230 - Keys to Success: Adaptability, Prioritizing Progress, and Efficient Time Management with Erin Alli

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 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.

Aaron Ollie, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the founder of Operational Leadership Solutions, found at operationleadershipsolutions.com. Thanks for joining me today.

Thank you for having me.

So first of all, tell us a little bit about what you do and then how you got to where you are today. What's your journey?

Sure. So I am a fractional COO and a copywriter, and it all started actually years ago when my son was little. He was about a year old and he had asthma, so I couldn't work for somebody else and decided to start my own business and just looked for what I could do and still be home and went into, became a virtual assistant at the time, went into online business management from there and just grew my business as my son grew up too. So he was always right next to me through everything, but I wanted something that could make it easy for me to be available for him or go to doctor appointments, things like that, and, and still be able to contribute to the household too.

So when you talk about a fractional COO, Chief Operating Officer, what exactly do you provide in terms of services?

Yep. So our services include, we, we work with really busy, high-performing CEOs that are looking to grow their business, but they are still the bottleneck in a way because they're trying to do all of the things and they have all these amazing ideas, but they can't get everything implemented. So we help them with the strategy, the implementation. The putting all the systems in place, making sure that the systems that they have are working the way they should and everything's aligned with what their goals are and where they want to be in their business.

That's quite a skill set. How did you develop that set of skills?

Yeah, I hear that a lot. I am a lifelong learner, so I love learning, not so much when I was in school, but afterwards. So I actually have a graphic design degree. And I've been a copywriter for 20 years as well. And I've worked in administration, operations, things like that. And just for fun, I took coaching courses and just, I love expanding on the skill sets so that I can help my clients in more ways and even friends, family, whoever.

Mm-hmm. So today you've taken all these skills you've developed and figured out how, how to help entrepreneurs take a business concept, a new business idea, startup idea, and move it to a place of scalability.

Yes.

Hmm, interesting. So what is it that gets you up in— what, what gets you up in the morning to get you to go to work and get you excited to do the things you do?

Yeah, so I love working with all different types of businesses because everything is a little bit different. There's no— you're not doing the exact same thing every day. But I also love the part of being able— I can take the coaching aspects of what I know for mental health coaching and health coaching in general and use that to help the CEOs that I work with to make sure that they're not overworking, not taking care of themselves, not getting burnt out. So teaching them what they need to know to, or reminding them sometimes just what to put in place so that they're not, so that they're not overdoing it and can keep growing and taking care of themselves and keeping their health and mental health and physical health all at the same time.

So I'm curious, you've worked, you worked with a number of CEOs. I'm sure you've seen CEOs who've been turned out to be very successful and some who have not been so successful. What do you think are the differentiating qualities between success and failure as a CEO?

Yeah, so I think the difference in it is what they're willing to put in as well as their mindset. So I tend to look at, I don't look at failure as failure unless you're quitting what you're doing. It's rather a learning experience. Sometimes we'll do replays of events or launches or something and just see what works and what could be changed, things like that. And having that open mindset of being able to I have the fly. Did you see the fly? Just being able to adapt to what they're, what they're doing and how they want to grow. So if something's not working, being open to having it work better or looking at options that could work and not just being stuck in, we have to do one thing that way because that's holding them back from growth is how they're not going to succeed as a CEO.

So what kind of diagnostic tools do you use when you're— somebody, a potential client calls you and decides to engage you as a fractional COO, part-time COO. How do you— what's your diagnostic approach to figuring out what do we need to do here to scale this business?

Yeah. So one of the first things that we do is go in and we'll have a conversation. So I want to know all about what they're currently doing. What their goals are, where they, where they see themselves and their business in the next year, 3 years, 5 years, so that then we can deep dive into everything that they have in place currently and decide what they still need in place, what they can improve on, what, what aspects they may be doing things differently than they need to be. So sometimes I've gone into businesses and they're using 4 or 5 systems to do that, all do the same thing instead of just combining it into one. So breaking things down to make it simple as well is what we do. And then making sure that their inbox isn't overflowing with 10,000 emails, they can't find things, all of that. So organizing, systematizing, and just putting everything into a flow, automation.

So how do you distinguish a mindset that's going to be successful from a mindset that's gonna struggle?

Yeah. So a mindset that struggles is somebody who, they go, they might go for all the coaching and all of the learning and they have the ideas, but they're not implementing anything or they're holding back from pulling the trigger on launching. Their website or their book or whatever it is that they have, um, where that success mindset is more progress over perfection. So they're not waiting for everything to be perfect before they can launch it, before it can go out in the world. They're launching it and then fixing it from there, altering it as they get feedback on things, and just waking up each day with looking at it as a new day. So not letting what happened yesterday or last week affects how they're planning everything today.

And when you're working with people who've, who've got a, a mindset that's, they, they're either procrastinators or they have fear, or they got some kind of barrier that's getting in their way, how do you help them overcome that?

That's actually where my coaching comes in. So I'm known for, and I tell clients right up front that when they work with me, I'm going to tell them what they need to hear, not necessarily what they want to hear. So if I see something not working, I'm going to let them know. I'm not going to just give them a problem though. We work through solutions and things, but that's, that's where I can take that, that coaching piece and pull out like, why are they procrastinating? And dig a little bit deeper with them. Do the what-ifs. What if this happens? What if that happens? And run through those scenarios to show them that fear doesn't have to be in place or the fear of what are people are going to think when 9 times out of 10, those people that they're worried about aren't even thinking about them in the first place.

Isn't that the truth? As you probably know, I'm a lawyer turned peacemaker, and my big thing is listening. I teach a skill about how to listen other people into existence. When you're working with leaders as a fractional CEO, obviously listening is very important. How do you distinguish a good listener from somebody who needs some improvement?

So one of the, one of the things that I can pull out right away is even just how they have conversations or so team meetings are a great starter. That's one of the first places that I start because I wanna see how they interact with their team. Are they listening? Are they giving the team time to express themselves and to talk about wins, even if it's personal, getting to know them, or are they just cutting them off and jumping to what their agenda is, or cutting them off from questions and making that question seem like it never should have been asked, or versus are they actually listening to them and listening for what they're saying as much as what they're not saying? Because a lot of times there's a lot between the lines that you can hear if you're actually paying attention to what's going on.

And when you find a client who is not listening very well, Mm-hmm. How do you help them pay attention? Because it's such a— I'll just say that we, we're never taught how to listen as children. We are ordered to listen. It becomes a command, and it's a command all the way through school. Listen.

Mm-hmm.

About how to do it. And so people pick up, they either pick up the ability to be a good listener, either they find somebody like me who's teach them the skills, or they just do it by osmosis and watching people and trial and error. And, but most people are not very good listeners, and it's so easy to get distracted. Somebody says something, it triggers a thought, then your brain goes off this way, and you're now, you just lost 5 minutes of what's been talking about. How do you help people get out of that mode where they really truly can listen?

Yeah, one of the things I try and remind them to do is stay in the present moment. One of my, one of my pet peeves is actually when you're having a conversation with somebody and on their phone or they're texting or they're— and especially if they're the ones that have invited you to have this conversation and they're, oh, hold on, I have to, I have to respond to this text or I have to update my game that I'm on or whatever it is. They're clearly not listening to what you're saying in, in that situation. And there's different levels of listening. So you have that, you're listening in general, hey, how you doing type of listening. And then there's, it gets deeper and deeper from there. Really being present and listening to what they're saying, as well as listening even deeper to what they're not saying. So you can gauge, a lot of times you can gauge how they're feeling, what emotion's going on at the time. A lot of that can just listening closely to what they're actually saying. So it's more of a practice.

I think the hardest, it is a practice, and I think the hardest thing for people, especially when they would get distracted by their phones or tablets or whatever, is they're bored.

Mm-hmm. Yes.

How do you teach? How is it that we can help people not only not be bored when they're listening, but be deeply engaged? And the way I do it is by teaching people to ignore the words and focus on the emotions that people are experiencing as they talk.

Mm-hmm.

And when you do that, your brain becomes fascinated and engaged. And the last thing you wanna do is pick up a phone and watch because you're more interested in, wow, what's this person experiencing right now?

Oh, I love that. Yeah. Yeah. I, a lot of times when they don't have that focus too, or they get distracted, there's, I'm very like hyperactive myself, so especially if I'm on a, like, a longer Zoom call or a meeting or something like that where some parts of the meeting may not have to do with me and you just drift, but you still have to be present. So in those instances, I would, like, on the side of my desk, I actually have little, the ADHD things, like, so it might be a rubber band or something that I can snap or one of those, like, pop things or even just a stone too that I can rub and just keep my focus on that conversation versus wanting to drift off to do something else. Hmm.

So you got a little ADHD or something?

I do. I do.

Being focused can be difficult.

Yes.

One of the things that I just, I read a study earlier this year about aromatic essential oils and when you spray aromatic You use a diffuser and you diffuse the aromatic oils into your bedroom for 2 hours every night. I think there was a Japanese study that showed that it decreased dementia by 40%.

Yeah, they do a lot. I actually do have a diffuser in all different rooms of the house. I use 'em, even my grandkids use 'em too. And yep. All the different ones.

I was gonna say my wife has, suffers from ADHD and she's noticed since we started doing this that she's become more focused in her thinking.

Yes.

I thought was pretty, pretty powerful. But our olfactory system is so entwined into our brain that, yeah, that it can help us focus. So how do you help? You can see that you got a client who is not present, is distracted, goes to the phone, doesn't pay attention, thinks that he or she can multitask, thinks that they can manage all this stuff and they all, and of course they can't, right?

Multitasking is like the worst myth out there. Like, you're not actually more productive. You're less productive when you multitask.

There's no such thing as multitasking. Proven over and over again. Our brains can only do one thing at a time.

Yep.

And then it gets difficult because we have a task-focused system in the default mode, which is our social system. And so that means that when we're task-focused and we're focusing on a task, we can't be social. So you've had the experience where you've been really focused on something and maybe one of your kids or grandkids comes up to you and says, pay attention to me. And you get annoyed there for a second, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Because you're in task-focused mode and you have to stop being in task-focused mode and shift to social mode to be able to connect with people. And, and the two modes are antagonistic to each other. It's either on or it's off either way. And, and getting back into that previous mode is, it takes a couple of minutes.

Yeah.

And so for people to think that they can multitask is just, it's just an excuse. I, I see it as mental laziness. They're not willing to learn how to be disciplined and focus one thing at a time until it's completed. Because again, they get bored really easily. They need to be distracted. They need to be entertained because they have, they don't have the, the cognitive discipline to stick with a task. How do you help people overcome that?

So some of the things that I do with clients would— it's time blocking is a huge one. So making sure that they are blocking out time to work. So I have a lot of clients who, because they are, they're busy a lot. So they have a lot of phone calls and Zoom calls and different things going on and meetings and all, but they still have to have that work time. We, when I look at their schedules, one of the things we do is block like their phone calls, Zoom calls, like certain times, certain days, and then have at least a few hours blocked out throughout the week on certain days just for work time. So that's nothing's getting scheduled over that. And a lot of times too, I'll tell them to set an alarm on their phone. So even if it's for an hour, so you're working head down focused on what you're doing for an hour, and then maybe you take a 5-minute break, 10-minute break, get up, walk around, get a glass of water, center yourself before you go back into either that task that you are working on or the next task and setting the intention for the next task as well before just jumping into something.

I agree with that. I, I agree with that. In fact, there are apps both on, on iOS systems and, and Microsoft systems. In Microsoft 11, for example, there's an embedded app under the clock function that allows you to set a timer.

Yep.

That sort of fact. I'm, I'm pretty sure iOS has this and Apple computers have the same thing. The other thing that I'm really big on is making lists to overcome the overwhelm. You write down the list of all the things that you need to do, then you prioritize them with the most important being at the top.

Mm-hmm.

And you only work on the first 3 things and you ignore everything else.

Mm-hmm.

And then when you get those first 3 done, then the next 3 pop up, and you, then you add, keep adding to the bottom of the list. But keeping lists of tasks and deadlines and prioritizing.

Yeah. Or can keeping that like just a small notebook next to you. So as something pops into your head, you can just jot it down quick and then it's out of your head. It's on paper and you can go back to focusing on what you're focused on rather than thinking, oh, I have to remember that for 3 hours from now.

If you look at my desk. Yep.

Mine looks the same. I have my little index cards, my sticky notes and yep.

Yep.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And I'll even set alarms in my phone for different things. If I, if I have to remember something later in the day to do, or even when my next call is, if I have my work time blocked out and then my call, I'll actually set an alarm on my phone. So it goes off 15 minutes before the call so I can wrap up what I'm doing and get ready for the call and be present for the calls.

Yeah. I've gotta, I gotta work on that system a little bit. I have a bad habit of booking Zoom calls back to back. So I might be, I, before we jumped onto this, I was working with a client of mine and I'm teaching him how to train my material, but I didn't even get a break. I said, gotta go. See you later. And I'm on this call.

A lot of CEOs do that too. They're, they book everything back to back, but they forget that they need a break or a food break or whatever. And then by mid, like, I had one client who by the end of the, you know, late afternoon, she would just be hangry because she was like, I'm starving. I can't, I haven't had a break all day. And I'm like, that's why you have to add those breaks in.

The way I tell people to think about it is before the pandemic, when we were, when people were in offices, you would never have back-to-back meetings. We'd one meeting to another meeting to a meeting with no breaks. You always had at least 15 or 20 minutes between a break. You get up, walk out, go to the bathroom, go to the break room, get a cup of coffee, have a granola snack or something, and, and then move on to the next meeting. And one of the, one of the darker sides of being remote and working virtually is that you can book yourself all the way through, and you have to be about managing.

Today was a little unusual.

I now get an hour and a half break between my with my next call. So you can space them out, but yeah, it can, it can be a real burnout, and people don't recognize how exhausting it is, right? And presence, and every hour on the hour you're in another meeting.

Yes. And especially if you're extrovert versus introverts too. Extroverts will tend to book back to back, right? I'm more introverted, so I always make sure like my calendar is set up for a 30-minute in between, so nobody can book back to back with me in case it goes over or in case something happens.

Right.

I just wanna break from talking for a little bit. But yeah, I've noticed that like introverts tend to put really high boundaries around their time. I, I have certain days of the week that I'll do calls and not the other days, and extroverts will tend to take a lot of calls. So it's really important to set those boundaries around. Your time too.

No, I get it. I'm an introvert too. And, and I, I recognize that pushing energy out, it can be exhausting.

Yeah.

About how I do it. Interesting. So describe for me your perfect client. Where, how would I recognize your perfect client if, if he or she were walking down the street?

Yeah. So my perfect client is actually the really high energy CEOs. So they, they may be a little Type A, which I am myself. So I work really well with that type of client and the, the type of person that knows what they want to achieve. They know where they wanna be with their business, where they wanna go, and they know that they need the support and they're open to getting that support and learning along the way. Because I feel that no matter who we work with, we're always learning from those people. There's always something new we can learn or a different way to do things and being somebody being open to that, whether it's an admin on their team or whether it's somebody at their own level or even a, a mentor that's higher, they're always open to learning and being open to looking at different ways to do things.

Okay. One more question and I'll let you go. What's one thing about yourself, Erin, that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

So I am actually an animal lover. So in addition to my current business, I have 28 years experience with working with animals and rescue and things like that. So I actually work really well with rescue dogs that are a little more difficult, I guess you would say. So the ones that are harder to adopt out or once they're in a home, a little bit harder to take care of. So I usually, I do pet sitting in homes too and help work with those animals so that they're a little more socialized and calmer down the line. So.

Good for you.

That's great.

That's neat to hear. Erin, thank you so much for your time today. It's been a really wonderful conversation.

Yes, same. Thank you.

Welcome.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who 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 hashtag #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 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.