210- Courage to Leap & Lead with Elizabeth Lotardo part 2

You've got courage to leap, courage to lead. Be brave and be bold.

Wow!

Let it roar. Welcome to the Courage to Leap and Lead podcast, where each of our guests share the stories of courage that helped them become powerful leaders. Before we start today's show, please remember to visit courage-consulting. where you can find all the episodes and other excellent resources, all at courage-consulting.com. Now, here's your host, Leadership Courage Coach CB Bowman.

So, in your research, what are the top 3 things that people are looking for now?

Out of work?

Yeah.

So, purpose, which is going to be no surprise to everyone listening, is really having a moment. Having said that, I think people are looking for purpose in a not always attainable way. Like we want to feel every day that we are curing cancer. When we sign up to be a project manager in an accounting firm, you're not going to feel that way. Um, so, so some of it is, is some unmet expectation beef around there, but people want to know that their work matters and it doesn't have to be curing cancer. It can be making accounting a little bit better. We want to know that this. thing we spend all of our time doing is consequential to the world in some way. People are looking for connection, which has long been the case but has heightened in COVID. That doesn't necessarily mean in-office work. So if you have this like back-to-office narrative in your brain, let's put her aside for a moment. People are looking for connection in authentic ways. They wanna do work with people that they enjoy being around. And lastly, I think people are looking to work to fit into their life instead of be their life. And recognizing that working 60 to 70 hours a week is not sustainable for a lot of people. And that conversation is getting louder thanks to, to generations behind me, Generation Z and Generation Alpha. I think they're really bringing that conversation to the fore. So if we think about the search for purpose, we think about the search for connection, we think about the search for logistically what makes sense with our lives. The employers that are answering those 3 buckets are the ones that are winning talent now instead of losing talent or having a pool of quiet quitters that they don't realize has emotionally removed themselves.

Something you just said related back to our earlier conversation, the notion of Following your purpose, being in an organization that delivers on your purpose. How do we know that our purpose is real versus imaginary?

As an individual or for a company?

As the individual, because here's where the misalignment comes in, is that you think your purpose is, but in reality, it's not.

Mm-hmm.

And that causes a lot of, I think, disruption in your mind. It causes you to derail from where you think you're going.

I think the conversation around purpose and the push to have this, like, grand statement and perfectly defined essence of who you are is contributing to this mass existential crisis of, oh, it's not in alignment with me. It's not in alignment with me. I would suggest that, and the reason I chose meaning in the subtitle instead of purpose, is that you don't need to have perfect alignment between you and your organization to have a meaningful work experience. You can't be way out of sorts. Like, you can't want to make the world a better place and go to work for Enron. Like, that's not going to make sense. But to think that you will find an organization whose Stated organizational purpose is so perfectly nested over your exceptionally crafted statement of personal purpose. Like, we're— come on, like, we were setting ourselves up for an emotional letdown here. I think the better answer to say, does this organization align with my personal purpose, is to get clear on what you value and know that you want to make a difference in the world in some way. And you will find an organization who values what you value, whether that's integrity, whether it's honesty, whether it's creativity, whatever is important to you, and is making a difference in some way. But to think that you're going to have this perfect synchronization of purposes, it's a really tall order. This is still work.

You remind me of a conversation that I had with somebody, not to hop around DEI, but it was right after the killing of Floyd. And it was A client of mine, he said, okay, CB, I've decided I'm leaving my job because I can do more outside for DEI than I can inside. And I said, oh, tell me about that. And he said, you know what, my church is doing a lot and I feel like I can, blah, blah. And I said, hmm. I said, what does your family feel about the financial impact? of your leaving? And he stopped and he said, I haven't thought about that. I said, second question, have you been able to help people of color from inside your organization and made an impact on their lives? And he said, yes. I said, well, why don't you consider those 2 things before you hang up your coat and say, I'm out of here. And he called me back and he said, I can make my family happy and I can impact the DEI situation by staying where I am. I said, that's a solid decision.

I love that example. And what it illustrates so perfectly is finding meaning and financial prosperity for your family and small opportunities Inside of an imperfect situation and being at peace with that.

Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, I want to go to, um, the chapter on managing your boss.

That's my favorite chapter.

How in the world does somebody get to do that?

Well, we've read a lot about the importance of leading up and shaping your boss's thinking, but to me, those suggestions felt pretty thin. So what I wanted to break down in Leading Yourself was what exactly do you do and say in situations like working for a micromanager, working for a boss who always changes their mind, working for a boss who thinks they know it all? Like, how do you approach these people without these esoteric notions of leading up?

Mm-hmm.

So the pull-through in all of those managers is you have to focus on what is in your control, not what your manager's doing, what's out of your control, what they're thinking, what they're saying. What can you do? And that's where we get wrapped up because it's way easier to complain about our boss than it is to take accountability for how we shape the relationship. So let's take micromanagers, for example. Really common one that came out in the research. My manager blows up my phone at every hour of the day and wants to nitpick every single thing I do. And it really erodes your confidence when your manager does that. So I feel for people working for a micromanager. But what can you do? How can you lead yourself in that moment? You can request a standing meeting with your manager at the start and end of every day where you go through what's on the roadmap for the day. Then at the end, you wrap up everything that happened. You may not love it, but that's gonna keep them outta your hair a little bit more than if they're always trying to chase you down looking for updates. Let's go to, um, how do you work with a boss who always changes their mind? I just wrote a piece for Harvard Business Review about this. What can you control in that situation? You control the tee-up. And this is what I mean. If your boss is always changing their mind before you go to them with, what do you think of this project? What do you think of this proposal? I need your feedback. You are going to do a tee-up. You're going to say, here's what we talked about last time. Here's who is involved in this project. Here was the objective. Here's the timeline we talked about. And you are going to set that foundation before you ask anything, because they forgot. This is why they always change their mind. And then you're going to present your thing. And the odds of them changing their mind when they have been brought into the conversation with that context, with who's involved, why does it matter, what's at stake, when are we doing this, is way less than if you say, hey, what do you think of this project plan with no context? So again, in all of these situations of being confronted with an imperfect leader, looking at what can you do from your seat to maneuver this in a way that makes it less frustrating, that's the pull-through thread. And that looks different for every different type of boss.

I love what you said. It sort of reminds me about my time as an interior designer. Um, so I worked for design firms that, uh, um, worked hand in hand with architects. And I worked for architectural firms, and I hated when I presented a design and I got turned down. So one day I figured out the secret sauce. I would present the design ideas that I least liked that I did first. I was presenting to a group of bankers, and they just ripped it apart. heart. And inside, I'm smiling because I have my secret one behind. And I just, I said, gosh, you know what, I'm just so disappointed. I just thought I nailed this. But I hear your concerns. I, you know, the only thing I could do is present this one design that I just, it didn't feel like it was Right. And I presented it and they said, oh my God, you got it. And inside I am rolling with laughter, rolling, because of course that was the one I wanted.

So that's how to work for a boss who needs to think that it's their idea, which tends to be the pale male and stale among us. But That phenomenon, I wrote about it funny enough in Leading Yourself, actually played out at Disney too. So Disney has a team of animators and a team of art directors, and the animators would have to present to the art directors like, here's our concept for a new character. And they were always mad because the art directors would always change something because, you know, everyone's got to put their mark on it.

Put their hands in it.

So the animators started drawing hair on the arms of these cartoon creatures, which you never see. So they would present it to the art directors, and the art directors would be like, oh, you've got to take the hair off the arms. And they're like, OK. And the animators would take the hair off the arms. And then the art director would be like, now it's great. They just needed to have their little stamp on it.

Exactly.

So whether you take the semi-manipulative route that the Disney folks did that you did in that example, or whether you think about, how can I ask this person a pointed question that harnesses their strengths and enables them to actually contribute instead of undoing my work? That's up to you to decide. There are multiple ways to lead yourself through that situation. But through all of those examples is you're looking at the situation instead of wishing you could change this other person and how annoying they are. You're looking at what you can do to minimize it.

So Lisa, in writing your book, who was your target audience?

So I wrote really transparently in the opening of the book that this book was for an individual contributor, a new manager, someone in the first 10 years of their career, because the vast majority of business books are written for like the C-suite, which is 1% of the population. They don't need more books, they have enough. Um, what I was surprised to find was the receptivity to it of people who were in the C-suite and how much they landed with frustrating bosses. Their boss isn't a senior manager, their boss is the board. How much they landed with too many deliverables and having too much to do. So a surprise to me was how ever-present some of these qualms are, but I think that even raises the case that you got to learn to deal with them because they're not going anywhere.

Absolutely. I was thinking that as I first looked at it, I said, oh, this is for young kids, I'm not sure my audience is gonna love this. And then I thought, Well, wait a second now. She's tackling some things that haunt you throughout.

Haunt is the perfect word.

They do. Tell us about quiet fear.

So the reason I wanted to call out the need to quiet fear from a leading yourself perspective is that fear is rampant now, whether it is the fear of AI taking your job, that is the back of the mind fear a lot of us have, whether it is fear that you're going to be passed over for promotion, whether it is fear that you can't put your idea forth because they're going to think it's stupid. When we get ourselves wrapped in fear, we lose our ability to think creatively, to think strategically, to authentically build relationships. So we got to make that go away, or at least chill out for a moment. And to me, when it comes to leading yourself, the best way to quiet fear is to articulate the potential upside, which is not where our brain goes, at least not mine. We have no problem. Let's take pitching an idea, for example, thinking, what if they hate it? What if everyone calls me an idiot? What if I never get a chance to present the idea again? What if I make an absolute fool of myself? Like, that's where your brain takes you right off the rip. It's our primal instincts, our amygdala. You have No trouble sitting in that spot. To lead yourself and to quiet that fear, you have to force yourself to articulate a potential upside. What if everyone loves the idea? What if this goes, you know, towards my promotion? What if my boss starts to think differently of me because I came up with something so strategic? And forcing yourself to lean into what is the possible good of this if I do this thing. You don't have to really do it. You just have to consider those possibilities for a moment before you make a rational decision. That can help you step into opportunity. But so often we hold ourselves back because we give no voice to the positive possibilities, and we sit with all the ways this could go horribly wrong.

You know, um, as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking about my book. And so I wrote the book because I wanted people to have a new definition of courage. Courage plays on various levels. You've got the huge courage of running into a building and saving a child when the building is on fire. Then you've got what I've called microcourage. Which is getting out of bed with a migraine to make sure that you get to that meeting when you don't know if you're going to collapse on the way. You don't know what's going to happen. It's breaking down small steps and applauding yourself for those small steps to reach a big step. So I thought, is this book for young managers? Because it applies to setbacks in the workplace. Is it for the C-suite? Because it applies to big mistakes in corporate America. And how do you redefine those mistakes into success? And I struggled with it and struggled with it. And I finally came to the realization, well, it applies to Both. However, my neighbor came over 2 days ago and she said, CB, I want you to know that your book made a major impact on a friend of mine. I said, oh, why? She said her daughter is severely dyslexic, and your book gives hope to other children that are dyslexic. I stood there in a state of shock. It wasn't the intent of the book. And now I have a different point on that circle of helping people. And I thought, I, as a child, went through hell and back as a dyslexic. Why wasn't I thinking how much other children need help, especially in this day and age of bullying?

Mm-hmm.

So you're so right. There is the purpose and the intent that you have, and then there's a different purpose and intent on how what you do is received.

And I think as much as we can push ourselves to, like I said, articulate the upside, you never really know unless you do it, right? You would have never known that having a child with renewed faith in themselves was an upside to publishing a book on courage. So some of it is you just gotta leap, right?

Exactly. I like that. I like that.

Lisa, I'm using your book title. Of course you like it.

I just called you your mother's name. Um, Elizabeth, besides managing your boss, what are the key points to take away from your book, and what other section is your favorite section in the book?

So let's jump from managing an imperfect boss to dealing with annoying coworkers. Because these situations, you are often dependent on someone. You need their data, their feedback, their something to make impact in your role, but they're being frustrating. And so often these coworkers are the reason we lament our jobs, right? I had one executive say to me, like, my actual job is easy. It's working with the 2,200 other people inside of this organization that I find really challenging. And, and I think that is not a unique experience.

Oh, it's not.

So back to leading yourself. What element of working with someone who's frustrating you do you control? Well, you control the periphery, everything that's happening around that interaction, whether you need to get yourself a sweet treat every time you go into a meeting with them, whether you need to go for a run every time you leave a meeting with them, you control what surrounds that. You also control your paper trail. If you are chasing someone for something, you keep record of that paper trail. Hopefully you don't need it, but you might. You control how emotional you get in that conversation. I'm sure I'm not the only one guilty of taking a 1-hour conversation and letting it occupy 8 to 9 hours of my life. Replaying it in the shower and thinking about what I should have said and what I'm gonna say next time and how mean they are, right? There are so many elements of that situation that are completely within our control. And what do we do? We focus on the one annoying person over there we don't control.

I, I, I— the moment of silence is, boy, was that a flashback for me.

It was a flashback to me to yesterday. Like I said, I'm a work in progress.

Well, you've given us all permission to be a work in progress, which I love. Lisa, this has been a great interview, not only because you touched on what's in the book, but you touched on the next book that you'll be writing.

What is that? Let me know.

Well, it dives into the psychology of being present in a job in a deeper way, which I love. There's just so many of us that suffer thinking it's all us. It's not the other person. It's we're just not doing the right thing. We're not responding correctly. I think especially with people of color, be it Black, purple, green, or yellow, there's so much doubt in our ability to respond, and your book is giving us hope that we can do it.

That is the sentiment. You always have the power to change the way you experience your job. Whether it's worth the effort or not is up to you.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Lisa, thank you so much. Lisa, I did it again. Your mom's name is on my mind. That's because you have—

We look alike.

Yes, you do. And let's just give your mom a nod. Her book, Selling with Noble Purpose. And if you, if you are interested, which I hope you are, I interviewed her mom, Lisa, Um, maybe it was last year. Great interview, great book. The tree— or the apple falls near the tree, I shall say. Thank you.

That's high praise.

Thank you. I appreciate your work. I appreciate you. And thank you so much for coming on. Audience, if you want to know more about managing your life in terms of work, Leading Yourself. Please grab a copy of it. It's a quick read, and I'll tell you, one of the, the way that it is designed with diagrams, which I love, and with closed captioning— you see that little box over there where she pulls out information? It's just, you don't have to sit and read it cover to cover. You can scan it And the other thing she does is she gives examples, and it's written in a very scannable manner, which is so important in today's age of reading. Thank you. Thank you for considering the reader. Thank you for considering how we read today, and thank you so much for what's inside your book. Thank you.

Thank you for the thoughtful conversation. I really enjoyed your take on this.

Okay, so audience, stay with us for our next book interview, which will be The Balancing Act by Carol. So I'm enjoying these book interviews because I'm learning so much about what drove the author to write it. And the book itself. Until our next meeting, it's C.B. Bowman and Elizabeth. Thank you. Bye now.