Leader to Leader: Louise Perrin

Foreign. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being with us today. This is JLC Media. It is an ongoing set of podcasts that talks about leadership from a conversational standpoint. So to say we are conversational leadership people is a bit jargony, but we use conversation as the medium for leaders to develop alignment and to achieve expected outcomes. This one is a special one for me. I'm going to get to talk with someone I admire deeply, that I had a very long relationship with and someone who brought multiple arenas from almost last to first in every one of her experiences. She's magnificent. Her name is Louise Perrin and she's going to tell you a little bit about herself and then we will launch into the very first provocation so you can learn more about her. Louise, so great to have you here. Tell us about you.

Okay, well, thanks, Ray. It's such a pleasure to be here and have a conversation with you this afternoon. I am a retired senior vice president with State Farm Insurance. I grew up at State farm. I spent 33 years with the organization. I started as an agent and then worked my way up through various leadership roles with the organization, where I retired as a senior vice president, where I had responsibility for one of our six market areas, where we had responsibility for the growth and profitability of all our PNC product lines, life, health, commercial insurance and financial services. I guess my claim to fame at State Farm was developing high performing teams where we consistently exceeded expectations and exceeded our result goals and profitability goals and growth goals throughout my tenure as a senior vice president. You know, now I spend my time helping organizations, nonprofits and startup organizations really grow and develop and help them meet the needs of their constituencies and customers.

That is wonderful. That is a great background and those of you that are listening can understand. Not only do I admire her, I'm honored that she's in this conversation with us because her leadership background is superior and she retired and didn't stop. She's continuing to hang out with people that are trying to develop themselves. It's just really wonderful. So we're going to start with a piece that really matters. One of the things that Louise and I chatted about is who is the first person that you lead, and the first person that you lead is always yourself. And so, Louise, talk a little bit about how you created space for you to be vulnerable and to learn right in front of everybody that you were leading at that time, which was just magnificent. So talk a little bit about how you developed your own leadership capabilities.

I guess it goes back to why I even Wanted to be a leader, whether it was to lead myself or lead others. I always had this passion about making myself, making others, making organizations, making systems better. And if you're not doing that, then what's your purpose for being here? And I always took that very, very seriously. And so one of the things that I had to think about was me and what was important to me and what value did I have to myself and to others, and understanding what that value was and what I was passionate about. And also just being comfortable with who I am as an individual because it's tough in business, especially for women and women of color. So you have to be very comfortable and confident in who you are because that authenticity is just so important.

That's magnificent. The authentic self sometimes drifts away on us. And I remember as a leader, and that's why this series is called Leader to Leader. As a leader, I would fall apart if I tried to make a decision that had an emotional edge to it. And I watched you time and time again making sure, wait a minute, we can be upset about this, but let's try and make the best ethical decision that we can moving forward. It was really good moving to that space of making decisions through conversation. What attracted you to conversational leadership and why do you still use it? I mean, it's amazing how it's still. It's almost like inside of you now. Talk to us a little bit about that.

It is. And I just saw the difference that it made, quite frankly, Ray, in my everyday practice, and the difference that it made in the teams that I led. But what really attracted me to it is I was sitting in meetings and we were having discussions, and oftentimes I didn't think the people in the meetings were really listening to what the other person was saying. They were too busy thinking about how they were going to respond to what they thought that person was going to say. And I just kind of stepped back and listening and. And just saying, are we really understanding what that person is saying? And instead of jumping in with what you feel you would do, or even what you thought they were saying is really asking questions to understand what that person was really saying. And when I started doing that, Ray, of trying to understand their perspective and what they were really saying and just asking questions and continuing to ask questions, not only did it help me understand what they were saying, but it helped me understand the value that they brought to that meeting or to that team. And I just reflect back on many instances like that, and that is why I continue to use conversational leadership. Just in my everyday practices, it's just a part of who I am.

It's somehow. Yeah.

Jumping to conclusions that oftentimes gets us in trouble.

And if there's an emotional edge to a decision, that ability to jump to a conclusion does get us in trouble. So what I heard you say was just beautiful. How do I not judge the other person's thinking, but try and understand it? And of all the people that I've worked with, Louise, you disciplined yourself to do that. I could even. Because when I got to know you well, I couldn't even notice. Your eyes might flash. Like, what? And then you pivoted to what? Tell me more about that. Wait a minute. I don't understand that position. That was just.

I had to watch my body language because a lot of times I. I would lean, you know, I would lean in and I would. I would jump. And then I said, okay. And I would have to actually physically lean back and just relax and listen.

I love it, I love it, I love it. And really, what you're describing is in the literature right now, especially with the. The pandemic, and the pandemic's not over. Everybody wants to say, what was it like? When it's over, it's not over. The things are continuing, and your ability to listen and to listen, to understand was magnificent. So I'm going to stay there for a minute. How did listening like that produce the kinds of relationships that you wanted? And why did that matter?

You know, I think the listening really helped me better understand the people I was leading, the people on my team, the smaller team. But your team is really throughout the organization, and so it just expands from there. But when you really listen and you understand a person, you start to build that relationship with them because you start to know them better. One of the things and why this is important, because when I became a leader, I had to really sit down and understand what is my purpose as a leader? What is my purpose? And after a lot of thought and help from you, Ray, my purpose became simple. And it was my. It never changed from team to team, because I think it works for every team that I ever led. But my purpose was simply this. To create an environment where everyone on the team adds value. They understand how they provide that value, and where we individually and collectively achieve beyond what we thought possible. And that beyond is important because if everyone's just achieving what they thought possible, then why am I even there as a leader? They would be able to do it anyway. So my whole purpose was to take them beyond what they thought was possible for them individually and their goals and our goals collectively as a team. And the only way I could do that was to understand my team members and understand what is, what is or was important to them and create an environment that allows them to achieve their own individual dreams.

So Louise is all over the disciplines of a learning organization that was called Shared Vision, where she has a purpose, she had a vision, and she held it. Her interest was to make sure she understood everybody's individual expectations for success and then helped them get there. Now, in today's language, as I listen to, everybody's younger than me now, so everybody that's younger than me, they want to bring their best personal self forward. That's the language that I hear all the time. I watched Louise do that by learning who it was that was in the room with her. Now, this has been in the literature for a long time. Trust is a key component of leadership. It's hard to trust someone you don't know. And Louise just talked about that. She used these techniques, these practices, these disciplines to make sure she knew everybody. Talk to us a little bit about trust, why that's such a. A powerful component in the leadership world today, Louise.

It isn't. It's very important because you don't want your team to have to second guess. How is Louise going to react in certain situations? Because you're not always. And if you're taking risk, everything's not going to go right. Right. There are going to be some, I call them learning opportunities along the way. And so when, when, when things don't go quite the way you expect it, you don't want your. I didn't ever want my team to think about, oh, how's Louise going to react to this? So one of the things that I think is very important that I did and I learned along, along the way. Again, Ray, I think you were instrumental along with. I went to a development course as well, and they talked about the importance of having a personal leadership philosophy and sharing that leadership philosophy with your team and the things that were in that leadership philosophy. First of all, who you are, who you are as a leader, what's important to you, what your team can expect from you. So what do you hold yourself accountable for? What are your expectations for your team? How do you want to operate as a team? Because what was important is that our team members weren't in competition with one another. Although sales results were important. And that can lead to a lot of one upmanship. But we created an environment where if someone learned something and it was working well, they shared it. Okay. And that was the. And that was the expectations, expectation also in that personal leadership philosophy. And this is where, you know, you have to be vulnerable. And I shared my idiosyncrasies. You know, the things that can really get to me that I have to manage.

I might know what those are. You know what I mean?

And, you know, if you ever see me going there, hey, call me out, you know, let me. Let me know. Because it's not intentional, but that's one of my idiosyncrasies. So when you. When you're able to share that as a leader and just be your full self and who you are and not be afraid. I mean, I did poetry. You know, we sang, you know, we did mindfulness exercises. And it was just, we could be who we were. I was who I was. And that, in turn, gave my team members the ability to be who. Who they were.

I love it. Yeah, they did not hide from you. I love this particular piece you're playing on the table, Louise. There's a sensibility here that if I'm going to bring my best self forward, I need to be vulnerable and let you know who that is. And you kind of talked about this, and I'm going to reinforce it and ask you to talk about it a bit more. I watched this happen because I had the privilege of being in attendance at a lot of the leadership meetings that Louise held. It was fine for one of the people that reported directly to her to say, I made a mistake. I thought it was going to go this way. It didn't. And she used the disciplines and practices to say, well, you know, our after Action reviews are pretty straightforward. What was our intention? What did we do? What did we learn? What will we do differently? Louise, you did that all the time. Talk a little bit about the impact of those after Action reviews on the gang that you led.

Yeah, we consistently did the After Action reviews and over time. And individuals had to grow into it. I mean, just that vulnerability doesn't happen overnight, but when they see the sincerity of the leader and the sincerity of the others in the team, and it's really about helping everyone get better. Because you aren't the only one who is learning from your mistakes. Everyone learns from your mistakes. I, as a leader, learn from your mistakes. And so I was never afraid to put on the table where maybe I should have done something differently, and what would I do differently moving forward and what did I learn? And engaging others in that, what would you do? And that's how we did just as a general exercise, when we did those after action reviews, the person would talk about, you know, what did they learn and what would they do differently? And then others would chime in and say, well, had you thought about this? Because we all learn from that and it all makes us stronger as a team. And if you don't create that trust, that trust in one another and people's willingness to be vulnerable, then it, it impedes the learning, it impedes the opportunity for others to learn. And that's why I think over time I was able to develop these consistently high performing teams because it was just that shared learning environment. People not afraid to talk about their mistakes or where they were even having difficulty, even. They would talk about things even before it became a mistake. I'm having difficulty with this. What would you do? Let's talk about it. Yeah.

So there's a piece here that you're leaning into, which I love, and those of you that are listening. Louise disciplined herself and constantly worked on developing a safely dangerous space so she could tap into collective wisdom. This has all been about, I don't want to be the only person that knows what to do. We have a whole team of people here, and the more we can listen to them, the stronger we get. It probably was, from my vantage point, an elegant place to work. One of the folks that worked with her was in conversation with me recently and said it was almost like one of those times in life that I want to remember because it felt like I was deeply connected to the mission, deeply connected to the vision, and I felt like my part, my contribution, mattered. So the last thing I'm going to ask Louise to talk about is a phrase that we have used often. What does it look like if we are mutually invested in one another's success? What does that look like in action? Louise, you did that all, all the time. What did that. I began every meeting with gratefulness. I remember that. What does it look like to be mutually invested in one another's success?

Well, I think you have to be very intentional in planning your meetings because there's only so often the team really gets together as a group. So you have to be very intentional about the meeting. So we would all start with, what's the cpo? What's the context, purpose, outcome for this meeting? And then we would, before we would really get into the meat of the meeting, we would give everyone an opportunity to talk about what was going on in their life, give them an opportunity to talk about. And it was whatever they wanted to talk about. It could Be a business problem. It could be another issue they were working through, or they would ask questions of the other team to get their input. And that provides a time for us to really get and to connect on a personal level before we start getting into the business issues. Gives people an opportunity to catch up. You might only meet face to face once a quarter. You might meet virtually once a month. And especially on those times when you meet face to face of getting that connection is just so important. And if you don't have that, I think it slows down the development of that trust of that, you know, mutual investment in one another and one another's success.

Okay, so Louise has just laid on the table one more of her practice. If you do this, ladies and gentlemen, you do get to know people. And if you get to know people, you create an opportunity for them to trust you. And she's already talked about her personal brand is a accountability. I want to be accountable for what I promise. I promise you something, I'll do it. But she did something that in our culture, we call a check in. Everybody gets a chance to say what's on your mind, and if it's something distracting you, what are you going to do about it? You know, it's just a magnificent methodology to begin a meeting. Otherwise, whatever it is that's bothering me, the last phone call I had with my partner or my spouse or the last business phone call I had as I was walking into the meeting keeps you outside the meeting and stops you from being present. So, Louise, that was really just excellent. Ladies and gentlemen, we're drifting towards the end of this podcast, and I hope I get to Louise. Get Louise to do some more. And I always ask my leader to leader this question. If there was one thing, one thing you would advise an aspiring leader to do or a sitting leader to do to become more effective, what would that one thing be? What are you thinking, Louise? Besides call Ray?

Yeah. Have a good executive coach. I think, you know, I think back to a time in my career because we all grow and develop over. Over time.

And.

I remember I overheard a conversation of someone who had been one of my leaders in my career, and he was having a conversation with someone and said, louise has really changed. And, okay, I've changed. And I'm thinking I could go, no, I haven't. Right. I've always been. But then I really. Again, again, you have to listen. You have to listen. So I said, what is he really saying? Okay, from his perspective, he feels that I've changed. And then I had to agree with him, because I never let him see the authentic Louise back then. Now he was seeing the authentic Louise. And I said, hmm, okay. So from that point on, I said, you know what? I'm gonna do me. I'm gonna be who I am, and I'm very comfortable in who I am. Now. It may take you a while to get there. Everybody's on a different timetable, but I just said, I'm going to do me. And I think me is a great person. And there may be some people who love it and some people who don't, and that's okay. But I am going to be who I am and be authentic. And I found that when I just took that perspective and had that point of view around who I am and my leadership, the magic started to happen. Right? So when you think it starts with you, it really, really does, because those conversations that I had with people were deeper. You know, we had fun. You know, our teams, even though we worked hard, we had fun. We enjoyed being together. We would laugh, we would joke. I mean, and it was just. Even when we were getting all these fabulous results, we were having a wonderful time doing it. And that's important because, you know, there was a time where I heard people say, you know, we're getting great results, but why do I feel so bad? You know? And even getting great results and feeling bad, I said, you know what? That's never going to happen. I will never have a team member say that. Yeah, we'll get the results. We'll get them the right way, and we'll have fun doing it.

Fantastic. So you heard from someone who I truly admire and respect deeply. Bring yourself to the conversation, to the meeting, to the. Whatever the situation is. Bring that authentic self. And Louise modeled this today. How can I be vulnerable? Because that's where creativity sparks. I can be vulnerable. I can be authentic. Louise, I am so grateful for this conversation, and I hope it's not the only one we're going to have. This was superior. I think those of you that are listening have lots of takeaways. I urge you, those of you that are listening, to stop and reflect on the little pieces that were in there. And feel free to run this one again, because I think there's some nuggets in there that you guys can. Can really use almost immediately. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening. If you want to hear more about us or from us, please go to gojl gojlc.com and learn more about what we're up to these days. We so appreciate you giving away. One of your biggest assets of the 21st century is time and you chose to give us little time. Louise, I am so grateful, still in love with you and still grateful for you being with us today. Take care of yourself. Those listening Be well. We'll see you soon.

Sincerest thanks for listening to this episode of the Everyday Leadership Conversations podcast. The Jorgensen Learning center offers a variety of programs for individuals and organizations to enhance their communication and leadership skills. To find out more about programs and upcoming webinars, check out our events page@gojlc.com.