Leading with Authenticity

Happy Monday, Cadre family. How are you doing on this beautiful Monday? I'm gonna walk and talk here for a second, mostly because the coffee shop that I'm working from today is a little more loud inside than what appears to be the noise outside. Working remote. I love it, and sometimes it can be a lot. So here we are, finding beautiful spaces to have our conversation today. Ooh, Liz bees. I like this. This is a great name. Nice to meet you. My name is Jean. It's great to have you out here. I am calling in today from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

If you're joining in the call, I'd love to know where you're calling in from. We travel so much, or a lot of us travel, so it's always fun to see what cities people are in so that when we travel, maybe we can connect live. So on this Monday, leading with authenticity. One of the questions I'm going to have to start for everybody, whether you're dialing in live, whether you listen to it on replay, I'm going to ask this question. Have you ever been laid off from a job performance managed, put on a performance management plan, had a tough conversation with your manager when they just weren't happy with the work that you've done?

If you've had any of those situations, I would love for you to type in the chat which situation it was for you and how you felt during the conversation, after the conversation. How is the experience for you? Now? The reason I bring this up is I, as I've mentioned, I'm a coach, and this seems to be, I've mentioned in the past one of my hats that I wear as a coach. I also co own a small business. And when you're working with people, it's inevitable that expectations may or may not get met. And here's the deal.

As a leader, sometimes my ability to lead, my team's expectations of me as a leader might not get met sometimes. And that is just a pure function of we're human. We are working a lot of hours. We sometimes are working in crisis mode, and when that happens, we may or may not show up at our best. When we are working on things that are uncomfortable for us, our strengths might not shine. Or if we're working on tasks that drain us, our strengths might not shine. Now, I'm not going to say that any of us are great at delivering hard messages, great at telling our team or individuals on our team or our peers or colleagues when they're not doing the best job.

We're human. We don't want to tell people when they're not living into an expectation, that can be really hard. Or sometimes, I guess if we want to tell them that and we're really eager to tell them that, then you might want to do a check as to what's your motivation for why you want to do that. Is it about ego? Is it something else that's happening? But delivering those hard messages can be very tricky in maintaining the integrity of a relationship, maintaining your own integrity and knowing that I, Jean, have to go into a couple of performance management conversations with people on my team, but also knowing that I have had, I've been the receiver of those conversations, it's really important to me that I go into them the right way, because at the end of the day, if somebody isn't meeting expectations, most of the time, they already know when I.

So I was. I've been laid off from two jobs, and I have had my own company now for over 15 years as a consultant and coach. I have fired a client. I have not gotten asked to come back on a project before. Sometimes it's budget related, sometimes we just didn't mesh, or sometimes the team is already living into the expectations of what they need to be doing, and they don't need me anymore. If I'm doing my best work, I actually work myself out of a job. And I remember one time when I had a performance management conversation, and I've had a couple.

We all have, right? And I've had two really big ones. And the first one came really out of the blue because I was working at a new job. I was staying up really late. m. because that was the point in time when all of the users of a technology I was supporting wouldn't be logged into the system. And there was one of those times or instances where I was doing my work and I had to send out an email to one of our client, like internal clients, and I sent it too fast and I didn't read it. And the way the message was received was nowhere near the way that I intended it.

But this person, rank wise, was higher in the hierarchy than I was. And so the fact that I had responded so quickly without actually being as thorough, and I was so tired when I sent the email. I literally can remember it to this day. When I got the feedback that I had offended this person, I literally was crushed. Literally was crushed. And I. I wanted to do anything I could to try to make it better with this person. And my manager, how they delivered the feedback was so kind. They were like, jean, we know this isn't what you intended.

We see that you're working a ton of hours. We're so grateful for your help. However, I need you to read this and then pretend that it wasn't you sending it, pretending it was you receiving it. How would you respond? And I literally, my heart just sank. I reread the email, and I was like, ah, snap. Now, I didn't get on a performance management plan. It wasn't that big of an issue. However, the impact to the relationship with the person that I was working with was significant, and it took me a while to recover from that one with this particular internal customer.

But my manager handled it with Grayson style. They knew that I was working in an extreme condition. They knew that I always ran with positive intent and that this was a learning opportunity for me because they knew that someday I would be managing people and I would carry that forward with me. The second time that I had an issue or performance management conversation, that one didn't go so well. This individual was a newer manager, and they were, had aspirations to get promoted. And the job that they were in at the moment they were managing me was just the pass through job to get them experience on a rotation.

And we had very, very different working styles. And so this person, not only would they nitpick at my work, because I had a very different working style, I loved my job. Our internal customers, our internal clients loved working with me. It was literally my favorite job ever until this manager came in and the conversation with her went very, very different. She criticized my work. She criticized my approach to my work. She criticized how I dressed at work. And we had a very. It wasn't super casual environment, and I never wore anything with holes.

I never had anything hanging down. She just didn't like my style. She'd criticize my hair if it was too curly one day. She'd criticize my hair if it was too straight one day. And I, day after day, just started feeling more and more depleted until my mentor found me one day, pulled me aside, and said, this is how you need to approach this conversation. And he coached me up. But had he not, I literally would have left my job, probably would have quit the industry, and never looked back and felt so torn apart.

So when we're performance managing people, we always have a choice. And when I'm working with managers, I always try to help them understand what's the motivation on their side for having the conversation, and then who is the person that they're talking to, what's their communication style? What's happening in their life? How might we lead with some compassion and still get the same outcome in the conversation? We need them to improve their performance, or a shift needs to happen. So if you've had any of those conversations or you've been on the receiving end of those, I'd love to hear how it's gone for you.

Now I'm in a position where I need to have one of those conversations with one of my team members. And here's the processor approach that I've taken. This is, in particular to the studio, the indoor cycling studio that I comb, and we will do peer to peer reviews. So I put team members together so that they can learn how to give feedback in a really positive way, because at the end of the day, almost everybody that works at our studio has another full time job. So even though we're teaching fitness classes, I want to help our team be set up for success, not just at our studio, but in their lives and in their jobs.

So we do peer to peer feedback, and I coach people, and we help set people up to have a conversation where we can give and receive feedback in the nicest possible way. We do actual critique sessions. So, for all of our instructors, we'll go in and do a formal review where we take a class and we have a script. And after going through those experiences as a boutique fitness studio, there's often times where somebody might need a little more. And I have one of those right now, and they're very passionate, they're talented, but it's really important for me to understand why they're doing what they're doing.

And fitness, if you don't have passion for what you're doing, if your why isn't truly about the people in the room and it's more about you, it doesn't work. And that's a hard conversation to have. And so I met with this individual a couple weeks ago, before they had a very big life changing event. They got married, but they were really struggling. They wanted to quit. So I sat down with them. I have heard rumblings from the team that this person has been complaining a lot, and it's starting to bring down the morale of the team.

And so I met with them one on one and said, here's the process. Here's why. You know, you're not getting what you're demanding. And I say demanding because that's exactly how the approach has been taken. And we talk through, like, here's exactly what you need to do to get to the next step, but you have to choose. You're either all in or you're not. And so after you get through the wedding, you go through a couple weeks of being back. I'm gonna take your class, and then we're gonna meet, and we're gonna have a conversation, and we'll go from there.

And so those conversations, I literally will stay up at night. I will toss and turn. I will try to think about it from their end of the receiving end of the conversation. I will try to understand their strengths. I will look to see where they're shining and where they feel depleted. So that when I go into the conversation, I can always come from a place of knowing holistically where they're at, at least from an outside in perspective. And when you're delivering the hard conversations, when I'm coaching managers and teams, it's always coming from a place of positive intent.

Why am I having the conversation in the first place? Is there a disruption on the team? Is there a disruption in work performance? Has something changed in their lives that might be causing the disruption in work performance? What is the driver? And then taking the time to have the conversation with them, to validate and hear their concerns. Maybe they don't have what they need to be the best at what they do. And that might require more time from me. That might require more structure. It might require more vision, it might require more autonomy.

So it's really important that I'm going into the conversation, having all the information. And when I coach anybody into those conversations, I always ask them to start with questions. How does this person feel about their performance? What do they think is doing? They're doing well. Where do they think they have an opportunity, and why do they think we're having this conversation? Because when I can hear their perspective, then I can kind of marry it with mine. And then we can start to either create a plan or we can start to create a path.

And both aren't easy because it requires an ego or super ego. If you want to listen to Freud, to get pushed aside, I, Jean, as a manager, as a leader, as a co owner, I'm not always right. But I do want to do what's best for the team, best for our community, best for the individual. And if they know that that is always my intention going into it, even when we've had to part ways, we can still part ways in a way where we both feel supported and lifted up. So I invite you, if you are managing people and you have to have the hard conversations, what's your approach?

How might you approach it in a way that still leaves that person feeling lifted? And if you're on the receiving end of a hard conversation, what might the other person delivering the message might be going through as they're talking to you? And where might they have some truth in what they're saying? Where might you have some opportunity to grow, learn or understand? And if you're on the receiving end of that, it's because somebody cares enough to have the conversation with you versus just letting you go.

So how might I, Jean, take the hard feedback in a way, or the performance management conversation? If I'm the receiver, how might I be more curious to understand more about what I can do better or different, or what's on the being perceived and also doing a check in? What is happening with me? Because if I've been doing a really great job and all of a sudden I've hit a wall, something likely has shifted. And if I'm being really honest, a part of it has probably shifted with me and my approach. And then maybe there's also been a shift in manager and management and the vision of the company.

And then I get to make a decision. Am I going to lean in? Am I going to step up because I still love what I do? Or is the time for me to find something new and great? Is it that time now? There's never a one way answer to any of it. But whether you're the deliverer of a hard message or the receiver of a message, we always get to lead with integrity. And we always have the opportunity to be authentic to ourselves, to be vulnerable, to create space, to hold space, to be in the space of what our own truth is.

And that doesn't always mean that there's not emotion attached to it. There always will be, especially when we're passionate about it. But sometimes it requires us to do a lot of reflection to understand the why and how we can still show up in our best way, in our best light. So if this has been beneficial to you, let me know if you have questions, if you've had an experience, I'd love to see it in the chat. I always look into the chats to see if there's any insights or questions. So feel free to do that.

And this beautiful, magical Monday, whether you're having your best day, a challenging day, a questionable day, how might you just take a few minutes to get outside, take a walk, take a breath and check in to see where you're at in this moment and what step can you take next? I hope you have a great day. I'll be here on Sunday. Always for me time. And next Monday for performance development day. Leading with authenticity. Enjoy.