Small Business Bestie
Entrepreneurship is hard, and sometimes we could use a friend to walk a mile in our shoes. Small Business Bestie is here to provide that friendship, support, and inspiration that small business owners need from time to time.
Small Business Bestie
Navigating Leadership Burnout
Stephanie Green, founder of HealthBridge Consulting, shares her journey from 25 years in healthcare leadership to entrepreneurship after hitting burnout and receiving a life-changing ADHD diagnosis at age 49.
• Reaching a breaking point at age 50 when comparing her life to her mother's cancer diagnosis at the same age
• Realizing her leadership position as Chief Operating Officer wasn't bringing fulfillment despite achieving career goals
• Late-life ADHD diagnosis providing context for lifelong struggles and workplace challenges
• The problem with traditional burnout advice focusing on self-care activities rather than addressing root causes
• Why leadership development fails when it only focuses on performance metrics rather than human connection
• The importance of creating psychological safety in teams where vulnerability is rewarded
• How hierarchical power dynamics affect communication even in small business settings
• Practical techniques for encouraging open dialogue and honest feedback in teams
• The unique challenges of leading small, tight-knit teams while maintaining appropriate boundaries
If you're experiencing constant overwhelm, remember it's not normal, and there is a way out. Organizations that aren't investing in leadership development should start now—it's where success truly lies.
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Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Small Business. Bestie, I'm Michelle, your host, and today I'm chatting with my good friend, stephanie Green. She is an amazing entrepreneur and, even more importantly for me, an amazing coach and consultant, and so I'm going to be picking her brain as we go through the conversation today because, as you guys might know, I need all the coaching I can get. So, stephanie, if you wouldn't mind, take just a second and tell us about yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so thanks, and I'm really excited to be here and talk with you today. So yeah, I am 51 year old person who has two kiddos who have flown the nest within the last couple of years, which is a whole adjustment in and of itself. My youngest is 19 and my oldest is 20. They reminded me they're about to be 20 the other day, as if I didn't know, and then my list is 24. So you know, it's been an interesting year of starting a business, having your kids leave the nest and lots of other things. So I've been in health care leadership until now for over 25 years and started as a clinician back in the day. Clinician back in the day I graduated x-ray school in 1995, which you know gives you an idea of how long I've been in the healthcare world and then, just you know, worked, ended up going from clinician to leadership unexpectedly and ended up staying there for 25 years. And just in the last year my course has changed a bit, which is why I'm here with you.
Speaker 1:That's so exciting. I mean I want to unpack all of that, but I'm going to start with. Your course has changed within the last year, so what are you currently working on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I started my own business, healthbridge Consulting, in June of 24. So I am doing consulting for healthcare organizations still operational consulting but my real passion and love is in leadership, coaching and development. So I do both of those things. I have been doing clinical operations for again 25 years, which is a very long time to be solving clinical healthcare problems which, as most people listening could imagine, are really not solvable. So you know, my favorite part of leadership was always the people that I led and worked with and investing in them and seeing them get where they wanted to be, avoid mistakes I had made on the way, like taking care of yourself and hopefully preventing them from getting kind of to that wall.
Speaker 2:I hit at the end of my career and I don't think that that happens enough. I think you know what I was seeing as I end of my career and I don't think that that happens enough. I think you know what I was seeing as I went through. My career too is especially in healthcare, and I know it happens in every organization or industry.
Speaker 2:But we take people who are really good at the job they're doing and we're like, wow, you're great at being a nurse, let's put you in a management or a leadership position and give you no training, no skills, and then let's all act surprised when you either, you know, collapse from exhaustion or you know it doesn't work out for you, and then we'll put the blame on you, versus you know, putting some things in place that help leaders become leaders and make sure that they even want to be a leader. I think a lot of times we tell people you need to be in leadership and they think, well, I should do that when they really hate leadership and want to be in it. But that's what we tell everybody you're supposed to strive for.
Speaker 2:So, you know, people end up in the wrong seat because, sometimes, because they feel pressured to be so.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I know that happened to me whenever I went from being a solopreneur massage therapist to opening the spa. Suddenly, I was supposed to be the leader of this team of people. I didn't know anything about how to be a good leader, you know, and sadly, up to that point, I don't feel like I had seen a lot of great examples of what a good leader looked like, and so I was emulating all of these ridiculous things that I had learned through my time in the military and restaurant work and all of these things, and I was like, well, this is how people led me before. This is just how it's supposed to be. But then, looking back on it, I was like, wait, I really didn't respect or like my leaders. Why am I acting like they acted?
Speaker 1:No offense to any of you guys that are listening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I can relate with that in some ways in terms of 15 years of that health system here in Washington, and I had many leaders throughout that 15 years but there was probably only one who, I would say, gave me positive things to roll.
Speaker 2:He really was invested in the people that reported to him and I don't even know if he knew he was doing it or if it was intentional, but he did have more soft skills than what I typically see and, oddly, you know, most of my supervisors were females and that is not what I got on those sides.
Speaker 2:But he actually, you know, really cared about culture and people and I learned a lot from him and I learned a lot, as you said, about what I don't want to be as a leader along the way in some instances.
Speaker 2:But then, you know, I think I took pieces and parts of good and not so good from every person I reported to and then, as you said, use my own experience and I think the best boss I ever had was in high school and all the way through college and you know I'm still in touch with him this day, but it was in a restaurant and you know he taught me what good leadership looks like and what caring about your employees looks like and I was, you know, 16 when I started working there, so, yeah, it's interesting. Who can teach you the lessons along the way? It's not always where you think it's going to be, so I kind of strive to be the leader that was saying, hey, let's talk about the unseen part of being a leader and how hard that is and how you take it home with you every day and what all the expectations that have been role modeled for you and how screwed up those are in a lot of cases.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And again, when you're early on in your leadership career and that's what you see you can hit the wall really quickly, and I see it with young leaders all the time, just because nobody's giving them any real guidance, except for KPIs and, you know, operational tasks. And if they get leadership coaching and I have been the recipient of leadership coaching you know, when you're a high performer, they want you to keep performing to your, you know, best degree and more so. And again, all it's the focus is on that advancement and at the time, that's what I wanted. But the leadership coaching was very much based on based on, you know, self-organization and how do you, you know, look at your budget and what are some things you could be doing better and strategizing.
Speaker 2:There was nothing about how are you leading your people? How are you feeling? Are you able to get out of bed today? And if you're not, you know, let's talk about why that is. Are you enjoying your position? It is, are you enjoying your position? You know some of those things.
Speaker 2:It's all about performance, performance, performance, that external leadership expectations and nothing about the real part of leadership. To me, the part that's the most important. So, you know, that is where when my journey led me straight into a brick wall of I can't keep doing this. I really decided that that's where I wanted to focus with other leaders and I say female because typically that's who I see get burned out the most because many times it's not just the burnout associated with work, but the emotional labor that most of us are carrying around being female, being wives, being partners, being mothers, potentially pet owners, appointment schedulers, you know, manager of all things, usually at home, and that's not to be critical of any male partner or other partner. It's just typically those are the things that we end up doing in our role and all of that adds up over time when you lay on top of it the work pressures.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. Do you feel like there was a particular like experience or situation that like made you realize like I've hit the wall?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, I do actually. So the last two years has, you know, you know, been ripe with change and milestone. Birthdays are not usually a thing that I concern myself with, it's just a number. But in 23, I was approaching my 50th birthday and it hit a little different, mostly because my mom was 50 the first time that she got diagnosed with breast cancer and at 58, she got re-diagnosed as terminally ill and passed away two years later.
Speaker 2:And as I approached that 50 year birthday, I was like I am miserable, I am so unhappy in every aspect of my life. And you know, if I were to repeat my mom's fate, or my mom was to know at 50 that she only had eight good years left, what would she have done differently? Because I sure as hell don't want to spend the next eight years like this. And it was really that moment of okay, you've got to stop and do some really critical self-assessment here of, because when, you know, I found this phrase on repeat in my head, that was this can't be all there is, this can't be all there is. And it really was like if I had, you know, if I was like my mom and had eight good, healthy years left, if this is it, man. I don't, this can't be it.
Speaker 2:So I knew that some things had to change and that I needed to figure out what that looked like, because I just mentally and physically couldn't keep going that way. And so, long story short, I got a divorce. First of all and second of all, I was like you know, I have hit the position I wanted to have. I was a chief operating officer. That had been my goal, and yet I got there and wasn't happy, and I was less happy in that role, as a matter of fact, and I finally figured out that. You know the other thing that happened along the way there is at 49, I finally got diagnosed with ADHD, which you know, really was no surprise.
Speaker 2:Both my kids have it, let's just say one of my parents is probably in denial about having it, and so it was really run strong in my family and you know it had always been a joke. Ha ha, mom, we know you have ADHD, but I decided I wanted to go get diagnosed and you know it's a three-day process and by the end of the first day the psychologist who is wonderful was like I mean, we know where this is headed right. And I'm like, yes, I know where it's headed he's like.
Speaker 2:But we have to finish the next two days and I didn't expect for it to be so impactful. But, you know, getting that official diagnosis made me mad. It made me sad. I went through this whole grieving process in the middle of all of that because I could then look back through my whole life and say this is why this was this way, this is why I've always had to stay up till 2 am working. This is why, you know, there's just a myriad of things that I realized were real and that weren't excuses. It was context. And I say that because what I started to realize was in that role that I had strived to get to for so long.
Speaker 2:You know, authenticity is a superpower in my mind and what you see is what you get for better or for worse with me, and people who have worked with me or who I've led have always commented on the fact that they appreciate that. But maybe the peers around me not so much, because I am. I'm different, differently wired, and that means if I'm passionate about something, I'm really passionate about something. I am worried about people. I am. I use a lot of words which you know can be problematic, and I just felt, felt I was like you feel like a square peg in a round hole every day of your life, and especially going to work. And I just felt I was like you feel like a square peg in a round hole every day of your life, and especially going to work, and I just realized I wasn't able to live. You know, authenticity is like if you do the core values exercise. It's my top one and I didn't feel like I could be myself, because I was either masking to play down the part that you know I'm a strong female professional, or I'm masking my ADHD symptoms to make other people feel more comfortable, and I'm not focusing on all the soft skills and culture and all those things that I think are more important. And then, if you lay the foundation of that, all the KPIs will come. And that wasn't a space that I was in, and so there's this misalignment between personal and professional values, and I was living that misalignment at home as well, by the way.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, it was coming from all sides and I just thought, you know, if I have to get up every day and continue to try to be somebody, I'm not to. I mean, I do good work. The work is always complimented, but I don't feel good about myself and I don't feel like other people feel good about me. Then that's, I can't do this every day. That's why I felt so crappy, and it was I can't get out of bed. I you know, on the weekend, once I hit the bed, it was like I'm going to be watching Netflix for the next 48 hours because I can't physically get out of the bed. And I knew, you know, I mean, and obviously there were a lot of other things going on too, but nobody wants to spend their life that way. So unique.
Speaker 2:I hate to sound this way, but the divorce gave me a unique opportunity to be like you know what, if I was ever going to start my own business, now is the time I'm selling my house, the kids are moving out, I'm going to downsize, move into an apartment that I love, by the way, shout out to Park Place, and I'm going to have a safety net and I'm going to try this and I'm going to get my coaching certification and I'm going to do all those things, and if it doesn't work, at least I tried.
Speaker 2:And what I do know is I won't go back to what I used to do. I mean, I've established that that's not where I need to be, so that that is a long series of catalysts that brought me where I am. But it's kind of like all these things came together at one time and were shouting at me from the universe of you can't do this anymore. And so, yeah, you know, being an entrepreneur is a different kind of stress, as you know, and yet it is not. It doesn't even compare to the stress that I was feeling before, because I'm able to be myself and look for people who appreciate me for being myself and are interested in what I'm interested in, and hopefully I get to help some people along the way. So that's incredible.
Speaker 1:I think it's so interesting when, like all of the catalysts, it's like, like you said, like you're hitting a brick wall, but it's not just in one aspect of your life. It's almost like you just need a complete overhaul of like. If I make this one little change, it's not going to stick or it's not going to have the impact that it should have, because all of these other things are still not in alignment and you have to just be brave and say I'm going to bowl the whole thing over and build it back from scratch.
Speaker 2:And that's kind of how I do things in life and build it back from scratch, and that's kind of how I do things in life yeah.
Speaker 2:I wasn't expecting to upgrade that single car. You know, if I was to do somebody, all the things that have changed in the last two years, that's a lot of stuff and then it's not, you know. So, yeah, it's a huge period of adjustment and not all fun, but it is exactly that and what I would really get annoyed by. You said not one thing is going to change it. You know, at that point you're desperate. When you're you're feeling so awful. And I have a therapist, I'll never not have a therapist. I've got an ADHD coach, I got all the people.
Speaker 2:So it is not a matter of not having resources or you know, self-development is another big thing for me. But you know, you go on and you're so desperate You're like cures for burnout and it's like drink water, walk your steps, eat well, go get a massage, and those are not quote, unquote self-care, the things that we read about, and I'm not saying those things aren't great, but the problem is we should be able to do those and do our jobs and take care of ourselves before we ever get there. So once you're in a state of burnout, those things are not going to help you. All they're going to do is be a list of things that you don't have the emotional, physical, mental energy to do, that you add to the list of guilt and shame. Absolutely, it is not helpful.
Speaker 2:And the thing that it takes to figure out how to get through burnout is figuring out one, what's causing it? Because it's not, it's deeper than you think it is. And two, you know what are my strategies going to be to truly get through it? And they aren't. The strategies are not. You know exercise, massage, take PTO. I love that. One Take PTO days. Make sure you schedule them, okay. Well, and when I do, I'll come back and I'll have two weeks of work to do in one week and then, I don't feel any better at all.
Speaker 2:Right, so you know, I think leaders are often handed these well-meaning list of things to do to take care of themselves, but once you've hit that burnout place, that is not the solution, and what I help people do is figure out what is that underlying cause of why you've reached the place you are and how do we move you from a place of burnout to recovery? Because it is a recovery, and I would say I still feel like I'm recovering in some ways, and I have to remind myself when I'm taking downtime, or if I do have a couple of days where I just sit and binge Netflix, that I'm not a bad person, that I'm not being unproductive and that I'm actually recovering and healing and resting, which is what we're supposed to do and that there is no you know person going to come in and tell me Stephanie, get up off of the couch and stop watching Netflix. So that has taken some rewiring of the brain too. You compare 25 years of that kind of mentality to the last two. I'm not there yet, but I'm getting there and I want to help other people get there and my other, you know, interest and work is around helping organizations who are interested in preventing their leaders from getting to a place of burnout and therefore, that not trickling down to the people in their organization to prevent it before it happens, and what leadership skills it takes to help leaders not get burned out and help their employees not get burned out, because that's really important work too, and I love working with organizations who do that for their employees and their leaders, and it's lots of fun for me. So I love individual work and group work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's. They call burnout. It's an occupational syndrome and there's a reason that it has a real definition and a real name. And I talked to so many women and I often have to bite my tongue because I don't want to be that person who starts telling them what's going on. But they'll be like, oh, I just, I mean, I'm in this position and I can't get out of bed and I just my family's like, what's going on with you? You're not listening, you're not present with us, you're not able to go to things, and I'm just. But you know, I need to get to that next level of leadership and I'm thinking, no, you don't necessarily. So I really think it's so common and I think we've accepted it as the norm, and if I had one statement to say, it would be overwhelm. Constant overwhelm is not the norm. It's not normal. So you know that shouldn't be what we set our baseline at. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean full disclosure like I've been in a state, not only just in the past couple of months, but honestly, the past few years, where I'm recognizing for the first time that something happened in my life early in my life that like put me into the like lizard brain portion of my brain and I've just lived from that survival mode and so, whether it's my family life, my professional life, you know whatever like I've been in just like almost reactionary mode for so long and I didn't even realize that that's what was happening until a few years ago, when I started getting therapy and coaching and it was like so you're not actually supposed to feel this way all the time, you're not supposed to be so apprehensive, intense and stressed out all the time that everything is just a knee-jerk reaction. I found out, no, that's not the way it's supposed to work.
Speaker 2:It's interesting that you say that way. It's interesting that you say that because you know one of the things that when I work with clients, we have a specific way that we react under stress and typically there's like one or two places we go and it's either a place of kind of self-shame, self-criticism, judgment, those things, or and or a combination of the two, but we usually we have one that we default to. That would be mine or we are really resentful and angry and outwardly, our stress comes out that way and we've probably both worked with people where you're. If you've worked with them long enough, you're like, oh, when the stress goes up, this is the reaction, this is the behavior. I see Right, and I know people know what mine is, and you're in that state. That's where all those things you know about in terms of fight or flight and adrenaline and cortisol and all those things are surging through our body.
Speaker 2:And, as you said, I mean I had my therapist say to me you've been in a state of fight or flight for several years now. No wonder you're. You know you're binging Netflix on the couch, like you know. You don't see lions hunting every day, all day in the. They lay down under a tree and rest for a while after they kill something.
Speaker 2:So I mean it's it is very much exactly what you just described of being in a place of all I can do is react because I can't get out of this place of, you know, stress and anxiety and overwhelm, and so, once we can, I wish somebody had been like, okay, there's a better way, like, and I'm very self-aware, I know I'm doing it, but nobody really helped me figure out. On the coaching side, therapy is one thing. You know we go back and talk about our deep-rooted problems and start, you know, realizing things about ourselves. But you know, burnout is a right now thing and it's like, what can I do right now to start moving out of that? And again, not take years for me to figure out why I'm here because I don't have years, yeah, to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when I was really trying to work through my I mean, I wouldn't have called it burnout, but it was that place where I'd hit a wall and I was like I can't live like this anymore, like I don't want to be this reactionary, angry, bitter, shameful person, Like I don't feel like that is who I am at my core, but that's who I present, as you know. And when I was trying to work through all of that, I was so, so incredibly lucky to be able to take a step back and like have a couple of months where I didn't feel this huge pressure to like perform, you know, at work and things like that. But I spent all the time doing all the self-care things that we read about, right, working out, going and getting massages once a week and going and doing float therapy and do it, you know, like all of these self-care health and wellness things. And I felt amazing I mean I really did. And then I had to go back to work and immediately I was like wait a second, that didn't fix it.
Speaker 2:Well, and when I resigned from my employer which I don't think anybody was expecting including me, honestly, before that I did have the opportunity and have been grateful to stay on and do healthcare consulting with my former employer, and yet I was like I need a break, like I'm going to take now. Granted, it was like two weeks, but still I've never taken two weeks off in my whole life. And it was the middle of the summer and I just moved into this apartment complex with this awesome pool and still, you know, I wasn't consulting full time. I'm still getting my coaching certification, which is like a year long process, and so, you know, I'm working like three days a week on my time, remotely by the pool, and I'm like, oh my God, this is what work can feel like, not that everybody can. You know work outside and those things.
Speaker 2:But there is a version of work, I think in corporate America, where you and I could see other people doing it and I'd almost be angry at them. I'm like what, how dare you not be angry and bitter and sad? I hate you. And I went from that very sad. My gosh, poor me. I can't figure out how to survive in this role to being real mad all the time and, like you, I was like this is not me. I am so angry and resentful and that is not who I want to be. It's a place I don't like to be at all. I'm not comfortable in that space. I'm much more comfortable being guilty and shameful, but I'm not comfortable being mad and resentful.
Speaker 2:And again, I'm mad at home. I'm mad at work, but when I would look around and see my peers who weren't working 60 hours a week and who weren't having to change anything about themselves when they came to work and were accepted and everything was great, I was mad. And so then, when I took that two-week break and I did laugh I was like well, it's only two weeks, but who takes a two-week vacation? Not many of us, right, right. And then just started not working. I was working full-time. I'm still working full-time, but in a different way. I was like oh so, and I don't feel this pressure to show up as anybody else but me. I can kind of set my hours. I can work from my patio. I can. I don't and I don't have to worry about, especially being someone with ADHD. What I'm not doing is sitting around worrying about how everyone else is perceiving me every minute I'm in existence.
Speaker 1:You know, I mean.
Speaker 2:I worry about that a lot anyway, because I'm constantly thinking, oh, you're using too many words or whatever it is. But I'm not having to think about that because the only person that really matters in this context is me and whoever else I'm working with and, as I said early, before we even started the podcast, it's like what you see is what you get, and hopefully people will be drawn to me because of who I am, and then, if they're not, they don't have to work with me. So that's, I don't have that pressure, you know, of feeling like I need to show up as somebody different in order to be accepted or to be valuable in the work I do. So that has been a huge relief just in and of itself, and I know that there are other people too who are in that same boat. I recently did a presentation about leading authentically, and in the presentation I took a different approach because, again, I just am me and I put a whole slide montage of like okay, we're going to talk about our values and how, if they're not aligned, you can, you know, have a problem in your leadership and what authentic leadership really means. But in the spirit of being authentic, I'm going to put a slide in here and it had all these pictures of like things that are represent my values in my life, one of them being I don't know if anybody else is this skilled I'm sure we've all put a, you know, started the coffee maker with no cup or you know whatever, but I am super talented in that I put my coffee mug upside down under the Keurig and started it.
Speaker 2:Never noticed that it was up. How do you do that? I turned around and I see the coffee mug is upside down, coffee is everywhere and all I could do was laugh, and humor is part of what gets me through. So that was a picture in the montage and I said you know, I have ADHD. This stuff is not abnormal for me and I think it's a perfect representation. The upside down coffee cup with coffee all over the place is kind of a picture of me really, and I had two women come up to me after the presentation and they were waiting to talk to me and they were waiting to talk to me.
Speaker 2:They're like, hey, we both have ADHD and we were diagnosed late in life, like you, as many of us women are, and we wanted to say thank you for talking about it because we don't know how to show up as ourselves sometimes and we're going to ask you, like, what does that look like for you? And also, nobody ever talks about it in leadership because you know you're afraid. And I mean I talked about it at work. I did an article on anxiety and ADHD and when I left the organization people, two people came up to me and one of them said and she was a certified nursing assistant, the backbone of health care and said I heard you're leaving. And I just wanted to say I'll always remember that article you wrote about your anxiety and how you'd had it your whole life, because I always felt really alone. So thank you for that. And I was like, if that's all I'm remembered for in this career, great.
Speaker 2:And then you know, and the people walking up, the two ladies who were like, listen, nobody talks about ADHD and we're afraid to admit it at work. Because what will people associate it with? Oh, they can't stay on task, they can't do their work, and so those things always surprise me when they're said. But it does tell me that there are other people out there who are like I don't know how to show up as myself, and what does that look like? And when we can't be who we are, of course it adds on to the burnout phenomenon. Yeah, yeah, I wasn't expecting that at the presentation, but we all got some good laughs about the coffee cup being upside down and shared all of our ADHD stories. But I was, you know it. I didn't. It didn't even dawn on me that that would be something that somebody wanted to hear. So I was yeah, that was it told me I'm doing the right thing, I guess.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. It's funny that you're telling a coffee mug story right now. So I have my favorite coffee mug here. I have about six of these. Yeah, do you know, stephanie Spires?
Speaker 2:I know the name, I feel like I do, but not well personally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's a small business bestie. She's amazing. She has a group called Women's Entrepreneurs Lex. It's a really informal networking group that gets together once a month and she's I would say that if the three of us got together there wouldn't be a moment of silence for days. We're all a little wordy, we've got a lot of ideas, we do all the things you know.
Speaker 1:But we did a recording together and one of the things that she talked about she's making a major life change. She's leaving the corporate world, going into consulting and entrepreneurism and she said it's either going to be right or reckless. I'm not sure which one. And I was like girl, that should be a t-shirt or a mug or something. So I had some mugs made that say right or reckless. But I think that that's like the way that I've had to kind of deal with that sense of overwhelm, because I'm constantly second guessing every move right, and then I make a move and I go. Was that the right move? That was a reactionary move, was that the move I wanted to make? I don't know. And it's been so helpful to have this little term that Stephanie gave me, the right or reckless, because it's either one, right, yeah, and if it's reckless. Then, guess what? We can pick up the pieces and try again. It's not the end of the world.
Speaker 2:Well, and as I go through this process and, you know, get the whole imposter syndrome and what am I thinking? Why did I do this? And then I very quickly remember why I did this and I think, well, if it is reckless, as you said, I have done much harder things than pick up the pieces. Or you know, Absolutely, and I have been. You know, I've gotten through much worse things. So absolutely it will be this. You know it could. It will be handled either way.
Speaker 1:So let's talk more about what you're doing, like if someone was a leader in an organization and they thought you know what the organization that I'm working with. They don't put enough time, resources, energy into developing the leaders and we really need some organizational help. What would that look like to work with you?
Speaker 2:So I can do a variety of things, but I do love to do group leadership development in organizations and I have done that in my former employer that I still am still doing that on a consulting basis for them.
Speaker 2:But group sessions are great and I get feedback around. You know what are the top, what are the things that they're interested in or struggling with. And I'll tell you, the number one thing that I get asked to develop workshops or presentations around is having hard conversations. Like that is the number one thing I'm asked to do, because nobody wants to do it and everybody needs to do it as a leader. And if you have a lot of leaders in an organization who really struggle to have hard conversations whether that's performance or whatever it might be it's going to cause a lot of negative downstream. And so going in and either doing you know, half day or full day workshop around specific leadership topics and you could spend an entire day or more on just how do you approach really hard conversations with either or your direct report. So you know it can be that it can be one on one coaching with specific leaders, but I find the group coaching model works really well because people just feed off each other's energy and can share their own experiences and bring up things like well, what about this? This happened, how would we let's talk about, how would we address that? So I love working with groups inside of organizations. You know the content can be based on what the needs are of the organization and the leaders. Or you know leaders can work with me one-on-one, either on their own or through their organization. If an organization wants to have a leadership coach work with some of their leaders one-on-one, I can also do that.
Speaker 2:Where I see a real need is people just entering leadership at that middle management, if you will I really don't like that term, but that's the one I have Love where they come in, as I said, as new leaders and they need to start developing those skills right away, because you're immediately managing people and if you can't have a hard conversation and you're managing a bunch of people, especially in health care, that's really crippling. Or if you don't know how to handle all the things that are coming at you or you've gone from being a clinician to what did you have to give you a report? I've never used Excel, you know. So I love working with that level of leadership, but I work with all little levels of leadership and I think one of the common things I see is that when people get to a certain level of leadership, they think they don't need leadership development anymore.
Speaker 2:And I would strongly suggest otherwise, based on my firsthand experience and observations. And I mean, again, it's that never stop learning phenomenon, and so you know executives need to be engaging in leadership. Mean, again, it's that never stop learning phenomenon, and so you know executives need to be engaging in leadership development too, because we have many who have worked their way all the way up to the top of the ladder and don't have some of the skills they need. So that takes some self-awareness, but again, it's needed at all levels.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think back to so many of the employers or jobs that I've had over the years. I'm like there was no sense of leadership and if they had just taken the time to invest in that, like the turnover, like the employee turnover rate would have gone so far down, because a lot of the dissatisfaction with the job wasn't actually what we were doing or, you know, the customers or anything like that. It was that we weren't respected, as you know, team members and things like that. So, yeah, that's really really great.
Speaker 1:I was recently told I was saying I don't want a job in leadership If I'm making a career change soon, like I don't want to take a job where I'm going to lead people because I'm not a very good leader. And somebody was like what are you talking about? Like you know, look at the Facebook group that you have. And I was like maybe I should reevaluate. Maybe all of this life coaching that I've been getting has helped. But it's really interesting that the skills that that leaders need are really just skills to be a really great human.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I mean they definitely transfer. And I think the traditional leadership skills that we have focused on, or that many of us Gen Xers have been brought up in and beyond, is that focus on business, business, business, and you leave, work, you know you're personal at home and you know I show up to work and I'm a robot and I would do my thing and I would talk about KPIs and then I go home and if I'm reporting to someone like that and they are not humanizing themselves or treating me like a human, then I've got a lot of questions about what's okay and what's not, and what's safe and what's not to talk about. Or is it okay to put my family first, because I'm not seeing that modeled anywhere else or it's being said, but then I'm getting in trouble for it later on, you know. But now we don't. You know, I've had those things happen throughout my career and that's very disheartening.
Speaker 2:And you know, one of the concepts that I ran into that I think also was a catalyst and made a lot of people look at me like I had a third eyeball on my head was the whole concept of psychological safety at work. And you know, people immediately kind of brace themselves when they hear the word psychological. It's not therapy, it really is what you said. It's health. It's like workplace health and it's about having guardrails in place and you know, we have meeting ground rules and those things that set us up to have mutual respect and inclusiveness and safety in our interactions. And really the definition of it is being rewarded for being vulnerable. That is the definition I love about psychological safety and it impacts teams and so if you're on a team and you've probably had this happen where you can't speak up because you feel like the last time I did that, somebody came at me, or if I bring this up, I know that they're not going to like it or I need to. You know I need to be quiet or I'm from a different background and so my input doesn't matter as much and you know there's a lot of ways to improve that. And when I started learning about psychological safety and you know I did get a certification in that too we would talk about these leadership development topics and I'm like it really all comes back to psychological safety and what you said being good human beings who are being respectful of other people in their opinions and their input and allowing them to be innovative and, you know, push on the status quo without it being a problem, learn under safety and not be shamed for not knowing something, and all of those things should be very practical and logical. But somehow it's made into, you know, for it depends on the personality type.
Speaker 2:One, it can start an argument or two, it shuts people down if they're talked over every time they speak up. And sometimes and I will be the first to admit as somebody with ADHD I'm constantly like I hope they finish talking because I'm going to forget what I want to say. And so somebody might do it for reasons that are not to overpower or not for aggressive reasons, but simply it's something that they struggle to control. But it doesn't negate that it has an impact on people. And so you know. There's another one.
Speaker 2:I see companies use silence as agreement. Silence usually means that people aren't feeling like they can speak up. So I would be cautious about saying well, if you don't speak up, then that means you agree. I would say if everyone's sitting there quiet, there's a reason they don't feel safe and saying I don't know how I feel about that, or can we talk about that some more? So those are really intentional things organizations can do that falls under leadership development. That really improves the culture and makes people excited about being on a team versus being shut down and just coming to work, clocking in, clocking out and going home. And, as you said, people want to find meaning in their work and value and it's not the work that people don't like. You know there's a reason people say they leave their managers, not the work. A lot of that is culture and the fact that maybe their poor manager never got any training.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So is there like any particular easy to implement tool that you could share with us for, like you just mentioned, like if you're in a room full of people and no one has a question, no one speaks up, it's just silent. I was like high ADHD here talking, but, as you were saying that, I was like visualizing are like a board room or meeting room and no one's talking and I thought what would I do if I were the one that had thrown out the idea? Or I was presenting an idea and it was evaluate, like are you actually creating a safe place? Because if they're giving feedback and you react in a way that's not conducive, then you know you're the problem. But is there a tool that you would have for a scenario like that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, One of the things that you know we talk about in terms of the silence part of and it's real uncomfortable right Like especially those of us who like to feel the silence because we're so uncomfortable with it. I've used in teaching leadership development. When you know I ask a question or say can somebody share there and there's complete silence, get brave enough to speak up and then you know if it doesn't work that time, if just you know letting the silence sit, then it's about asking targeted questions that aren't aggressive but saying I'm getting a sense that maybe there are some concerns I could imagine. Maybe one of those would be can anybody relate to that? So kind of laying the groundwork to, but not just taking it as well. I'm all good, nobody pushed back, so let's go.
Speaker 2:And you know you mentioned boardrooms and things like that there's also leaders in executive positions and leaders in general working with their team who reports to them. Really need to be aware that there is a hierarchical dynamic there at play. If you're, you know if you're the boss and you're sitting in a room full of your direct reports asking for their opinion and they already know what you think it makes it a little and what your decision really is what you're asking. It makes it really hard for people to speak up and be like yeah, I know you're the boss, but I don't agree with you. And so making it easier and using tools like if you know, here are the things I thought about as I was developing this Tell me what you think about that and helping pave the way for them to give you feedback versus you know, it's usually like who's going to be brave enough to say something, which putting people in that position is not great, and then, as people do start to open up and see that it's okay for them to open up and it's even okay for them to challenge the status quo or their leader on a thought you know respectfully, and that trust builds over time, and then they'll start to do it more. And so it's really a layering effect of I'm going to start them off easy and try to get them to speak up, because I've heard people say I want to hear everything you have to say, I want you to come to me, and then I've seen it. I'm like but as the person with the title that you have, I know that that's what you want, but it's not going to happen because that's not how people work. So here's some tips to help them get there. And then reward and praise and talk about I am so glad you brought this forward and then people start to see, oh, it is okay for me to say what I want to say and even if it's not what they want to hear, it's still going to be okay and it takes time and that really is a leadership skill of being able to help people get to that place.
Speaker 2:Because even if you're the best leader in the world, I was always so shocked and I know this, I mean it sounds like I don't know lack of self-awareness, but, as I would, you know, go up the corporate ladder, if you will, and be in a different position, I would hear people say I was so scared, I was so intimidated by you and I'd be like huh, you know literally like what. And they're like well, you know you're just, I don't know you're in that position and like then I met you and I'm like well, this person is like it's like talking to my you know, a family member or something, and I mean with boundaries in place. Obviously there's this preconception that you are a certain way and that there are certain boundaries in place and that you can't speak up regardless of. And I was always so shocked and a little bit hurt Like how could anybody think of that of me? And it had nothing to do with anything except for my title, really.
Speaker 2:And what they perceived was not allowed and what I would be like, and so, and in some cases they're right about those people and in some cases they're not. So I think, again, that self-awareness of leaders to know those, that hierarchical dynamic exists and that they need to be the ones breaking that down, not the employees. That's not their job. So that would be my suggestion and, again, I think that's why it's so important for leaders at all levels. You know, as you become an executive, there are things that come along with that that you don't know because you haven't done it before, and some of that is the dynamics between people and what that means and how they see you and how you now have a responsibility to build trust in a different way, because you're at the top of the food chain, so to speak.
Speaker 1:Right, you're the lion who, just you know, ate your deer or whatever that we just yeah, and I think like bringing that back around, for I think the majority of the small business besties who are listening to this are probably, like you know, the entrepreneurs who have maybe a team of 10 or less you know, people on their team.
Speaker 1:And so I think it's easy when we're in the smaller phase, it's easy for us to think like nobody's going to be afraid to bring their opinions to me because, you know, I'm just and I'm air quoting here, I'm just, you know, starting out or I'm just the owner of the salon or whatever the thing is right.
Speaker 1:And so we get this idea like, oh, surely these people, you know, they all feel like they can talk with me openly. But if we're not facilitating that and encouraging it from the very beginning, then we're doing a really big disservice to our team and to ourselves and to our business. Because, whether we want to believe it or not, when you're in any position of power or you know that hierarchical structure is in place, there is a chance for people to feel that intimidation and feel like maybe it's not appropriate for me to bring this idea to them or maybe it's not appropriate for me to give them a constructive criticism of this thing that's in place. So, regardless if you're, like you know, c-suite of a you know 500 person organization or if you're the owner of a very small company, that facilitation of open dialogue and the team is for what it sounds like to me, stephanie, you're saying like this is the key to leadership.
Speaker 2:It is the key.
Speaker 2:And I think you bring up a great point about small businesses and think and there being a perception that maybe somehow it's easier because it's a small team and it's you know, we know each other and, as you said, if I'm the owner of the salon or whatever that looks like and we know, many times these things happen because of relationships we already have, people we know, and you know it's really hard to balance leading a group, a small group like that, especially when people work together every day. It's a small group, you get to know each other. It's really hard to be quote, unquote the leader, because you are in that situation if you're the owner of the business or whatever that looks like but also balance boundaries and reestablish oh hey, what's this look like now? And that's because it can go completely the opposite way too, where the leader now is like, ok, I have no, I don't know what's happening here, and so it's a tough thing.
Speaker 2:The smaller the team is and the department you know I would use the example as a department Wow, the smaller it is, the harder it is. And my experience working with leaders who manage small departments or, you know, teams of people that work really closely together. Like you know, I was inserted into a situation where I was on an inpatient unit and it is a team that works together all the time and it's a very small team, but the dynamics get even more complicated.
Speaker 2:I would say, and again, you know when you're this team of 10 or 15 people that work together every day and you're bonding over all these things that happen, but then you're also the leader. And if the leader is not able to have that balance of, I am the leader, I want you all to trust me and let's do this, but also I'm not your best friend, Right? That can be really difficult too in a small environment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So there's nothing easy about leadership. I think that's one of the takeaways and the most important part managing people and learning how to work with people is the hardest part, the most rewarding part and, I think, the part that sometimes we neglect the most when we, you know, become leaders and help other people become leaders and that's a shame. So well it can really be the magic sauce. You know, become leaders and help other people become leaders, and that's a shame.
Speaker 1:So Well, it can really be the magic sauce. I'm glad that we've got people like you out there reminding us that, like, at the end of the day, people are what matter. Yeah, you know, and if we're, if we're acknowledging that and working towards creating a space where our people feel safe.
Speaker 1:Yes, that everybody's better off, exactly, yeah, yeah, all right. Well, stephanie, it has been amazing chatting with you. I'm so glad to know more about what you do and how you can help people. I'll make sure to link to all of your socials, your website, all of that in the show notes and description. Is there anything else that you want to leave our listeners with today?
Speaker 2:No, I think you know. For the only thing I'll say is I'll repeat a statement I said earlier If overwhelms your horn, it's not, it's not supposed to be, and there is a way to fight your way out of that, and I certainly would be honored to help. But and I know there are others out there who can too and if you're an organization and you're not investing in your leaders, it's time to start, because that's where the success really lies down the road. But I appreciate the opportunity to be on and talk to you and you, allowing me to use all my words.
Speaker 1:I'll always let you use the words, because I'm going to make you invite me to the pool this summer, and then I'm going to give you all of my words.
Speaker 2:Girl, you don't have to make me. There's an open invitation, so anytime.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, stephanie, thank you so much, and to all of our besties out there, thank you guys for listening and we will talk to you guys later. All right, besties, that does it for today. If you're interested in becoming a part of the Small Business Bestie community, join us in the Facebook group or find out more information on the website at smallbusinessbestieorg. Please share the podcast with your friends, who could use A Friend in Business, and it would really mean so much to me if you follow the show and take just a few seconds to rate or review. A five-star rating really helps the show become visible to other besties who may just need the support and friendship that we offer.