How to Develop Leaders and Manage People Well | ft. Jennifer Paulson

In this episode of the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast, Jared sits down with Vanderbloemen COO Jennifer Paulson to explore the art of people management and leadership development. Together, they discuss why the COO role extends far beyond numbers and operations—it's about understanding, empowering, and growing your team.

They delve into:

• How managing people is at the heart of the COO role and why people challenges often trump operational ones.
• The essentials of effective delegation: why following up and hands-on coaching are critical for developing emerging leaders.
• The power of emotional intelligence in navigating difficult conversations and maintaining high team morale.
• Customizing your leadership style to meet the unique needs of individual team members for optimal performance.
• Reframing tough decisions—like letting go of employees—as opportunities for growth and a healthier organization.

Whether you're leading a church, nonprofit, or corporate team, this episode offers actionable insights to help you build, run, and keep a great team.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to the Vander Bloom and Leadership Podcast, where we help you build, run, and keep great teams. Thanks for being here. Let's dive in. Well, welcome in. We have a very special episode for you today. We are talking with someone who I admire very much, primarily because they think in a way that I just do not and cannot Jen Paulson. It is so good to have you today, Jen.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Thanks, Jared. No, Jared, you're still young. You have a lot of time to learn the way to learn to think like this. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

That's right. But before we started recording, we were even talking a little bit about some about the topic of managing people and developing leaders. And I found that so interesting for because for myself, I always viewed the COO role as more of a almost like a numbers operations. But what I've come to realize is that most of your problems are people problems and managing people problems. What could you just speak to that as a as a start? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

That's great. And this is a topic I'm super interested in, and I absolutely love talking about it. So there's usually two roles in a company now. There's sometimes a CFO as well, but in most companies, there's the CEO and the COO, and chief executive officer versus chief operating officer. And normally the conventional wisdom is that the chief executive officer is the people facing. Yep. So he faces people to get new clients to build the brand, um, to speak at public events. And then the COO is back in the office handling all of the operations. And I would say that a lot of that is true, but there's also a different dynamic, which is that since the CEO is oftentimes outside building the brand outer facing, the C E the COO has to be focused internally. And more than just the operations and making sure that the data is good and everything like that, is taking care of the people in the office. Yeah. So it at Vanderblumen, a lot of what I would do, I would say probably 60% of it is handling people problems or people issues or just kind of making sure that the people are happy and it's running smoothly. Yeah. And it's something that I really like to do, but I think it also is kind of a reason why COOs tend to be more mature because in order to handle people problems or do a lot of uh a lot of people related things, you need a lot of emotional intelligence. Yeah. And a lot of times that comes from life experience. Um so I'm in my I'm in my late 40s, a woman's not supposed to say her age, and I know you would never have thought that, dear. Uh, but I've been managing people since I was 22. And I was talking to one of our managers yesterday, and she's about that age. She's in her early 20s, and she said, you know, Jen, how come you know how to do this stuff and I don't? And that's easy. That's just because I've had years and years of experience doing that. Uh I also think that with people management, a lot of people think anyone can manage people. It's just a person, Jared, do this, Raina, do that. It's really not that at all. Uh it takes a special skill set that is learned to be able to manage people well. And I think that you're not going to be a successful COO unless you have that skill.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

You know, one of the things that you said that kind of stuck out to me was that how it's not for everyone. How do you kind of go about kind of the delegation almost and of um balancing the tension that is of equipping people to say, hey, go and do this versus maybe even a little bit of like micromanaging A8 of it?

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Yeah. Oh, Jared, that's so good. Okay, so I'm I'm still, you know, people we're all we're all students. William says we're all weak students. So I'm still learning too. Um but I think it's there's a big difference between handling the situation yourself or delegating it to someone else and what that looks like. Something that I learned when I was in my 20s is you can't delegate and forget. You have to delegate and follow up. So if you're delegating something to a younger leader, you can't just say, okay, Jared, you know, this employee, this employee needs to have a corrective action, go handle that.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

You really need to put more time and effort into helping the manager do that than you would have if you just handled it yourself. So you really need to sit with that manager, do a role play, uh, make sure that that manager is well equipped. Because if that manager tries to do a corrective action or put someone on a performance plan and they don't understand what they're doing, they'll make more of a mess of it than if if you had just done it yourself. So you've really got to every time you delegate, it's going to take more of your time initially, but then eventually wean off and the manager will be able to do it themselves.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

I love that. And one of the things that I'm kind of hearing it, and it, you know, you said you're super passionate about even developing leaders. Um what are just some tri or tricks, I guess, some best practices that you've seen and put into place when developing internally for people to I've got a couple that I'm thinking of right away.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

I had to interrupt you so I don't forget, but now I might end up forgetting anyway. So I one one really important one that I would say is have the younger leaders shadow you as much as possible. Okay. So they're they're sha any anytime you're going to do something that's a little bit different or a little bit out of their comfort zone, something that may they have met maybe haven't seen before, make sure that someone is sitting in there with you so that they're learning. Because a lot of learning is really just seeing what it's either making your own mistake or watching someone else do it right. So it's much better to have someone sit in and watch you do it right than to let them try and fail. And yes, they'll learn, but what is the cost of them having failed?

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Um the other, so what was the the question was about other things you can do to develop the manager? Yeah, just developing leaders and I th so another one would probably be giving them small projects that are pretty easy and then following up with them afterward to see how they do on that. Okay. So it really, it really is a lot of hand holding. Um another thing that I would say is more feedback is always better than less feedback. So they say that, you know, n in in the world, just 90% of problems come down to communication. Yep. And in developing leaders, you have to be over-communicative. So, Jared, I'm doing this today and this is why I'm doing it.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Be really explanatory. And then, okay, you watched me do that, Jared. What did you learn? You know, what is something that you picked up on? What is something you think I could have done better? Just really a lot of communication. It's it's really kind of um surprising to most people when you think about doing your job. A lot of people think you just sit down and do your job and you're spending your time, you're doing your spreadsheets, you're creating your budgets, you know, you're you're paying the bills, that type of thing. But really, a lot of it is people empowerment and people development. And if you don't do that, your company's never gonna grow because you've just got a bunch of robots that are stagnant.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Ooh, that would be a good book title. Stagnant robots. Stagnant robots. Just staying the same. I love that so much. I think that um one of the things that you kind of uh pointed out a little bit was when you have uh a person who fails, a leader who fails that you're trying to develop. How do we go about having those needed conversations, but most times maybe a little bit uncomfortable conversations? Yes. And even you can go into like the like how much uh chances are you giving for failure versus where you get to a point where a change in their role is needed.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

One of we have a one of our team managers who's just an absolutely excellent leader, and she said something to me yesterday. She said, You're the manager of that employee until that employee is no longer in the company. So you can't check out when you're developing people, you can't check out and just say, Jared's never gonna make it, I'm not gonna spend any more time on him, he can go sit over there.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

You really have to continue to invest in that leader, even if they fail. So my opinion on this is if they fail, you've got to do a debrief with them as to why they failed. If they're able to understand it and realize what they could do differently, then they're worth saving.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

If you have a debrief with them and they don't understand what they did wrong and they can't see your perspective and they don't really have that self-awareness, then you're not gonna be able to save them because they just don't have the ability to have that emotional intelligence required to be a good manager. So I think after you have one of those difficult conversations, you can decide if you want to pivot to continuing to develop them or if you want to pivot to finding them a different role or to moving them out of the business. And it sounds kind of dramatic, but if you keep banging your head against the wall with a manager and they're never gonna get there, all that you're doing is hurting your organization because the people that they manage are gonna have a negative experience.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Yeah. Yeah. I think that is so, so, so important. And you even hinted at it earlier, but the importance of emotional intelligence in all of these conversations, do you want to just maybe talk about that and how it's helped you be able to navigate those kind of conversations?

SPEAKER_01 9:06

My f I I always say things are my favorite. So if you really if you could took a list, I'd have like eight million favorites, but one of my favorite things really is emotional intelligence. I really think it's important. Um, if you can't understand where the person you're talking to is coming from, you can't have a successful relationship with them in in your personal life or in the office. You can't. You have to be able to see things from the person's perspective. And to me, an easy definition of emotional intelligence is being able to see things from other people's point of view. Okay. And a lot of times young managers are very rigid, they're very black and white, and they see things from their perspective and they're just talking at the employees without understanding where that employee is coming from. So unless you get in try to get into that employee's head and figure out where they're coming from, you can't talk to them at a level that they're even going to be able to understand what you're saying. And then there's no connection there. Did that answer?

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I love that. The um we were talking earlier about firing, and I had this story pop up, and I almost forgot to mention it, but I remember sitting in your office. I think we were going over some slices of the Trevor Burrus.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Is that the day I fired you?

SPEAKER_00 10:06

That was the day you told me the amount of people that you had fired as a COO. And that was something that I think it was like, do you know the number or something?

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Well, it's in the it's in the late 200s. However, now I'm thinking that we've talked about that in a couple podcasts that people are going to get the idea that all I do is spend my days firing people. No, but it's about like 280.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

I well well, the thing is that I just I I love that. And I think what it shows is a a level of care to even know, like to have an idea of like knowing that number. And it goes to that emotional intelligence of having being able to be empathetic really in those conversations of dealing with transitions in people's life.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Aaron Ross Powell That's some a a really good thing that I think it's important for people to remember is that you as the boss are not God and you're not in control of us of someone else's destiny. And a lot of times someone staying working for you could be preventing them from getting to somewhere way better. There's been quite a few people that I've let go over my my time that have gone on to be so successful in just a slightly different industry in a slightly different company. And I can feel good about the development that I gave them when they were working with me. Yeah. And that then we sent them on a trajectory of more success. And I think if if you think that where you're working is just the very best place ever, and you know, you've got to do everything you can to keep a person there, it might not be the healthiest place for the person at all. Yeah. So I think to not be scared of making sure, and maybe there should be, maybe we should invented a new word for like terminations or firing, and maybe it should be like setting free. Or like I've I've set Jared free today. Something like that. Like where can where can this employee go and be happier and be more successful? Yeah. And that's only going to happen by emotional intelligence and good communication.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Yeah. I think that is so needed in so many of those conversations. A lot of people talk about like, you know, toxic workplaces and stuff like that and can do a little bit of maybe even the blame game a little bit. But I think that it is great to be able to, even from the what you're saying, I just love the the uh recognition of the value of each team member and being able to send them off and to say, hey, you know, there's more to your story and all that.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

100%. I really think it's it's a leader gets into trouble if they start thinking about their employees as like automatons or like robots. Like they're just Jared's just here to do this job, Brandon's just here to do this job, Pannah's just here to do this job. When you start thinking about your employees like that, you you lose the emotional connection with them, and you actually lose what God put you as a leader on earth to do, which is to raise up people and to develop people. And if you don't treat them all as individuals, another thing I'm really passionately passionate about is that you have to manage people based on what's best for them, not what's best for you. You can't be a manager and say, well, the way I manage is I just delegate everything and they better figure it out. That's not that's not an option. To be a good manager, you have to customize your managerial skills to what the person needs, the stage of life the person's in, the role that the person's in, the Enneagram number or you know, the emotional intelligence level that that person had. And if you don't personalize your management style, your employee is never going to be able to thrive. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Could you give some examples of that? Because I think what you're saying is so, so important and almost catering to the needs of the person.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

Aaron Powell That's what I think you need to do. Um we were managing someone, um he this is he's an example of someone that we we set free and he is doing so much better. I talked to him yesterday, he's so happy and he's really quite successful. It's awesome. And he he was a five Enneagram. Yep. And five Enneagrams just normally are very normal, like scientists kind of thing, like they're very facts and figures and logic based. So when we were coaching him, it had to be no emotion. Like there's no emotional connection. It's literally just like, let's just say his name was Brian. Yeah. Brian, we need you to do this better, we need you to do this better. Um, this is an example of something that you didn't do well, and this is how you should have done it instead. We're gonna give you 60 days to improve in this. And it's very non-personal, yeah, very disconnected. And he thrived with that type of feedback. Where other employees, if I said to them, okay, we need this, this, this, they would feel attacked or they would feel like I didn't care about them as a person. Yeah. So there's other types of employees that you really have to check in with them as a person before you even start giving them any type of feedback. So, how are things going at home? How's you know, how's your relationship going? Um, talk to me a little bit about what's happening in your home life. How are you feeling? Are you physically doing okay? And then once they have that emotional connection with you, then they're more open to accepting feedback from you because they know that you care about them as a person.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

There's also, we have an employee right now who's just so darn sweet. Um, she maybe isn't uh I would say she's got maybe a little bit lower potential, but but really high performance. Yes. And with her, you don't want to give her very complicated projects. Like that's not gonna be a benefit to her. You've got to give her projects that are within her wheelhouse, things that she's able to manage. And if you were to give an employee like that too much, that would probably shut her down and she might quit. Whereas there's other employees that if you don't give them a lot to do, we have another employee like that. Like I need to keep, I need to make sure with this other employee that her workload is always really, really full with really difficult things. Yep. Because otherwise she gets demotivated. But if you were to treat all four, I talked about four different employees right there. And if you were to have treated all four of them the same, maybe one of them would have thrived. Yep. But by personalizing, you can have all four of them thrive.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Yeah. And it'd probably be the one that would be most like Yeah, most like you.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

That's exactly right. Whatever way you do. And that's also something that some le sometimes happens to leaders. They end up surrounded. I think William mentioned this in a podcast we recorded one time, but Yabutsu, yeah. They end up work you end up hiring a bunch of mini-mies. Yes, that's what we said. The problem with that is gonna be that if let's say you need a hundred percent of this pie to be successful, but you've only hired people that are like this 10% over here. You don't have anyone with the skills of that other 90%. Yeah. And Jared, that's really a brilliant thing. You and I should write a book about that. Because if you don't customize your leadership, you're just gonna end up with a bunch of people like you, and you're not gonna understand why your business isn't thriving.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Yeah. Yeah. Boom. Jared. Well, we'll have to come up with a title. We'll see.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

That'd be the automaton robots. That'd be the bigger robot. That's right. That's what it'll be real.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Uh one of the things that you kind of touched on a little bit and I I want to really hit on is how you talked about checking in with people and how the people who need the the to know that the emotional connection is there. And what that really is is just kind of like their morale and how they are feeling about where they are in their job and how their team is. What are some ways that people can make sure that their team is operating at a high morale? Even maybe some tips for during challenging times. And if you have a a time where you maybe were handling a manager whose team was in a difficult moment, of how you can kind of lift their morale a little bit to, I guess, view more optimistically and such.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

That's a great that's great. So I would say two things. One is communication and one is time to rebuild the connections. So I'm saying them at the beginning so I don't forget. So one of them would be if if a team is going through a challenge, I would always r recommend that the the leader of the company tell that team, why don't you take some time away as a team to rebuild the connections? Because a lot of times when there is when there are issues personnel related, instead of talking more, the people will talk less. So if they, if they have, if there's an interpersonal conflict and maybe it blows up or maybe it's handled improperly, what'll normally happen is that just by nature, the people won't want to talk to each other anymore. They'll want to pull away. And then what'll happen is they'll start becoming factions in that team and like almost like little clicks. These people will talk to these people, these people will talk to these people. And then automatically, morale is a great word, morale is destroyed, but the communication is completely gone. Yep. So I would recommend that the team goes away, takes a day, maybe, and does um, you know, like a mini off-site and takes that time to rebuild the connections. Also, the communication piece of it, I would say this is very tough to do, but very important. Anytime there's a problem in a team, that is an indication that there needs to be more communication, not less. Okay. We've gone through a period lately where we we have done a little bit of restructuring, a little bit of changing, and a little bit of letting a couple people go. Yep. And without communication, people always create the worst per the worst idea in their mind.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

Oh, the person probably stole me. Oh, the person probably killed Jen's dog, you know. Like everyone who listens knows I love dogs so much. Someone probably killed Jen's dog, something like that. But if you can get ahead of that and do the communication ahead of time, you eliminate all of those stories and you kind of help the team continue to be strong rather than take the chance that there would be something that would create the divide. So more communication, more time together, and you might have to force the people to spend time with each other and to talk things out. Because once it goes like this and there's no communication, it just it's very easy for it's probably like in any relationship, but once there's a something that creates a rift, it's really hard to get things back together without communication.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Yeah. And as we kind of close today, I think the one last thing that I wanted to kind of hit on from your perspective a little bit is when you watch leaders or managers evolve and the importance and the need for it for people to evolve and maybe even speak to when someone changes and maybe is no longer in a way that best is serving the mission and the values of the company. What have you seen from leaders that can evolve and change in a way that's great, in a way that improves, and maybe in a way that is drifting from the Jared, I'm really flabbergasted by how great your questions are, and I'm almost unable to answer them because I'm just thinking about w what a great question to ask her you are.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

It's really you really found your your place here. Um I would say that that's a that's a really good point. Leaders evolve and develop, and it's very important that they evolve more in line with the vision of the company or the vision of the organization. Yep. And if their evolution takes them in a different direction, it's really important. I mean, let's speak from the leader perspective. You want to be in an organization that lines up with your mission, vision, and values.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

I I worked for a company for 10 years that I believed in absolutely everything that they did. And every single day of work was a joy because I came in and I knew that what I was doing was helping to serve this mission that I believed in so faithfully. It was just wonderful. And if you work for a company or a church where you don't necessarily believe in that vision, it's gonna be really hard for you as a leader to continue to be motivating and to continue to be able to develop other people because you're not necessarily in alignment with where the company wants to go. Yeah. So I m my advice on this situation would be for the leaders to make sure that where you are a leader is a place that you believe in because people can spot inauthenticity from far away. Yes. And something I like talking about is cognitive dissonance when in your mind you think one thing, but with your mouth, you have to do something different.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

And as soon as you get that cognitive dissonance, you're never going to be as productive as you would be if there was cognitive alignment.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

So that would just be the advice from a leader. And then I guess if some of your managers are maybe going in a different direction, you do have to sit down with them and just say, This is, you know, where we want to be as a company or as an organization, is this where you want to be?

SPEAKER_00 21:36

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

And they have to either commit or not commit. And if they can't commit, that's okay. Then we do the setting them free thing and get them to a place where they do feel like they fit in. But if the leader's not developing in the way that you want them to, give them coaching, do the communication. But then if they want to go in a different direction, there's really no negative judgment associated with that. Everyone has the best place for themselves.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

I love that so much. Well, here's what I know is that uh As a leader, if your team is going to be great, you've got to be able to communicate. Thank you for listening. Thanks again for joining us on the Vanderblumen Leadership Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you're looking for more leadership resources, you can find us at Vanderblumen.com and on socials at Vanderblumen. We'll see you again next week where we continue discussing how to build, run, and keep great teams.