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Introduction
Hello again everyone. Doug Thorpe here. And you are listening to Leadership Powered by Common Sense. My guest is going to help us look at how do you fix your business. And a lot of times people, founders, owners and leaders think that maybe their people are broken. But guess what? There’s a whole other side of that story that we’re going to explore today. Her name is Betsy Kauffman. She’s an author, speaker. She has a TED talk that’s got over 16 million views. You might check that out, but we’ll talk about it. Betsy, welcome to the show.
Hi, Doug. Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Meet the Guest: Betsy Kauffman of Cross Impact
Yeah. Give us a little bit of a story arc of your background and what got you into the work you’re doing now.
Yeah, so it’s kind of funny. I am a project manager, technical project manager, portfolio manager, program manager.
Background kind of fell into that work in my very early 20s. Someone believed in me and said, hey, come, come do this work. So I did, and and I’d been doing a lot of large scale technology transformations and project management work, and I was speaking at a local meetup. I’m based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and we had a meetup of about 100 people showed up. It was kind of fun, and we were talking about building high performing global teams. And so when we were talking, you know, at the end of it, we had probably a line of 50 people wanting to come talk to us. And the very last person said to me, you need to take this show on the road. So I did. I quit my very secure job at Bank of America, and I started my own consulting firm and coaching firm, and I, I really started focused on agile coaching, agile training. So again, the background being technology, we were trying to build high performing agile organizations.
And so I would go in and I would do a lot of work at the team level, really helping to train them and help them to learn. How do we how do we work in this new way of working? And this is back in 2014, and I was I was working with the teams. I would often get leaders coming to me to say, can you come work with me? Can you come spend some time with us? We need your help like we need your help at the leadership level. The teams need your help, but we really need your help at the leadership level. And so I often said that I did not go looking for leadership coaching and leadership consulting and organizational design. It actually came and found me because I think I was able to be very open and transparent and have good conversations and not be afraid to tell the leaders what was actually happening within the teams and what would needed to be fixed. And so the work just started to evolve and morph into leadership development, one on one coaching and building high performing leadership teams that work across the organization.
And so hence that’s the name of the company is Cross Impact. Because the impact that we have usually is across the organization, because we’re usually potentially see silos and needing folks to come together. So. So it found me that work found me. I’ve enjoyed it, I’ve loved it. I’ve loved morphing it from an agile technology training project management company into a leadership development organization, and you never know the projects that come and sit on our come to us, or a whole bunch of interesting things that I’m sure that we’ll explore over the next, you know, 30, 45 minutes as we talk.
The Leadership Gap Nobody Talks About
Well, fascinating. And one thing that came to my mind, as you were describing all that is that, you know, these leaders were reaching out and saying, hey, come work with us. At the leadership level, I think there’s a prevailing norm where high performers, individual contributors get recognized and get pushed into management roles. The team leads, section heads and so forth, and then they get on the management track and then they may get promoted another couple of times before anybody says, maybe they need some help doing this new job.
Yeah, yeah. Usually it’s by like subject matter expertise, right.
And like, oh, by the way, because you’re good at this, you’re now going to get some direct reports.
Well, in often companies when they had their so-called first time manager training. They’re really not teaching leadership. They’re there teaching process. You know, here’s our HR protocol for performance review and and positioning and budgeting and all those things that go with it — all very necessary. Don’t get me wrong. But that’s not leadership training.
Exactly. Yeah. And I often see and even if they do have like a first time manager program and there might if there is some leadership in it, that’s usually where it stops then, right. So when you get to like the second level or the third level or the fourth level, we tend to we see companies tending to, to not spend as much time and energy on growing and developing that set of leaders. So C-suite usually will get coaching. Right. And I do a lot of work at the C-suite, but it’s kind of that, that in-between messy middle of leadership that needs it the most.
And that’s where we kind of spend a good amount of our time, is helping them and helping them to learn how to how to balance, you know, all the things that come at them because they’ve got they’re kind of sitting in this perfect, perfect. I don’t know what you want to call it, but perfect storm of, you know, I’ve got people pushing up on me. I’ve got my peers pushing on the side of me. I’ve got my C-suite pushing down on me. And how do I how do I navigate all of that and still show results as a leader?
The “Frozen Middle”: Your Most Critical Leadership Layer
I call it the frozen middle. It’s kind of like that.
That frozen.
Frozen lasagna you put in the microwave, and it’s bubbly hot on the edges, but still rock solid cold in the middle.
Yeah.
And it’s actually your most critical group or I guess, of leaders, our level of leaders, because they’re I feel like they’re the ones that will make or break any type of initiative, transformation program, whatever you’re trying to accomplish as a company, that messy middle or frozen middle is really critical for results.
Well, and and the the real liability in that is the burnout of the people that report to them. Yeah. If they’re swimming in treading water as fast as they can. But making unintentional mistakes about their leadership, then the people that report to them are impacted by it. And in the modern world, the you know, the front door is on speed control.
I mean.
People are in and out in a heartbeat nowadays.
Yeah.
Especially that there’s no there’s not much loyalty or any loyalty to companies that, you know, these days. So. Absolutely.
Yeah.
Introducing The Fix: People Aren’t Broken, But Your System Is
Right, right. Well let’s touch on. You’ve you’ve got a new book that just got released called The Fix. Tell us about what you’re attacking in that book.
Yeah.
So it’s a business fable and it’s it’s a number of years of clients and work, and it kind of came into a culmination. But it’s called The Fix: A Business Fable. You know, people are not broken, but your system is. And so it’s actually written from the perspective of a coach or a consultant and what they see and what they hear when working in organizations.
And a lot of times as a coach, when I come in, I’ll have someone come to me and say, hey, if you. I need you to come in and fix this person. And so really, the premise is one people are not broken. I fundamentally believe that people are not broken. There’s usually things around them systemically or, you know, other things that that are causing them to potentially not live up to their expectations or performance and what we’re looking for. But we tend to want to think about it being the person that is broken as opposed to like, stop. Let’s see all the things around them that need potential help. And then how do we focus on those?
And, you know, that leader might need some support. I’m not saying that leaders, you know, everybody’s perfect. But there could be they do need some support, whether executive presence coaching or decision making or things of that nature. But there’s usually larger systemic things that are happening in the organization that need to be fixed and to help that leader to grow and support them in their in their journey.
The Clarity Problem: When Direction Gets Lost in Translation
And, you know, directly related to that, one thing I observe, and I work with a lot of my clients about, I challenge the leaders I work with on the notion of how clear are you in directives that you’re giving? Yes, and in a very complex and sometimes ambiguous world, the leader that cannot articulate clear direction to their team is going to. It’s going to result in good people fundamentally doing nothing.
Absolutely. Yeah. It’s interesting, if you were to get your leaders into a room and ask them, what is the highest priority thing that we should be working on right now, you will probably get X number of responses based on who’s in the room with you. So if you have five people reporting to you and you ask them that, you’ll probably get five different responses. And that’s a lot of what we find in the work that we do. When we do, we do a leadership alignment work quite a bit. And it’s been it’s been really fun and fascinating is just to get folks to say, okay, stop.
Do we actually know what we should be focusing on? Like what’s the most important thing? What are our highest priorities? And then we go from there and we find that everybody usually has a different charge and they’re they’re not. They’re all focusing on something different. And so can you. I mean, the confusion that caused not only at the peer level. Right. And at the leadership level, but then as you get into the team levels, you know, they’re being told, I have to do this and then this team will have to do that. And we often have this conflict happening between different teams and organizations.
So, you know, for me, it’s asking very basic questions and getting some very basic fundamental answers from the group. You know, for example, when we say, you know, this is kind of silly, but what is a project? You could probably get five different answers. What is a product? What is our highest priority that we’re focused on? What you know, what are things that we’re going to stop working on, what’s not important to us, and just starting to get those conversations happening are the critical things, and that’s some of the systemic things that we see.
That’s that’s maybe hindering a leader’s performance is that they aren’t clear on what we’re trying to do, or they aren’t clear on giving direction, on what we’re trying to do. And so when we can get that alignment, we can fix that system. We can actually start to help our leaders become more successful, more high performing.
The Whiteboard Exercise That Saved the Company Millions
You know, I love that description. I was reminded of a team level workshop that I facilitated one time, and the senior executive that had these people reporting to them, and each of his reports were department heads in their own right. And he he and I, you know, talked about what they wanted to accomplish in the workshop. And so one of the things we did do, we did the classic whiteboard exercise. We had every, department head go to their own board and write out the top 5 to 10 things they thought they were working on. Yeah, the priorities. And we spent I think I have 45 minutes to an hour allowing them to really think through it and, and do some heavy lifting on what those might be.
Then we flipped the tables, we kind of did a musical chairs. Now go to the, you know, step over one board.
Yeah. Yeah.
And and read what there is there and make notes about the overlap that, you know, might be present and the things you might be sharing or, or in some cases, what we revealed was there were two different efforts going on for the same goal, and somehow it had gotten misinterpreted that it was assigned here versus assigned there. And, and, you know, they they had this duplicity and things going on.
And so, yeah.
We spent most of the rest of the workshop realigning all of that and getting that clarity on who really needs to do what, who’s going to support versus deliver and, and so forth.
It’s funny because isn’t it happens all the time. Right. I mean, we see that all the time. And it’s fascinating to actually run an exercise similar to that because one it’s coming in all hot. Wait, I’m working on that.
No, no, no, I’m working on that. Right. And it’s it’s as simple exercise. But think about the the criticality and being able to get folks to, to to realign and say, okay, now wait a minute. If you’re working on it and I’m working on it, does that make sense? Do we come together? How do we do it. Right. And so they probably save the company honestly, hundreds of hours, maybe even millions of dollars by just having that conversation and spending some time?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Those basic like stop. You know, let’s just whiteboard what we’re all working on. I did a very similar one two with a past client, and it was really it was a I was a vice president, and she had several different department heads and nobody knew what the other one actually did within the organization. And so they each did what we called a marketplace. And they put up kind of this is these are the things that my group is responsible for, and this is what we do.
And they said it was probably the most productive session that they’ve had because they really had no idea. And to your point, they found that they were doing overlap. Wait, you’re doing that? I do that too. Does that make sense? Should this should this portion of work and these people come over to here? And so it was. It was just a very basic but it was a whole day session of just getting alignment on what everybody does and understanding. And then how do we support each other as peers within that organization?
Leadership Rotation: Great Strategy or Recipe for Chaos?
Well, and in the case of the team I was working with, they were part of a global brand that had a protocol, a regularly expected rotation of leaders. You know, you would you would move through the company every 2 to 3 years. You would be given new assignments, new responsibilities with the long term intent of exposure to all facets so that you are a more well-rounded executive leader. Potential great strategy. The military does it all the time, you know, and, as as people elevate up, get promoted up, you know, there’s only so many roles for them to fill.
And so it’s an understandable exercise. And at the same time, when you’ve got this somewhat short term fluidity in the teams, a leader moves in and inherits a team, and then the team bubbles up and tells the leader what they think they’re working on. And the leader at that point initially may or may not have a valid scope understanding of what they should be doing and if if they’re not coming together as a leadership team to reconcile that on a regular basis, you’re you’re going to get off track.
Yeah, for sure, for sure. It’s interesting though. I would love to go back to that rotational conversation if we want to want to go in that direction. I’m coaching a team right now. And so we mentioned now this is you know, this is not a leadership training. These are folks that have been in the department for many years. And we mentioned, you know, hey, what if we were to start to rotate the different areas in the leaders and we’ve got a really interesting reaction.
So half of the leaders are like, that would be awesome. I’d welcome being able to rotate and take on different teams. And the other half were like, absolutely not. I have zero desire. I like what I do, I like where I am. And so, you know, I am now working in coaching this group to figure out, well, what do we want? Do we actually want our leaders to be more, you know, T-shaped or eye shaped? You know, we’ve got all these kind of different things of how we, you know, have deep technical knowledge or do we actually want them to have a broader range and have more leadership skills and be able to, to navigate and elevate?
And so it’s been a really fun concept to explore with them because I think they’ve always in their head said, okay, I’m going to do this. This is what I do. This is my career. I’m staying in this lane. Whether it be, you know, I’m a really good designer or I’m a really good engineer, I’m a really good, you know, social media whatever management expert.
I’m like, oh, wait, no, wait. Maybe I need to elevate and look across. And are there other things? And how do I become how do I grow my leadership skills? So I think that’s been a it’s funny, my leader that I was coaching and she was like, I had a huge moment with that was like, I actually may not need to be the smee of everything as I continue to navigate my career. And so that was it was fun to watch that.
But it’s also been fun to to kind of see how these leaders are reacting to as we throw out these crazy ideas of rotation. And I feel like the best leaders should be able to take on any team. They don’t have to have the subject matter expertise. But how do they coach? How do they guide? How do they work with their peers and build alignment across, you know, like look across the aisle is really where you’re going to become a better leader as opposed to being an expert in a certain field or a certain, you know, domain, right?
Well, a very good call out there.
And I think the caveat that I would add to that is, I think that distinction of when and how you do rotations is, is directly related to company size and what your long term demand for ongoing leadership at certain levels is going to be. And I tend to see the rotational mindset happen in the larger global brands, where you’ve got tens of thousands of employees and you’ve got all of these work streams going on, and it is a complex organization, and the propensity to do that rotation exists at that level. But if I’m recalling from your bio, you tend to work with companies 500 million and below.
Yeah, that’s the target.
My background is very large company. So again, Bank of America, Duke.
Energy.
All of those I like. I do love the mid the mid market companies just because of the ability to to move right, to move faster, to make change and to make impact. But you know, it’s potentially something to think about, right. Even at a mid, at a mid market I was working with a, a mid market company, about 300 million, 400 million on a succession plan.
And they had as they had four executives that are getting ready to retire all at the same time, you know, C-suite and we’re having a baby. Like, wow, what are we going to do? And so they brought us in to, to really analyze, like, who do we have? Who could potentially be next? What have we done? You know, what’s the plan. And so as we were interviewing and getting to learn and learning all the different areas of the four executives, there was really a gap between the, the, you know, the next level leader and that C-suite that’s going to retire. And and it became a big moment of like, how do we we need to actually identify a couple of folks and we need to develop them, and we need to grow them, and we need to coach them.
And I think it started to create this awakening as to how do we start to build more of a competency within our organization and not just get people, this is what you do.
This is your job. Stay in this box. But how do we start to think about the next generation of leaders? And that’s what I see with that mid market level that mid you know we kind of get our folks and they do really good. And then you know to move them around or to coach or guide them. We’re not we don’t spend as much as like the larger corporations do. And so that’s why it’s critical. It’s critical to do that. And even the rotation, I think, you know, they may start to do some rotation because they’re finding that they’re having people that can literally only sit in one box, and there’s not a lot of flexibility to be able to move around and find players and player coaches to, to, to start to grow into other positions.
Rotation Is a Culture Question
Yeah, I think ultimately it becomes it becomes part of the strategy and planning process. And and ultimately it’s a culture question because on the one hand, if as you’re recruiting people to come in, you need to tell them if you’re going to hang with us a while and you get to a certain level, there will or will or won’t be an expectation to move around.
And some people are at a station in life. They don’t want to do that. So, you know, if that’s a true long term expectation, that’s a serious point to consider. Yeah. Coming on board. But but anyway, I think.
It’s.
It’s back to the original point being, when there is fluidity in the leadership, there needs to be that alignment of purpose and scope of effort that’s going on to keep good people clear on the mission. One company I worked with, I used the phrase what does a win look like? You know, they would that would be the trigger question. If if, for instance, in a leadership team meeting, they were a new venture, a new project was being laid on the table. These folks were predominantly engineers of all types. And so they immediately got into the process analysis of what this needed to look like. And inevitably that that question, what does a win look like, became sort of the safe word. Everybody, you know.
Right.
When somebody felt they were getting too deep into the weeds, somebody would raise their hand and go, wait a minute, time out. What does a win look like?
Right?
And that was the trigger for everyone to regroup and come back. Yeah. Go back to that basic question and whether or not they understood what that might be.
Yeah.
It’s interesting. I think we tend to go down to the how right faster than the what. And to your point, being able to stay on the surface first. Not really surface, but like what are we actually trying to accomplish or what is a win look like? Or what’s the most important thing that we need to be focused on to move the company needle. Right. Just keeping it there because we want to try to solve and figure it out. But if you can’t actually answer that across holistically, across the team, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how we execute it because we’re going to be executing different things.
So all right.
How to Break Through: Diagnosing What Your Business Actually Needs
Betsy, how do you break through a senior leader’s mindset? Who who might have enough presence to say, I think we need help.
And at the same time, I’m not sure where we needed it. It’s kind of like the old joke in marketing. I know I’m wasting half of my budget. I just don’t know which half.
And yeah, yeah, yeah.
So first it’s it’s coming in and just asking a lot of questions and understanding, okay, what’s currently going on? Are you guys spending time. You know for me it’s alignment. I’m you know that’s a lot of what we spent our energy on. That’s where we spend a lot of our time is does everybody know what we should be working on. And if they don’t that’s really where we go first. Right. The next thing is how do we work together as a group of peers. So I’m a big fan of the Patrick Lencioni first team concept. And it doesn’t just have to be at the C-suite. It can be in a department level too, right? So as a team, do we actually look across and do we support each other first or do we look down? And there’s our down lines, our first team.
And so starting to ask those questions and understanding kind of where everybody’s head is at, it helps us to understand okay, let’s start here either. Let’s do some one on one coaching. Let’s figure out what you know. What each leader leader has. You know their strengths and their challenges. Or let’s do some group and team coaching to figure out do we know what we’re supposed to be, what we’re supposed to be working on, or what are the biggest things that we’re trying to accomplish?
I’ve been working with a group of leaders right now currently, and we’ve been focusing on like, what are our strategic strategic initiatives, what are we going to focus on? And they kept bringing up this one thing like, we have a capacity problem, we have a capacity problem, and we’re always too busy. We can’t do the work, we can’t do the work. And so but they were focusing on other things to solve for on their strategic initiatives. And I finally was like, hey, stop. Pause.
Until you fix this capacity thing, we actually understand the capacity thing. The rest of it doesn’t matter. So I think it’s sometimes just listening and hearing some of the things that they feel are their bottlenecks. And then just asking the same question back out. They’re like, okay, but if we solve for this, will that actually make some of the other things that are causing our bottlenecks, you know, resolved? And so it was just it was one of those like it almost stopped the room like, oh yeah, we need to solve for our capacity problem first, or at least we need to understand it. And is it truly a problem? And if it is, then how do we solve for it? And how does that make our department better?
So I think, you know, for me, going back to your original question is one understanding what’s actually happening, where are the dynamics? How do we, you know? Are we aligned? Are our leaders aligned? Do they work well together? And if they don’t, you know, let’s start to figure out the right way to tackle it from from all of those.
Are You Measuring People on the Right Things?
And it is so easy to lose sight of all that as you get busy day by day. And it it it is so incumbent, I believe on on leaders to be able to maintain that clarity of direction and purpose and priority. Yeah. You know, a lot of times people, good people want to do good work. So they see an opportunity and they go after it. But is that really a priority? Is that really a value add contribution in the long run? arguably it might be the next right thing to do. Yes. But is that really in scope for what we’re trying to get done in our most urgent priorities?
And do we agree right across across the board? The other thing that tends to come into the mix of that is what am I being measured on, right. So if I’m being measured on this thing but the priority is that right, I’m going to I’m going to focus on what I’m being measured on. I’m not human nature means like if this is going to impact my livelihood, I’m not a focus on this.
And so sometimes that needs to be surfaced up to say, okay, wait a minute. You’re telling me that the most important thing to focus on is, is over here, but I’m being measured on this, you know, can. Is there something we need to do to change that? How do we make sure that I’m being measured on things that are the most impactful? And I’ve been working with another group currently and that was one of our biggest sticking points is I’ve got some folks that are being measured on a certain way of how they have to work and how they have to execute, but it’s not what we are actually trying to accomplish within the organization.
And so that was like we got to if we don’t solve for that first, it doesn’t matter because they’re never going to actually lean into whatever the change that we’re trying to do here, because you’re measuring them on the pathway or past behaviors or past ways of working.
Job Descriptions and the Hidden Misalignment
Well, in a related matter on that topic, I have a colleague who is also in kind of an HR space, but she helps small companies, small and mid-sized companies with doing a deeper dive on basic job descriptions.
You know, everybody is pretty well familiar with a job description, and you block out certain things you think you’re going to assign to a position. And but but she has taken it a step further. She said, okay, you’ve got these five things on the job description. And you, you even maybe have gone so far as to do sort of a time allocation. You know, I need you to do in 30% of your time on this number one and 20 and ten and five and five, whatever. but then she challenges the question, okay, you’ve allocated that time, but what is the value add to the business correlated with that effort. And she she uses an example where one position had a block. That time allocation was something like 20%, but value to the company for that role was 50%.
Oh interesting.
And it’s like, wait a minute, you’ve only allocated this person, yeah, 20% of their day to give you a 50% gain in productivity. And that that’s not an alignment thing.
That’s you know, that is out of alignment.
Right.
That’s confusion.
So that’s confusion. And it goes to your point. If you’re going to be evaluated it in this case, if they’re going to be evaluated on the 50 they need to be contributing. You’ve you’ve constrained them to 20% timewise. And that’s not going to that’s not going to compute.
I also think would be interesting for that. You know, if you’re doing those job descriptions once you see them, you know. Is this. Is this factual? Do you spend 30% here and do you spend 20% here? And do you spend 10% there? That’s another interesting conversation. And like, no, I’m actually spending 90% on the 10%. Right. Or, you know, depending on whatever it is that that tends to have, have us have that conversation like, okay, wait a minute. So what are you doing here? And, you know, how do we how do we shift your focus and your energy? And then also, is it of importance and impactful to the business and what we’re trying to accomplish?
Yeah, yeah.
The Big Insight: Alignment Does NOT Equal Agreement
What have we left out Betsy. What what have we not touched on related to this really critical thinking about fixing your business?
Yeah.
So I think, you know, we’ve talked a lot about alignment. And someone always asked me like, what’s what’s the most important thing that you think is important is that alignment does not always equal agreement. So that is the big concept that when I’m first coming in with a group, I try to explain is we’re going to work on alignment. And and if we try to agree on everything, we’re never going to get out of this room, right? So we need to really think about okay, can you align enough that when we do leave a room that we’re going to move forward with whatever decisions were made? And so I think that’s that’s the hardest part.
And people are like, wait, I don’t understand that. Like I go, if we have to sit and every has to be 100% in agreement, we will never like it won’t happen. And so I would say that would be the one topic that, you know, I would I would always put forward as one of our rules of the road is alignment doesn’t always equal agreement.
If you fundamentally do not align with something, raise your hand. But if you can live with it, we will move on. And so we kind of do we do some exercises with that. But I think that’s kind of a critical thing for folks because I forget because I try to get like 100% consensus on things, and sometimes it’s just not gonna be possible. And we got to move forward and we’ve got to acknowledge it and say, okay, great, go, go, go forth and conquer it.
Bringing It Home: Lessons From the Living Room
Interesting. And I, I couldn’t help but think, as you were describing, that, I do that here in my household. My wife and I, when we came together a long time ago, we didn’t formally set jurisdictional boundaries about things related to the household, the operation of it, but we kind of evolved into it. And part of the alignment issue was, you know, this thing over here is yours. That thing or there’s mine and I’m going to be responsible for, you know, the outcome.
I might seek your counsel and your opinion on things.
Yeah.
But we have this agreement that, you know, when the decision is made there, there’s no sniping or grousing about, you know, what happened. And it’s it’s and I’ll use a classic example. I’m probably I’m speaking more to the men in the room here. But, you know, if my wife says she wants to go get a new sofa, it’s like, okay, you know, what are you thinking? And and she’ll she’ll share ideas, but she has enough Grace and desire for harmony that she’ll say, well, I’ve come up with two options. It’s either this one or this one.
Yeah.
What do you think? And then I’ll say, I don’t really like that one, but that other one’s nice, you know. Yeah, I can see that. And then boom we’re done, you know, and and then, you know, there’s no like I said, there’s no griping about it after the fact. You you move on and it’s created a harmony.
And, and we proudly tell friends, you know, we’ve never really had a serious fight, right?
Right. Well, and.
That’s a, that’s a team, right? That’s teamwork at that point.
Yeah. Yeah.
It’s it’s fun to watch it because it’s fun to watch a team come together and start to be able to align quickly in that manner to say, okay, we’re making this decision. How do we move forward? I know, you know, even acknowledging I know you don’t 100% agree with where we’re going with this, but can you align around it that the the best teams can do that? And we can have these really great conversations and and pick at it and then move forward, and then we leave it in the room.
Okay, great. I’m not gonna I’m not going to leave and then go back to my team and say, well, even though they agreed with it, I didn’t necessarily do that. That’s really actually what we’re trying not to do. We’re trying to make sure that we say, hey, as a team, we’re aligning, and when we leave this room, we will align outside of this room as well.
So same thing with your with your.
Wife.
And the sofas.
And I think that whole mindset of being willing to go back to the team and in your mind, you know, you didn’t 100% agree, but you are willing to align. You don’t have to talk about that. You know, you don’t have to carry that into the spirit. And that’s a culture thing. If, if, if culturally you you think about the question, how do we want to work together? Well, one of the houses I want to agree to align, you know. Yeah, it’s kind of like I don’t agree with the thing necessarily, but I am in concert with alignment. And if that’s the the consensus, that’s the direction it will go. Right. And I’m going to deal with it accordingly, professionally and otherwise. And because guess what. There’ll be another day when your thing is the thing you want.
To absolutely.
Push for and promote. And not everybody’s going to be in agreement on your idea.
Exactly.
When we leave the room, we need to support each other, because supporting each other outside of the room actually helps your teams to work together better, right?
Closing Thoughts
Absolutely. Yeah. Well, Betsy, this has been great. Tell people the best way to get in touch with you.
Yeah, yeah.
So you can find me on LinkedIn, Betsy Kauffman, or on my website, Cross Impact. I’ve actually got a leadership alignment survey there. It’s free. Ten quick questions kind of helps folks to figure out where are we as a leadership team and where do we need to spend some energy and focus and then buy the book The Fix A Business Fable by Betsy Kauffman. When your people aren’t broken but your systems are, is so. Yeah, perfect. And that’s on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and I think it’s coming out on Spotify soonish as a audiobook.
So wonderful. Well, folks, as always, we will have those links in the show notes. So hop down and check those links and then get in touch with Betsy.
If you’ve got a need or an idea in your own company. And one last time, Betsy, thank you so much for being with us.
Thanks, Doug. It’s been great.
Appreciate it.
Yeah, everybody, I do like to remind you we have a video version of this show on YouTube channel by the same name, Leadership Powered by Common Sense. Check us out over there. Drop me a note. Let me know if you’ve got an idea for a topic or a guest that you haven’t heard yet. We’d love to hear from you. For now, I’m going to sign off, say goodbye, go out there and make it a great day.
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