168 - Modeling a Growth Mindset: Leading with Vulnerability and Humility with Slate Communication's Laura Crandall

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Laurel Crandall, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the president of Slate Communications. You are like me, involved in communication and leadership development, that sort of thing. Uh, you can be found at laurelcrandall.com, and you are author of one of the, the second most fun book about that, which is Working with Humans. It's only second to De-Escalate: How to Calm an Angry Person.

Perfect. I'll take that. That's pretty good. That, that, that's, that's a pretty good rank, right? Yeah, laurelcrandall.com. That's where you can find me.

laurelcrandall.com. There you go. Well, welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about your backstory.

Oh my gosh. Well, I was born in the Midwest. No, I, I wants to go that far, far back. Well, a little bit. I am a Midwesterner at heart. I've lived among the New English people for about 30 years. And I have a business background that has its roots in hospitality. I was an executive in luxury hospitality for a number of years. And when I left corporate, I had, I'd really gotten a lot of satisfaction about, um, corporate ed, helping people become engaged in their careers, helping organizations learn quickly, and having a good time at the process, at the same time, you know, in the process. And so I went and, you know, left, left the, the mainstream, did a master's in organizational behavior and cognitive neuroscience at Harvard, and then started my own communications consulting company, and the communication piece is the internal communication that helps every organization work a little better and have people have more fun in the process.

So when, when you talk about internal communication, what exactly are you talking about?

I'm talking about everything from what is the internal strategy of what is our work and how does everyone know that, but also how are we connecting with each other and the manner in which we're communicating. Are we kind? Are we thorough? Are we checking for understanding? Are we being generous? Are we being hospitable to one another? Um, and does that track with what we're trying to accomplish in an organization, in any organization, whether that's manufacturing, philanthropy, uh, academia, hospitality, you name it? How are we treating each other? And is what we say we're doing out in the world aligning with how we're doing it internally.

Do you find when you walk into an engagement, um, how do you identify communication styles and efficacy and clarity or not?

Um, that's a great question. One of the things is that I ask where the— where people think the problem is, whether, whether the problem that they're facing is a pain point, right? That's the So many executives know where or think they know where the pain point is, right? Everybody has a hunch. But also the pain point might be, wow, we're up, we're doing really well and we want to keep going, you know, the opportunity. And the communication style often shows up in who is speaking, who is not, what's the level of clarity. How at ease are people when they're speaking? Is there miscommunication? And who has the authority to speak?

So if, if I were a CEO and I was listening to this and I wanted to figure out how do I— yeah, I've heard that HBR and everybody says communication is really important.

You gotta do it. Yeah.

I think I'm a wonderful listener and I'm a great communicator, but I don't want to believe my own press. How would I as a CEO take the temperature of the organization and figure out whether or not we need help or not?

Right. The first thing I would say is that if you are asking that question, you probably do. Just because, and if you're not asking that question, you probably do too. But only because it's why I titled my book Working with Humans is because there are so many tacit expectations that we have of one another. That are tacit because we don't think to ask of them, which is why the subtitle of my book is Tools You Didn't Know You Needed for Conversations You Never Expected to Have. And there's this, there's this element of, okay, I, I should be able to just magically say, okay, fix the communication, go. But what does fix mean? Why, why is it important to you? What What do you as a leader, you as a CEO, do you know what your leadership and communication style is? We often label those styles. I'm, you know, pick your inventory du jour, which I love all of them, by the way. I'm a big fan of a lens.

Yeah, I'm a level 5 leader out of Stephen Covey's work or whatever.

Exactly. Like, great. Congratulations. But what does that— how do you make use of that? And what does it really mean for the people you work with? And how are you embodying that? In a relaxed, centered way that is effective for your organization. So the first thing is look at yourself and then start asking some questions about your expectations, what you think people know, and all the ways that they're sort of bumming you out by when they don't get something. That's usually a pretty good point to go, oh, maybe I have not been as explicit as I should have been, and to hold that lightly., but be curious about yourself first. That's where I'd start.

That's a hard one for people.

Oh, it's horrible. It's the worst.

I don't know if it's horrible, but it's hard because we're not taught that, that part, that part of being self-reflective is part of the social default mode of the brain. As I teach, you know, education only focuses on the task-focused system. I know you know this stuff. So for those that you don't know, we have two neural systems that are antagonistic, the task-focused and default mode. Task focus is all the stuff that has to do with gaining knowledge and learning rules and algorithms and using critical thinking and logic and reasoning and all that stuff. And that's what education focuses on. But that's only one small part of our, who we are. The other part is our social brain called the default mode, which is how we interact with people. Empathy, listening, problem, or conflict management, being empathetic, being self-aware. And what's interesting to me is that our educational system completely ignores the default mode, training the default mode, and solely focuses on task, task-focused, which is, I think, one of the reasons why we have so many problems that we have today is because we're not, we're not trained to be social in the same way that we're trained to be, solve problems.

That's right.

I think we have to be trained to be social. I don't think this is something that just default happens in the families because Who is the great therapist? Virginia Satir said in the 1980s, 96% of all families are dysfunctional. And then some wag said the other 4% are lying.

Yeah, right, exactly. Well, I think that to your point about what gets measured, right, when we look at, you know, the multiple intelligences that we have, numeracy and literacy have been privileged. And that's fine because we need to know how to add stuff up and we need to know how to write stuff down. Great. But the other intelligences around interpersonal, intrapersonal, spiritual intelligence, physical intelligence is all of those things. You know, Howard Gardner's work, the— all of those things are very, very fundamental, but they are— they're more qualitative and they're harder to, you know, they're harder to pin down. So we think they get— they get devalued very quickly. And if we could just, to your point about reflection, reflection is about listening to oneself, to refining one's thoughts and taking the time to know that they matter. And when you're a CEO and you're, you're going so quickly and trying to do the good work you are called to do, that can feel like a luxury that shouldn't matter because we haven't been taught how to do it.. But when we take the time to learn to listen to oneself, to think about your own character, to think about your own communication, to think about the behaviors you embody, um, man, it go— makes everything a whole lot easier and a lot more fun. So that's the— it's— we have not centered it, but man, oh man, it makes stuff so much better when we do.

Huge difference. Yeah. I, I reflect on the fact that, you know, EDDs in education that teach education in universities and professors that teach MBAs, and they didn't get their degrees and did their dissertations on stuff like emotions and empathy, right?

No.

They got their stuff on quantitative analysis and marketing, stuff that we can put numbers into and show how smart you are because you can do beautiful graphs and you can do regression analysis and all this stuff.

Well, then that, and that the people stuff will sort of just by magic sort itself out, right? And a miracle occurs, right? Like, that's the— yeah, the, the— there's no way it doesn't help.

There's no way.

Well, the thing of it is, it— the problem is, is that sometimes it does when you get lucky. And luck, you know, if you happen to have if you happen to have a general disposition for like, I know a good worker when I see one, well, good for you. Congratulations. And that's fortunate. And you might have a really excellent team that happens to circumstantially have the same understanding of very abstract concepts like just work harder or give it the old college try or whatever it is, be smarter. But if you don't explicitly share those expectations, that's very hard to replicate over time, and then disappointment ensues, and so does the outcome of what you're trying to accomplish. But luck, luck can help as long as you stay lucky.

Yeah, if you're— if you, if you grew up in a, an emotionally competent family and you were— and, and who— and your parents nurtured you emotionally up until adulthood, which does not happen in most families, And you have the good fortune to avoid trauma, which doesn't happen to most people. And you have the good fortune to get, have the right kind of education in the right way, then you will have, you might, you might intuitively develop these skills.

Sure.

But when you start looking at all the qualifiers, you can see that's a very small percentage of people that, and the rest of us, it is effortful, but the beauty of it is it's not that effortful.

Well, I think the other thing is that I think it, and I don't know if you find this, Doug, but it's not one. Once you realize what the payoff is, the rewards of the effort are exponential very, very quickly.

Oh my God. Oh, unbelievable. Yeah.

I'm like, what? What? I could just do that and it works.

Okay. And I teach people. I mean, I tell people, I teach people how to listen to emotions. That this takes courage in the beginning because you're, you're fighting against societal norms. But once you start doing it and you start giving away that priceless gift of listening another person into existence, all your fear will go away. You just have to have the courage to work with it for 4 weeks and make it habitual, and then you're golden. And that's—

well, I think I agree that once you start seeing the payoff, it really shows up. And also it will always be surprising. And so, you know, there are always outliers. There are always, to your point, there are always people that you just go, I had no idea they were going to bring that up, or wow, or they just bring something into the room or into a conversation or into a project that'll just surprise the heck out of you. But when you have enough experience of knowing where you are reflectively, you've listened to yourself, You know what you want, you know how to communicate well, you know how to attune and welcome emotion as well as objective, measurable, concrete data. You know, all data is data. It— you're just more prepared. And I think that's the other thing too, is that in a system of productivity that we're all trained to do when we're successful business people, replication is— and consistency is very, very valued.. But people are messy and the variables are infinite. So where can we make room for that so that we can be more engaged and more fruitful in how we, how we work and have more fun in the process?

Like make it more just absolutely, absolutely. And, and I love the word messy because I talk about that too. How do you deal with the messiness in your lives? And, and it turns out there are skill sets out there that are so easy to deal with the messiness and now there is no mess. You just clean everything up. Just by how you listen and how you respond to people.

Yeah. And that the mess isn't— the mess can be very generative too.

That's right.

And so that is really, really important. I have a dear colleague whose book, Yes to the Mess, actually, I'll plug another book, my friend Frank Barrett teaches leadership and improv. And he's a jazz pianist. Because if you make a mistake once when you're playing, it's a mistake. Make it again, and now it's a riff, right? That whole thing just It's OK. And I think that's to your point about acknowledging emotion. When it becomes part of the story, when you're listening to that element of the humanity of how you're working with humans, that becomes generous and becomes a superpower in its own right for leaders who really are wanting to find more meaning and grow their— get their own chops in how they're leading well and feeling proud about what they do.

Allows people to be compassionate without being weak. And I think that's— imagine being able to be compassionate with the people that you're leading and yet still have a strong leadership presence and not be pushed over or anything like that. In fact, just the opposite. Nobody's going to touch the strength you have. I think it's interesting you talked about— I play jazz violin.

Oh, nice. Fantastic.

I'm all about improvisation.

Yeah. And I think that's where we can learn from that as communicators and as listeners and be willing to be surprised and learn on the fly. That's the other thing I was thinking about, Doug, when I was listening to some of your past shows. I really appreciate the act of listening. And I think one of those tacit expectations that is, I think, an undercurrent in a lot of when we talk about listening is what we're going to do with that listening, what we've gotten from the listening. I think it's implied that we will then learn from and apply it.

That's type— there are two kinds of listening. That's type 1.

Yeah, I know. Yeah.

Type 2 listening is what I emphasize, which is not what I'm going to get from you, Laura. I want to make sure that you are listened to in a way that you feel completely validated. I want to listen to you from your frame of reference so that you feel deeply heard and listened to. That's my agenda is on you. That's type 2 listening. Type 1 listening is where I'm here and I'm gaining information. I'm gonna respond to it back and forth. Sometimes I'm listening, sometimes I'm not. I'm, you know, progressive, right? Focus on me, the listener, right? Yeah. That's that. And, and both have their, have their place, but I focus on type, the Type 2 listening because most people don't know how to do that.

And when you learn, and I think that it's not, we don't know what to do with it because in a transactional interaction. So when I work with organizations, How can we move beyond and through the transactional, which is very necessary? I'm not here to say, let's sit around and, you know, I'm going to go and make everybody feel completely like it's only about communication. We got to get stuff done.

Tree huggers or a singer.

I mean, I like to hug a good tree. Like, why not? They're delightful.

But we got a business to run.

Exactly.

But the point I think we're making here is, all right, you got a choice. You can deal with people who are unhappy and emotional and disgruntled and just tell them what to do, tell them to leave their emotions at the door, in which case you're gonna get about 2% out of them. Or you can acknowledge their emotions, work with their emotions, coach and train them, teach them, support them, validate them without losing any stat— in fact, you'll gain in stature when you do that. And you'll get 100% of the people, you'll get 100% of every person that comes in, in, in the door. What do you want, 2% or 100%?

Well, I think the thing of it is, is that One of the things that I see when we're with my clients who are trying to get engagement, who want things to be better, who are really looking for a solution about how do I help engage people more, being able to say to your example, how much of a percentage do you want? That piece, it doesn't happen instantaneously. And I don't think it needs to. I do think that what we want to— back to the point about emotion— if you listen well and you feel like your work matters and you are heard, everything gets easier. And isn't that more productive? Isn't that more engaging? Isn't that more efficient? And so one of the things that I like to ask my clients when they're— I work with, as you do, a lot of stress and strain that CEOs face around, oh gosh, I have this problem person, or I have this problem situation, right? And the equation is, how many hours have you spent avoiding the conversation?

Exactly.

Multiply that, and then what's your hourly?

Well, take your annual. You're taking a page out of my book.

Oh good. Yeah. So it's just like, what's the cost? And then what's that person's salary? And what's everybody else that's involved? You've been avoiding a meeting for 6 months.

Yeah. So the way I, I do exactly the same thing, only I, I do it a little different. I say, all right, how many hours a week do you spend in this with, with the fights and arguments going on in your business?

Yeah.

What's the time value of your productivity? Not your, because right now the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the average worker's productivity is worth $120 an hour.

Yep.

It doesn't take long for it to add up.

No, it adds up really fast.

It's like a quarter million dollars, three quarters of a million dollars a year, a quarter. I mean, it can be huge.

It can be huge depending on how many people are involved.

Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I'm pleased that you, you use the same kind of cost benefit analogy. Yeah. Because so, so many people don't, are not able to put a price on these skills.

Well, and that's the thing is that when we were just, you know, one of the things that I really work with is a lot of intergenerational environments, right? Like, which is, I love, you know, I'm, I'm smack dab Gen X. You can't get any more Gen X than I am. So, I mean, in my first executive role, I was managing people who are from the age of 18 to 73, and I was 25.

Wow.

It was like, ah, you know, okay, hold on. But it was really fun because being able to stand in both the industrial and the information age, And to have conversations that help eliminate confusion and value differences of work, that's just interesting. And to be able to say, OK, what did you mean by that when you said you wanted me to show up on time? Oh, yeah, I have a totally different understanding of what it means to be on time. Let's talk about that. And let's— I mean, it seems ridiculous. Like, shouldn't people know?

No.

Well, especially coming out of the pandemic, Why would they know when people have never had to work in person, right? Why would they know that, right? Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and be generous.

And so there, that's another example of the things you were talking about before about how we make all these implicit assumptions about this. And it's those assumptions that get us into trouble.

Oh, raging trouble. It's horrible, right?

Exactly.

Yeah.

But I also think it's an opportunity if we listen to what we are saying we want, reflect on our assumptions, unpack what our expectations are, do an inventory of our expectations, which we don't often think to do. As a CEO, so many people that, well, why do I expect people to do a good job? What do I mean by a good job? Where did I get the expectation that timeliness is important, or that integrity is important? Those kind of— those questions. When was the last time you asked yourself that? And for most people, it's never. It's just because it's the way it works. So taking even an hour to unpack that in your life and reassemble— and I mean literally, like, pull up, pull out the ideas, lay them out on, on the floor and see what you got. And then see what works and what doesn't, what you need to share with others. That's such an efficient way to start communicating more efficiently.

That's right. As I was listening to you talk about these assumptions, what does it mean to show up on time? What does it mean to work hard? What does it mean to do this? A lot of this goes back to these are cultural and societal implicit rules and norms that are unspoken and unstated that everybody just sort of knows.

Right. It's like the white, it's like the white noise of cultural behavior.

Thorsten Veblen and the Protestant ethic, right? That's what he unpacked all this stuff back in the '90s or whenever he wrote this. I mean, the guy's a genius.

Yeah.

Um, but he, he unpacked, for those that don't know, Thorsten Veblen was a philosopher. I guess the best thing to call him is a philosopher who examined Western culture and the Protestant ethic. And what does that mean? What does it And he looked at this kind of stuff and looked at, looked at where, where it all came from. And so much of what he wrote about is so embedded in our culture today that we're, we're oblivious to it because it's, it's there. It's not something that we have to pay attention to.

Well, and it's multigenerational. It's cultural for hundreds and thousands of years, depending on your vantage point and disposition of where we've learned the rules of how we are to engage with each other. And that are perfectly good rules. But unless we explore them every once in a while and talk about them deliberately, we allow disappointment to run rampant when people don't meet our expectations.

Or we have assumptions around rules that are no longer adapted. Yeah. One of the things I advocate is that when you turn 12 years old, your parents should have a new talk and set up a whole new set of rules. Say, what we taught you at 2 years old was really important at 2 years old, but many of those rules no longer apply because you're going into adulthood and now you need to have adult rules. And here's how the rules change. But whoever gets— whoever gets that conversation—

well, well, because it's assumed that you will understand the, the gift or the gears that you are shifting. And I don't know that the gear— that the that the rules no longer apply, but your ability and skill to build upon them and cultivate them in a new language to translate what the basis of that rule might be and apply it to a wider variety of circumstance. That's a nuanced conversation that says, okay, so now let's review the rules from the last 10 years. What do you think? Which ones need to be updated?

Exactly.

And I think that updating is where We don't, we just expect people to get it just like on-the-job training. I mean, I talked to so many people, managers and executives who have gone up and have these beautiful careers because they're competent and they care and they have vision. But wouldn't it have been great if with your new business card you got like the magical skill download that was like, and now you know how to do this other thing. And we don't ever, we're not generous enough with people to go, oh, guess what? Now that you're going to do this other job, you're going to have to be able to deal with all these other kinds of conversations. And if we took the time to say, what have you been faking this whole time, right? Like, as a CEO, like, you've had a 30-year career and you still don't know how to do X, and now you just kind of pass it off to the people, you know, who are now report to you. We end up faking it in ways that sometimes work but mostly do each other disservices. And if we didn't have to fake, it'd be a lot more fun.

It would be.

Yeah.

And that would— and there is another implicit assumption in faking, and that is that I got to be a master of everything.

Sure. Look busy, look perfect.

Yeah. Instead of accepting vulnerability and humility, I don't know everything. This is my wheelhouse, is what I'm really good at. Right. I'm not so good at that stuff.

And to that point about listening to what's needed in an organization, we assume, we as leaders assume we have to know. And one of the things I really enjoy helping people remember, because I think there's a part of us that knows this somewhere, you don't have to know, but you have to be willing to find out.

Right. Right, exactly. And that you were just causing me now to spin and think about since you're from Harvard. The hypothesis, right? Adaptive leader.

For sure. Yeah.

That's exactly what it is. That's the adaptive leader.

Yep, exactly.

Mind willing to learn, as in Dweck's language, growth mindset.

Growth mindset. Exactly. You got it. You got it. And that just makes— it also lets the burden of performance go. You get to be new. You get to stumble. And also, the other thing about leadership is that we model what we want. And if you want people to learn and grow and say, hang on, I need help, or wow, I didn't understand that, or where can I go for more information, or hang on, I got to check my own understanding. If you model that and lead by example truly in your learning, it's the most generous thing you can do as a leader.

And I would also say it's the most powerful thing you can do as a leader. Because guess how humans learn? We're mimetic creatures. We learn by imitation.

That's right.

And, and we—

and imitation and the reward of going, wow, that worked, that was fun.

Absolutely, absolutely. So what do you—

how do you—

this— we've been talking, I think, at a pretty high level for a lot. Ground us down. When you're, when you're, when you're begin an engagement, what are the kinds of things that you do to help take these concepts we've been talking about and make them practical for C-level people?

It's a great question. So the first thing that— let's say somebody is coming in and they're trying to get a message out that's, you know, let's make sure our strategy is clear or that we're enacting. Let's just grab the value statement. Great. And what are your values? And our values are integrity and teamwork and pick your values. And they're all right. They're all fabulous. But how do you, or how are you really describing them? And one of the things I do is go in and have people do something as concrete as draw what teamwork looks like to them physically. Draw it down. You know, the whole design thinking thing. What is, how do you know when teamwork is really showing up well? What does that look like? So you can identify it when you see it. And by what people draw and what they define and how they explain themselves in how they're thinking of a word like teamwork or honesty or integrity or timeliness or innovation. However they're describing that, let's create a shared definition so that some of those tacit expectations or assumptions come out literally in the conversation so we can build a shared understanding. And even if it's not identical, that's OK. One person says, wow, I really notice teamwork when people close the loop with me and really keep me involved, or when people just take the ball and run with it, or whatever it is. That's fine. But then there's— it decreases the likelihood of misinformation, especially at a leadership level, and miscommunication because of projected understanding or assumption so that people can go, oh, okay, that's why you do that thing that way that I never understood that makes me crazy. Okay, I got it now. Right? So that level of really, first of all, exploring, just let's describe what we're talking about. And then how do we want to enact in that? So I really try to talk about character as, especially for senior leaders, what— so your character is developed by enacting your values consistently over time. What are your values? The qualities of character that you want to embody— curiosity, trust, courage, kindness, tenacity, all of those things. And I start with helping people explore that for themselves and then taking it to whatever the next level of their team is. Just from a really open, grounded, shared conversation so that we have a shared language. Then going things like, okay, how are we communicating? What are the tools that we have? And what my book does is break down these really foundational tools that we assume everybody knows, like how to get commitment on something. It's a yes/no question. Let's just ask it, see what goes, happens from there. And then also, what are the key behaviors that we expect from each other? How to talk about them so that you can move effectively and communicate well from a place that is grounded in your character and feel good.

And I would add one more. Okay. What do we do when somebody falls off the wagon?

It depends. It depends on whether or not they jumped or where they fell.

Yeah. I mean, I mean, one of the things that I've, I've learned in my peacemaking work, we reach, to reach a durable agreement, we want to say, what are all going to get all the things to get in the way of doing what we say we're going to do?

And then follow through. Absolutely.

Exactly. Accountability. And then what is— how are we going to handle the inevitable problem that comes up?

That's right. Well, I think troubleshooting for that, when it goes poorly— what is it going to look like when it goes well, and what do we do when it goes poorly?

There you go.

And how do we want to help each other? To that point of follow-through commitment, um, and what, what you're looking at, I've labeled efficiently the 4 things to do forever. You just do them forever. Communication gets easier. And the fourth thing is follow through. What do you do when someone doesn't— when somebody lets the team down or lets you down or misses the mark or whatever it might be? How do you repair that? How do you reconnect and how do you reengage? Exactly.

I think that when you start thinking that way and anticipate the problem, the problem goes away.

Well, and if the problem— It, or it's not a surprise. And I think it's the surprise that, that bums people out. And so if we can, yeah, so in that, so seeing the vision, what are we going to do and how do we know if it's working? So those are some really concrete questions that as I help people map out their strategy or what their plan is, what their game plan is about their internal communication, what are we going to do when it works and what are we going to do when it doesn't?

So sounds like a This, your process sounds, sounds really cool.

I, I mean, oh, and it's illustrated too, so it looks really awesome. When you—

now, how do you maintain accountability and support? Because you can't go in and just do it. You and I both know you can't go in and do a one-off and expect there to be change. It's— this is something that has to happen over time. So how do you manage accountability and support to support people while they're going through this change process?

Right, it depends on what they're needing. If somebody really just needs to have a conversation to introduce a topic, I'll go in and work with people occasionally, but that's very, very rare. Normally, I engage with people for longer periods of time, usually several months, just because even if it's from an executive coaching perspective, because of that consistency of practice, because you can read a book and if, or, you know, what I like to call management model whiplash, um, is that, you know, you go to a really great seminar and it's awesome and you love it and you get so, but then you go and you're out of the lab essentially and you don't know how to practice. So to be able to reinforce to help people check for understanding whether or not what they've learned is applicable. That needs to be carried through. And depending on the circumstance, that can be for a few weeks. It can be— it ends up normally being months because I usually have fun with people and we have a great time working together. But, and I, and I mean that sincerely, like, I do my work because I'm very committed to the fact that work should be a better experience for more people. Um, and the longevity of practice and support is that I got to practice what I preach. Like, if you got to— if you need help practicing, then let me help you practice and let me help you get it right. Um, which I know you, you do the, the same thing, Doug, of, of being able to stick the landing and then let's keep going and seeing.

Not just sticking the landing. I'm a pilot too. It's not just sticking the Runway, right?

Yeah, let's just keep going.

We're not, we're not done once we're on the ground. We got to roll the airplane out and taxi it in. And we have, there's a lot to do once.

And the other thing too is that it's kind of, I don't know if you have this, but sometimes you do really well as an organization and you're like, yeah, thanks so much. We've been working with this for 3 months, 6 months, whatever it is. And then next year or 5 years or whatever, wow, we, we need, we need a tune-up.

Right.

So tune-up happens every once in a while. And that's fun too.

Well, you know, and that's because people come and go. And a couple of core people remember everything, but they see that the culture has changed because the people—

Or circumstances are surprising. And you want backup. I mean, that's what the cool thing about— I don't know if you find this, Doug, but the cool thing about helping people get really good at using their internal holistic resources about how they think, how they feel, and what they do is that it's good to know that it's not a one-shot deal, that you're going to have backup over time, that you're going to be seen and heard consistently as a person with support from somebody who has your best interest at heart.

Um, you're not alone.

Yeah, you're not alone, and it's, and it's going to be okay, and you might have a good time in the process.

Yeah, it's a big deal.

Yeah.

Well, Laurel, this has been a really inter— I'm going to ask you the question I would ask my typical— you're not my typical guest, my— any of you watch podcast, you know what the question is. What's one thing about yourself that we would never know unless you revealed it?

I can sort salmon by species.

You can sort salmon by species?

Yeah, I worked in an Alaskan, uh, cannery after I went to my undergrad and trade school. And, um, yeah, because that's a thing people do. And, uh, yeah, so I worked in cannery.

So you can a coho from a—

Oh yeah, I know my king salmon from my coho from my— Yeah, I know. Yeah.

You know them all.

Yep.

That is really unusual.

That's an unusual skill in your, in your average management consultant.

Yep. Well, this has been a great conversation. Thanks so much.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.