Relationshipping for Leaders with Michelle Hoffman

According to CEB, 60% of new managers fail within the first 24 months. When a leader is struggling, their direct reports perform 15% worse on average than those who work for high-performing managers. They're also 20% likelier to leave the organization or be disengaged according to the Gartner consulting firm. Well, on a scale of 1 to 10, how effective would you say you are in effectively leading your team and achieving your business goals? How effective are you in building the relationships you need with your team members and peers to ensure that you're all successful? Well, our guest, Michelle Hoffman of The Art of Relationshiping and author of The New Management Blueprint, will discuss how extraordinary times call for extraordinary leaders, powerhouse leaders, as we call 'em here. But how do you really become the manager who truly makes a difference? Well, Michelle will share with you tips and strategies on how to uplevel your leadership skills and create winning teams. She'll share how to cultivate a management style that complements your personality and skyrockets your professional development. And lastly, how to navigate professional and personal relationships by understanding The Art of Relationshiping. Michelle will share techniques that will give you the confidence and empowerment to adapt to change while gaining the wisdom and power to create significant change in yourself, your team, and the business. So stay with us. Michelle, how are you? Welcome, welcome, welcome.

I'm so happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

We're gonna be getting into Your Management Blueprint, as well as The Art of Relationshiping. What does it mean when you say relationshiping? And, and more importantly, tied to the subject for today is how should one, especially our professionals that are listening and watching, how should they view and go after relationshiping?

I'm so glad you've asked because I've certainly worked with the largest organizations in the world and, and really high esteemed professionals. And all of the people who had reported to me through my professional life came and said, congratulations on the success of your book. When are you gonna write the book we've been asking you to write? And that's how I decided to write The New Management Blueprint. How to Spark Talent, Ignite Winning Teams, Creating Valuable Results. And because that's the topic of this particular podcast, we can go a little bit deeper into that. Yes.

Yes.

All relationships follow the same cycle from chemistry to casual to committed. What's difference between a, the difference between a personal relationship and a professional relationship is a lot of emotional connection. So when you're vulnerable with somebody who's going to be your partner, your, your intimate partner or your family or that sort of thing, there's an emotional capacity component to that that needs to be included in there. It's very different in a professional environment where, yes, of course we get emotionally involved in how we represent ourselves and the organization and our success. And the product and service we are representing. But that same level of emotional vulnerability is not required in a professional relationship. This is actually an, a very clear explanation as why some people succeed beautifully in their professional life, but they can't seem to get it together in their personal life. Those people often come to me. We make a couple of quick little shifts and voilà, suddenly they have work-life balance like they've never experienced before.

Okay. What are the keys based on all of that? What are the keys to having the right relationships or the right level of relationships in the workplace, being that they are so different than what their personal relationships are?

Right. So understanding who you are in the workplace, your role, and how you work, your individual contributions and how they balance out in, uh, as part of a team that rolls up to success. When the corporate culture, I'm gonna give you an example. When the corporate culture is out of alignment, oftentimes that's when I'm invited in.

Out of alignment with the leaders or what, what's out of alignment?

So if for some reason you're not hitting the goals, the benchmarks, whether they be quarterly, semi-annually, annually, year over year, whatever it is, if the organization is not exceeding the goals that they set for themselves to, you know, succeed as an organization, something's out of alignment somewhere.

Right.

So I come in and help figure out what's going on. And I'll give you an example of what it's like when I walk into a boardroom with a group of people. If I'm working at team levels, one of the things that we do is we identify who are we, what are our roles. We want to streamline, you know, the— and gain efficiencies in what we're doing. So we don't need to duplicate efforts. And we wanna make sure we're being as effective as possible. What surprises people is that I invite people to figure out or share what their personal value system is. And I've got a couple of quick little exercises. A very simple one is, you know, choose the values that are most meaningful to you. Get your top 3.

Sure.

You know, there's underlying ways of figuring that out. How do you spend your time, energy, money, resources? It gives you a clue. Well, here's the reality. All of our decisions are in alignment with our value system. So then as an individual, we know your value system, so we know how to position you well in the organization to stretch your strengths and strengthen your weaknesses for proper balance and showcase your skillset. Then what we do is as a team, we figure out what are the core values that we as a group represent.

Okay.

As a department, everyone's going to be doing their piece as individuals to contribute to the entire department's goal achievement, right? Then we're going to uplevel all of the activities that we're doing every single day. And recognizing everyone for the contributions along the way. What we've done by doing that is we've aligned everyone's personal decisions with the decisions of the entire department.

Now, what if the department and the corporate vision and culture are disconnected?

That's a very good point, and that does happen occasionally. What happens is clients leave because their expectation of what the organization is, is different than the people who they're working with specifically. So what we then need to do is reconnect the mission and vision of the organization. And when it is in alignment with the individual decisions and choices and value systems, as well as the department's goals, Everybody's making an effort that is in alignment to achieve and exceed the expectations of the mission and vision of the organization.

So effort is key there. Making an effort to move toward that overarching vision and values of the company. So how does all of that tie back to relationshiping, like, and what people need to really focus on in the workplace to improve those relationships that even get them to the table, right? Be open and transparent and vulnerable in sharing all of that, because that's quite a disclosure.

For myself, when I interview people, I know who I'm talking with. There aren't all that many managers in the world like me. Who will honestly say and do what they say they're going to do with integrity. When I have someone who I am ready to invite onto my team, I am honest when I say, with your body of knowledge, and I'm going to share all of my body of knowledge with you to help you grow in the way you want to grow, because then you're going to be motivated to improve your skill and your career. And uplevel that consistently, what happens is you create a department or a community within the workplace that's filled with trust. You want to be able to have a management team that will be supportive, who you can be honest with, and know that no matter what's going on, from the bottom up, if there's integrity, the top down will meet you there. And we'll figure out a way even when there are challenges.

So the key being leaders need to take the time to meet one-on-one and meet their people where they are, learn more about them, learn what they wanna achieve, what they wanna accomplish, what they bring to the table, so they then can develop and coach 'em toward being more successful. Is that the action that leaders need to be taking?

So that is the action they need to be take. The concern is that they don't have time. And then that's where you bring in somebody like myself to go in and see what kind of gold mine that you've got, because people want to contribute in a positive way. They want to make a difference.

That's how we feel fulfilled and we progress as individuals as well as professionals. What do you mean though? What do you mean though that you come, that's why you come in and do what exactly?

So I come in and I do corporate consulting.

Right.

To help organizations, one, be in alignment, streamline what they're doing so that the individuals, the teams, and the mission and vision of the organization's success are in alignment, so everybody's effort is moving in the right direction. But what I've done in the past, for example, is I've gone into organizations and figured out what are the individual motivations of the people, because the leader, the senior leadership team doesn't have time for this. And I'm actually quite skilled and experienced at figuring out where are the opportunities that we may be missing out on. I can give you an example. We had 50 employees in the customer service department, and I learned that they have a better understanding of the, the client base, the individuals who call in and place orders to the actual clients, as well as all of the product line. When I was working with the product development team, they were saying, you know what, it's really hard to get a hold of clients to figure out What's the next best product or improvement that we need to make that's going to, one, increase the loyalty of the relationship between organizations, as well as continue to add value to them so that they never think of changing their, who they're working with.

Right.

And I said, well, I realize it's hard to get that information for your clients, but my team is talking to the clients. All day long. Give me your top 5 questions. I'll have them answered for you in 2 hours. And voilà. So that's an example of how the product development team now sees an incoming call center as an opportunity for treasure that doesn't cost the organization anything more.

Right.

In addition, when I understood that these call center employees were actually quite savvy and knowledgeable in the product line. I invited them to cross-sell and upsell opportunities. Of course, they didn't want to be salespeople. And I said, oh, you don't have to do that. Just help the people you're on the phone with. Bam! $1 million every single year, consistently exceeding the goal we set. Every single year.

Yeah. Wow.

And that's— type of interdepartmental synergies is how you can increase the success of an organization without adding a dollar to the—

Right.

—of expense. Yeah.

So what is, what have you done with all of that, with all that, you know, capability and strategy and those techniques? How has that fed into the Management Blueprint? How does that kind of craft itself from all of that?

The new management blueprint is really all about how to get into an organization in such a way that you can figure out where is the treasure that you've already got in the organization and who else do you need to add in, or what skillset do you need to add in to really achieve the goals that are set forward? Okay. There's opportunities and like some of the challenges and obstacles that I hear people running into is they don't always jive with the person they need to partner with professionally. And that's really a matter— there's relationship being right there. You don't have to be best friends. You need to achieve a goal. Another challenge that Okay.

So let me ask you just to touch on that though, because that's, that's a great one and one that, you know, a good deal too many probably managers, you know, confront. How do they start relationshiping with that individual to kind of change the dynamic of that relationship and partnership because they are so dependent on each other? Right.

So let's talk about first. A manager, and I might call this type of manager a eucalyptus manager because eucalyptus trees drop an oil that don't allow anything to grow underneath that. Oh, okay. If you're working with somebody who's a eucalyptus manager, you may not be able to grow within that capacity of where you're at. So we would then, if I was working with that person, We would then shift what needs to happen to meet expectations and then see what other opportunities are available so that that individual underneath the eucalyptus manager can actually grow within their career.

So how does the eucalyptus, eucalyptic, or whatever manager, how do they change? Or is, you know, is there an expectation that they're not going to, or what do you, what, you know, You know, what is the expectation of that individual's dropping that oil that isn't allowing anything to grow?

In reality, you can't change other people. You can only change yourself. When you change yourself, there may be a shift in how people reflect from you. If there's a situation with a eucalyptus manager, I mean, my first thought would be to put them on a guru track. If they're really good at what they're doing. But they're not really good at managing people. They're managing whatever, they're exceptional at what they're doing, and we can help them grow on what I call the guru track. So people can access them and their skillset and their contribution without putting a eucalyptus manager in a required scenario that they don't love or enjoy.

Right, right, right. Do you find, do you ever find though that those managers They, they may not like it or enjoy leading people and developing and having to really focus on the people side of it, but they want it from an ego perspective. And therefore, people have to report to this individual to get the overall work done. So there, there's still that tree sitting there kind of beating up on, you know, the, not only the people, but the overall business growth. And then what does a peer who's trying to work with this person, what do they do? Because they need that person, that stakeholder, to help achieve their goals.

I'll give you a couple of real examples. I was working with somebody like that, and the organization was like, we need your help. This person is destroying more than they're helping, but we're in a scenario where we can't change what's happening. When I'm aligned with that person, I mean, there was one example and the very intelligent, very intelligent woman, very accomplished, very empowered and powerful. And what she would do is demean everyone around her as a means to make herself better. But it doesn't really do that. What Ivy League? You know, accomplished. So what I needed to do in that case was meet her where she was at and share with her something at that intellectual level that she could actually hear. So I brought in some, some studies that demonstrated, in short, what you say about other people is a reflection of you. 80% of what you say about other people is a reflection of you. And the second time I said it, she went, and she turned to her right-hand person, like, this guy is amazing. And he really believed in his job and the company, despite having to work with this eucalyptus manager. And she says, Jonathan. I'm sorry. I won't do it again. Now she knew she was doing it, right? Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

And you were— Uh, they're very well aware. They're very well aware.

Yes. And it changed the entire atmosphere in the organization. Suddenly anything people were complaining about didn't matter anymore. Because they knew that their previously known as Eucalyptus manager was appreciating and recognizing them and didn't feel obligated to step on other people to get ahead. She didn't have to.

So there's an example. That's all. Yeah, no, I absolutely love that. And that is a struggle for, for a number of managers or peers working with, you know, individuals like that. So thank you. That was, that was absolutely awesome. So what do you think? Because I know a philosophy of yours and the Management Blueprint is also around the fact that unlike the eucalyptus manager, you have to allow others to lead, you know, and you have to empower them to, to develop and grow. And while at the same time you're ensuring that you're not feeling like you're losing control or power or influence. And the best leaders know how to do that and still feel empowered. Would I— is that an accurate statement? Yes.

I think the way that I say it really is strong leaders allow someone else to take the lead without losing their status or power. Because you're there to support and they know that. You're there to help foster growth because you want the success of your company. Right, and your own success. And if you encourage the success of the people working with and for you, all of that will be enthusiastically growing in the right direction. Now, does that mean you just take off and let them figure it out on their own? No. This is more of an identifying skill set and seeing where there's room. And I think I said this briefly. To stretch your strengths and strengthen your weaknesses for proper balance. Right. This means that individuals are growing within the organization. It doesn't mean they can replace you, nor do they necessarily want to. Right. The assumption of that is a mistake. So figuring out what individuals' motives, motivations, and their ultimate goals are, working with them to figure that out, I had an incredible employee and his goal in life surprised me, and that was to be the principal of a junior high school. Oh, he was, he was in a role that had nothing to do with that, but what I could do to get the very best employee out of him was to help him understand what skills did he need to become this dream job for him, and thank God. Thank God for the principals of junior high school.

Yes. Yes. I agree. I agree. So what are the skill sets that he needed to get there?

Because he didn't have those right now. We figured those out. So teamwork, leadership, conflict negotiation, you know, and he needed to lead his teachers, so He was basically running an organization, right? Openly in his dream. Right. We, I helped him gain the skillset to achieve his goal job.

Nice.

Other employees are now all running their own businesses. They're in senior management, all on their own. They've risen through the corporate ladder through their own path, but understanding what's the skillset you don't have and which one do you need to hone? To achieve your goal and get where you want. So as a leader, knowing that about your team, give them the skill set that they have capacity to rise to. That gives them experience. It'll then all ships rise when the tide rises. There's a saying in there. Yeah. Everyone is growing. Right. You want your business to succeed. Then everyone gets up in the morning enthusiastic about going to work. They can't wait to see the opportunity where they can shine and make a difference in the moments of truth. And then it's, even if it's not recognized, they know it. They know they're contributing. And that's how you create an organization and the culture within the organization where everyone then is supporting each other. And you're not only meeting the goals of the organization, you're continually, continually seeing how you can add value and uplevel that.

That's relationshiping. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. Relationshiping. And the one thing I'll be taking away is the fact that get out there, talk to, talk to your people, get to know them enough to where, you know, you know their skills, you know, their opportunities and their dreams and the challenges even that they're having. So that you can be the type of leader they need to help them achieve their goals. Because if they're happy, you're happy, and the business is happy, right?

Right. Right. That treasure that you've already got in-house. I love it. Love it.

Love it. Love it. Now I know, and you can hold them up again. I really want everyone, if you would, go to Amazon. You can go right to Amazon. You can also go to theartofrelationshiping.com, but her books and Life Worth Living and The New Marriage Blueprint are available both there. This has been fabulous, Michelle. Thank you so much. I appreciate it, but I wanna remind everybody, please go to theartofrelationshiping.com to learn more about what Michelle's all about and, uh, how she might be able to help you. Be sure to follow her on Facebook at Relationship Shipping 101. And again, get her books, you know, and hold out for that third one. But Life Worth Living and The New Management Blueprint is available right now on Amazon. Thank you so much, Michelle. I appreciate this. Has been fabulous. Relationshiping. The New Management Blueprint. Poom, poom. Powerhouse Michelle Hoffman of The Art of Relationshiping was just spot on in providing some very new and unique takes on what it really, really requires for any of us to be successful leaders in an organization, but also what it means and what it takes to lead our personal lives successfully. So we find success and even balance, or what I call blend, in both our work and our career. So The Art of Relationshiping, loved it. Loved that conversation because life is all about relationships. So she spent a great deal of time going in and out of talking different scenarios and examples and things you could be doing to ensure that you are really focused on building relationships with your team members, with peers, with key stakeholders, whomever, so you can ensure that you are optimizing and leveraging their skills, their talents, their passions, their hobbies, whatever the case might be. To where it helps everyone to grow, to learn, and to be successful. And if you have any additional questions over and beyond what we talked about today, if you need some support of your own to address not only the relationship building, but, you know, just overall trying to connect with your team to, you know, help them develop and grow, help yourself develop and grow, then be sure to reach out and let me know. And you could schedule a call with me at coachmebernadette.com/discoverycall. And let's talk about it and let's, let's spend a short amount of time giving you tips and strategies and specific actions you could be taking that will move you toward being that powerhouse leader you're meant to be. So I am appreciative and I feel honored that you were here with us this week, and I'll look forward to having you back here for another episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Bye.