Courtney Jordan Owner of the Jordan Group Consulting Business
Mar 20, 2024
Alimond Studio
Have you ever stood at a crossroads between the comfort of a familiar path and the thrill of a new direction? Our latest guest, a former real estate mogul turned executive coach, recounts their bold leap into the world of leadership development. They unlock the secrets behind guiding individuals and teams to peak performance through self-awareness and intentional influence. With anecdotes about unwavering team loyalty and the power of authentic connections, this episode promises to reshape your understanding of what it means to lead and inspire.
Imagine a world where every conversation led to new depths of understanding and every community thrived under the guidance of intentional leaders. That's the vision our guest brings to life, especially in the vibrant communities of Northern Virginia. Weave through their tales of golf, UVA basketball, and the personal pursuit of leaving a meaningful legacy. If you're seeking a catalyst for your professional growth or a reminder to wear your true colors with pride, this conversation is the game-changer you’ve been waiting for.
Have you ever stood at a crossroads between the comfort of a familiar path and the thrill of a new direction? Our latest guest, a former real estate mogul turned executive coach, recounts their bold leap into the world of leadership development. They unlock the secrets behind guiding individuals and teams to peak performance through self-awareness and intentional influence. With anecdotes about unwavering team loyalty and the power of authentic connections, this episode promises to reshape your understanding of what it means to lead and inspire.
Imagine a world where every conversation led to new depths of understanding and every community thrived under the guidance of intentional leaders. That's the vision our guest brings to life, especially in the vibrant communities of Northern Virginia. Weave through their tales of golf, UVA basketball, and the personal pursuit of leaving a meaningful legacy. If you're seeking a catalyst for your professional growth or a reminder to wear your true colors with pride, this conversation is the game-changer you’ve been waiting for.
Speaker 1:
What's your 30 second elevator pitch for?
Speaker 2:
Oh gosh, I wish I knew my 30 second elevator pitch is you know, whenever people ask me what I do, I say I bring leaders to life. My mission is to unlock the potential of individuals, teams and organizations through leadership and self-awareness, culture, training, emotional intelligence, creating high performing teams.
Speaker 1:
What got you into that? Like, what was that spark?
Speaker 2:
So I come from a real estate background and I got bored and I felt like I wasn't having the impact that I really wanted to have on people. So I had a friend who met the co-founders of a company called Giant Worldwide and she brought me to Atlanta and she said hey, I really want you to check this out and I think you could be good at it. And I said, okay, great. So I went and I was still selling about $15 million of real estate and I just felt like it wasn't the right time. But something inside of me said there's something more for you. And so fast forward a few more years. And that's when I was bored and I got to meet the co-founders a couple of managing partners, at a dinner. They were here in town, from England, in Oklahoma City and Albuquerque, all over the country and one of the co-founders said hey, if you're ever in London, I'll do a mini intensive and we'll figure out who you are and what you should be doing. And I said, well, great, I have a trip scheduled in July, I'll see you then, did you actually? I did Okay, so I actually had a trip, and so we scheduled it. And after that mini intensive one, I understood myself so much better and I thought I would love to do this for people. I would love to help them know who they are by nature and what their natural gifts are going to be. And two, I really think I want to do this thing called Giant, and so I started making the transition. That was back in 2017. And so I started making the transition to be a full-time leadership and professional development consultant six years ago.
Speaker 2:
And so what does that entail of the training or leadership and professional development?
Speaker 2:
Yeah Well, it entails figuring out where the pain points in an organization are, or with an individual. So when I have an individual who says, hey, I want you to be my executive coach, we always start with a mini intensive, which is again getting to who you are by your nature, what your characteristics are, what your strengths are, what your learning opportunities are, and then we dive into who is you know or what are the skills that they really want to learn when we're looking for at the executive coaching experience. And so that's for individuals. For teams, I will normally start with an assessment that we call the Giant Leadership Audit. It follows the five metrics of a high performing team communication, relationship, alignment, execution and capacity. So we'll do that kind of do some diagnosis, figure out where the pain points are, where we need to start, and then we do a combination of it's usually workshops, coaching, individual small groups. It just depends on, again, the pain points and what problem we're trying to solve and what their budget is.
Speaker 1:
What type of transformations have you helped people go through?
Speaker 2:
Man. I've seen A good leader who really cared about his people really transformed into a great leader who not only invested in himself but in his people, so much so that when he was making a move to a different company, they all said we're coming with you. And they didn't have to. They could have stayed, it would have been easier, they wouldn't have had to learn new systems. But they said you care about us more than just as your employees. And that was through our work, really giving him the how not just theoretical tools of leadership, of becoming a better leader, but here are some concrete practical application tools.
Speaker 2:
Individually again, I coached a young woman. She was in her early 20s, struggled with confidence and the ability to challenge those who were older than her, even though she had a higher position, being able to speak up and know that she was valued. So watching her kind of go through that transition, that was pretty amazing. Most recently, a team that I was working for they were all working in silos and for this particular organization they were missing out on so much more capacity and I just spoke with their leader and she said yeah, we just got through our biggest event season and we all remarked how much easier. It was this year because our communication and our relationships, we built more trust with each other and the whole thing just went smoother because of the work we've done with you.
Speaker 1:
I love that. Do you feel like our? Do you feel like more people that are in leadership positions need this type of training?
Speaker 2:
I was going to say that right, yeah, that's right. Or you're trying to say it like diplomatically yes, right, yes, I hold to the fact that we have a lot of leaders, but we need better leaders, and so many people fail to lead themselves well first, which means that they're not leading their people well. And so if you don't know your strengths, if you don't know your challenges, if you don't know what it's like to be on the other side of you, then how can you grow your people, how can you grow your team, your organization? And so, at a minimum, I think a leader should do it, if not the whole team. My goal is to create a common language. I want to create language that helps create yes, just like that.
Speaker 2:
The communication code. That is one of our tools. That is literally just one of our tools, but it is super practical, super easy to implement. Where the communication code, there's actually five codes Care, clarify, collaborate, celebrate and critique, and so the goal of using the code is to actually tell people what you need instead of making them guess. So I would say, right now, I need you to care and I would be able to vent. That means you're not going to try to solve my problem. You're just going to listen. But if I came to you and I said I'm looking for critique, show me how this isn't going to work, then you know that it's okay to tell me what's wrong with it. But how often do we go to somebody and we're looking maybe we have a finished product and we're like, hey, it's done, look at this, it's so great. And then somebody critiques it like, oh well, why didn't you do this? You should have done this. Well, you're missing this and this, and then it's deflating.
Speaker 1:
I'm on the critiquing side all the time, so this is such a good tool for me to say well, how would you do that?
Speaker 2:
How would you do that? So you would. If you're a natural critiquer, if you know that your natural communication code is critique, you would go to your team, whoever it is, say what are you looking for me right now? As soon as they bring you something? And if they know the five words they say, I need you to clarify. That means that you're going to ask them questions to maybe draw out some more gold or more creativity, whatever it is. Or I want you to collaborate. So collaboration is different than critique. It is. We're shaping this together. So maybe you're asking questions versus just telling them Like how did you arrive at this decision? Okay, let's walk through that Now, what are we thinking here? That kind of thing. And if they say I want critique, then you can go into critique.
Speaker 1:
That's so good that right. There is such a great tool, though, when you have to, not even necessarily as a leader only. It's a person, as a human, who needs to communicate with other humans.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, Just in find I'm teaching a high performing teams cohort. It's a six month cohort with a company and I laugh because sometimes these guys go. I feel like we're in therapy. Man, my wife is going to love this, you know, and it's helping them in business, but, as you said, it's just it's helping them as humans. We talk about that. There's five circles of influence Starts with yourself, then it goes to family, then it goes to team, then it goes to organization and you can't give away that which you don't possess. So if that self circle is not healthy, then you're not going to be able to be super healthy in the other five, but it radiates out. So if you're healthy for yourself, then you're healthier for your family, your team your organization Community yes, it can be right.
Speaker 1:
I mean honestly, like if you have all those, if you have this part down and you understand it, it does. It affects your interpersonal relationships Absolutely and those professional, even just being a part of your society or your community.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, how you put yourself out there. I definitely agree, and that's what we say. It's what's it like to be on the other side of you, and do you truly know? Research shows that 95% of people would say that they're self aware, and the actual statistics are 10 to 15%, and so it's a way to help people truly know. Okay, here's how I'm coming off. I think I know how people receive me, but this is what I'm actually giving out, and then you're able to adjust.
Speaker 1:
Ascended. Yeah, what's something? You kind of gave me the statistic there with that 95% Sure. What do you believe most people get wrong when it comes to communicating with other people?
Speaker 2:
They communicate the way that they want to be communicated to, not the way that the other person wants to be communicated to. So they will take well, this is what I would want. So I'm going to assume that the person on the other side of me wants that. And we all have a different voice. We all have a different personality. Five voices is our personality profile that we use. And so when I a lot of people, they'll say okay, this is who I am, deal with me. And what we want to teach our leaders to do is say this is who I am, this is who you are. How do we deal with each other? And so I will often say there's the golden rule Do unto others as you would have done unto yourselves. Let's elevate that. Let's go to the platinum rule Do unto others as they would have done unto themselves, and you get a better result.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely when you take the other person into consideration, I feel like this whole methodology needs to be elevated to a national and international conversation.
Speaker 2:
Well, from your lips to God's ears right, that's where that's my goal. I have clients all over the country, but I live in Loudoun and I love Loudoun and I want to create better leaders in Loudoun not just more, but better like healthy leaders who are multiplying, who are self-aware, who know how to get the best from their people, who are creating healthy cultures. We all know that you can have the best strategy in the world, but if your culture is toxic, you're never going to achieve your vision and strategy under pressure. If it without healthy culture, you're not going to get there.
Speaker 1:
How are you doing that? How are you leading these different individuals and teams? Is it virtually?
Speaker 2:
Is it in person? It's a combination of both. It really depends. Some of my clients find me out, which you know it's so sad I have to go to California in February, southern California in February. It's going to be hard, other times it's, and they will have a combination of virtual work as well. I do a lot of work with Lytos and most of that is virtual. But they'll have me, you know, go sometimes to different places if they've got a team that's local or hey, we'd rather it be done in person. You know we'll do that. So it really just depends on budget time. You know a lot of people are spread across the country with these organizations, so it's easier for them to get together virtually anyways. So we were doing virtual work before the pandemic. Yeah, it was. It was not like, oh, now, this is this thing we have to do. It's like, oh, I get to continue doing this. Now more people are doing it. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:
Where do you see yourself in five years? Oh wow.
Speaker 2:
I see having so I have my company, the Jordan Group, and I've got one associate. I see having a team of people who are looking to liberate Northern Virginia, the DC Metro area, and really having that impact, that ripple effect of I don't know. I wish I could throw out a number of like 10,000 leaders. I would love to impact at least 10,000 leaders in my lifetime and I think I could do it in five years, which means my vision is gonna have to get bigger.
Speaker 2:
Why are you super focused on this area? Because I think we are so influential, and when I say leadership, what I'm actually meaning is influence, and we have so many people here who have true influence and they don't spend it wisely, because influence can be currency. And so I've always said I wanted to change the world, and I think here is a great place to start. I knew that I would never cure cancer. That was not my thing. Like put me in a lab and I'm like no, thank you. But I said I could encourage somebody who would cure cancer and that's something that could be world changing, life changing, and so by impacting this area, I really feel like there's a chance to make some, you know positive ripple impacts across the country and across the world.
Speaker 1:
That's awesome, that's beautiful too, because it's something that's doable, like you can accomplish that. Sometimes we set these big dreams which I'm a big dreamer type person but then it's like am I going to ever achieve that? Probably not, but I'm still gonna shoot for it. So then I take big actions.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely absolutely, but that's definitely something that I think you can achieve. Yeah, thanks, that's my goal. Okay, so, in terms of looking into this community of Northern Virginia, what are some of the biggest? Besides reading the book and working with you? What are some of the biggest things or not biggest the smallest changes that people can start doing today or this week that could help?
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. The first thing is we have a free assessment called the Five Voices and you can take that link. That is one way to start discovering what your tendencies are. What's that link? It is, oh man, thejordangroupslashgiantoscom. I think it's a longer link. I have a QR code and I can look at that, but that's again thejordangroupslashgiantos. Or just go to giantoscom and the code in there is thejordangroup if it asks you for a referral code. But it's a great way to start understanding your tendencies so you can start saying again what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are. So it's building self-awareness, starting with self. I know I would much rather work with somebody who was self-aware than somebody who was a know-it-all, so and moldable and teachable. So that would be the first step and then from there, that gets you a free account on our platform. We have some free resources. It's over 100 hours of free personal and professional development.
Speaker 1:
Start exploring, start watching videos, start taking notes Because everybody is different, like you can't just get like one or two tips that applies to everybody, because it's specific to each person and their journey right.
Speaker 2:
Where are they? You know my younger leaders. I have to teach them. Hey, you don't know it all you know. And my dad used to say that all the time He'd say oh, courtney knows it all, just ask her. And so teaching younger leaders versus leaders who are a little bit further in their career or at the end stages of their career. They're gonna need something better. But the other thing is choosing to be for the person on the other side of you, recognizing that every interaction how can I be for you, not for myself, when you go into each interaction?
Speaker 1:
And doesn't some of that mean you have to already know a little bit about that person before you know how to kind of communicate with them, so that you're hard, absolutely, and if so, if you know them, then that becomes a little bit easier.
Speaker 2:
But even if you're meeting a stranger, be interested before being interesting, and oftentimes, you know, native Northern Virginian DC has been in my blood for years, and one of the first questions we ask people is what do you do? Well, maybe ask some different questions. What are some questions that you'd like to ask? What do you like to do? What are you excited about right now? Where are you from? Not necessarily, so it's more about who they are, and when they say where they're from, oh, what's the most fun fact about your town that I should know? Or, if I ever go there, is there a great restaurant or something like that. So, being a little bit more interested in them as people than just what they do or what they could do or connections that they could provide for you?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's a good tip. We used to have a networking event where we banned the question what do you do? Oh good, and we gave them five other questions to ask, depending on, like, if it was around spring break, it would be like are you going anywhere for spring break or the holidays, or what's a memory from like when you were 13 years old? You know, like these random things, that people are like oh.
Speaker 2:
I haven't thought about that in forever, or gosh, I haven't told that story in ages, exactly. So again, it's that idea of being interested before being interesting.
Speaker 1:
I love that. So, speaking of which, who are you outside of leadership?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, who am I outside of leadership? I'm a big golfer. If it was summer, you would see that I have two different colored hands, but they've actually like evened out a little bit. A couple of vacations and I have a significant other named Chuck and we travel a lot. We go back and forth between Southern Illinois in here to be with his family and my family and I think other than that that's. You know, I love sports. My nickname is actually Sportney, so I probably should be led with that. Oh, I love that. So my license plate says Sportney. People are like Spirit New York. I'm like nope, it's a Sportney, it's a Courtney who loves sports.
Speaker 2:
What did you play growing up? I played soccer, tennis and basketball, so my biggest sport that I cheer for is college basketball, and I happen to have gone to UVA, so I'm a big UVA men's basketball team fan. So we don't talk about 2018, but we definitely can talk about 2019. There we go. Yeah, we were the longest reigning national champions ever. Thank you, covid.
Speaker 1:
So yeah, yeah, it's funny. So, in terms of where you see yourself as a human, not necessarily within work, but just as a human, where do you hope to see yourself in 10 years? Wow?
Speaker 2:
In 10 years, just as a human, I want to have created something where we're not that's giving back, that is, it's not just about the corporate side, but where I'm able to use my talents, use my skills for those who can't afford it. Because it is. It can be costly, depending on what you need, and that is part of my passion, again, is having that impact on people. My goal is to leave them better than I found them, and so, in 10 years, to be in a spot where I have a team that is doing our billing and having our company be successful, but that we can also be generous with our time and, yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1:
That give back is always our. What is that called legacy?
Speaker 2:
Exactly. It's like again it's what kind of legacy are you leaving and how are people going to remember you?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so Awesome In terms of it. Just to wrap it up, if you could have one message to the world, what would that message be? Don't shit all over yourself.
Speaker 2:
I spent about 20 years pretending to be something that I thought I should be and it was exhausting. I listened to the messages of the world around me and stifled some real big parts of me and my personality and I was depriving the world of those gifts. The world gets the best version of me. The world gets the best version of you when you are who you were created to be. So I would say figure it out and don't shit all over yourself.
Speaker 1:
Do you know a woman named Gil Page? No, okay. So she coached me at the beginning of my career, sorry, and she always said that don't stop shitting all over yourself. And I remember that was the first time I had heard that and I was like what the heck, I like it. Yeah, that's such a good piece of advice.
Speaker 2:
Whenever I say it in workshops and stuff, people are like and I was like yeah, no, I said should.
Speaker 1:
Should, should, should. Yeah, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It was so nice meeting you and learning a lot more about what you do. Well, thank you for having me, of course.
