276. Laurie Maddalena | The Elevated Leader

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to our personal development podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, we interview one of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and live better. In today's episode, we have the pleasure to interview Laurie Maddalena, author of The Elevated Leader: Boost Your Confidence and Transform Your Team by Mastering Coaching, Accountability, and Difficult Conversations. Laurie is a keynote speaker, certified executive coach, and leadership development consultant who's on a mission to upgrade workplace cultures and rid the world of bad management practices. Laurie is the founder and CEO of Envision Excellence, a leadership development firm She's also a member of the National Speakers Association and a Certified Speaking Professional, a designation earned by fewer than 17% of speakers worldwide. Drawing on years of experience as a VP of organizational development and HR and more than a decade of coaching leaders, she helps managers move beyond outdated command-and-control tactics to modern, human-centered leadership. In this episode, you'll learn why great individual contributors don't automatically make great leaders and what to do about it, how to shift from fixing problems to facilitating performance through coaching and curiosity, and the 3 core actions of elevated leadership: creating clarity, caretaking the culture, and facilitating results. We'll also dig into the 6 leadership saboteurs, practical feedback frameworks that build self-awareness and emotional intelligence, and how to delegate without drive-by dumping. Now get ready to learn and enjoy this incredible conversation with Lori Maddalena.

Lori, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. I'm excited to chat with you about your brand new book, The Elevated Leader. And my first question has to do with 7 words. If you can lean, you can clean. Tell us about those 7 words.

Yes, thank you, Nick. So great to be here. That came from my first job, which was at a restaurant in upstate New York called Danny's, where I worked. And I just remember one day my boss coming out of the kitchen. I was busing tables and there were some servers around, and he looked at us and he said, if you can lean, you can clean. And those words just really stuck with me of, okay, it's not just about doing the specifics of the job, you know, filling the job description of busing tables, but your boss, your manager is always looking for you to step up and do more. And that really stuck with me of being kind of a mantra as I went through my working years of trying to become indispensable for my bosses and really doing whatever I could to make their job easier and to just elevate whatever I was doing in that position.

Yeah, I remember trying to become indispensable in my first couple of jobs as well, just raising my hand every time there was a chance to take on additional responsibilities or, or opportunities to do that. Do you think that that was just a characteristic that you had? Was that inherent to you, or is it something that was developed over time? I mean, why were you so ambitious and aware Of your potential?

Yeah, I— for me, it was both. So, growing up in a family, I'm the oldest of 5 kids, and there were some challenges financially in my family when I was a teenager. And so, a lot of that was about this need to get out. And if I wanted a Champion sweatshirt, which was very big back in those times, or if I wanted something specific, I had to go out and work for it. And so, through that, I think that drive came to me. And then when I, earlier in my career, in my 20s, when I started working, I saw the power of that, of leaning into what you could do in your role and going above and beyond. In some ways, you know, I talk about in the book that if you can lean, you can clean became something that in a leadership role could kind of hold me back because I was so conditioned to do the doing piece, the task focus, and to do that so well. And that's what we're rewarded for. in independent roles that when I shifted to a leadership role, I had to really change that mindset of now my position is different. The competencies are different. Getting in the trenches all the time isn't always the best answer. So I had to kind of reverse some of that conditioning in some ways.

Yeah, you're totally right. And I know that you highlight that really strongly in the book, but I think in general language, just to summarize it back to the audience, And I've experienced this too, that great individual performers don't always make great leaders and they don't make great teachers. You see that all the time as well. And, uh, people who have a lot of success in their lives oftentimes struggle teaching it to other people, which is why writing a book is such a great process because it forces you to synthesize, uh, and then be able to articulate in a clear and concise way what made you successful or what made the people successful that you're writing about. And it's a different skill set, just like writing a book and promoting and marketing a book are usually very different skill sets too.

Absolutely. And I talk about in the book that not everyone is meant to be a leader, and context is important here. So, I know many people say that you could lead, you know, anywhere in your life, you can lead your own life, and certainly you can. You can lead without a leadership position or title. But if you're a leader of people, not everyone is meant for that role. And just like you mentioned, not everyone's meant to be a teacher or a barista or in customer service. I think we can all think of someone who should not be in customer service. There are certain skills and competencies and even personality traits that lend themselves to being successful in a role. And leading people takes certain skills, certain capabilities, personality traits. And I think the reason why we're in a position in our world today where many leaders are not successful, not effective, is because we've gone about the wrong way of promoting people. We typically promote for technical ability and not for leadership competencies. And that's one of the things I'm looking to shift and change is have more of a revolution around leadership where we're really intentional about who we're putting into those roles and people are selecting if that's the right role for them or not.

So who is— first off, I love that you came out and you said it, not everyone is meant to be a leader of people. Who is the target customer for this book? Is it an aspiring leader? Is it an existing leader? Is it someone looking to hire people for leadership positions? Like, is it all of those? Who is the target reader for this book?

I wrote this book for managers, people who are in leadership roles and aspiring leaders. I really think the best time to get that training and development is before you get into the position. And for most of us, that didn't happen, myself included. My first leadership role, I became a supervisor and no one sat me down and talked about the expectations. I didn't go to any course. I had to figure it out and I had to go take courses on my own to do that. And so, you know, this book is written for people who want to lead better. And even for people who are very seasoned leaders, what it took to be successful in a leadership role 10, 20, 30 years ago is very different from today. And so those skills and competencies, I say that it's never been harder to be a leader than in today's environment. And so this book is for those people who want to continue to elevate no matter where they are in their leadership journey.

Hmm. Yeah, you said somewhere early in the book something like the local Starbucks barista probably received more leadership training than you did. And, and it's, it's funny because you're right. Like, I, I think about the first couple of leadership positions that I had. There was no training. There was no programming. There was no development in any way, shape, or form. Yeah, you're just kind of forced to figure it out. And obviously that's not the optimal situation. So what are, what are some of the competencies that should be developed? What, what makes a good leader in 2025 going into 2026?

Well, certainly there's a lot of talk around emotional intelligence, being able to manage people. I think one of the premises of this book is moving from fixing to facilitating. Many of us were taught to be fixers. Answer the question, fix the problems, jump in the trenches. And while that worked for a while in the traditional environment, in today's environment, we need to be able to facilitate better performance. So that's through coaching. It's through connections with your team, being able to have structures in place to align your team around the right goals. When we consistently Change is accelerating, things are, priorities are shifting a lot. And so we need leaders who are active in those ways. And I talk a lot about how we can facilitate through asking questions, being curious, and not just giving people the answers. So there's a lot of elements that are important. I talk about the 3 important actions that leaders need to take. One is creating clarity. We have to consistently create clarity for our teams around What's important in the priorities. Caretaking the culture, which is the people side of, you know, coaching, regular feedback, and making sure we're developing people in their careers. And then the facilitating results. Every business is in business to get results. So how we facilitate that will be important in today's environment.

I'm currently working through so many of these things within my business, BookThinkers, because You know, we're growing, we've got 10 people on the team now full-time, and we need to put some structure in place. So we need to change some things in our culture, and it's not easy. And it's why I'm so happy that I had a chance to read this because it, you know, it helped me, I think, change a couple of perspectives. And so what, what are the first steps if there's a young leader out there and they have received no training and they're trying to smarten things up a little bit and be more effective? Like, what are the first actions that you think somebody should be taking?

Well, one is to know if this is the right fit for you. So, to truly take a look and think, because I think there are many ways that we can develop in our careers and paths that we can take. I think many companies are getting better about creating different paths that are not leadership. So, I think one is to determine, is this the right path for you? Is this something that gives you energy? Not to say that we don't all, you know, have times where dealing with people is not challenging, but if this is something you really don't love and doesn't fill you up, it may not be the right position for you. But if you determine that this is the right role, is understanding what could be getting in your way. And so one of the things I talk about in the book are the 6 leadership saboteurs, the elements that can get in the way of us being successful as leaders. And we all experience some of these. There's no one who is, you know, immune to these saboteurs. And there are things like lack of focus, lack of delegation, lack of team engagement, conflict avoidance, and also even just passive leadership. It takes engaged action every day with our teams. So, some things leaders can do is make sure they're listening to their teams. Having regular meetings around alignment to create clarity, finding out what helps their team work at their best. How do they like to be acknowledged? Creating the connections is really a great way to start to build your leadership and strengthen your team.

The lack of delegation piece is interesting because admittedly, I, I was horrible at delegating. If you go back 10 years, I mean, I was, I was the person that tried to do the work of 5 people instead of trying to delegate it to the 5 people. And now I actually found myself on the way other end of the spectrum recently, where I think I was over delegating without providing enough or without doing enough work on the front side like you talk about to get alignment, to find clarity, to make sure that we're all aligned and focused on the same thing. I think I was so over delegating without any of the prerequisites so that it became kind of toxic, like the leash was too long. Nobody knew what to do. And if they were successful in their roles or not. So it's funny how you can kind of have— you can kind of be on both sides of that.

I so resonate with that, Nick, because that's me. You know, in my career, probably lack of delegation was the thing that really was the most challenging for me. The first time I got promoted in human resources, I was about 3 months into that role when my VP brought me in for a meeting and she said, Lori, I did not promote you to keep doing the things you were doing before. So I had previously been responsible for payroll, for benefit administration, and I was still getting in there and fixing and doing those things. And it took her to, to start to help me see that the competencies are different now. You need to delegate and rely on your team. And so I've constantly had to work on that. And what you talked about around, there can be the opposite. I find myself in that position sometimes too. I call this drive-by delegation, where we tend to dump something or give maybe a little bit of context and then move on because we can be fast-paced and, you know, achievers. And I myself have to slow down sometimes and really think through, you know, what are the elements that are important for success for this project and really communicate those things before I just delegate to someone and move on.

Yeah, I think so too.

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Now, another piece of this— we just talked about delegation. You talked about emotional intelligence and connection. Do you think that emotional intelligence is an inherent skill or competency, or sorry, is it an inherent competency or is it a skill that can be developed over time?

It absolutely can be developed over time. And there's a lot of research around this too. So, you know, some people might have personality traits or skills that lend themselves to great emotional intelligence. So if you're empathetic, you know, that's a great skill to have of emotional intelligence, but we can also overuse skills. So any skill overuse can become a liability. And so for example, empathy, if you overuse it, you might let, you know, people walk all over you or you might wanna people please, or maybe not have that challenging conversation that needs to happen to keep your team healthy. So we can really develop emotional intelligence. And one of the pieces is to build that self-awareness. To understand where you want to grow, what skills in emotional intelligence you need to strengthen. You could do that through assessments, through feedback with other people you work with. The more self-aware you are, the better leader you become. You know, I've met people who have really shifted how they work based on being open to that kind of feedback, to understanding their tendencies, their hot buttons or triggers, or things that can set off a perhaps negative emotional reaction. The more aware we are of those, the better that we're able to manage them going forward as a leader.

I like that leadership and self-awareness are directly correlated. And so you mentioned assessments and feedback from other people. Talk to us a little bit more about that. I mean, what are— so there's somebody listening or watching to the show right now, Laurie, and they say, wow, I need to become more self-aware. Like, what are, what are the steps? Do they go do a DISC assessment or a, or a Clifton 34 and just read the results? Or do they survey their friends? Do they meditate more often? Like, what, what do you do? I'm curious.

Yeah, well, all of those above are great. And, you know, something that I, um, really recommend to people, especially if you're in an organization, whether you're an entrepreneur or you're a leader or you're aspiring leader, is to ask some questions of your direct manager. And I find that if you, the way you approach it is important. So if you say, can you give me feedback? That usually is a very big question for people to answer. And I find most managers aren't good about giving feedback in general. And so they might say things that aren't very valuable, like, oh, you're doing a good job. So I call this narrowing questions. And so asking, what is one thing I'm doing really well in my position that I should continue doing? And what is one thing that I can improve on or do better going forward? And those specific questions, you tend to get much better feedback around that. And so those are a couple of ways that I think you can get some feedback internally. I'm constantly focused on building my own self-awareness. And just as an example, a few years ago, I worked with a parenting coach because although I've really worked on a lot of these skills personally in my work world as a parent. Sometimes they've been really challenging for me of slowing down and not fixing and, you know, getting into more of that curiosity mode. And I learned so much from that experience. For example, the energy I was bringing to the interactions with my children of understanding and becoming self-aware of that. I went to parenting coaching thinking that the coach would tell me, what I was doing, what I could do better with my kids because they were challenging. And what I found was she was focused on me. What are you doing to create this? And how do you shift that? And it was such an aha moment. So whether it's reading personal development books, listening to podcasts, asking for feedback, there are always ways that we can evolve and elevate. And we have to continuously be doing this if we're going to be effective as a leader.

I love that aha that you had as a parent. I think that's great. I've sort of— I mean, I'm a parent now too, but I've sort of used some of those same lessons, I think, in my relationship with my wife. You know, instead of trying to fix her problem, just be curious and ask questions and try to understand and just, you know, listen instead of try to fix. Because I, like you, that's kind of my default mode.

Well, most people aren't necessarily looking for us to give them advice or tell them what to do. They just want to be heard or they want to process. And I think as a leader, this is a really great skill of helping to build the critical thinking skills of your team and to bring out their ideas and their brilliance and what they bring to the position. And so if someone comes to you and says, you know, What do you want me to do? Or how should I handle this? Being curious and shifting it back to them to find out, you know, how would they handle it? So, well, what do you think? Or what options have you thought of? How might you approach this? It starts to really shift the relationship. So it's not about them looking to you as the manager. The manager does not need to have all the answers. The manager, the leader's job is to help facilitate other people to get to those answers. And sometimes we need to jump in the trenches. I'm not saying that we're hands-off and we're always just asking questions, but many times we can facilitate better results by being curious and helping other people come up with those ideas.

You, you talked about as a leader, you can generate more awareness by asking specific questions of your direct manager, but we also have a lot of small business owners in the audience. that have teams of 10 like me who don't have somebody managing them. And so you just started to touch on this, but do you ask those kind of same specific questions and try to generate feedback from the people you lead? Is that the way that you would recommend doing it?

You could do that. That can certainly work. Another framework that I find really beneficial is the what's working well, what's not working well. Framework. So whether this is individual or even as a team, I do this with my team a couple of times a year, is setting aside a time and letting them know this is how we're going to use this time to talk about what's working well and what we can improve. And then just be open. I mean, you have to share with people that you're open to their ideas and create psychological safety where they feel that they can speak up and maybe challenge things or say what's not working. But I love to have people write it down on a Post-it note first. So it's not just putting it in the chat or just saying it, but they have time to reflect. And then you process through like, what's working really well we should continue? What's not working well that we can improve? And then another question could be, how can the team support you better? And so, or how can I as a manager support you better? If we're consistently asking these questions and When people share things that may be hard to hear, we acknowledge and we hear it and do something about it. We start to build this team where people know they can share those ideas. They don't have to hold back where it's building up under the surface. It really creates a healthy, dynamic team, and constructive conflict is necessary for a healthy team.

I think so too. But it feels great hearing it from you as well. We're at Book Thinkers, we're starting the process of implementing EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. And so right now, for the first time in a while, I think that we're focused on having conversations like this. And I'm moving out of the technician role more, more into the visionary manager type role. And so it's important for me to state to the team, based on your suggestions and And your book, uh, yeah, this is a safe place. And I, I think it's been implied, but it needs to be stated more clearly that this is a safe place. I want your suggestions, and, uh, we will do something about them. And so that, that's happening in a change in our culture too. So it's probably the right time to, to be stating that.

Yeah. And, you know, EOS is great for putting in place structures to help the team, right? And so I know for me as an entrepreneur and a former leader, sometimes it's easier to not have the meeting or not have the conversation and just go about your work. And I think this is something that leaders often struggle with is I believe these structures, having them in place, whether it's regular conversations or even just team meetings for alignment, so we're not working in silos, And that alignment is so important in our world today where there's just so much going on. And if we're not aligned and around the priorities, how will 2 levels down or our team be aligned? And so, these structures help create that clarity that people need to be able to do their best and to be able to implement and achieve the goals that we have set for them.

Yeah, you highlighted this, that there's been a change. You know, there was that top-down hierarchical leadership time, and now there's more of a collaborative type of leadership that's, that's emerging where everybody needs to feel tied into the company's vision and know that what they're doing on a daily basis matters. And, uh, you know, so I'm excited to start implementing a little bit more of that in, into my business. You mentioned, uh, that personal development books and podcasts have had a big influence on you Improving your level of awareness. What are— who have been some of the big influences on your life?

A huge influence in my life has been Jack Canfield, who I've had the privilege of working with directly. And his book, The Success Principles, is fantastic.

I saw him in it.

He did. Yes, he wrote a really nice endorsement for the book, which is wonderful. He's— not only is he a humble person, but principles he teaches for how to live your life and how to lead have been incredibly helpful. And I continuously go back to those principles. So his book, The Success Principles, is fantastic. I just read Inner Excellence, which I know became famous this past year when a football player was reading it. And I thought that book was fantastic because, you know, we talk about often things to do as leaders of, you know, what can you do better? What are strategies? But the inner mindset piece is just as important. You know, are we getting better ourselves? Are we managing our saboteurs? Do we understand what could get in the way? Are we staying in a positive mindset to lead a team? And so those kinds of books, I'm constantly reading personal development books, even if there are things that I've maybe known about before, an author's different take on it to reinforce those principles and ideas in your mind. I find that very powerful.

I do too. And I haven't read Inner Excellence yet, although when AJ Brown was caught reading it on the sidelines last year, and then they ended up, the Eagles ended up winning the Super Bowl last year. So that was a lot of fun to see. And maybe that book had something to do with it. I should, I should get a copy of that.

I underlined a lot in that book. I really found it. I can't believe I haven't read it sooner, but never too late, right? And implementing Those strategies in there. Yeah.

And it's fun to see what happened with that book because he went from, you know, like moderate success with the book to just mega, mega, mega success with the book because one person was caught reading it on a sideline.

So that's right. That's—

yeah, that's, that's really fun. Well, good. Um, as we get closer to wrapping up the conversation today, what do you hope happens? With this book? I mean, what determines whether it was successful or not? Is it one changed leader? Is it a certain number of copies sold? I mean, what do you want out of this thing?

Really what I want out of this is for it to impact and transform the lives of leaders. And so yes, it's wonderful to sell a lot of books and I hope to sell a lot of books so that more people get ahold of this information. But really my My whole mission for this is to help people create better workplaces where people love to come to work. And while I talk about many great strategies that can help elevate leadership, a really core principle that I want to reinforce around this is that you can also create a really joyful and great life. And so I talk a lot in this book around about intention, and if we're using our energy and focus in intentional ways so that we can leverage the time we're at work in the best way possible so that we can also enjoy our personal life. So many leaders are just reacting to everything coming at them all day, and they're adding extra hours to their day or working weekends or working through lunch. And I don't think that's sustainable in our environment. And so these principles, if you implement them, they work. They are principles that are foundational to creating an exceptional workplace. But my hope is also that leaders can find some relief and find a better way to work that can reduce stress and feel like they're making the impact that they want, both in— at their workplace and also in their lives.

I love that. I love that. It's, uh, It is changing fast. And you are right, you kind of kicked off the podcast saying that I think it's more difficult to be a successful and effective leader today than it ever has been before. There's a lot of— the expectations are higher than ever. The average person wants more out of their leader than I think that they ever have before. And I know my kind of major takeaway from the book and what I'm going to be implementing is just more open conversation with my team about how I can be a more effective and elevated leader and about how they can do more of what brings them energy in their roles. I think just slowing down and just not being so task-oriented and allowing myself to step back and be an actual leader. Instead of a technician in the business. Like, that's something that I know I need to implement more of.

Yeah. And this is something many leaders are challenged with every day, is being able to step up into that more leadership presence. And I take the readers through this exercise called key result areas of really clarifying what is the biggest impact I make, whether it's in my business as a business owner, or if it's it's a leader or a manager, what are the key results that are going to really drive and move the needle in our organization that only I can do? And then I look at what I can delegate and what I can rely on my team for. So many people are doing low-level tasks that are not related to their talents and the best impact they can make. And so even having clarity around that helps us to show up more intentionally every day. And then of course, there's practices you can put in place to make sure that you're staying in that space. But if leaders can even shift that, they'll have a much bigger impact and feel that even passion and enjoyment in their work that they maybe now are feeling very overloaded or overwhelmed.

I can't think of anybody who doesn't want that change to take place. For— okay, so for anybody in the audience that's like, hey, that's great. I know I can go buy the book, but I want to fast-track this. For anybody that wants to work with you directly, I know you have speaking available. What other ways can you help people?

Yeah, besides keynote speeches and coming on site to organizations, we also have the Elevated Leader Program. Our next cohort starts in January. And so if you're looking for a deep dive with that support with other colleagues in an open enrollment format, that kicks off in January.

And so what does that look like for someone? Is that group cohort like Zoom sessions with with access to you, or how does that work?

It is, it's Zoom sessions. We go into 7 deep dive sessions where we will focus on a lot of the key areas of the book, helping you get support and coaching through that. And so, it's a great environment to really apply these skills and put them into action.

And what's the price point on that? Because I know that's what everybody will be looking at.

Yeah, we have some early bird pricing right now. I believe it's about $2,495. And then the regular pricing's around $28.95.

Okay, great. We'll put links to everything in the show notes. Uh, and then for people that want to go get a copy of the book or check that out, where do they go? What do they do?

They can go to theelevatedleader.com.

Okay. theelevatedleader.com. Perfect. And then last question for you today before we let you go. So if The Elevated Leader was accidentally deleted and wiped from the internet and the book was gone, but you could leave the world with just One simple message from the book, what would that be?

That would be to focus on building the connections and facilitating in your work. Pull yourself out of those trenches, ask more questions, be curious, and lead your team to bring out their brilliance and their greatness.

I know that's what I'm working to implement. Well, Laurie, congratulations on the book. Thank you so much for the conversation today. It, uh, it has been a pleasure talking with you.

Thanks so much, Nick. Great to be here.

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