Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey everyone, welcome to the episode. So ask a Ram flips the script one step beyond podcast. Guests and listeners submit their questions and ask a Ram anything. Questions can be music, life stories, business, leadership, advice, how to make the best vegan omelette, you name it. Aram will unpack your questions and leave you with info you can apply before we get to it, please rate, review, and subscribe.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: This might be a silly question, but what is executive coaching?
[00:00:33] Speaker C: Executive coaching is exactly like normal coaching, except in the business world. I'll unpack it because it's a little bit more than that. So usually when people talk about executive coaching, it makes it sound like it's only at senior levels. But coaching just in general, can be applied at like all sorts of different levels in an organization. And if you think of just traditional coaching and anything that someone does, whether it's like, you know, a coach that is part of a soccer team or a weight training coach or any of the, any of those things, it's someone with a level of expertise that's helping you achieve a higher level of performance in that arena. So let's just say someone has a personal trainer.
Most people can figure out how to exercise. Like, I, I can go for a run or I can lift some weights. The reason you get a personal trainer is that person has the level of expertise in how the body works, how to take care of yourself, how to not just exercise in general, but how to do it in a way that you can make gains and you can be effective in what you're doing. So a coach really is about helping people take things that they could learn how to do in general. You could read a book, you could watch a video, you kind of just figure it out. And they just, they have a level of expertise to help you make gains and be more efficient in how you do it. So when it comes to executive coaching, it's like such a huge range of things, but the most basic form it has to do with, usually, communication or leadership.
And you could figure out how to communicate effectively on your own. Of course. You could read a book, you could observe other people. You could watch a video, you could figure out how to lead. Again, you could observe others. You could have someone who's a mentor, but someone who's a coach or an executive coach is someone who's got a real specific level of expertise that they bring to that to help you learn how to do it faster, better, in a more effective way. Um, and I do really encourage, I don't like that idea of, like, tagging executive onto it. It is kind of just part of the industry. But in general, most professionals would benefit from having a coach at some point in their career. People shouldn't feel that they have like endless coaching forever. Think about it is like if there's something that you're really trying to achieve, like a stretch full, you have. And again, we'll go back to personal training. So lets say someones going from not really being physically fit at all and wanting to get to a much higher level of physical fitness. Thats where youd have a personal trainer because its someone whos taking you into that space. But lets say youre a really incredible athlete, and now youre actually trying to go from being just a really solid athlete to actually going into a competitors space. And now youre trying to actually compete. Great, thats another time for a coach. Lets say that youve been a competitor and now youre actually trying to get into the Olympics. Great, thats another time for a coach. So do people in general need coaches? No. Like, you know, just in general not. But if you're trying to scale up to something, grow into something, get really, really good at something, it's a great time to have a coach at pretty much any time.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Can you unpack talent retention? How do I keep my team from jumping ship?
[00:03:34] Speaker C: Think of it this way.
The relationship with their direct boss, relationship with their team, enjoying what they do, and then salary, benefits and work life balance, that's the scale they should be looking at. The most important is connection to the direct manager. So I'll explain it a bit deeper. When I think about talent retention and people staying within an organization, one of the spaces that people go to immediately is how much should we pay people? What are their benefits and what's their work life balance? And then kind of all the attached things around those around things like benefits, like what kind of learning opportunities they have, all of those things are super important. I don't say that they're not, but I tend to find that those are further down the list.
I believe from a talent retention point of view, the number one indicator, whether or not someone stays or leaves has to do with their relationship with the direct manager. And it's not like, oh, I love my boss and we're such buddies. In fact, I think that's like the worst space to be in. But more so, it's about how much intention their leader puts into giving them opportunities, giving them clear, direct, and timely feedback that's like actually actionable. Does their boss coach? Does their boss give them the spotlight?
Does their boss put them intentionally into things that are going to help them grow. Does their boss pay attention to them in terms of what they're doing and actually really try and cultivate that? I am trying to help you get along. They get along in your career, when someone has a boss that's really vested in them. And again, investment doesn't have to be like anything from a financial perspective, but invest time, effort, energy in them. That, to me, is the greatest indicator of whether or not you can retain someone. The second is someone's connection to their team. Now, again, when I say to their team, I don't mean being within group, and everyone's like, buddy, buddy, and everyone goes out for beers afterwards. It's not that. More so, is the team that you're working on enable the best level of work that you're able to do or that you've ever done? So does your team actively, like, pull barriers out of the way? Do they communicate well? Does, like, the left hand know what the right hand is doing? Do you collaborate really well? Is that collaboration really organic? Or if it's not organic, is your boss really good at creating inorganic collaboration? So if you're part of a team that enables you to do the best work that you have ever done in your life, you're very unlikely to leave that team. The third thing is about whether or not people actually like what they do. And I know it might sound like, weird that that's so low down the list, but not everybody loves what they do. And it's this kind of north american fantasy that we have that we should all have this job that just like speaks to our soul. Yes, I would love it if that was true for everybody. But if you're listening to this, I want you to really think, does your job speak to your soul? Amazing. If it does, you are one of. One of very few super, super lucky people, and I am totally stoked for you. But if not, it's that whether or not you enjoy what you do is usually trumped by people who have a really great boss who's super invested in them and a team that helps them do their best level of work. If you can like what you do, maybe you don't love it, but you like it. Thats pretty awesome. The last thing is pay benefits and work life balance. Paying people fair and equitably is super important. The best as an organization, do it giving them great benefits, like really good healthcare, supporting them around childcare, and theres a bunch of stuff that could do there and then also work life balance. But heres the thing. If someone doesnt love what they do and they dont get paid that well, but they have amazing boss whos super invested in them. So thats like a growth opportunity and they have a team thats like totally invested in them and actually helps them do the best work that theyre ever going to do. A lot of people will stay in the job if you flip it. If someone gets paid a ton of money and yeah they like what they do or say, they even love what they do, but their boss doesnt give a shit about them and their team actually is like, like puts challenges in their way.
They might love what they do but theyre just going to try and do that somewhere else. So from a retention point of view, paying people a ton of money, even if its something that they like to do, isnt a retention strategy, the retention strategy would be about how can I make sure that my team is feeling like Im really invested in them and how can my team enable the best work that each other has ever done. Those are the two key things. The other two are like super nice to have. I want everyone to have them. From a practicality point of view, not everyone has them. So focus on those first two.
[00:08:12] Speaker B: What's the best way to structure a one on one with my reports to maximize time?
[00:08:17] Speaker C: Have an agenda and try your best to have nothing. Be like a last minute topic. So when I say have an agenda, it doesn't have to be this like long, you know, exacting agenda, but basically be like, here are the three things we're going to talk about, or here are the five things we're going to talk about or here are two things and here are the sub bullets. Having an agenda in advance, the things you want to talk about, they want to talk about allows both of you to come to the table prepared for the conversation.
If you do that in advance, that means you should have the expectation that people are showing up and ready to discuss it. Now, that doesn't mean there aren't some things that are going to come up last minute, but that's fine, too. If something comes up last minute, let's say something comes up an hour beforehand, email an updated agenda and literally put in the in the subject line agenda, update today's meeting and then have what the updated items are. It just gives people the idea that they should be coming to the meeting being prepared in advance. Now, there might be some things like you have to bring up in the moment. They're just like brand new information. That's fine, too. You can do that. But I do have a trick about that. But before I get, before I get to any of that, spitballing things in the moment or like, oh, I've got one extra thing to talk about. It's not that you should never do that, but if that's what your meetings are usually, then typically all you're talking about is just like update meetings. Why would you have an update meeting? What's the point of update meetings? You should be spending your time with your reports, actually working on things rather than updates. Updates can just be done through email, and a lot of people end up just having these update meetings with the reports or with their teams that just get repetitive and boring. If people prepare in advance so they know what they're going to be talking about in advance, and that's the expectation, then you should be having better interactions with your reports and them with you. So for things that just come up last minute, I think it's really important to take the time to think about it. So let's say something comes up, like five minutes before a meeting. What I'd encourage is, right when you start the meeting, you say, okay, here's this thing that we need to talk about in the meeting. What I think is, why don't we both just spend about five or ten minutes prepping our thoughts and then have the meeting. So just delay the meeting by about five to ten minutes, prep your thoughts and then go in and have the conversation. You'll have a more effective conversation than if you just start spitballing it. Now, this might seem a little like, well, shouldn't I just be able to chat with people? Totally. You totally can chat with people. But if we're talking from an effectiveness point of view, there's something that Michelle Rakshas, who's our vp of learning, told me about Amazon is that, you know, like when you get documents emailed to you in advance, it's like, come to the meeting and be prepared to speak to this, that a lot of people actually don't read the documents, myself included, at Amazon, what they do is they start the meeting and they have like a ten or 15 minutes buffer where everybody literally in the meeting is reading the document because they assume nobody's going to read the document in advance. So what you can build into your meetings is if you want, if you have things that people should be reading in advance or you should be reading in advance, or you have some space for some prep that you can anticipate other people are, don't have time to do in the rest of their meetings. Build an extra 1520 minutes where you're literally sitting in the same room doing your prep or reading the documents. And then after meeting, we all are like, too many meetings, too many conversations, too much this, too much that, and also repetitive conversations on the same thing where it doesn't seem like we're making any ground. Then build your meetings in accordance. First, have an agenda that you can update right up to the beginning of the meeting. But I also encourage you to put in some time if there's documents that need to be read or if you wanted people to have a little bit of extra prep time where you can literally just sit in the same meeting for 510 or even 20 minutes where people read documents or prep their thinking beforehand. Yes, it's a little bit of extra time, but think how much extra meeting time you can save in the future if you do that.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: As a manager, I often struggle with communicating to my team on decisions made by the large company that I work for that I don't agree with. How do I remain authentic to myself and deliver a message that I don't agree with?
[00:12:28] Speaker C: Challenge up and sideways and then lead down. The order of importance here should be what does your team need and then how do you feel? So I'm going to unpack that.
When I say challenge up and sideways and then lead down, that means if you work in an organization that has like five people or 15 people or 50 people or 500 people or 5000 people, whatever it is, at some point you're going to have to lead through something that you have some level of disagreement with. And it could be mild disagreement or it could be like super serious major disagreement. When we disagree or disagree about something, I don't think you should just like eat it and you just sit on it. But your team really needs you to lead, especially if it's something that you disagree with and you can anticipate that they're going to disagree with and leadership here should be leading them through that. But it doesnt mean you shouldnt challenge it. So lets say its a peer level discussion then you should challenge at a peer level. Now, I dont mean challenge in some totally terrible way where its going to end up causing you to leave your job or lose your job, but I think decisions that can be challenged at a peer level. So again, challenge sideways should be until the point where the decision has been made and thats just it. But also challenging up. A lot of people can feel that challenging up is a very dangerous thing to do and it can be like, I don't want to say that it's not, but I also say that, I don't know. I know a lot of people in the corporate world and just in the business world who have made a lot of cool things happen because they were the person willing to speak up. Now, there's all sorts of caveats I can add on there, for sure, and there's all sorts of special circumstances and some people who can speak up or have more liberty to speak up than other people. Yes, all of that. But for this answer specifically, if it's something you disagree with and you think there's an opportunity to actually challenge it, you challenge it sideways and up. But talking about leaning down, the first thing I'd encourage you to think about is what do my team need versus how do I feel? And it doesn't have to be one versus the other, but it's about one has to go before the other. So when we take that step into leadership, we have to take our feelings and we make them a secondary concern. And it doesn't mean that they don't matter, but it's what do people need from us?
Something that I feel is totally true is when things are good, leaders are totally needed. When things are neutral, leaders are totally needed. But when things are challenging, when decisions are coming down the line that, like, people disagree with, that's when leaders are really needed. And what you gotta do is you've gotta communicate clearly and concisely. When things are communicated and the leader clearly disagrees with them and they're taking a long time to explain it, that's actually quite damaging psychologically and from a motivational point of view for people. When there are leaders doing that, you should rip the band aid off. Be clear and concise about it, and you should hold back your personal opinion.
If your team knows you, they already know you disagree with it. Of course they know. They know who you are, and you've probably shown who you are through multiple interactions. It's not going to help them for you to be like, and I personally disagree with. That's probably actually going to hurt them more psychologically. It's going to be really tough because they look up to you and believe in you and trust you. And then also from a motivation point of view, they're not going to be motivated to work through it because they're like, well, my boss disagrees with this and thinks it's crappy, and let's just put up our hands and complain about it. It doesn't mean that I think we should just swallow everything blindly. Absolutely not. I think challenging sideways and up is super, super important. And other times when we work in an organization, whether it's five, five people, 15 people, 50 people, 505,000, whatever, you're just going to have to manage decisions that are difficult, but that means leading through those things. And again, be clear, concise, talk through it, and then talk about, okay, we got this, this challenge, now let's go through it. Let's figure out how we're going to work through it. And that's where you focus on bringing your team together and you lead them through it about, we've got this thing going on. It's a challenge. Let's move forward. That space of a leadership.
Leadership does cause us to have to focus first on what do the people need from me, and then second, the emotional space around the emotional space. It sucks to be leading through something that you disagree with, but let me just push that a little bit further. Do you disagree with it or do you think it's immoral or unethical? If you think it's immoral or unethical, we can't lead through things like that. So either you need to help the organization resolve that or you need to manage yourself out the door. And I dont mean like quit in a huff and walk out the door. But I think if youre asked, if youre being asked to do things that you think are immoral or unethical, you cant rationalize that to yourself long term. So if thats the situation youre in, then, yeah, you should probably make some decisions about where you want to work. Otherwise, if its not immoral or unepcolan. And again, Im like, Im putting those as red lines. If its shades of things that you disagree with, and it might be you disagree a little bit or you disagree a lot, but its not crossing into moral, immoral or unethical. Thats the space of the leader, and thats the space of saying, yeah, this is challenging, and lets figure out how we do the absolute best job with it. Imagine your emotions on the back end of that is tough. But the first thing is always thinking, what do the people need for me? What do my team need for me? And focusing on that as your first tier priority.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: I tend to get lost in the weeds on projects, and I've recently been given feedback that I micromanage my team. How do I delegate to my reports and keep them on track without micromanaging?
[00:18:09] Speaker C: My suggestion is focus on anything that has a clear outcome, like something where it's like basically you're checking the box and put all of those things into your reports and instead focus your time on things that don't have clear outcomes. So when I see people struggle a lot with delegation and micromanaging and those things, and then also they get feedback that they're getting stuck in the weeds, it's that drift that a lot of people experience when they're kind of at points in their career where they're going into areas where there's not clear wins on things. So, like, anyone who goes into a space where there's not, like, a clear win, and you've come from a place where there are clear wins, like, I've completed these ten tasks, and these ten tasks have led to these ten outcomes. When you hit a place in your career where everything is actually, like, a little bit more misty, like, I don't quite know what these tasks are, and I don't quite know what the outcomes are going to be. So there's a lot of just kind of, like, figuring it out, there's a lot more strategy instead of, like, kind of more tactical stuff. It's scary. And in those spaces, it's like it. It can feel like you're doing a good job by just focusing on your reports and then micromanaging their outcomes. They're the ones who are actually supposed to just hit those tasks and get the outcomes. Like the ten things you used to do that led to the, like, ten or five or three results. It's their job to do that now. And really what you should be doing is anything that's like two box checky or task oriented should 100% be with your reports, and you should totally let them do it. Give them lots of feedback on how they're doing it, rather than stick handle the puck, which is a canadian term. So what I mean by that is, like, when your micromanaging is usually like, when we're focusing on how someone's doing something or we're not focusing on the outcome, focus on the outcome. Sometimes people get things done in way better ways than we would have gotten them done if you just leave them alone to do it. So if someone's getting a killer outcome is a really, really good outcome, why are you even worrying about the process unless something is telling you that there's an issue with the process? So focus on the outcome and let people get there on their own. Now, if they're taking too long or if they're, like, ruffling feathers or there's something weird going on, of course, then go in on it. Otherwise, give people the tasks that are here are the specific tasks. Here are the anticipated outcomes. Go for it. While I'm focusing on the outcomes around getting lost in the weeds, though, and pulling yourself out of that micromanaging space, it's tough. So the way that I encourage you to think about it is, let's say you are going to drive across the country, and for this example, we're going to be in Canada. So let's say you're going to drive across the country, and you are going to drive from Vancouver all the way out to Newfoundland. But there's no such thing as provinces, and there's no such thing as measures of distance, so there's no such thing as kilometers. You don't have anything like that on your car. And theres no provinces or anything like that. You would have no way of knowing how far you were youd have no way of strategizing your time. You wouldnt even know. Well, where should I be stopping for gas? Where does it make sense to rest for a while? Because theres no units of measurement. Units of measurement help us understand what our progress is. Its like, okay, I drove for like 12 hours, and I got this many kilometers done, and heres the destination ive landed in. Without any of that, its really, really hard to feel that youre on track and especially that youre making progress. When youve moved from a place in your career where everythings really like a box that you check and everythings very specific, you know what youre doing into a place that has less of that. So theres not like, clear units of measurement. You got to kind of create that for yourself. So, for example, if I was driving from Vancouver all the way out to Newfoundland, and theres, like, no provinces, like, theres no city names. Theres nothing where I could say this is a unit of measurement. I'd be looking for things that would be monuments to progress. So it's like, oh, okay, now I'm in the Rocky Mountains. Oh, now I'm in the prairies. Oh, now I'm in lake country. Like, that's the idea, that you have to create your own monuments of progress. So if you've moved into a job where you're, like, getting sucked into the weeds and you're micromanaging, it's probably because you're in a time of your career where your own progress and the units of progress aren't as obvious and you're being drawn into, like, kind of what I used to do, like, the safety of that. But nobody wants to meet micromanage, and you don't want to be at micromanager. So focus for those people on their outcomes rather than how they're doing it. And for yourself, try and create monuments progress, and really focus on letting go of the box checking and the ten things I got done today, and instead focus on what's the big picture. And then how can I tell myself a progression?
[00:22:59] Speaker B: How do I deal with one on ones with a co worker who is constantly overstepping personal boundaries with me? She's my peer. We work in a small office. Five people. Another coworker and I are friends outside of work, but this person on my team and I aren't. I'd like our relationship to be more professional. What can I do?
[00:23:19] Speaker C: What I'd encourage you is to focus on being center conversational or conversational leaning forward. So let me explain what that means when I think of work relationships. Relationships could either be casual, conversational, or formal. And these are all just indicated by the boundaries they keep with people and that they keep with us. So when I think of casual, what I believe that means is we treat people like our friends and family, which might sound awesome, but I am going to tell you, some people come from, like, super messy family dynamics, and other people come from, like, chillingly like, formal family dynamics, and other people come from these, like, super wonderful families. There's kind of like, you don't really know what you're getting into if you get too casual with coworkers. So if they come from families that are like, just those wonderful families, they'll probably be staying like a really appropriate space. But some people who come from really messy families, like maybe families that yell to express themselves, you're opening up a whole different kind of thing can be open. So treating our coworkers like our friends and our family is something I deeply encourage staying away from. Because at the end of the day, the people that we're most willing to take liberties with are our closest people. And, like, our friends and our family, most people will be, like, shitty to their friends and their family in a way that they wouldn't be to their coworkers. So if we're thinking about being casual with people, we should stay away from treating them like our friends and family. And hopefully that will encourage other people from staying away from that being with us as well. We're going to go all the way over to formal.
Formal is kind of like more like 1970s, 1980s style leadership. It's very hierarchical, it's very top down communication. I tell you, you listen. It has a lot to do with a lot of space in the relationship, you're really only talking to people because you have to update them or they're asking for an update, or they need to give you orders. In this space, it's not really. I don't believe formal communication style and formal boundaries are really in today's workplace. But there are some industries that are much, much more formal, like finance and banking tends to be quite formal still, and there are other ones that are really formal. It's not bad, so to say, but I feel that there's a lot more unhealthy politics or non useful politics that come into play in that kind of space. I also think that there's a lot more struggle for the best idea to come up, because usually it's dominated by. By power and who has the most power and influence. So formal communication style is too many boundaries where casual is too few. And that's why I think conversational is the best place to go. So conversational feels a lot like casual, except we're being really intentional with how we're communicating. And again, just put yourself in your circle of friends, or put yourself with your family. There's not a lot of intentionality with how we are with our friends and our family, maybe more so with our kids, but like, outside of that, like, just with our friends and family, it's just like we're just kind of hanging out, acting. However we act. If we think of conversational, it can have that warmth, but there's just the intentionality. So casual, it's too few boundaries. Formal, too many boundaries. Conversational. There's the appropriate amount of boundaries. I think there's three positions in there. They're center conversational, where you're very intentional and you're also like really focused on getting work done. Then there's conversational leaning casual. This is where I put work fronts. It's like totally conversational, but it has a lot, like a little bit more of that warmth and that ease of friendship. And there's conversational leaning formal, where again, conversational, still warm, but it has more formality. And the way that I encourage you to think about it is if you're conversational leaning casual, that means there's probably like a 50 50 split of when you're spending time with someone. Probably 50% of it is just like being buddies and like kind of bullshitting, hanging out, talk about personal life. And then 50% is based on work. If you're an employer, you might be like, oh, how dare you spend 50% of your time just bullshitting. Part of the human experience as part of the work experience. And that could be like great culture. If you are center conversational, that means 30% of your time is just like catching up, having fun, pull shooting, whatever, but 70% is focused on work. And if your conversational leaning forward, that means 90% of your time is focused on just work stuff and 10% is more of that casual space. So what id encourage you with this coworker is I would be conversational leaning formal so that youre keeping the focus of 90% of your time with this person on work stuff while still leaving a little bit of that, 10% for that kind of like human warmth and that conversation. That means in this space is they may tell you about them and tell you a bit about them, but you don't tell them anything about you. You keep, if they want to get into like the conversational space around just like personal stuff or be chitchatty, let them talk.
And then as quickly as you can, move it into a workspace. I really encourage you really quickly refocus things again and again and again on work, but in like a cool, fun way. But don't really reveal a lot about yourself, about your personal life, about like, you know, anything, just like outside of work stuff. And as they're speaking, give them space. You don't need to be brisk or rude about it, but just keep redirecting them. They should, over time, catch the trend of where you're trying to move the conversation. And they should be totally used to it because most of us have very few work friends and then more people that were in the space of center conversational or conversational leaning formal. There are a couple other things that I suggest to you, though. If in your one to ones that youre finding this person being super casual with you or even center conversational or conversational leaning casual, id encourage two things. Leave the office door or the meeting room door open. So if theres an open door and people are in a room meeting, typically people arent going to start like, you know, gossiping or telling you about their weekend or that, or going on too much if the door is open, because again, there's this psychology of like behind closed doors, we could just like chop it up and like kind of like goof off and joke around a little bit. Open door means like, wow, people might be overhearing us, so we should be focused on work. The second thing I'd encourage you to do is give them the door. And what I mean by that is they should be the one seated closest to the door rather than you. So like they would be in between you and the door. And again, what that means is it's like they come in, theyre there, the door is open, theyre closer to the door so people can hear them. If theyre just kind of like bullshit around a little bit, youre a little bit further away. It has more of a, come in, do your work. This is not, youre here for a good time, not a long time. Like come in, work, do your work and then leave that. It creates more of a space of a transaction rather than come in, sit down, set up base camp and chat. So keep it conversational, leaning, formal. 90% of your conversation should be based on work, but leave some about 10% ish time for the other person to share but not you. And then leave the door open and make sure they've got the chair close to the door.
[00:30:38] Speaker A: We want to hear from you, our audience. To submit your questions, send us a message, drop us a DM or comment on our social channels.
