#64 Why Playing by the Rules Won’t Get You Promoted

Hello everyone and welcome to Pearls on Gloves Off. I am your host, Mariel Carroll, Chief Operating Officer at Goodwin. Today I'm joined by Kathy Dockery. She's been a leadership coach for over 20 years and is hired by large complex organizations to accelerate the success of high achievers who are being groomed for or transitioning into CEO and management team positions. Before becoming a coach, Kathy herself was a corporate leader, but with a career that culminated as CEO and Northern American President of a well known British energy company. So she understands from personal experience the level at which her clients work and the outcomes they are determined to achieve. But general management was not where Kathy started her career. Instead she started out in, you guessed it, the law. Yes, she's one of us. She was originally a litigator in two large New York area firms and started corporate life in general counsel positions before transitioning into these operational roles. While while Kathy partners with her current clients on the full range of issues that comprise leadership at the top, she is particularly sought after when a leader's success is dependent on effectively influencing, moving ideas forward, developing powerful leadership and board presence and or gracefully navigating complex interpersonal dynamics otherwise known as politics. Kathy also helps her clients learn how to tell their career stories in ways that make the value of their contributions memorable and compelling. We all know that's what all GCS and legal departments are struggling with today. How do we demonstrate the value of our function? I loved our conversation today. If you are interested in helpful tips on how to better influence, persuade, have presence, tell a story, demonstrate value, or how to get identified as being a high potential leader in your organization. These are lessons that we can all learn from today and things that you can make happen for your career. I hope you enjoy From AI to.

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Hello Kathy, Thrilled to have you on the podcast today. Welcome.

I am so happy to be here. Mary.

I already know we're going to learn so much from you and what you coach on is exactly what our listeners in our legal space are focused on today. And the fact that you have a career as a litigator, a past career as a litigator in general counsel I should say really allows you to understand the struggles that were all facing here. So excited to get into this. When we first chatted Hermet, you mentioned that you do developmental coaching versus Behavioral coaching. So what Is the difference. I'm not sure I understand the difference there.

That's a great question. And yeah, it's something that has to be explained a lot to people. You know, in the old days, behavioral coaching was a lot about people who were adding value, but they needed to have certain improve certain behaviors, had to learn how to be a better manager at people or they had to learn how to collaborate well with peers, things like that. And companies would invest in that for that reason, just to sort of improve the behavioral set of the manager. And that's still a very valid aspect of coaching. But there's this whole other segment that started growing after a while which was more developmental coaching and that's more aligned with the way a coach would be, say, in the sporting work. So someone who is already pretty effective at what they do, but they have high goals, they want to get better and better so they don't see any cap on their improvement. It's something that companies are interested in and firms are interested in because as talent becomes more and more valued, you want to invest in the growth of that talent for the very senior walls that might be coming up in the future.

Got it, Got it.

Okay.

And I'm a huge proponent for coaching, executive coaching. Although I always say the first time when I was back at Google and I got tapped by my manager and they said, you've selected you and you're going to get a coach. And I said, oh no, what do I need to work on? What have I done wrong? You know, I sort of saw it as like something to improve, but it was supposed to be a positive thing. And now that I've worked with several coaches in my career, I mean, it's so valuable, so helpful every conversation, it really is.

And in ways that you don't always expect. For example, because yes, we're working on real time issues and building real time skills, but in complex jobs, just to have a thought partner, to work through some of the emotional or political environment that you're processing and trying to figure the best way through it, you really don't have anyone else that you can talk to who is going to be that safe space and has your back. Yeah, you can get really good feedback from some of your peers or colleagues, but at the same time, you really can't be venting or revealing yourself as much as you would like. And it can be difficult. Those are really challenging areas. They're hard enough when you're early in your career. Yeah. And increasingly harder the more you go up the ladder.

It's so True. And the more you go up the ladder, the lonelier it is because your number of peers shrink. And then you're right. There's certain things you can't really say to them in, in the way that you could your junior level peers. So it's very valuable.

Yeah. Just to add to that, some of the bad behaviors that we see at the top are really more stress behaviors because someone have someone to talk to. Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you coach a lot of what we call high potential or hypo leaders and I believe prepare them often to be the next CEO or groom them to be part of the organizational leadership team. And that starts sometimes even years before that switch happens.

It can start as late as maybe a year before. It's usually someone who is known that they're going to fill that position or very likely to. But with some people at very large companies, they're spotting talent early on. They're saying themselves at one point or another. These three to five people really have what it takes to possibly be CEO one day. Let's give them a little bit more assistance in building their skill set times. I start with someone who's as early as, I don't know, five, seven years out. Yeah.

And do organizations have to be secretive about that because does that create, I don't know, jealousy or competition amongst team members or does it actually make it something that others drive towards? How have you seen that work?

That's a great question. They're kind of all over the place on that. They usually don't say, even to the person you might be working with, that you are possibly in the running for the position if they are far out. But you deduce that if they're going to make that investment in you. But coaches are being used so much by so many people nowadays that people don't necessarily think to themselves, aha, we know that person is going to be CEO in three years. Yeah. And then some people don't want to work with coaches, which is still interesting in this day and age. It's not very common anymore. But when the approaches them and offers the coach, they say, no thanks, I'm fine. And that's perfectly legitimate. But it's a little bit. You're not playing it safe because you're doing it on your own and you're not, you're not getting that feedback and that constant awareness of how you are developing that could be really helpful.

That's one of the reasons I want to showcase more coaches on this podcast, because I was one of those people who didn't recognize the value of it or like, how would I work with this person? What do I, what do I tell them? And how does it differ than having a mentorship program where you have someone within the organization mentoring you?

Yeah, and that's a good question. And it may not differ. And in some cases it does. It depends on the situational awareness of coach, I think, to some extent. So you have some coaches who are fabulous coaches, really great at being that mirror to you and feeding back to you how you need to develop. But they might not know the organization that well. That might not have been their skill set before they became a coach, for example. And so they won't be able to help you necessarily with the politics or the culture of the company as much as. And that's when a mentor can really help you. And then there are some of us who are mentors, coaches who we've got the coaching skills, we've been trained in that area pretty rigorously. But we also have backgrounds or an aptitude for navigating through all those complex interdynamics that happen in organizations.

That's often the key to success. Right. We talked about this. And how do you stand out as being a fast rising. How do you stand out in being high potential? What are the things that you need to do to sort of be recognized and get ahead? And you know, if you're in a large organization, in legal, a very hierarchical often organization, you don't really feel like you have the opportunity. Everyone's a fourth year, you know, associate. How do you stand out amongst that bunch? Do you have advice?

I think first of all, you can't necessarily just play by the rules. So if there's a hierarchy or perceived way of being, getting good at what you do, that's very important. But you've got to be demonstrating something above and beyond.

Yes.

And you've got to be holding your hand up to do things that are going to test you a little bit, challenge you a little bit, really take you outside of your comfort zone. Not only to demonstrate the value that you can add, but also to learn from it. And the reason why learning is so important is first of all, that's what grows you. But secondly, that's what people higher up are looking for. One of the single biggest predictors of long term success is what's called learning agility, the ability to throw yourself into different situations, learn quickly and add value. So that's one of the things that people are trying to spot very early on in someone. How much bandwidth do they have if you take them outside of their normal area of expertise, how will they do? Will they rise or not?

Yeah. So that's so interesting and I love what you said earlier because I've grown up in my career as a first time manager and then big teams, but so often there are the folks who, you know, say, I want to be promoted, I'm ready to be promoted. I see the job description. I do everything that's asked for me, I do it on time, I do as I'm told. Why am I not getting promoted? I think you highlighted it. It's going above and beyond that. I mean, the job description is the expectation. And so if you're doing all that, aren't you meeting expectations?

Yeah, really, the job description is merely the lowest standard to meet when it comes to aspiring to larger roles and particularly leadership roles. That's the price of entry, doing your job. Yeah. What else do you have that proves that you're worthy of those larger roles?

That's right. And of course there's a big difference between those who are can excel in their role as an individual contributor and do the job really well versus as you say, being a leader or being a manager. And those are navigating the organization as a skill set that you know is not in the job description necessarily and is harder to define, but probably more critically important as you rise up the ranks.

Yes. The more complex the organization especially too. Yeah. Because yeah, the bigger it is, the broader it is. You're going to have to be able to reach out to a wide variety of people over the course of your career and have them perceive you as someone who adds value.

And so is that something that's innate, that is just part of our personality and you either have it or you don't? Or is that something that can be coached, can be learned? How do you teach someone to learn?

It all exists on a spectrum of some kind. You've got people who on one end really, who went into the role that they're in simply to do that role. That's all they're particularly interested in. And whether they have capability or not, they're not particularly interested in stretching themselves. They might want that bigger role, but they're not particularly interested in figuring out what capabilities are required in a role like that. And then you have people on the other end who are naturals at it and the rest of us are pretty much, much in between. And as to that, I think a lot of those skills can be taught. What's really important though is that willingness to put yourself in an Uncomfortable position in order to learn, the ability to learn quickly and the ability to take advice, guidance, that feedback loop where you can get better and better at what you're doing.

And so do you. Do you tell people to go out and ask for that feedback? If they're not getting it, do you have to seek it?

Yes.

Yeah.

That is so hard. And I'm speaking personally, I'm speaking to someone who is totally submissive.

I always think it takes a huge.

Amount of courage to do it, but it's so important. And yes, I'll ask people to do it. But first, when I'm actually working with client, the very first thing that I do before we get started, we'll have some goals that we've set for ourselves. But I'll end up interviewing anywhere from 6 to 12 people so I can get feedback from them on behalf of the client. And I can then put that in a sort of story that I'm hearing about that person so they can see that and understand it and we can look at it together. We put it down and we look at it together and we say, what do we think about that? And what does that imply in terms of what goals we want to set for ourselves? Sometimes I'll get a little bit of pushback where someone will say, I'm not sure that my peers really have a basis for providing feedback. They may not know me as well as they, or they don't know the nature of the work that I'm doing. And that doesn't matter. That's not the only reason why you go get feedback. You want to find out what their impressions are too, how they perceive you. Because how you're perceived is going to be how you're treated and how decisions are made about you. Doesn't mean that you have to accept everything that's being said substantively about you. You might say, well, that's not who I am. If you hear the feedback. But if people are thinking that you're that way, then you have a different problem. The different problem is how do you now persuade them about who you really are? That's your problem. Yeah.

And that's so key. Right as you're moving up. And okay, so now let's say you, you do more than just the job that you're asked to do. And now you can navigate and you can figure out politics and how to get stuff done, but there's this whole other piece of the perception. And, you know, you can't just be hiding at your desk and getting stuff done and working behind the Scenes. There's this whole piece of how do showcase yourself. There's this whole idea now of your personal brand, even within your organization. And I hate that term, but it is useful. And one of the things that I admittedly am not great at and had to really work at it in my own career is managing up, telling your story to the people who are above you because you think, oh, they're busy and I don't want to bother them, and I'm just. I'm getting everything done down here. But it is so critical to make sure you have. They have visibility into everything that you're doing. And how do you separate yourself from the pack when there's so much noise? That's a big part of it, right? It's like selling your values, selling your story.

That's so true. And I think there are two ways where that comes up for us, or two ways, two areas that we want to think about. One is actually promoting ourselves, telling our story so people are aware of it. And the other is getting visibility through the ideas that we're bringing forward. So if you are aspiring to larger roles, you should at some level also be aspiring to come up with good ideas for people, for the entire enterprise, not just in your area. So, number one, how do you develop those ideas? Number two, then how do you pitch them to people who might be higher up the food chain? And both of those are really important ways of getting noticed and not being crowded out by everybody. And they take slightly similar skills. Communication is a theme running through them, but they're also different on the story side of things. You really have to intentionally understand how to put a story together and how to express the value that you're contributing. And that's always a very natural skill set to do. And in fact, a colleague and I put together a course a little while ago, and we run it every now and then simply to help people tell their own story. In other words, there's a pretty good formula for doing that, but it's not something that we do naturally, and we don't spend a lot of reflective time around it. Usually when we're asked to describe our value to someone, it's on the fly. And how do you answer that? You usually answer it by telling people what you do, which is not really the answer to the question. What you do is not necessarily the value that you add to the organization. It may be a part of it, but you're not making it very clear to the other person about what makes Mary really unique. Why do we have Mary around Here in the first place. What is her potential and what makes her worthy of notice?

Yeah.

And so you have to do some reflection around that normally and we're asked the question and we're not ready for it often when we're asked the question and then we have to learn how to tell a story in the first place. A story is something that leads other people in, makes them lean in and find you somewhat interesting. Instead of a list of the things that we do, like a job description or resume, what we want to hear is what are some of the themes of what makes you tick during your career? What are the things that you're really good at and perhaps even the things that you're not. What are the things that excite you and make you interested in working on them? It's those sort of things. And so you've got to learn how to put all those pieces together, do it simply and clearly. These are things we don't normally take the time to do. I don't know about you, but I was always in my career, I was running from one thing to the next, seldom thinking about my story.

And every general counsel, every in house legal team I talk to, the biggest question they ask and struggle with is how do you demonstrate the value of your function, your team, your department? And that's. That is the story that you're talking about. And I think what you're saying is, is also what I've been saying. It's not always about listing out the effort and the metrics and the volume of work that is being done. It's the impact. And when you ask what the impact is, you get the blank stares of what do you mean? I do my job. And so I bet a lot of people don't even know what the answer is. What truly is the value that, that they bring?

The way I would put it is that it's usually buried inside you. You know it, but you've never actually verbalized it. And that's where you might be struggling at help to bring it out. There's a quick little thing that I give people sometimes and it's not the, it's not sufficient in and of itself, but it's certainly helpful. And I call it the value formula. And the value formula is, let's see, how does it go? I help the company or the organization achieve X so that if the organization can better achieve Y and I do it this way, the first part X is I help the company achieve. And that might be say, what the legal department does. A legal department, if you're the general counsel. I help the company manage risk and look for legal opportunities that, that promote the strategy. You might go through a list of things like that so that the company can better be more competitive within the marketplace place and maintain its reputation. That's the second part. And I do it by doing A, B and C. And that's a really quick way of describing value. It's pretty plain vanilla, but it actually goes way behind beyond what other. Most people do when they say what their value is, they usually say, this is what I do. And they the other person to guess, well, what value is that to the firm or to the company?

And how do you find the opportunity to tell that story? Because none of us like to brag or talk about ourselves. And it's not a natural conversation to say to your boss or manager, let me sit down this week and tell you the value that I bring to this organization. How do we use that storytelling environment to showcase ourselves into that high potential bucket that I'm sure everybody wants to be in?

Yeah, I think you have to really think of it from a relational point of view versus selling point of view. Okay. And every good salesperson knows that instinctively. You know when you're being sold, and no one likes being sold. But by sharing a little bit about who you are and what interests you and why it interests you and why you like being able to provide value in that way. Through normal conversations, it gets across. It gets a point across. And then you can also flip it and ask the other person too, to explain themselves. What is about this job or role do you really like? What do you think is the biggest impact that you make? People love being asked questions about themselves. The interesting thing is it's actually a form of influencing them. Because if you did a brain scan and while you were asking someone questions about themselves and their career, the part that indicates pleasure or receiving a gift lights up. It's like a form of a gift to ask the other person questions about themselves. So you're having a twofer there. You're asking them about themselves, what makes them tick, what drives them. And then it's pretty natural for them to turn around and ask you same thing. And boom, all of a sudden you're both talking about why you do what you do and what makes it valuable versus selling them on the idea that you're a valuable person.

Yeah. Yeah, that's helpful. So going back to the other thing you noted earlier about standing out is bringing up new ideas, raising your hand, coming up with things that go beyond the walls. Of your job to the whole organization. Sounds great. But again, you know, if you're just a middle manager associate at a firm, you're just like everybody else. How do you find a way to raise your hand and get your voice heard and say, I have an idea? Is that uncomfortable for most people? Do we have to find the right time for it? How do you coach people on finding that opportunity?

Yeah, it's complex and it depends on where you are in the organization. And you pointed out a lot of good things to consider. But I think if you were going to look at anyone in the organization, whether it's a firm or a corporation, and say, and instead of saying, how do you do it, say, what are the skills that make it easier to do it? Those would be three skills, and I call them skills versus personality because they all can be learned.

Okay.

The first skill is influence. And influence is, I like to describe it as the environment you create that allows people to take you seriously. So it's kind of a relational type of skill. You are creating an environment where people say, if Mary ever comes up with an idea, it's worth listening to. Because I take Mary seriously, even if it's an off the wall idea, I'm going to. It gives. She's credible to me.

Is that how you present the idea or is that more about what you've built kind of beforehand? Beforehand? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, there, exactly. Right. That's preparing the environment for presenting the idea. And that's something that you should probably, during the course of your career, you should be doing all the time. You should always be building the environment where you are being taken seriously and people want to hear from you. It's a relational skill. There are particular techniques you can do and it creates this really fertile environment. When you have to pinch an idea, you're going to be much better prepared. People are going to give you some space to do that. But then there's the pitch. And so that's the second skill. And that is you need to be building the skill of persuasion. And again, very learnable. There are some simple persuasive techniques that will immediately increase your persuasiveness, but you have to be learning them. You have to be adding persuasion to your toolkit. And then the last one is presence. And presence I think of as really all the little bits and pieces of our mindset, our behavior, our body language that gives us some innate credibility in the moment. So if you're pitching your idea and you're dressed like a slob, for example, you're going to have a much harder time pitching the idea because you are not sending the signal that you're someone who is to be taken seriously. So all three of those things are very important skills to learn. They're not hard to learn. You just have to make a little time to do it, and then you have to practice them a little bit. And that's doing new things is something that we always are a little concerned about doing. That's why coaching is a great environment for this sort of work. Because when you have a coach, you can actually say, okay, let's try this skill out now, this upcoming discussion, this meeting, let's practice it ahead of time, and then you can walk in there and try it out.

Yeah, that's really helpful. On the last piece. The Presence I wonder your thoughts on Times are changing. Generations are changing. My mother always said to me, dress for the job you want, not the job you have, and prefer to be overdressed and underdressed in an office environment or a professional setting. But there's so much of I want to bring my whole self and I feel more comfortable in my sweatpants. Where does that line in today's sort of wanting to express who you are and bringing your true self to work versus I need to conform to this professional environment.

I don't think it's as much of an issue as we. We think it is. I think, first of all, general office environment, you don't have to be thinking about that all the time. There are settings where you can be perfectly casual. And even in the boardroom, there's been some loosening of the expectations about how you're dressed. But I do think the bigger the stakes, the more powerful the audience you're speaking to. That's probably when you want to start thinking about bearing a little bit on the side of formality. Right. Unless everybody else in the audience is going to be dressed informally, in which case you don't want to look out of sync. It requires you to have some radar about it. You have to put some effort into it. And I love the opportunity to dress more casually nowadays, and I take advantage of it, but I have to think more. I used to have a uniform and wore all the time, and I didn't have to think about it. But I think that's what different standards of dress and culture bring to us. It means that we have to pay attention a little bit more and we can't take things for granted. Yeah.

And I think to your point about cultivating your own presence, it actually goes beyond your attire and what you're wearing it is how you carry yourself, how you speak. And I always remember my first week at Google and I had come from a law firm where everyone Wore suits back 20 years ago. And then I got to Google where the first time I saw Sergey Brin, he didn't have shoes on in the cafeteria. So it's like a very different environment.

Did he have socks on at least?

Nope. Barefoot. In the cafe, one of my first meetings, someone came into the room wearing a hoodie, like very casually dressed. And I thought, honestly, he was the guy coming to fix the video monitor because it wasn't working. And he sits at the head of the table and starts talking. And I realize, oh my God, that's. I won't say who it is. Very senior vice president. And once he started speaking, like, you knew this guy was, you know, knew what he was doing and you had all the respect and everyone was silent. And it's not because of how he dressed, you know, it was how he carried himself, how he spoke. He had the presence to command the room in a way that was just really interesting.

Really interesting. Yeah. And presence is exactly right. It's much more than attire. A common thing that comes up when I'm coaching some clients and men as well as women, is that there might be some feedback if, say, if they. On a management team, they'll be saying, oh, we love so and. But he or she doesn't speak up a lot at meetings. And we want to be hearing from them more. And they don't. They're not projecting leadership presence at the meeting, tell them, coach, that they need to be speaking up more. And I would go back to the clients and say, this is what I'm hearing. And the client would either say, I really hate speaking up unless I feel I have something to add. I'm very efficient and I just don't say anything if I don't think. And everybody else is talking just to prove that they're there. So I would get that. Or sometimes someone would say, I'm genuinely an introvert. I don't normally speak up a lot at meetings. Here's the fun part about being coach is that there are all sorts of ways of proving presence. The one that I teach that people who are in that position is you can establish presence by asking questions instead of making statements. A well chosen strategic question that gets everyone thinking. And you do that a couple times in a meeting. You're not occupying the bandwidth any more than you were when you were just making statements. But somehow everybody feels that you Filled the room. And so with those clients, a lot of times you'll get the feedback back at the end of the engagement. Oh, like they're speaking up all the time. They're really involved in the meeting.

And the hilarious part is they're actually.

Not saying that much more, but they're saying stuff that's really helpful in adding value of a contribution to the meeting and establishing their presence. Yeah.

And I love these three points. So the first one, influencing, going back to that one, how important building relationships are across an organization, knowing who has influence, the power of persuasion to get everyone else aligned. How do you sort of build those relationships in an intentional way is how do you encourage folks? Is it asking people to coffee? Is it asking questions? How do you encourage that?

I think in the old days people thought that you had to put together some big networking plan and, and have regular meetings and quite a few people would sort of. And. And I'm an introvert by nature too. So especially from the introvert clients that I'd have it, they'd be going like, oh my gosh, on top of everything else I do, I like people. But that's lot of interacting. I think play to your strengths. If you're an extrovert, that's a wonderful thing to be doing. But for introverts, a lot of times it's being a little wise about who are you developing the relationship with and it's asking what I sometimes call are powerful questions of the person. So not just talking for the sake of talking, but asking these deeper questions that introverts are really good at. They're really good at saying, asking you what makes you tick. What do you like best about your job? What do you not like? Is there any way I can be helping you with this? All these sort of questions you could spend a couple minutes on and it would be. It could be so impactful, it could make a real difference. I tell a story. Now, part of this was accidental, but when I was still several layers down in one of the companies that I worked for, it was a British company and I was visiting the UK for a set of meetings and I happened to got on the elevator at the exact same time that the newly promoted CEO got on. It was this very sort of quiet British guy, Masterpiece Theater, quite intimidating, really nice guy. Though I had never met him before in my life. And I'm standing there and I'm going to what do I do? Do I not say anything? I don't want to interrupt him. I'm thinking all the things that I'M thinking. And I thought, at least I have to congratulate him. So I congratulated him on the position and I said, what has surprised you the most about getting the position? Because he was internal and he that he was going to get it, but I thought, there's going to be a surprise in there somewhere. And his face lit up and he said, you know, you're the first person who's ever asked me that question. He said, and there has been a surprise or two. And then we got off on the same floor. He was walking to his office and he said, come along. And he's telling me the answer to this. I just met him. I walk in, I walk past his admin, who's looking at me like, who's this person? And he ends up telling the story. And then we swap a few stories about the things that have surprised him. I got in his radar screen. I had no intention of doing that. That was spur of the moment. But I learned from that and subsequently used it and then have taught my clients the power of a really interested and unexpected question when you're developing relationships with people. And as a matter of fact, I do attribute that to my next couple of promotions. I was on the radar screen for that. It didn't get me the promotion of my work on me promotions, but it meant that I was seen in a way that I might not have otherwise been seen.

Yeah, all these stories, all these things you're telling all of us. The word that comes to mind, and I use this word a lot, is intent and intention. You can't just take a backseat to your own career and hope that everything works out and that you'll get rewarded. You hope that everything in the world is fair and you'll get noticed because you've got your head down and you're working really hard and putting in a lot of effort and maybe even making a lot of impact and delivering a lot of value. But you have to be intentional about showcasing that work and building those relationships and positioning yourself to be considered to be promoted, high potential, considered for other roles, you need to be top of mind when that role opens up and someone goes, oh, gosh, should we look internally or externally? And if you're not positioning a person.

Who had this interesting perspective, who I talked to the other day, yeah, that.

Person had some good ideas. Exactly.

And so I would flip it a little bit, too. I think intent is really important, but I think sometimes people have intent for the wrong reason. It's kind of manipulative, even if they don't have that intent. A lot of people shy away from talk. One of the reasons why I didn't, I almost didn't talk to the CEO that time was that I thought, oh, is he going to think that I'm just toting up to. Because I too was suffering a little bit from that. I don't want to be Ms. Eager Beaver and sell myself to to it. And I think a lot of people then don't speak up and don't showcase themselves because they're afraid of looking too salesy. And so to them I say, let's flip this a little bit. What if you were actually doing everybody a favor by doing it? In other words, you think, oh, I don't want to seem like I'm self interested and selfish, but think about what it looks like at the top of an organization. You have the exact question yourself, which is, how do I when I'm looking at all these people, how do I tell who has real value and who doesn't? And because people are never talking to me or they're talking to me in stereotypical ways about the weather or something like that, they're very concerned themselves about where is the talent. And what if we all looked at it as we are talking to the people above us, that they're just people to some extent like we are. We're doing them the favor of letting them know who we are. For better or worse. Maybe they us but at least we're letting them know who we are. Yeah.

So I'm five months in to this new role here at Goodwin and the coo. I travel around all the offices and it's impossible to meet everyone. It's just such a large organization. Yeah. But I love when people stop by and say, oh, I heard you were visiting X office today. I wanted to pop by and introduce myself. I am so grateful. You know when they do that.

Yeah.

And oftentimes they will either ask a question like you said, or they'll say, I'm glad you're here because I wanted to share something with you. I've been thinking of this organization or the way this currently works or I came from a different company. We did things differently there and I, if it's okay, I'd love to share my thoughts with you. And I'm like, sit. I wanna hear all this. So I welcome that. And into your point. The way it's received is like it's not. People always say, oh, I'm so sorry to bother you. I'm sure you're very busy and I'm like, no, I'm not. This is exactly what I wanna be spending my time with. It's connecting with people and hearing the ideas that. That I'm not aware of and hearing what you're thinking. So to me, it's a gift. And. Yeah, I just hope other people see it that way. It is a gift.

Yeah. I think it changes your whole attitude when you think about it that way as the person who's operating it. You realize. And nothing ventured, nothing gained. But I think almost everybody welcomes it at some level and suggested to clients that they do that with people higher up the food chain that maybe don't take them as much. Because even people who don't like us as much as some of the other people, when we reach out to them in that way, they too experience it as a gift and it starts building more of a bridge.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And then the second one, persuasion. What do we need to know about persuasion? More like, how can that be? How can that be taught?

Actually, I think of the three of them as one of the easiest, and it's one of the most fun because there are so many cool little persuasive tips that are not hard to do. And the impact can be amazing. There's one. We can't get into the details of it today, but it is so simple. And I say, if I only taught one thing in the world, this is the thing that I would talk. You can change. Let's say you're making a presentation. You can actually change the persuasive power of the presentation by putting it in a different order. That's all. The content remains the same.

Okay.

Actually putting it in a different order. This is out of some research that's come out of linguistics. But typically in a presentation, let's say we're pitching an idea or an initiative. This is the standard way that we all approach it. We say, here's the problem or the issue. Here's what we should do about it. And if we do this thing about it, here are the results, good results that we're going to get. Yeah, that's almost. I'd say 95% of every presentation in the corporate or legal world. Everywhere. And it makes sense. It's a very convenient way of framing things. Is that someone in linguistics, they call it chronological. It's like past, present and future. Past, present. What we're going to do about it, future here in the results. So we just normally do that. If you instead switch it around and you start with the future first and you spend more time on it than perhaps you normally might. You say, here's where we are today. But imagine it's two years from now. All of a sudden we're not experiencing this problem, we're experiencing all these benefits. Basically you're saying, look how our lives could be easier, faster, better or whatever way. And you do it with pretty vivid language. And you linger on it a little bit too. Sometimes I'll have clients say, oh my gosh, if I linger on it, everybody will be looking up their watches. Never happens. People like hearing about the future. They want to know how can things be better? And then you shift from that into. In order to get there, this is what we need to do. The process part, which almost always takes up when we do it the old way. It's, I don't know, 75% of the presentation is about what we're going to do. We don't need to spend that much time on it. If people are already invested emotionally in what the benefits are, they want to hear the process, but they're not going to be second guessing you or pushing you down rabbit holes or anything of that. And then you sort of wrap it up and do that, do the ending of it and it will increase. Anyone who does this, by the way, there are a lot of little sophisticated nuances to it that I won't tell. I don't have time to tell now, but I'd love to talk about this. But even if you did this clumsily for the first time, you probably would have increased your win rate somewhat. When I teach people persuasion, I say, how much easier would your life be if you were 25 to 50% more persuasive than you are now? And they go, oh my God, that would be amazing. That is perfectly achievable. Perfectly achievable. Yeah. It's one of the most thrilling things that I do to see that happen. I had a client once who is in the running for the CEO position. And we had just started working. It was the very first meeting and I learned that he had a meeting next week to 200 of the top people at the company. Really important meeting. It was like preview to see how he would be behaving as CEO. And I said, can I help you with the presentation? He said, oh no, it's already done. It's already been approved by the board. I can't do anything about it. And I said, can we maybe just change the order? And we did. And I actually went to the presentation to see how he did. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh I'm not sure how this is going to go. Afterwards, the current CEO walked up to me and he said, I don't know how you did it, but that's the most inspirational I ever heard. We had done nothing to the presentation except change the. But these little things like that actually make a huge difference. So that's why I've always loved the persuasion part of things.

I feel like you've given away my secret to inspirational talks. It's. I always tell people that's what you've been following, you know, and someone very early in my career, and I feel like maybe I might be making this up. It's the McKinsey way of presenting where they say, tell them the answer, tell them why it's the answer, and tell them the answer again.

Oh, well, that might be a different.

It's a similar. Yeah, similar idea. Because some people spend so much time telling you the problem, and that is not inspiring. You're like, ugh, I know the problem. I know that we've the problem. I know the current state is no good, and you're all getting worked up about what are we going to do about it? And you don't get that until the last five minutes, you know, of the meeting. And you're. You're going through all this time talking about what's wrong. But I think you're right. If you start with, this is how great it could be, everyone's okay, tell me more. How do we get there?

That's right. But it gets even worse because think about who you're presenting to. You are presenting to a room of people who are critical thinkers. They're in these roles because it's been their job and they do it for fun, to poke holes and ideas.

That is what they're trained on, is to find what could go wrong. Right.

When you start telling them what the problem is, guess what they're doing in their mind, they might actually be thinking it, but in their mind they're going, is that the problem or is it another problem? I don't know if I would tell, blah, blah, blah. And then you get to what you should do about it. Then they really go down there thinking, why don't we do it this way or that way or this way? So even if they don't say a word during that time, what's happening, they're completely distracted. They're not actually listening to you. And so you're losing them. And when you start with the benefits at the beginning and what the future could look like, they lose that incentive to start criticizing. They say, no, I want that. If you get it right, everyone's going, that's the future I want. Yeah. They all are nodding their heads. You know, that's been probably a great tool in your toolbox.

I think sometimes you learn things the hard way.

We do. We do. Let's call getting out of our comfort zone.

This has been great. I feel like we haven't even touched on so many of the things that we could all learn from you. And I knew this was going to be a wonderful personal coaching session. So, Kathy, this has been great. Thank you for your time. What you've shared with us is so important and such real, tangible lessons that hopefully everyone can take into their day jobs.

Thank you so much, Mary. This has been enormously fun for me.

And how can people find you? If they want to find you, they.

Can find me on LinkedIn, that's KakadoCri, and also the name of my firm is Significanta Groups, and you can find that at Significa Group.

Excellent, Kathy, thank you so much. And I hope everyone got as much out of this as I did.

Great. Take care, Mary.

Talk to you soon.