Willow North Growth Partners的动态

Transcript

Hello and welcome to another episode of What's in the News. My name is Indora Hinton, CEO of Willow N Growth Partners, and I have my colleague and podcast partner in crime, Brian Petrovich. Brian, you want to say hello? I sure do. Hello Andorra, and hello everyone listening. It's always great to be back on and I'm happy to be here. And I know I say this a lot when we're together in Dora, but I'm really excited about today's topic. You know, I am too. So Brian, as you know, I've been a little bit under the weather lately and sometimes that's a really good thing because I am not working, but my brain is still working. And so I've been today. I want our topic to be around guiding principles for leaders. And one of the reasons why I'm really focused on that specific topic is because I've been thinking about how we work with leaders in just how busy everybody is, not just leaders. Just people in general. But when we think about from a leadership perspective, I was just talking to someone earlier about some of the challenges that they were having. And one of the first things that he said was time management, which I always equate to priority management. And so as we continue to move into this space, because I mean, nothing's going to really slow down. It never really slows down as we continue to move in this space of being busy, It's really thinking about how do we. Interact with our people in a way that we are being led by different mindsets. So for example, one of the first things that I think about is when I work with my team, I really want to show up as being authentic. But if I have all of these things going on in my mind, then that could hinder me from showing up as being authentic. So the whole thing around guiding principles is to be mindful and to think about when I am. With Brian or when I am with Leno, whoever I'm with on the team, then my guiding principle in that moment should be authenticity, which means that I want to focus on being connected. I want to focus on integrity. So, you know, I really think that if we could just be a little bit more mindful and slow down just a little bit, just like we have our core values that lead us from day-to-day, we could also have these guiding principles that lead us from day-to-day. Yeah, and I think that's that's obviously super important. And you're right, we're all so busy. Everybody I know last year we kept saying, hey, the, the kind of the keyword is busy. Everybody's busy. We're always busy, which is true. And I love that you said use the word integrity. I always believed as a leader, the way you build trust is through integrity and, and, and building trust and, and being authentic. I think authentic goes right along with with building trust and you know. You know, when you meet someone who was authentic, it just it gives off a certain vibe. You, you, you, you can recognize, you can see that. And especially when you're a leader, you want, you want your team, you want to lead by example, right? We always say lead by example. And I believe that leadership starts with trust. And I believe that you build that trust through leading with integrity and, and being your authentic self and, and I think being your authentic self as a leader. Is so important it makes it it it it makes the communication and the collaboration within your team seamless. It builds that that comfort zone, you know, so I love that you used in, you know, that word in, in integrity. Yeah and you know, I unfortunately, I think that sometimes leaders don't feel like they can be authentic because authenticity leads to vulnerability that then also leads to. Being a little bit more open and sharing. And one of the things that we talk about often is how vulnerability is a superpower. That we're not perfect. It's not about that. I'm going to come crying to you because I'm having a bad day, excuse me. But vulnerability is really just about how we show up as human beings. That we all are human beings and we might struggle with one thing or another and it's OK for us to be able to share that with a colleague with. Direct report because then that person also feels like they can be human too. At the end of the day, we're all human. No matter what your position, no matter what your title, at the end of the day, we're all humans. We all have lives outside of work. We all have problems that we deal with. And you know, I never wanted my leader or my leadership team to be robotic. You know, I wanted them to be authentic. I wanted them to to be human and show empathy and compassion and. Be able to relate, you know, I think when, when you're a leader and you, you create that, you know, sort of safe space where your team and, and your employees can, can be able to sit down and have conversations with you, You know, going back to that integrity, right? You know, if you, if you've been able to build a safe, a safe space where your team feels like they can trust you and they can have open conversations, I, I, I truly believe that leads to higher productivity and higher. Retention rate, absolutely. And so that was my first one. I have two more. My other one was around curiosity, which led me to the guiding principle of being open minded because you know, again, not just leaders, but since we're talking about leaders. It might be that at times we may feel as though because we're so busy that it's almost like we're tunnel vision, I can't see anything else. Or I hear a lot of leaders say I don't spend a lot of time coaching or asking questions to help them figure it out for themselves because I myself have to get to the next thing because I'm busy, so I've got to get to the next thing. And so if we can lead, if someone comes to me and they are struggling with something. If my guy and one of my guiding principles is being open minded, then that means that in that moment that should be somewhere in my brain should click, that in this moment I need to be focused on being open minded so that I can be curious and ask questions. So that's my second one. What are you thinking about that one, Brian, for open minded? Well, I think being open minded, no matter what you're doing is very important, obviously for a leader, you know, anyone in a leadership role being open minded, you know, and I think one of the, the greatest things that we can do as, as leaders is being able to, to listen, but also being able to empower and, and want to develop others. You know, I've talked at length before about mentorship and coaching and I'm a massive advocate for, for having those leaders who take the time to listen. And be open minded and want to coach and want to develop. Umm, you know, so I think when you, when you talk about open mindedness, whether you're a leader or not a leader, I think that is a extremely valuable trait to have and something that you should invest in. But especially as a leader, being able to sit down and have a conversation, you know, you don't want to have. I've always believed, at least as a leader, you don't want to have tunnel vision, you know, and, and when you're talking about a team, there's so you wanna be able to enhance creativity. And innovation, and you can do that through, you know, open mindedness and, and having those conversations and, and, and taking the time to really get to know your, your team members. And, and again, that goes back to, to trust that I talked about earlier. But, you know, I think one of the best things that can come from, you know, being mindful is, is the ability to empower and develop your staff members and be able to invest in their growth, which, you know, I'm, I'm a, I'm a big advocate for. Law and to your point, when you have specific guiding principles that are leading and guiding you, your people are watching those things and so they can pick up on those. I mean, I learned so much from some of my leaders who I had when I was in the corporate space that I learned from because those were their guiding principles and you pick up on those things. So my last always, I'm so glad you and I'm sorry to interrupt you indoor, but I'm I'm so glad you said that because I've always learned, you know, and again, I've had some great leaders. And coaches and mentors, but I always do the best learning when I can just sit back and watch. Yeah, I've learned the most from those individuals that I've worked with. And, and, you know, usually in a leadership role, but just being able to, to, to sit back and watch how they conduct themselves, watch how they interact, watch how they, you know, collaborate with team members and communicate with team members. And, and I've picked up so many different things from so many different people along the way and, and throughout the years, I've kind of put it all together and that's really. Obviously from, from working with them and talking to them and, but, but really a lot of that has come from just sitting back and, and, and watching others and watching how they conduct themselves and what they do. And I've been able to kind of, you know, it's, it's a melting pot that you take with you from kinds of people. Well, and that's why it's so important to note that as a leader, it's not just about what we say. It's also about what we do because people are watching us. And then my final one is I want. That I'm being president, and so I connected that as my guiding principle of being attentive and practicing empathy with the fact that we are also very busy. It's so easy to either have your phone or to have a laptop open and you're typing while someone is talking or you're not. You're off camera when it comes to being on video or something like that. So how do you have a guiding principle? Of being more present, and that is being attentive and practicing empathy. You know, as far as the empathy thing goes, one of the things that I'll often say is one of the things that we should offer, remember, is that at any point, whenever we're communicating with one another, there's more than one person involved. There's you and then there's also me. And So what would I want from a person who is communicating with me? I would want them to be present. I would want them to be open. Find it. I would want them to be curious. And so if I want that, then that other person probably wants the same thing or similar thing. And so I believe that if we just really think about not only ourselves but also other people, than that makes just for a really good, not just a conversation, but a really good interaction overall and also helps to build trust. You know, earlier this season, at the beginning of this season, we had Danny on and one of the things that he had talked about was when he when he had his one-on-one meetings with with his team members, the very first thing they did was just talk about what's going on in your life. Talk to me about your kids. Talk to me about what's going on in your life. And that resonated with me because I always appreciated when leaders took, you know, my leaders took time to to know what to know what was going on in my life. You know, how how's your wife? How's the kids? You know, how's the family back in New Jersey? I think it's really important to be able to connect on a human level, Take time away from your laptop, take time away from your phone and get to know your team members. Because in the long run, again, that's going to help with that, you know, integrity and building that trust and building that safe zone, which ultimately leads to higher productivity and retention and, and all of that. But I really do think it's, it's being able to connect on a human level and, and making your team. Members feel like you are important and you matter and, and what's going on outside of work matters because the truth is it should as a leader, what's going on in your team members lives should matter. It's extremely important. And you know, so that that that always resonated with me when a leader would put their phone down, step away from their laptop and have a human conversation. I think it's extremely important and I think it's something that as leaders we should all be doing and you know, and I think that just kind of. Fosters, you know, overall a a culture that you know, is, is gonna lead to higher productivity and, and overall, you know, everybody's gonna be happy and, you know, it goes back to those keywords that we talked about with integrity and being able to lead by example. Absolutely, absolutely. So another these these conversations are never long enough, but no things I wanted to make sure that we got across is just for us to really focus on slowing down just a little bit. Like if we just focus on slowing down, we can be able to listen to the voice inside of us that saying. Have integrity in the moment because you want to be authentic, be open minded so they can be curious and to be present in in attentive. Be attentive so that you can be present. So those are my own personal guiding principles. You all, I'm sure have your own. If you haven't thought about this, this is definitely something that I think you should think about. What are your guiding principles that help you day-to-day so that you're in when you're in your interactions, you can really think about in the moment what you should do. From situation to situation, Brian, as always, it has been a pleasure having this conversation. Brian Petrovich, who is my podcast partner in crime and thank you so much for joining for this conversation. Brian. Today we will have someone scheduled for next week to have a different conversation. And as always, we are always happy to help and support you wherever we can. So if you are looking for. Additional information around guiding principles. We are here to support you, so please do reach out to us. And we look forward to seeing you at another episode of What's in the News. Thanks so much for joining us.