A New Kind of Leader for a New Work World with Vanessa Judelman

How prepared are you to lead in a workplace that's changing faster than ever before? As corporate executives, you're facing unprecedented challenges, shifting workforce dynamics, evolving employee expectations, and relentless demands for adaptability. Is your leadership evolving to meet these demands, or are you stuck in outdated methods that no longer work? In today's episode, we tackle the pressing realities of this new world of work. How it's redefining leadership responsibilities, disrupting traditional approaches, and pushing leaders to rethink their strategies. We'll explore 5 powerful tools that will help you lead with confidence and agility amidst this rapid transformation. Joining us is Vanessa Huldeman, president of Mosaic People Development. Joining us is Vanessa Huldeman, president of Mosaic People Development, a a leadership authority with over 20 years of experience working with top organizations like Campbell Soup and the UN. Get ready to change your perspective and level up your leadership game. So let's dive in.

Welcome to Shedding the Corporate Bitch, the podcast that transforms today's managers into tomorrow's powerhouse leaders. Your host, Bernadette Boas, executive coach and author, brings you into a world where the corporate grind meets personal growth and success in each and every episode. With more than 25 years in corporate trenches, Bernadette's own journey from being dismissed as a tyrant boss to becoming a sought-after leadership coach and speaker illustrates the very essence of transformation that she now inspires in others with her tips, strategies, and stories. So if you're ready to shed the bitches of fear and insecurity, ditch the imposter syndrome, and step into the role of the powerhouse leader you were born to be, this podcast is for you. Let's do this.

Vanessa, how are you? Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Thank you. Great to be here.

It is fabulous to have you here because I find this subject matter critical and very exciting when it comes to what do leaders need to do today in the ever-changing world and in this new world that we're living in. And so we'll get into even what is that new world. And a lot more than that. But before we do, I like to get our listeners and viewers connected and relating to our guests. So could you share with us a little bit about Vanessa?

Of course. So let's go back to birth. I was born in kind of an interesting place. I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. Yeah. And my family immigrated to Toronto where I live now when I was 7 years old. And for many years, my parents missed their family back in South Africa. So we used to travel back and forth a lot. So I know South Africa very well. It's my roots. In fact, I saw The Lion King this weekend on Broadway in Toronto. And the music and the costumes are from South Africa, inspired by South Africa. So it was just so heartwarming. I have two children. My older son just started university. He just started college. So he's 18. My younger son is a Division I basketball player. So we spend a lot of time watching basketball and my favorite food is sushi.

Again, I love this subject and you are the perfect individual based on your background, which you can always share with us as we go to discuss this. But the first thing I want to understand is how do you define and envision the new world and therefore the new leader that needs to take the reins of that new world?

Absolutely. So I define it sort of on a macro level and a micro level. So the macro level is really around what's going on in our environment. Dramatic environmental changes, uh, virtual-first workplaces, massive amount of rapid change. Organizations are getting a lot more focused on bottom line, I find, and on data, data analysis. So that's a huge change. Just the way people are working has changed so much. So that's the macro. The micro level are individual leaders. How is all this change impacting them? And I see in this new world of work, leaders lack— oh, I'm gonna say 3 things. Number 1, they lack self-awareness. Number 2, they lack strategic insight. So a lot of leaders are told they need to be strategic, but they don't know what that means. The third thing on more of that micro level that I'm seeing is promotion without education. So because organizations are moving so quickly, this new world of work leader is, is launched into a new role. Without a lot of education. And as we know, you know, there's, there's different levels of leadership and every level of leadership requires leaders to learn new skills and behaviors. Even moving from an individual contributor to a leader for the first time requires new skills and behaviors. So those are some of the trends that I'm seeing right now.

Well, let's break them down. All right. So you got into the education piece. So when, when you say education, you're not talking about that they should come in with a degree or, you know, but at the, it's more. Relevant that they get the on-hand training, development, coaching, mentoring that they need to uplevel their skills or gain new skills. Is that where you were going with that?

That's exactly it. That's exactly it. So once you enter the workforce, it requires you to have a different skillset. So when you're an individual contributor, I mean, you have to be a team player. You have to have expertise in your specific area that you're focusing on, whether it's finance or marketing or IT, whatnot. And then the minute you get promoted into a leadership role, you have to learn new skills. You have to learn how to coach. You have to learn how to get results through other people. You have to learn how to give feedback. And a lot of leaders that come to me for training or coaching are feeling really stressed or they lack a lot of confidence. And so my goal as an executive coach, as someone who does leadership training, is to gain— well, two things. First of all, Increase their confidence level and increase their toolkit because it is a different job.

Absolutely. And there's the people element beyond the coaching and the development that you mentioned, but even what do you see from kind of an empathy, emotional intelligence, being able to actually inspire and motivate their team members?

It depends on the individual, but I, I am working with a lot of leaders who lack empathy because They're driven so hard and they need to be so focused on the bottom line that they forget that they need to be empathetic. And so where that often, for example, where I see that, let me think of an example. I was talking to a coaching client recently and we were talking about feedback, positive feedback. So she says to me, you know, Vanessa, I, I'm kind of an intrinsically motivated person. So I really, I don't need positive feedback. And I said to her, Good for you. And 75% of the population's different than you. So just because you don't need positive feedback, it doesn't mean that people on your team don't. So let's talk about how to give positive feedback because it's so critical for building a positive culture on your team. And I, I actually stopped the conversation and I said to her, what do you think the benefits of positive feedback are? And she was, she She was flabbergasted. She, she, she said, I don't know. I've never really thought about that question. So we had to unpack that first and then I had to figure out how to give positive feedback.

Well, doesn't that also highlight for you too that, that, you know, I'll use her just as because you brought her up, but as the fact that they're thinking internally, they're thinking, I don't need it. They're not necessarily thinking like a servant leader as far as I'm here to help my people, so I'm gonna naturally think about what they need versus what I need and recognize that those two things may not be the same.

Oh, 110%. And so I always tell leaders, when you become a leader, you have to learn how to change or adjust your style to meet the needs of your team, right? So they go, why? I'm like, well, because you're a leader. That's why. Like, why can't they, like, I'm the boss. Like, why can't they change or adjust their style to meet my needs? I'm like, because No, that's old school. We don't work the new—

in the new world of work, right?

Work like that anymore.

So that's education. I'm very intrigued because I hear it quite a bit myself is what you said about that leaders need to be strategic and they're not quite sure what that means. So what does it mean to you? And what does it need to mean to, you know, the managers out there who want to be leaders but are lacking that strategic viewpoint.

So people don't realize there's actually 3 parts of strategy. There's strategic thinking, strategic planning, and strategic implementation. So the first thing I do when I work with leaders is break it down. So what is strategic thinking? Thinking outside the box, challenging the status quo. I always say to leaders, when you hire a new person within the first week, so Friday at the end of the first week, ask them what works around here? What do you like about our culture? What doesn't work? What ideas do you have to overcome what's not working? That's strategic thinking. It's not only crafting my vision and creating a strategic plan, right? It's constantly thinking about what's working, what's not, and what we can do to overcome what's not working. So that's strategic thinking. Then there's strategic planning, which is sitting down with your team, really getting clear on your expectations with them, creating development plans, creating a delegation strategy for yourself, thinking about your job and what you're paid to do versus your team's job and what they're paid to do. And then strategic implementation is get— getting the job done.

Mm-hmm.

And, and how are you doing that strategically and what kind of coaching meetings are you having to hold people accountable? So those are the 3 parts of strategy that I focus on.

And do you find that many managers struggle there because one, they have very little white space on their calendars to kind of sit back and work on those things. But what do you do to kind of get them to shift from that attitude? And in some cases, is it an excuse that they're giving that they're not doing?

It could be. It could be. And what I teach people is put structures in place so you don't have to think about it. So a good example of that would be set up formal coaching, accountability coaching meetings. And make them really short. So at the beginning of every week, let's say make it a 20-minute meeting. It could be with your team, it could be depending on how large your team is, it could be one-on-ones with your direct reports. And you could, in your accountability meeting, you could talk about, for example, your agenda's really tight and short. What's on your plate for this week? What are your goals for this week? What are you doing to move your goals forward? What help or support do you need from me? And maybe the fourth item could be something like feedback, feedback from me, feedback for, for, you know, for me to give you, for you to give me, or maybe any kind of information from the business that I need to share with you. And that's it.

All right. Let's move on to self-awareness.

Mm-hmm.

What is the challenge there for many of the leaders that you see out there?

I call it There's two things. Either you're an unconscious leader or you're a conscious leader. And so unconscious leaders have never developed themselves before. They have absolutely no idea how their behavior is impacting the people around them. Conscious leaders, and, and most leaders have to learn to be conscious leaders, have to have someone to tell them, you have to be a conscious leader. What does that mean? Understand your strengths. Understand your weaknesses, understand that your behavior impacts some people around you, and that as a leader, you have to be very conscious of your behavior. And so once you are, you can really consciously create that culture with your team that you aspire to.

Would you say that these are kind of the biggest shifts that leaders need to make in order to really adapt and be impactful leaders in this new world, world of work?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it starts with, I think about it in terms of 3 pillars of leadership success. So you have to know yourself, manage your team, and lead your business. So the know yourself is that self-awareness piece, is that conscious leadership. The manage your team is how to coach, how to develop, how to give feedback. And then the lead your business is managing change. It's that strategic, executing strategically piece that we talked about. It's also prioritization. I mean, so many leaders in terms of time management don't know how to manage their time, don't know what their priorities are. So that's actually part of the strategy bucket too, is being super clear on your priorities. And when I work with a leader and they don't know what their priorities are, I say to them, well, go speak to the person you report to and get that clarified because you can't clarify your expectations with your team until you know what's expected from, from your leader. Now, if, if it's a CEO, maybe they need clarity from the board. For example, I have a CEO who his organization, he's been running the organization for 5 years. There's no strategic plan. So I said to him, what's the reason you don't have a strategic plan? He's like, the board hasn't developed it. So then I said, well, what's the reason you haven't talked to the board about developing it?

Right?

He said, I never thought of it. That's executing strategically.

Would you say Would that be considered one of the biggest mistakes that leaders make when it comes to, you know, addressing change and adapting to, you know, the new mode of, of work is one of those being that they don't have a strategic plan or don't know what's really important?

Oh, 100%. And especially because organizations are changing so quickly now. So, you know, we used to be, we'd have a 5-year plan. Well, you can't have a 5-year plan anymore. You can have a 5-year plan, but it, there's, I mean, month to month, my clients are changing their plans. It depends on the economy. It depends on sometimes there's governance, governance issues that come up at the last minute. So it really depends on what's happening in their external environment. And so I really ask my clients to sit down quarterly, look at the strategic plan if they have one, and think about, okay. What am I doing to align myself with the strategic plan? And what am I doing to align my team with this strategic plan? And, and do our goals need to change from last quarter? Because I, I don't know about your experience, but I just find things change so quickly now. Setting goals that, that are going to last even a year, they're— people's goals get outdated in, in months because change is so rapid. Are you seeing that as well?

Absolutely. And, and they are actually delaying setting goals because they're just not quite sure what's going to land. So yes. So yeah. And that's a great point as far as that touches on the adaptability, right? That touches on the leader being able to be that nimble, that agile, that adaptable. What challenges do you see when it comes to that?

Well, it's interesting because I see it as a combination of structure and adaptability. Adaptability, and leaders have to have both. So for example, the structure piece is putting that meeting in your calendar at the beginning of the year. Quarterly, I get together with my team and we talk about strategy. So that's the structure part of it. Then the adaptability part of it is now we need to look at our goals and figure out, are they still relevant or do we need to tweak and change them? So it's kind of that interesting nuance between those two. And I find some leaders are super good at the structure piece and others are super good at the adaptability piece. The challenge comes when leaders have to merge the two.

Right. Sure. And that creates issues in itself. You talk about 5 practical tools that you use in your business with leaders to help them take control of the need for change of this new world of work. Can you walk us through what those 5 tools are that they should be using and considering?

Sure. So I'm going to start with what I think is the most important one, which is coaching. And most leaders do not know how to coach. So they've been told, I need to be a coach, but they don't know what it means. They don't know, for example, that there is a difference between formal and informal coaching. Right? I talked already about those formal coaching meetings where you have to specifically put them in your calendar, have an agenda, have them at a regular time. And then there's informal coaching, which is day to day, right? So that's the first. The second is feedback. Again, critical for leadership. A lot of leaders don't know that they need to give positive feedback. We talked about that a little bit. They, they know they need to give constructive feedback, but they don't know how to do it. One of my clients this morning that I was coaching said to me, Vanessa, how do I give feedback to somebody who's not doing a good job? Right? Because she said, it was quite interesting. She said, I know that I need in this new world of work to be a nice leader, but can I still give direct feedback? So these are things that leaders are worrying about. They don't know how to give direct feedback. And still be that new world of work leader where you have compassion.

Right, right, right, right, right. Because we've all been there. We've all been in their shoes and, and, and need that feedback.

Feedback's, it's just for developing people. Like it's not so scary. So that leads me to the third one, which is developing people. So you have to know how to coach. You have to know how to give feedback. You have to know how to develop people. That's your job as a leader. You have to know how do I move people from developing to fully developed. And so. The first thing I always say to leaders is, well, write down a list of all their tasks. Do, do they know what, what you expect from them? Do they know what their task list is? Do, do, do you know what they should be focusing on? Start there, like being really, really specific about what they need to accomplish in their role. And then you could look at, you know, what are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? What are their gaps? And so that's your job as a leader. You, you need to. Figure out, do I need to give them a lot of direction? Do I need to give them a lot of support based on some of their gaps? So that would be the next area.

Okay.

So we've got coaching, feedback, developing. Delegation is the other one. Delegation is so critical for business. When I talk about leaders, we talk about the fact that there are huge benefits for you for them and for the organization when you develop, when you delegate. For you, it's getting stuff off your plate. It's allowing you to be more strategic. For them, they can learn and grow. They can't learn and grow if you don't delegate. And you want people to learn and grow. So everybody needs to be focused on letting stuff go and taking on new tasks to grow and develop. For the organization, it's huge in terms of succession planning. It's huge in terms of maintaining knowledge. If somebody leaves the organization, you know, and you don't delegate, you can't develop your people. You, you won't be able to maintain that organizational knowledge. And then we have change management. So again, you know, it's so important to understand the barriers to change, why people resist change, how to overcome resistance to change, how to communicate change. That's your job as a leader today with so much change. You have to know how to communicate it and how to move people through some of those barriers to change.

Some of those other things that you touched on, such as like prioritization, leading your, leading the business, managing the team, all could fit into one of those 5 things. Because the first thing that jumped out at me when you were talking about delegation is whether or not the individual knows the difference between dumping and delegating and based on like even what you said about the listing of skills, you know, of each of their, of their people. So they know that they could be delegating things that maybe fall outside their job description, but they're good at it. Would that, would that be a strategy that you would use?

Oh, for sure. It's great to leverage strengths. I always say when you delegate, think of who you're delegating to, why you're delegating to them. What you're delegating to them and how you're delegating to them, right? So the who is, if I have a larger team, some people just have one direct report, so they know who. But some people have 3, 4, 5, 6 direct reports. Think about who, what are their strengths? Who's, who needs to develop in this area? Who fills my gaps? Leaders have gaps. It's impossible for leaders to be good at everything. So think about the who, who is that person on my team that can do it better than me?

Right?

And hire for people like that too, right? Hire people who can close your gaps too, right? The how is how much direction and support do I need to give them? If they've been doing this task quite a lot already, I don't need to give them a lot of direction. I could just give them some coaching and some support. But if they're brand new to the task, I've gotta be super directive. Lay it out. Here's how you do it. Give them a little piece of it. And a lot of leaders hold back also because, hold back on delegating because it's such a big task that it's overwhelming. And I say, well, just break down the task. Break it down into smaller pieces. Delegate the first piece, delegate the second, right? That's part of the how of delegation. So delegation itself is an art.

Yes. Yes. And would you also say that based on what you just explained in regards to that project that might be really big. Is there a trust issue that they also have with their people that you find to be why they resist to delegate as much as it, they just haven't taken the time to do it?

Oh, of course. Of course. And I think often leaders don't have that learner's mindset, right? So they forget what was it like to learn to do this because, you know, at one point they were new to this task as well. And so they, I would say honestly, 9 times out of 10 leaders don't trust their teams to delegate because the leaders are delegating incorrectly. They're, they're throwing stuff at people and saying, just go do this, right? Just go do this presentation for the executive team and, and bring it back to me. And they bring back the presentation. This happened to a client of mine recently and it was, and it's terrible.

Well, why?

Well, they've never done it before. So what do you expect? What do you say? Right? They can't read your mind. They don't know what you want. So that's knowing the difference between when to be directive and when to be supportive. Someone's doing a presentation for the executive team for the first time, I would be super directive. I'd be like, okay, use this font. Here's a, here's a presentation I did last year. It's got the, the appendix written out. The table of contents is there for you. You can see how I structured it. Go to the first two slides. Let's do our understanding of your needs and updated performance results. Let's just do those two slides. Slide, come back, let me review it. Oh, you're missing data. I promise you the CFO is gonna want the data, so make sure you go to the finance department and get that included. Be super directive. And the more they do it and the more they learn, you can hold back a little bit, hold back, become just more supportive. And then say, you know, maybe they, maybe they're on their third year now of doing this presentation to the executive team. Say, we've done this already twice. Well, what do you think is the right approach? What information do you think you need to get from the finance team this year? Right. And give them a lot more freedom and, and collaborate a lot more.

Love it. Love it. And you touched on at the very beginning data, and you just mentioned data and how analytics and data, you know, is so prevalent in every leader's toolkit and/or just expectation day in, day out, not only of their people, but of themselves. From their bosses. What skills must leaders have today to become data-driven leaders or analytical leaders to really ensure that they are optimizing the data and the tons of data that they're getting?

Well, it's a huge change management initiative in any organization when they bring in a focus on data. So one of my clients, for example, is a pharmaceutical firm. And for the sales team, the sales team used to be relationship-driven. So that was the focus of their development was all about how are you building relationships and how are you following through and how are you nurturing those relationships? Now it's on data. It's, are you meeting your targets? Are you meeting the numbers? Are you putting your numbers into the system? How quickly are you putting your numbers into the system? And it's a completely different skill set.

Mm-hmm.

So this is a huge change management initiative, and anytime organizations change, they think just onboarding a new system like that, that's easy for people to adopt to. No, no, no, no, no. Right? We are creatures of habit and we are programmed not to change. So that's a huge change management initiative.

And would you say that not only internally are they, uh, being forced to change into that analytical mindset. But the customer is also very data-driven and they're taking the whole like relationship, how well do I like, know, trust, and want to do with you to be more like, okay, show me the bottom line of how you can help me.

I think it's a combination of both. I still do think relationship is king. It's so important. It's not a one or the other to me.

What does the modern leader need? If you were to give us like one or two things that if they were to leave this conversation with us right now, they should focus on what?

Okay, so I'm gonna give you a continuum, and the continuum is going to be task on one side and relationship on the other. And I'm gonna say the modern leader needs to be in the middle. They need to have a balance between task and relationship. So task is getting results, getting the job done. It can be also how you implement the task, like doing it in a very growth mindset way. The relationship is that piece around building a high trust team, developing those strong relationships, coaching your people, giving them feedback. So in my mind, it's not okay to have either or. You have to have both. And for leaders to think about that continuum, sometimes you need to be more on the task side. Sometimes you need to be on the relationship side, but overall in your leadership practice, you have to have a balance of both. Right.

And for them to find that if they are lacking it, what really should be their focus?

It depends which way you're lacking. So you have to think about, and that's a great question because I find leaders tend to be on one end of the continuum or the other. Some naturally go to the task side and some naturally go on the relationship side. And so the first thing I would say to you is, What's your natural tendency? If your tendency is to focus on task, I'm gonna say, what is one thing that you can do to dial up your focus on relationship? And that's gonna be your development plan for 2025. If you're on the other side and you really drive your leadership practice through relationship, I'm gonna say to you the opposite. What is one thing that you can do to dial up your focus on task? And that's going to be your development plan for 2025. Awesome.

That's fabulous. I love it. Love it. Love it. Vanessa, this has been fabulous. So many tips and great practical strategies. I so appreciate you contributing to our growth and our ability to be better leaders in today's new world of work. Thank you so much.

Thank you for some great questions and really engaging conversation today.

You're so welcome. What a powerhouse conversation with Vanessa Huleman of Mosaic People Development. It was filled, packed with just practical tips and strategies and advice for you to really level up your skill and capability as a leader, to really become a powerhouse leader. She talked about 5 tools that she educates her clients on that they need to possess in order to really be the impactful individual that they wanna be in the workplace. And that was coaching, feedback, development, delegation, and change management. And she broke them all down, uh, so you can really kind of see discreetly what it will take for you to really uplevel your game. And then she talked about the 3 pillars that if if you were to focus on anything, these 3 pillars are the foundation of leadership. And that was to know yourself, manage your team, and lead your business. And again, broke those down to really help you understand what exactly that means. You can literally replay this episode time and time again, share it with your team members, make it as a lunch and learn where you all come together and even listen to it. And really come up with a plan for yourself and each other as far as what you want to do to really become that powerhouse manager, leader, contributor, team member, employee for your business. It was a fabulous conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed her sharing all of it with all of you. And to go even deeper with Vanessa, you can pick up her book, Mastering Leadership. You can go to mosaicpd.com and check that out in Kindle form or in paperback. And it's a practical, almost like workbook that will share stories and examples and illustrations of all the talking points that we talked about today and so much more, and then allow you to actually engage with the book in order for you then to adapt it into your own leadership style. So again, go to mosaicpd.com and look for her book, Mastering Leadership. It was a fabulous conversation and I was so honored to have her to share all of that with all of you. Now, if you should, beyond the conversation that we have today, still are struggle to really understand, uh, who you are as a leader and what it's going to take for you to be that powerhouse. Then don't hesitate to reach out to me at coachmebernadette.com/discoverycall and let's have a conversation. I am so happy that you are here with us this week, and I'll look forward to having you right back here for another episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Bye.

Thank you for tuning into today's episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Every journey taken together is another step towards unleashing the powerhouse leader within you. Don't miss any of our weekly episodes. Subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you love to listen. And for those who thrive on visual content, catch us on our Shedding the Bitch YouTube channel. Wanna dive deeper with Bernadette on becoming a powerhouse leader? Visit balloffirecoaching.com to learn more about how she helps professionals, HR executives, and team leaders elevate overall team performance. You've been listening to Shedding the Corporate Bitch with Bernadette Boas. Until next time, keep shedding, keep growing, and keep leading.