Confidence through Focused Action with Tamra Gaines - Keep It Human!

Today we have somebody I wanted to introduce you to for a long time, Tamara Gaines. I met her in Texas while I was speaking for the Cornerstone Credit Union League, and she's left the corporate world and she's now consulting and training leaders in the credit union industry and beyond. So let's get to it with Tamara Gaines. All right, as promised, here's my friend Tamara. Tamara, nice to have you on Keep It Human.

Thank you. I love the title, Keep It Human, although that's a lot of pressure, right?

These days, these days. But I'm glad to make the disclaimer, this is not AI-generated. I just saw this thing this morning, this AI platform that takes transcripts of You don't even have to— it can just be a blog post and it turns it into a conversation.

Oh, wow.

That's weird.

Yeah, it's absolutely amazing. And I think, you know, for me and for others I know that utilize, you know, AI chat, that sort of thing. Now we're having to layer, you know, other things to keep us from plagiarizing. Like, how do I make sure that I stay authentic to my voice, my brand, my content? But utilizing this, the software in a way to, you know, enhance it or make it, make it better, make it grammatically correct sometimes, because I write like I speak, which is not always grammatically correct.

Well, I'll tell you what, you just set, you just set up the episode pretty nicely because talk about plagiarism. I'm working on this article, I haven't put it out yet, why I'm not suing HBR for plagiarism, and I'll explain it real quick. One of the recent articles that they posted was a research project that someone had done and posted there. They identified that the 3 most important things people needed to perform effectively at their jobs was leaders who care, a purpose, and the tools they need, and some direction, training and support. They almost verbatim, here's how I say it, People perform at their best when and only when they know their leaders care, their work has meaning, and they have the chance to learn, grow, and develop. So I'm not suing them because first of all, they're right. And I didn't invent the idea. That's just how I put it in words. I learned it as a sensei. I learned it from the ancient masters. I don't think these are new ideas, but I'm glad that they did the research and validated it. And that leads to one of the things I wanted to ask you about. I know one of the things you work on so much And one of the things that people need, especially as leaders, and need to share with their people is cultivating influence, but with confidence. And I'll add the caveat, 'cause I'm cheating 'cause I know you well, with humility, with that sense of humility that we learn so well, and hopefully in martial arts, right? Because we don't want to be arrogant, we don't want to be authoritarian, but that influence with confidence. Can you explain? Can you go into that a little bit deeper?

Yeah, I think, I mean, the foundation for me, it really is the confidence, right? Because when you can portray some level of confidence in whatever it is that you do, then not only is that influencing yourself, but then it becomes, you become an influence for others as well. And, you know, there are times when you can be be the most confident in a particular area of your life, but maybe not in another area of your life. So being a confident person doesn't necessarily mean having confidence in all areas. Um, and quite honestly, sometimes I think we can— well, I know we can portray confidence, but that might not be what we're feeling inside. Right, you know, and so the foundation is that awareness of it, that working toward, uh, you know, having it, gaining it, obtaining it, and then releasing it and empowering others to have the confidence as well. You know, we all have a— we have a role in that. And I think it's that releasing, that empowering others is, is part of that influence, right? Because then want to hear you, they want to follow you.

I think we need to dig into that pretty deeply, but the— because the other thing too that I'm interested in hearing your perspective on, you tell me what you think about this, because confidence obviously is a big issue in martial arts. In fact, you look up any ad for a martial arts center and you'll probably see self-confidence as one of the benefits that they preach that you're going to get, right? And, you know, I would argue this, and this is the imprint from that world to the world of leadership, that you know, certainly, I think too many people confuse confidence with the surety of an outcome. You know, I'm confident and maybe I'm the only boxer that ever did this. But when people would ask me, are you going to win? I said, I don't know. I don't know how the other guy trained. I don't know what I'm getting into here. But anyway, to me, authentic confidence, and again, this is what I learned as a martial artist, is really based on your training and preparation, right? I can't control the outcome., you know, at least not 100%. I can't control other people's reaction to what I do, but I can damn sure control my training and preparation, how well I'm prepared to meet that challenge. And that's what I'd say. I mean, in the ring, and I said this, you know, I was a boxer. I wasn't a very good one. I can accept someone beating me, but I was not going to let somebody beat me because I wasn't prepared. Does that make sense? Are we singing in harmony, you think?

Yeah, no, I definitely agree with that thought process. And it's interesting when you liken it to an activity, right? In your case, it's like, am I going to win? Well, the confident person says yes, even when the little inner voice inside might be saying, I'm not sure. But I'm going to portray that level of confidence, and it's either going to make the other person have some level of fear that, that I'm gonna beat them in this particular instance, um, or it's going to lift yourself up, right? Because it's that positive reinforcement of, yes, I can do this, or I'm qualified, I'm prepared, to your point. And, uh, and all of that helps to kind of lift us up and help us feel empowered in whatever it is we're doing, whether it's in the ring or in the office.

Yeah, and doesn't that also help us when, you know, when we do get knocked down? Because what was the study that was done some years ago? They studied the greatest success stories in business and industry all over the world. And we're talking like, you know, Steve Jobs level people here. And the question was an interesting question. They want to know how many times these people had catastrophic failures on the way to what we all see as their success, right?

Right.

And they found that the average in business was something like 5 or 6 catastrophic business failures. So it seems to me that, you know, people that are authentic— again, I'm going to use that word— authentically confident, they don't seem to be afraid of failure. They're not afraid of losing, right? They might tell themselves they're going to win, but they're not afraid of that. Maybe that's what gives them the ability to dust themselves off and get back up.

I don't know.

What's the secret?

I love the concept of like hurry up and fail fast. I think when you walk into, you know, the process of ideation and innovation with the thought of everything is not going to be a winner, every idea is not going to be excellent, and not everything is going to execute into success. But if we can walk into it with the thought of, well, let's hurry up and fail fast, then number one, I think it gives us a little grace to fail, that it's okay because we're expecting it. And, and back to your point, how many times do we have to fail before we can succeed? And, but let's do it quickly, and, you know, and then let's move on. Because so oftentimes, especially I think in a corporate environment, we have an initiative, have a strategy around it, we go and then we go and we go, and it's maybe not quite panning out, but nope, we've committed to this because we told the board we were going this, and we keep going and keep going until, you know, it's like we're waiting to get to the end of the year to reevaluate or to reestablish a new goal. It's like, no, let's, let's stop and go numerous times, you know, throughout the year so that what we're getting is that achievement at the end of the year toward whatever, whatever it is that's best for our clients, our customers, our members, our organization.

Ourselves.

Yeah, ourselves.

Absolutely. I'm glad you brought that. I'm glad that that's what you teach and that's what you emphasize. I think we need more of that because, you know, I'm wondering, I'd like to hear your perspective on this. I'm wondering if shielding people, you know, at least a couple generations here, we've taught people to be afraid of failure or to avoid failure. And I'm pretty— I don't know if I've ever told you this story, but I remember a workshop I was doing a couple of years ago where You know, you do the same thing. Sometimes these workshops can get very intense. People are exposed to their own feelings. And this one young manager, she was in tears. We'd been talking about failures. And I thought, oh my goodness, did I say something horrible? So I went over and talked to her and she said, no, no, she said, you just— I failed for the first time this week. I said, okay, at work? No, I failed for the first time this week. And I'm thinking, well, geez, you know, I failed like 9 times this morning already, right?

Right.

But okay, tell me more. And in talking to her, I realized that she had been sheltered from failure. Now, of course she had failed, but she'd never been made aware of it, right? Someone had always come in and finished the job for her or fixed things and made it right. And then the other thing is, I said, I asked her, I said, well, why didn't you ask for help? And she said, I never had to. And there it is again, right? People stepped in. And so she did not know how to reach out for help. I mean, did we just cripple a lot of people with this, this fear of failure?

Yeah. And, you know, surrounding ourselves with enablers, right? The people that, that are always—

How do you get strong? How do you face failure if you're not exposed to the danger?

I look back at a time in my life, and I tell a different version of this story of this time in my life, of in my early 20s, I became a Mary Kay consultant and I had a great job in insurance, had been in insurance for 6 or 7 years at that point, became a consultant so that I could get my products wholesale and quickly, you know, rose through the ranks. Of, you know, I earned my car, a free car, in my first year, and I became a director in my second year. And here I was, I think 21, 22-year-old, managing a team of like 30 people. I had no coping skills. I didn't know how to, to deal with all of that. And I was getting great training, and my confidence was being, you know, boosted and built because of you know, the achievements that I was having. But the business side of it, I was failing at. And ultimately, you know, the story— I probably need to write a chapter on it. The story is the rise and the fall of my Mary Kay career, because in the span of 3 years, you know, I won the car. I should say earned the car because you earned the ride.

Right, right, right, right.

So, Jim Bouchard, but, you know, you earn the— I earned the car, I earned the directorship. And then a year later, you know, I lost it all. And but it was through that failure, couldn't see it at the time, right? Right then, I'm, you know, I'm heartbroken, I'm crushed, I'm embarrassed, I'm mortified, you know, trying to figure out what I'm going to, what I'm going to do. And, and then, you know, look back on it. And the greatest lessons that I learned are from the failing part of that story.

Amen.

And that's what you are able— that's how you're able to influence others, right? Because then you're able to take those learnings and, you know, yes, we can see when others are maybe on the verge of it, and it's not a matter of coming in and fixing it for them. It's a matter of sharing your perspective so that they can then make decisions of which path that they're going to go down, but then also allowing them to fail. You know, one of the questions that I often ask with my, um, in my executive coaching practice is, what's the cost of failure? Especially when I'm talking with executives that might be working through some team dynamics, or I might notice that they're struggling with delegation. And so, you know, I, I like to dig in and kind of find out, so what happens if you allow your team to go down this path?

Yeah.

Move forward with their idea and it doesn't work. What's the cost of failure from that? And 9 times out of 10, it's either, you know, a small monetary or it's pride, right? You know, we're going to miss a goal or the department's going to look bad or it might cost us a little bit of money. But what's the gain, right? What's the lesson? What does that team member gain because you trusted in them to move forward with their idea? Or, you know, what are they going to gain because you allowed them, empowered them to carry something through? And so, it's really interesting when they come back and they kind of share how it worked out. And the dynamics that came from it, not only for themselves, but for the team member that they did that with.

Now you're hitting it out of the park because part of that, and I understand the fears, don't get me wrong, I'm not diminishing the fears, we all have them. But there's a much greater risk in not allowing people to be exposed to risk and to grow, right? I mean, courage isn't the absence of fear. The absence of fear is stupidity. So we don't want to expose people to inevitable failure or to catastrophic failure. Those are the things we have to manage. Although sometimes that's worth the risk too, right? I mean, sometimes the greatest successes come out of, hey, this could be a catastrophic loss. But if we do this, we might have a victory we never thought possible. But yeah, hey, before we circle back and dig into that, I want to make sure people understand how to get in touch with you. So you can come in and workshop with them or speak at their event.

Absolutely. I am a certified leadership coach. And I'm also certified through John Maxwell through leadership. So I speak conferences, associations, and, uh, and then also executive coaching, do group coaching, next level leadership, you know, all the, all the way up. And so I have a lot of fun with that because every day is different, right? Sometimes I'm working with an individual and we're tackling a particular, you know, problem or issue or opportunity, and then sometimes I'm just providing value in a group setting or, you know, maybe providing value, hopefully, through, you know, a keynote or breakout session. So that's a lot of fun for me. And my website is my name.

Easy. And we're— yeah, and we're— it's probably appearing on the screen right now. So there you go. Yeah. And, you know, it's so cool to be able to do this because, you know, I share these people with you because I believe in them. I've heard Tamara speak before. I've We've had some nice conversations. I've known her actually for a long time now. And so I feel very, very confident in, in making, you know, an endorsement and say, hey, you know, she's somebody you want, you want to get involved with. So that's, that's really cool. Someone challenged him on that, Tamara. At least they say you recommend all these people. I said, no, no, I have them here because I feel good about them. Not because, right?

Yeah. And, you know, Jim, I was thinking, I was trying to think of how far we go back. And of course, you know, we're just talking about—

BC.

Yeah, my new gig, if you will, or what I'm doing in this life. But in my past life, I had a wonderful career as a, as a senior leader with meeting planning and, and leadership and development. And so one of the tasks there was to book fantastic speakers, right? And so, uh, I think you and I had our first engagement where I booked you probably 15 or years ago.

Wow.

And, uh, and one of the criteria in order to rebook someone is that, you know, you have to do a stellar job, right? You have to stand out above the rest. And so I, I know that we've had a couple of opportunities that I've been able to bring you in for that same reason. So I, uh, I considered it just an honor to be invited here, whether we were going to record it or not. Let's just, let's just chat.

Oh, it's cool. It's cool. I thought you, I thought you got— yeah, it was Cornerstone. When you were there, but I thought you guys had me back so many times just because I helped clear the tables.

It is a good quality when you're hands-on, but no, that's not it.

I know so many speakers, that's it. It can be a diva world, right? I'm not doing that. I think it was, uh, oh gosh, I'm spacing out her name, but somebody actually, somebody needed help clearing the table, so I said, no, I'm not doing anything. I'll give you— that's funny.

I know I do offer other speakers some tips on like what drives meeting professionals crazy. Yeah, you know, like don't do this or do this. This is, you know, this is good.

It's not my job, right? Yeah. All right, well, listen, again, getting back to the confidence issue, okay, because you're a very confident person, obviously. Yeah, you mentioned, I think, one of the keywords, certainly one of our keywords, one of the key disciplines that that we emphasize, right? Empowerment, getting people, you know, what they need to succeed. And I'm with you. I think confidence is one of those, one of those assets that people need to develop. And, and I'm not going to just say in management. I think at all levels, you know, you know how I feel about it. Leadership is not something restricted to rank or title. You know, we should cherish our leaders on the front lines too, because they're people who inspire the people around them. They empower people around. They guide the people around. Those are Essential Discipline. So this empowerment thing, how do we share that, that confidence? What's the best— how do you coach leaders into sharing that so that other people around them can become more confident? What are some of the key factors there?

Yeah, I mean, it really is by, I think, leading by example, right? From that standpoint of what is it that you're looking to attain or trying to achieve? Again, whether it's with an individual or whether it's with your team, and are you emulating that so that they have that influence, that, that vision to follow? Um, you know, empowering to me, the first thing that generally comes to mind is I go back to my, you know, corporate America days, and I always think of empowering from that standpoint of delegation, but not from delegation of the grunt work, right? We all—

not just cutting rules and stuff.

This isn't just giving you the crap. This is the delegation that's going to foster and build leadership skills and determining, you know, where is that gap? What do I need from this particular person? And what's the gap of maybe the skill set that they don't have? And then how can I empower them to gain that? Through an action, through an invitation to a meeting, through weekly coaching, through asking them their opinion. You know, I love it when team members come and it's like, okay, I've got this problem. Okay, how would, how would you handle it? Is the question that I ask back to them, because it's real easy. I've been doing this for 30 years, real easy for me to answer it. I can answer it in a New York minute. And we can move on. And we can get ahead of schedule. But the reality is then that person's not feeling empowered to make their own decisions. They're not feeling trusted with that. And as a leader, I'm also not hearing how would they handle it. Do I agree with it? You know, we can— my husband and I have this conversation because we math differently. He's really good with math. I'm not so good with math. We will come to the same conclusion eventually. It might take me a little bit longer, but we get there. We get there differently. And so how do you bring that into the workplace too, where you empower your folks to get there in the way that they get there? If I'm not doing the work, I'm not going to tell you how to do it. I'm going to let you know what the outcome needs to be. Now you go and figure that out. And if you need me, I'm here to support you.

No, and you hit a number of points. First of all, and I'm guilty of it too. I've been guilty of it many times where sometimes I get impatient, you know, if you know the answer. The flip side of it is this too. And the question underlying this one is gonna be, you know, how important is transparency in sharing information? Because especially if the organization is large or the phenomenon we see more and more now, people that come right out of school, right out of college, for example, and into management positions, particularly in industries where they might not have any other experience at all. One young man, I remember this when I was speaking in Cuba, this young manager from Jamaica, he was bristling a little bit at what we're talking about now. And he said, the example was, I said, you need to ask your people on the front lines what they're dealing with. You need to go to them. And have them lead you a little bit. And he said, well, if I do that, they'll think I don't know what I'm talking about. And I said, well, but you don't, right? You don't know what you're talking about. You haven't been in their shoes. You don't know what's going on down there. They are the people who have the information you need to make good decisions. Well, I couldn't hope for a better outcome. A couple of years later, ironically, at CU Leadership in Vegas— not, not this past one, but a couple of years ago— who comes running up the hallway but this guy He said, "You remember me from Jamaica?" I said, "Yeah, I do." And he said, you know, I said, "How things working out?" And he said his supervisors were still, they were still old school. So they were still a bit skeptical, but more important was his people were coming to him with ideas. They were starting to lead up organically. And the only thing I could offer him for encouragement, I said, "I know your leaders are still, you know, they're still old school." But I said, "You're going to be in their office." in a couple of years. You're the one making the change, right? So, let's get back. It's that idea. You know, how are you seeing the same thing? How valuable is it? How empowering is it for leaders to share information and share even sometimes I think stuff challenges, right? Trouble.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, you mentioned transparency, which yes, and vulnerability, right? And both of those things garner trust. And I think, you know, I talk a lot about trust. Because without it, it's hard to get the buy-in. It's hard to move the needle. So, yeah, so definitely the transparency and the vulnerability. And, you know, transparency with regard to business things. You know, that, you know, CFO entrusted me with information of, well, this isn't ready yet, we're not ready to launch, but it might impact your department. So I'm giving you a heads up so that you can kind of figure this out, but keep it on the down low. I feel trusted with this, you know, confidential information and empowered to get organized with whatever it is that I need to do in order to, in order to do that. But then the vulnerability comes in when someone's willing to share their failure or a struggle that they had. Or, you know, putting it out on the table to the point that you made with the person from Jamaica to be able to say, you know, I don't have all the answers. And the reality is, if you and I both know how to do the same thing, one of us is not needed. So there are going to be gifts that you bring to the table and there are gifts that I bring to the table. And it's okay that they're different.

I think that's right. Now, the leader thinks they can do everything isn't a leader at all. That's, you know, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, ego.

Yeah, but we've all met great leaders that tell us they are.

Ego with a title.

Yeah, I know, I keep saying every— it seems like every episode we end up talking about that. I've met more great orange belts than great black belts. Yeah, it's crazy. The best leaders are the people who are always trying themselves. You know, they lead, like you said earlier, lead by example. They're the ones who are constantly learning, growing, developing. You know, I say this every day, perfection is not a destination, it's a never-ending process, right?

Yeah, but it's almost like, I mean, you have to be, um, I mean, let me stop myself before I say you have to be. I believe that it's most common that it is the, the people or the leaders that are somewhat seasoned, whatever that means, whether it's 10 years or 40 years seasoned in a profession or what they're doing or just their career, to be able to look back on and see the progression, see the learning, see the failures and all of that. Whereas when you're newer in your career, you don't have, you don't have that hindsight. You don't have that history that, you know, helps to kind of paint that for you. And so therefore, I think, you know, it's that balance. It's incumbent upon those with experience to share it and be open to the fresh new ideas of people who are new to that profession or new to that position.

Well, especially as rapidly as things are changing. But before we wrap up, I want to flip that a little bit and ask you from the other side of that table, so to speak. Sometimes, especially when we're doing our Rising Leaders track, we'll run it, and I get it, we'll run into young leaders that are chomping at the bit. They want to, that's not the right way to say it, is it? Champing. I was corrected recently. It's champing at the bit. All right. So anyway, they're champing at the bit. They want to you know, they want to get the job done. And, you know, everybody above them is— they don't know what the hell they're doing. You know, I'm the new fresh guy on the block. I know what I bring, all the energy. Again, in martial arts, one of the great gifts that I learned from that, that practice is, you know, the sense of humility and deference, to have respect for the elders, which I, I think is sadly not lost, but it's certainly been diminished in our culture to a large degree. You know, what do you think about that? How do you help young leaders be confident yet still maintain that appreciation for the people who went before them?

Yeah, I think it really stems into learning what people value. And, you know, we can't group, we can't say that all women think this way or all men act that way any more than we can say—

Well, you can on Facebook.

All baby boomers, you know, all baby boomers are this or all millennials are that. And so I think, you know, the engagement with the conversations, learning about people, learning what they value, what is it that they're looking for, you know, it's that connection, it's that communication. And I think that's what fosters the mutual respect and the ability to kind of, you know, come together and work on work on some of these things together.

And we better do it. For the first time, Gallup just reported we have 4 generations in the same work environment.

There's 5, actually. There's 5 now?

Wow.

My bad. We're on the cusp of 5. But I'll tell you, we're about to lose— so in the next 6 years, if all the baby boomers retire— they're retiring at a rate of 10,000 per day. If they're retired in the next 6 years, when they're eligible. That's 78 million people, Jim, that are out of the workforce. And now our workforce is being led by Xers. I'm one of them. Millennials, Gen Z. And so what is that going to look like? That's where I think understanding what each of those generations in general value, and that's how our workforce and workplaces are going to change.

I'm glad you were diplomatic about that, 'cause I thought you were just gonna say, "When all those boomers die off." I'm married to a boomer, so. Like, I can see, you know, it's just where I am. I can see that end of it better than I can see this end of it now.

I know, I know, that's great.

The horizon is looming up, right? There you go. Well, listen, you've provided so many powerful insights, obviously, and I know we talked about, I hope we can tap you to be a regular here and invite you into, um, the live stream on the network. Because, uh, for people, keep the Keep It Human Network— Keep It Human Network, get involved with that. There's a free forever plan and then there's some tiered plans for people who want to get more involved. And, you know, it's been a dream of mine. You probably heard me talk about this ages ago. I wanted a platform where people could come together, share ideas, support one another as leaders all over the the world. So we finally got it and it's up and going. It's just the beginnings of it. So come on board and, and we'll have Tamara and other, other great leaders like her on there for our exclusive live streams. And that's where you'll get to interact with them and do some one-on-one stuff with them. Okay, cool. So Tamara, we're gonna have you back and we're gonna have you on that, right?

I love it. Absolutely.

One more time, let's tell people how to get to you.

Great. Come, come to my website, Tamara Gaines, T-A-M-R-A gaines.com, and I'm on, you know, LinkedIn under the same name. And I have a book, The Pillars of Confidence, and my Facebook page is Pillars of Confidence.

As we say in Maine, Tamara's wicked easy to find. No excuse not to find her.

I love it.

Thanks, Jim.

I appreciate you.