote Atomic Habits, the book Atomic Habits, he's got a list of 50 values, and I encourage people to do this all the time. You look at that list, you winnow it down to your top 10 values, your top five, and then your top two. And oftentimes those top two are really about who you are when you strip away work. And that's the challenge is to figure out how you can make sure those values show up every single day in what you're doing. So you stay in alignment.
Kathie:I, and it's perfect. What it does is it also allows you to go through the day feeling like you're in the right place.
Joya:It's good. So number six, and I forgot to put all of our banners up here. So I'm going to recap them at the end, but to have vision and be decisive, we know that there's nothing worse than having gosh, you know, a chaos, utter chaos to be able to upend the
Kathie:Apple cart and what that does for people. If there's chaos and there's confusion, they lose sight of where they're going. All right. And that's where you get the distractions that come in pride is one of the things I talk about a lot with individuals, and you can tell someone who's prideful who immediately, and in your I'm attracted to them. I'm attracted to hardworking people. I'm attracted to people with great character and people of pride, um, and that allows you to stay on, on target. Um, but I'm going to say without all of these skills, right, you, what happens is all of a sudden, you've got yourself, a marching band that's going into multiple directions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you've gotta
Joya:Be decisive, right? Like people can, people can lollygag and ruminate for hours, but you always need someone to be decisive. And I was reading an article by Warren Buffet and he talks about like three choices in life that separates the winners from the losers. And I, and his last one is one I'm still thinking about, which is he got to really do what you love. And you got to love your employees. You got to love, you know, your clients, because that is the key to unlocking success.
Kathie:And I love those quotes. And I often said to people, you, you know, throughout when you love what you do, because you'll never have to worry about coming back to work the next neck.
Joya:So Kathie, before we close out this episode, I just want to quickly put up what our six top tips are. As we're transitioning back to the office and getting the optimal performance out of your teams as leaders, number one, making space to lead, always be learning. Number two, be able to anticipate and get ahead of problems. Number three, communicate, communicate, communicate, not only simply, but clearly, um, making sure you keep the team goals in mind, help your team. See the big picture, always role modeling values and encouraging feedback, having vision being decisive. And before we go, Kathie, if anyone wants to work with you, you're a business strategist. How do they get in touch with you?
Kathie:Well, they can. There's the email[stuartkathie @gmail.com]. I love that. So I don't have to spell Stuart and Kathie are two names that are often this spelled based on how I do it or directly at my, um, line number, which is (609) 933-7600. I forgot what my number was
Joya:Mine. I, you know, I work with folks, especially corporate women when they want to transition up and they want to get that promotion. I work with you on your public, speaking on how to really come into that room with some confidence and command with authority. So my email is joay@joyadass.com and next week, Kathie, what are we talking about? We're going to talk about, and I think this is perfect for you. You are the go to you are really going to shine in this one. Not that you don't all the time, but it's, we're going to discuss the stories we tell and how that impacts who we are and what we're able to do. So stay tuned. Awesome.
Kathie:Awesome. I believe that the art of influence is truly in the art of storytelling. There are one in the same, so I can't wait to talk about
Joya:That. Great. Have a great week as always. It's great to talk with you. All right, Kathy, we'll see you next week. Take care.