Tales Of Leadership: Listening

It is Thursday. It is tales of leadership. This is Luke Wentlandt. I'm going to give you two tricks today. Whether you are a leader or a subordinate, either way, we all work together at companies and organizations, and I think this one's going to be really, really good. And it's all about listening, right? So I'm going to give you two examples today in which you as a leader could take this with you to help change maybe the paradigm of relationships with you and your team, or if you are an individual reporting up.

This might be a couple different ways in which you may be able to find different ways to maybe meet your leader in the middle to continue to build relationships. Because at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. Our world's all about relationships as leadership. It's all about the relationships you can or can't build. So I really want you to think about these ones today. So I'm gonna give you an example of two. The first one is going to be in a team setting. The second one is going to be in an individual setting.

Okay. 1 second, please. Oh, I hope everybody's having a great day. Ana, it's always so good to see you. You have leader written all over you. You are a future leader in this world. It is going to be so great to see what you do. Hi, Joe Pajoy. Gosh, anytime you're on the live stream, it always makes me happy. One last sip. I promise, one last sip. Okay, here we go. So let's say, for instance, you have a team meeting. There's three of you, six of you, eight of you. One thing that you can do at any time, if you're the leader or if you're not.

This is what I typically always do during a meeting. Right here. I write down the initial of each leader, and then as the meeting goes on, any time that we talk, I usually have a little dash mark. Sometimes it looks like you're writing and that's fine, but at the end of the day, you're just going to write a little check tally by every single individual as they talk. Okay? And you're just going to sit there, you know, as the leader, you're going to literally sit there, moderate, get the thing going, get the meeting going, bring your points forward, and just kind of do your checkboxes.

And I think what you're gonna find sometimes is behind two or three individuals. In a six person or an eight person meeting, maybe two or three take up the bulk of 60 70% of the meeting, or you might even have one or two check marks, which is really sad. Then I think you have to think about that meeting as a whole. But when you start to see your tallies as a leader, ultimately your goal is to try to bring those tallies as close to possible so people feel safe, psychologically safe, open to share, willing to put their input two cent in on different things that maybe organizationally are charged with doing your tasks, with doing.

So the best part about this exercise is using the information after the meeting is done. Okay, what do I mean by that? So let's say you have little Johnny here, right? Johnny only spoke twice during the entire meeting. Maybe this would be a great time after the meeting to meet with Johnny. Excusing Johnny as a name. Hey, Johnny, everything okay? You're really quiet during that meeting. I just want to check in on you. Forget about the business. Right. Just how are you? Everything okay? Did that seem to resonate with you?

Were you on the same page? Is there something I was missing? It's not having the meeting after the meeting where we b**** and whine about what transpired, but rather, or as Cyn would say, our bmws, but rather, instead, you're trying to build the relationship from that meeting of the why is it somebody that doesn't feel safe to be able to share? Is it somebody who doesn't? So those are some things I really want you to think about as you're moving through the meetings. The best meetings are when every single individual feels like they are safe and can be able to share.

Bezobitz, 33 let's go, Alec. Hey, Katie. Hello. Hello to you all. It's the best to be able to do this. I love sharing every Thursday. I live for these moments just so on the same page. Tales of leadership are just simply my tales. Every one of us on this planet's a leader. Sometimes in organizations we do this funny thing and we have titles where, you know, there's rank and whatever. Titles are nothing but that. Titles. Leaders are leaders. And if you show up and you're the person that you are and you're authentic and you're direct with your communication, you're all the things you are a leader.

So let's call it what it is. We're all leaders, but so I hope this one helps you. So the next time you're in a meeting, in a team meeting, and you have four, six, eight people, by all means write down their first initial and just do kind of a check mark and just see kind of. What does that look like? What does that meeting look like. And I think you're going to find some trends over one, two, three meetings. Okay, the next one is. So I talked about the team and listening, and now it's the individual.

If you'd ask any individual that's ever, ever reported to me, ever, I guarantee you they would be able to say this. They know a lot about me. If you ask anybody ever, in 10, 15, 20 years of ever having individuals report to me, they know a lot about me. And I'm going to give you one trick of the trade. Okay? Well, it's asking questions and listening. But here's one trick that I really, really want to share and offer to you. Okay? Anytime you're talking on the phone, anytime you're text messaging, anytime you're doing anything outside of email, go one week and never have anything to do with work, ever, as a leader.

But put this on your shoulders for one week. One week, you will literally have nothing to do with work in one week outside of email. An email can say, hey, did you follow up with XYZ? Was that report done? TPS report? I'm just teasing, but give it a go. And I think what you're going to find is, wow, Sally's got a lot going on at home. Johnny's struggling with a relationship. Timmy has anxiety and depression. Sally is struggling as a caregiver, taking care of her mom, who's 82 years old in XYZ hospital.

Brenda is finding it very difficult to be a single mom after a relationship was broken. We all have s***, people. We all have stuff. And I highly encourage you to show up as a human being and a person, and that's really a leader. But show up as a human being and a person for somebody else work, odds are you could probably fulfill that via email. But those text messages. Tell me what was good this week. Tell me what happened. Tell me what's going on in your life. And before you know it, you're going to tweak a little nugget, and you're going to tweak a little nugget, and you're going to tweak a little nugget, and you're going to have people that are willing to share, really what's on their heart and their mind, and that is gorgeous.

You hear us a lot talk about Cadre, right? Compassion, authenticity, diversity, respect, engagement. We just tweaked those just slightly yesterday, which was good, but a stuck, which is authenticity. Authenticity. So I encourage you to go one week. So let's say you are running a hotel chain down in Fort Myers and you oversee a group of individuals that work as custodians in cleaning all of the rooms, maybe send the email out of, hey guys, everybody got everything cleaned? Hey, did we get our, you know, our kra is reported, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever those things might be the schedule.

And then I encourage you, any face to face text message, otherwise interaction, go deep with the human being, go deep with that person and I think you're going to find some trends going on in their life. And then before you know it, I know this corporate talk or otherwise, but before you know it, there's a lot of things that are going to be like on or off the table within reason, which is really exciting as a leader, to be able to work with people really for who they are and what they are. So I hope these two might potentially give you little sparks in your brain either as the individual that showing up to the meeting that's reporting to that individual or the individual that's running the meeting.

Because at the end of the day, it's all about team anyhow. But I wish you nothing but the best with building relationships through silence. Right? That's what it's all about. Just listening. Listening in silence. Something, quite frankly I still kind of suck at today is. Or otherwise I'll revert it back to the me or revert it back to the I when I'm like, gosh darn it, this was a great opportunity to shut up. I hope you take some of these misses that have happened in my life over the course of the last couple decades, and I hope you transfer those into opportunities for yourself to learn from these brutal mistakes.

So at any rate, these takeaways give me sparks to the brain. Oh, that's great. I'm happy to hear that. Man, I can't wait to see you tomorrow. But good luck to you all this week. Good luck heading into the weekend. Be good to one another. Do the best you can to support those around.