In this episode of Building Great Sales Teams we are joined by Stephan Wiedner. Stephen is an psychological safety, interpersonal skills, and deliberate practice for interpersonal skills necessary for building great teams. Enjoy!
Stephan Wiedner is a psychological safety expert whose career has focused on developing sustainable high performance leaders, teams, and organizations. His passion for unleashing the collective potential of people has led him to cofound Noomii.com, the web’s largest network of independent life coaches, Skillsetter.com, the deliberate practice platform for interpersonal skills, and Zarango.com, the psychological safety training experts. Stephan has been a guest speaker for ACETech CEO Roundtables, Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, Building Psychological Strength Podcast, and many other audiences interested in psychology, business, and technology. His writing has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and other popular publications. Stephan is married with two children and enjoys spending quality time in the outdoors, hiking, biking, camping, and reading.
Stephan has developed a unique perspective on psychological safety by designing innovative and evidence-based training, building technology to help leaders and managers master their interpersonal skills, and leading a research study supervised by Harvard professor Amy C. Edmondson.
Connect with Stephan Wiedner:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/swiedner/
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00:00:18:09 - 00:00:33:18
Speaker 1
Great experiences, build great leaders. Great leaders, build great teams. This is building great sales teams.
00:00:38:07 - 00:01:03:24
Speaker 2
All right, guys, welcome back to the show. I've got Step on Wednesday. He's an expert in psychological safety and interpersonal skills. He's got several holdings. He's a CEO of Zarin Dotcom. That's kind of like a moneyball for business teams using how teams fit together to drive performance. He's also the CEO of Skill Set Account, a flight simulator for interpersonal skills training geared towards counseling, education, social work and more.
00:01:04:06 - 00:01:23:07
Speaker 2
And then lastly, the CEO of New Mi.com, a professional coaches directory, which I actually had a chance to peruse a little bit. I was very impressed by that, and I can't wait to hear the story, how that came about. But well, we'll kick it off here. Welcome to the show, Stephane. I appreciate you coming on.
00:01:24:03 - 00:01:30:03
Speaker 3
Doug Thanks for having me. It's fun to talk to new audiences every day, so appreciate you inviting me.
00:01:30:19 - 00:01:48:03
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, work with your skill set. We're getting very deep into what makes teams tick in general. You know, I think that's important. You know, too many people try to classify, okay, you know, we're just talking sales on this or we're talking teams that's it goes hand in hand. So let's kick it off with kind of the evolution of your career.
00:01:48:03 - 00:02:02:10
Speaker 2
But you started out as a in construction management and then transitioned into a 14 year coaching career. So I imagine there's a story to that, you know, and going from construction to coaching.
00:02:02:10 - 00:02:28:04
Speaker 3
Yeah, there is. And that is a pretty big job. So I got out of university and I got my first job working for a construction management company. I loved it. They were a small, little organization, worked out of my boss's house. In fact, his house was about five blocks away from my house. That's great. I go home for lunch and and the crew there were just really focused on doing excellent work and having fun while doing it.
00:02:28:04 - 00:02:55:21
Speaker 3
And as a new grad, in fact, I started there as a co-op position. So I was still in school and then stayed on after graduation. And so what better place to work? So fast forward a few years. Their specialization was all about scheduling really large, complex construction projects, and there's not a lot of people that do that. Like when you start getting into that industry, it's kind of a niche within that industry and that's something that we did really well.
00:02:55:21 - 00:03:16:13
Speaker 3
And I got all this training and got all this education and got to the point where I was the head scheduler for $100 million brand new hospital that was being built. And so I'd be on site, I'd be coordinating with 50 different companies or, you know, all the different Saabs, right? Everything from the window guys to the concrete guys to rebar, etc..
00:03:16:13 - 00:03:38:18
Speaker 3
And I often found myself sitting in meetings with the lead architect and the lead engineers. There'd be a few different engineers, right? The mechanical and the civil, electrical, etc. So say a half a dozen engineers and they're all 50, 60. And I was this young 20 something year old, right? Going, Well, is this where I want to go?
00:03:38:18 - 00:03:54:21
Speaker 3
And this is what I want to be doing with my career. And and I think the answer in my head was a no. Like, so it's not that I hated the work. It's not that I was rather privileged in that regard. Like I was getting good pay, I was learning a ton and I was still kind of ambivalent about my work.
00:03:54:21 - 00:04:23:03
Speaker 3
I just didn't love it. It didn't excite me, didn't get me jazzed. And so then I end up working with a career coach to figure out, sort of unpack that for myself. And, and then that got me into the whole coaching world and working with people and the kernel, you know, the original seed for that concept started really when I was in university because I studied business and some of the classes I had to take were around organizational behavior, industrial psychology, that kind of thing.
00:04:23:11 - 00:04:41:12
Speaker 3
And I loved those classes. Those were always my favorite. I didn't so much care about finance. They always care about, you know, accounting and all that sort of stuff. But the organizational behavior of the leadership, those were the topics that really excited me. And so that's what I've been doing for the last 15 years now.
00:04:41:13 - 00:05:03:12
Speaker 2
I love that because, you know, I find myself kind of in that stage too, where. All right, what did I really enjoy when I first started out? And it was a lot of the sales program stuff, right? More of the engineering, the sales program and that's what made me successful early on. And now that I've gone into more of a consulting role, that's kind of what I focus on.
00:05:03:12 - 00:05:21:14
Speaker 2
That's my client is the sales program versus the the sales team or the the whole organization or the entrepreneur themselves. And so I definitely resonate with that. So I'm guessing when you got into coaching, you know, about two years in is when you started Newsweek.com, is that correct?
00:05:22:08 - 00:05:51:09
Speaker 3
That is correct, yeah. So I was working on my own. I was doing my own solo thing, building up my clientele list and my reputation online and all that sort of stuff. Doing all that marketing business, building stuff. And and then I ran into my business partner, who we've been working together ever since, and he at the time was in London and he was just finishing his MBA and a mutual of mutual friend of ours went and visited him.
00:05:51:19 - 00:06:14:16
Speaker 3
And so she was touring through Europe and she met up with him and he was writing a business plan all about basically taking coaching and putting it online. So remember, this was like 15 years ago, right? So, you know, we were perhaps a little bit new or early to the game and we knew that there was going to be some significant online place for around this concept of coaching.
00:06:14:16 - 00:06:41:22
Speaker 3
And so that's when we put our heads together and we thought, well, what could we do differently here? And our innovation to bring more coaching to the world was we actually created this app called Peer Coach and the app was all about like basically your gym buddy for your life. So we had a whole system where two people can coach each other, walk each other through their goals, and figuring out what they wanted to do with their lives.
00:06:42:09 - 00:07:20:15
Speaker 3
And, and it was really cool. Like we had all kinds of really cool features. We made a lot of mistakes that entrepreneurs, you know, I could probably write a whole book on stupid things not to do and how not to burn your money and stuff like that and, you know, so we ended up having to pivot from that because as cool as it was and we got featured in a number of different places and got all these visitors and people using the app, we didn't have a solid revenue model and back then it seemed like, I think in the same year that we launched, YouTube was launched and YouTube for like a decade was not
00:07:20:15 - 00:07:40:20
Speaker 3
making money, right? It was it was really figuring its revenue model out. And and so yeah, I remember the I don't know if you remember the dot com dot bomb era and you know, like it was almost like, oh, we don't need to worry about revenue. Let's just get eyeballs. That's the new currency and funding.
00:07:40:20 - 00:07:44:21
Speaker 2
And then next round of funding and next round of funding. And so you got to sell something.
00:07:45:11 - 00:07:58:07
Speaker 3
Yeah, exactly. You got to make money at some point in time. So? So after a little while, we had to pivot. And and then that's how new me evolved into what it is today. So that's the story there.
00:07:59:13 - 00:08:15:04
Speaker 2
Yeah, I was just assuming that like you were in the industry and you're like, How do I get clients? You know, where where's the directory for coaches? You know what I mean? And so when I went to it, I was like, Why haven't I seen something like this before? Because I'm I'm part of several masterminds and I'm in the entrepreneur space.
00:08:15:10 - 00:08:32:19
Speaker 2
And, you know, every entrepreneur I know has some form of a coach. Right. But I didn't know there was a central location to go to to kind of find them all. And as I was scrolling through, I looked up the ones for San Antonio. And, you know, it's everything you could think of. It's the psychological stuff. It's, you know, marketing.
00:08:32:19 - 00:09:03:09
Speaker 2
It's, you know, they're all very specific in certain areas. And, you know, you can find the area that you need and and capitalize on that. So I think that's really cool. So let's talk about the term psychological safety. Sure. I when I saw this term in your press kit, you know, the first thing I'm thinking in my head is women in the workplace and feeling safe as the first thing that came to my head, because that's been a big issue for me because for a while they're all my top closers.
00:09:03:09 - 00:09:29:10
Speaker 2
And Soler were women and they're on a, you know, testosterone fueled sales team. Right. And I know I'm not correct in or not correct, but like, I know that's the wrong frame of thinking that I'm having there. So can you kind of walk us through what is psychological safety and. Well, I guess, yeah. Why should the entrepreneur be aware of it and cognizant of it?
00:09:30:02 - 00:10:07:15
Speaker 3
Yeah. And I would say you're not necessarily wrong in what you just said. So we'll come back to that about women and, you know, testosterone fueled sales environment. So what is psychological safety? Maybe we should start there. And there's a definition provided by Amy Edmondson. She's a Harvard prof. She's researched this topic for over 20 years. And her definition is that it is a belief that within your team or within your work environment, you can say what's on your mind, you can speak up, you can say, Hey, Jonny, we have a problem here, Houston, we have a problem.
00:10:08:00 - 00:10:36:20
Speaker 3
Or you can admit that you made a mistake or whatever it is that needs to be said. You can say it without any fear of reprimand. There's no fear of a social consequence of some sort. So we're not just talking about, hey, if I speak up, the boss is going to fire me. It's things like, you know, will people think I'm an idiot or will they think I'm just oppositional or whether they think, you know, there's some sort of negative consequence to our reputation.
00:10:37:06 - 00:11:01:08
Speaker 3
And so that's the definition. So I'll say it more succinctly, it's the belief that within your work environment, you can speak up, say what's on your mind without any fear of reprimand. Yeah. So I want to come back to that original statement you made about when you first heard about psychological safety. You said it made you think of high achieving women in a masculine work environment, and you didn't think that was like safety, so.
00:11:01:19 - 00:11:11:06
Speaker 3
Well, maybe let's unpack that a little bit. Like what? What's the problem with that? Or what's the is there an issue with these women in this masculine work environment?
00:11:11:06 - 00:11:32:05
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, you know, and we manage it the best we can, but they're out in the field every day. They're being trained by, you know, other men that are supposed to be sales professionals. And every now and then it happens and we cut them loose as quick as we can, but they may get hit on or they may, you know, there may be cursing going on or something like that.
00:11:32:14 - 00:11:55:12
Speaker 2
And we don't find out until we until we have a woman in that environment. And then she you know, hopefully she feels safe enough to bring it to us without fear of consequence or anything. And then if she does, then we immediately rectify it. But that that that was my original thought when I, I saw psychological safety.
00:11:55:19 - 00:12:25:23
Speaker 3
Yeah. Well, that is really relevant because you just said like hopefully they come to you and even mentioned it. And what sucks is that women or people of perhaps minorities of all sorts feel like they're being marginalized. And it's hard for them to call it out, right? It's hard for them to say, hey, what the heck? You know, like I had another gentleman, he's head of a sales team, mostly males.
00:12:26:03 - 00:12:41:10
Speaker 3
And he goes on the road and he invites all the dudes to go hang out, you know, drink beers and have a good time. It's like, dude, you just you just excluded 20% of your sales team. That sucks, right? Sucks for them so well.
00:12:41:10 - 00:13:00:03
Speaker 2
And in his head, he probably had a fear of something happening, you know what I'm saying? So now that a a woman is in the mix, then now it's a liability, you know what I mean? Like, she's not a liability herself. But the the the guy that takes it too far is the liability. So he's just trying to avoid it altogether, which is discrimination itself.
00:13:00:11 - 00:13:02:10
Speaker 3
So it's like, yeah, all right.
00:13:02:13 - 00:13:21:05
Speaker 2
I get where his initial thought was. But, you know, we we do little things to minimize that. You know, obviously, we never we never have an event where only the men, you know, showed up. There would be everybody showing up and then we won't pay for alcohol, you know what I mean? The leadership, we're leaving early. We're leaving at 930.
00:13:21:05 - 00:13:40:19
Speaker 2
You know, I'm saying we're in bed by ten. We're setting that example. So, you know, if something does happen after that, then, you know, we have to deal with that. But we're trying to lead by example in the sense of, okay, we're not drinking a bunch, we're not paying for drinks. We're not, you know, fostering this party environment that a lot of that stuff happens in.
00:13:41:16 - 00:14:12:22
Speaker 3
Yeah, see, that's really awesome, right? So you're trying to model the behavior that you want to see. And then therefore, when there are offenses, you can call attention to them and you can you can draw some attention. What I would impress upon your listeners and folks out there is if you think there's any concern for this kind of thing in your work environment, whether it's, you know, marginalizing women or whatever, you want to make sure that you can make it safe for the women or minorities or whomever it may be to be able to express their concerns.
00:14:12:22 - 00:14:32:21
Speaker 3
And and and then you need to be able to jump on it, right? Because if you give people the avenue to blow the whistle, if you will, and you do nothing about it, that that's an even bigger problem that you're going to have on your hands. So you need to ask yourself what kind of organization do you want to build and do you want to build a safe one where people can speak up and do so?
00:14:32:21 - 00:14:47:17
Speaker 3
And maybe, maybe it needs to be an anonymous way. Who knows, right? You need to figure out the right structure so that there is an avenue for folks to be able to say, you know what, I don't feel comfortable in this work environment and here's why, and can you do something about it?
00:14:47:17 - 00:14:52:09
Speaker 2
And 100% no. I appreciate the insight on that. And it makes a ton of sense.
00:14:53:05 - 00:15:02:02
Speaker 3
Yeah, but I want to stop there and just that there's kind of a lot there and any questions or any thoughts emerge there?
00:15:02:03 - 00:15:35:20
Speaker 2
Doug Yeah, right away it's like I go, you know, so I'm a big self evaluator, you know, and I think you have to do that in order to grow. And if you're not growing, then you're dying in a sense, right? Or you're stagnant, whatever you want to call it. So right away I'm thinking about the times where I maybe sacrificed the psychological safety of my team because I reacted too quickly to a statement or to an idea or to a result, you know what I'm saying?
00:15:36:09 - 00:16:05:04
Speaker 2
And so right away I'm like, okay, I could see how, you know, you can go through training to not do that. And basically I'm saying in and it gets down to like a very adolescent level. You know, when I think about my son and when he's at his worst, he's emotional, you know what I'm saying? So I'm guessing that this training kind of teaches you to, before you emotionally react to, I guess, use your brains.
00:16:05:17 - 00:16:29:17
Speaker 3
Pretty much first. That is some awesome, awesome insight there for sure. The language we would use is instead of responding, you react. Or rather instead of react, you respond. Reacting is is emotional. It's it's that knee jerk kind of reaction and responding is taking just that little pause and absolutely that's that's something we focus on in the training.
00:16:29:22 - 00:16:52:05
Speaker 3
I want to go back to something else you said relating to that, though, Doug was you mentioned that. Oh, I think in my team I may have hurt or damaged psychological safety because I reacted. So tell me more about that. Like, what do you think was the impact of that reaction that you had?
00:16:52:05 - 00:17:08:10
Speaker 2
I guess it would constrict. Communication is the biggest thing. So let's give an example. And so I don't have a specific one. I could just see how I would do this. It's like, you know, your your calcium comes in from the field from the day before. They were in the field the day before they come in, you know, you got a goose egg for the day.
00:17:08:13 - 00:17:28:06
Speaker 2
That's a pretty common one. And then, you know, when they start making the excuses right away, you know, you react with, well, you're just not putting in the work. You know, it's very cliche to say that. And sales in in entrepreneurship in general is like, oh, you're not putting in the work. If you put in the work, you get the results, you don't get the results, you didn't put in the work.
00:17:28:14 - 00:17:54:00
Speaker 2
And things aren't that binary all the time, you know? And in the evolution of my career, what I've realized is respond instead of react. So responding would be asking three or four questions that would kind of evaluate their day and help them understand, okay, these action items that you have to take in prospecting in order to create a result of sales is where you fell short right here in what I'm saying.
00:17:54:00 - 00:18:15:14
Speaker 2
So today we need to focus on this metric. You know, if you double up that action, then you'll end up with the result because the numbers are there, you know. So that's a very basic thing that I would kind of walk through. But early on in my career, it was very like, you know, go do this instead of let's go do this or let's figure this out together.
00:18:15:14 - 00:18:22:00
Speaker 2
You know, I'm saying in as I go, oh, they got those those emotional reactions got less and less and less, you know.
00:18:22:16 - 00:18:28:21
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah. And what did you see in turn from your team as your reaction lower.
00:18:29:03 - 00:18:50:21
Speaker 2
Or lower turnover? Oh, you know, more understanding when the business was suffering and they had to step up, you know what I mean? More the just team mentality of, hey, let's accomplish this together. Let's overcome this obstacle together versus like, oh, well, you're going to, you know, you're all about the results and you're, you're going to react to everything I say anyways.
00:18:50:21 - 00:18:53:10
Speaker 2
I'm not going to communicate so we can solve the problem, you know?
00:18:53:17 - 00:19:24:21
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what you're pointing to is and this is, was in your original question, so what, who cares about psychological safety? Why is why should this, as a business owner, be of concern to me? And what you're pointing to right there is is the value. The value is in the learning. It's unpacking and uncovering learning because psychological safety is really the vehicle for teams to learn to learn from one another to, okay, we have a problem, how are we going to solve it?
00:19:24:21 - 00:19:49:20
Speaker 3
And you're not just reacting, causing people to get frustrated and then leave. And when there's high turnover, that's that's a massive cost to the business. You know, how much does it cost to find new people, bring them on, train them, etc.? Obviously, certain environments that the turnover cost is not nearly as high in others, but it's something that you want to be considering as a business that is that is hitting your bottom line, right.
00:19:49:20 - 00:20:15:21
Speaker 3
Every time someone leaves. And that's not that's the hard costs. What about the soft cost? Right. What when folks leave or get frustrated, they start talking to one another. Morale drops, people get frustrated and results dwindle. So it's kind of a fulfilling cycle there where as things get worse, they get worse. And if you can interrupt it, you can't get better, right?
00:20:15:21 - 00:20:17:19
Speaker 3
You can't improve. You can't get out of that hole.
00:20:18:24 - 00:20:46:23
Speaker 2
Yeah. It becomes a freight train of fires that are really difficult to put out because of one person leaving. And then the the catastrophic effect of that. So, you know, we can we can talk about this in the entrepreneur workspace, but you've done a pretty large scale and you all recently did some work with the Orioles. Can you kind of walk through how y'all utilized your services?
00:20:46:23 - 00:20:54:12
Speaker 2
And I'm guessing with Zynga it was the was the vehicle for that with the Orioles.
00:20:55:11 - 00:21:16:15
Speaker 3
Yeah, that's right. So Durango is our training arm of the business. And and what we did there is we worked with their player development team and they have roughly 80 people in that team. And we didn't work with all 80. We worked with their top dozen or so and they have that many player development folks because it's not just the Orioles, it's their minor league team.
00:21:16:15 - 00:21:45:15
Speaker 3
They have about a half a dozen teams that they support as well. And their player development staff are in different cities because those teams are in different state cities. And so what we did is we came in and supported them through about a six week training program, and that training program was all about interpersonal skills. It was training these managers and being able to pause and respond productively as opposed to reacting.
00:21:45:15 - 00:22:14:19
Speaker 3
And at a higher level. What they were trying to achieve is really trying to bring their like bring this sense of team, team, this weakness together, because in pro sports, it's a really interesting dynamic you have. So often you have a mix of old guard, you know, the old guard, this is the way we've been doing it. And and they really wanted to challenge the status quo.
00:22:14:19 - 00:22:27:22
Speaker 3
So if there were people that had been around the organization for 20, 30 years and were saying, well, this is how we've done it, they wanted to be able to challenge that. And similarly, they wanted to support the new folks that were literally days or weeks in their.
00:22:27:22 - 00:22:28:08
Speaker 2
Roles.
00:22:29:06 - 00:22:50:13
Speaker 3
Into the position. Right. To be able to say, look, if you're seeing things that should be done differently or you're like, you need to speak up. We need to create an environment where everybody feels like they can speak up. Also, during spring training, when everybody comes together, there's often heated discussions and even like, you know, sort of like super masculine clashes, right?
00:22:50:13 - 00:23:10:15
Speaker 3
Where two people don't see eye to eye and and they wanted to be able to not avoid those altogether, but turn those into more productive conversations. So it's not that the disagreement can't be there. It's just what are we going to do with it? And let's make it more productive. So that was one of the the explicit goals.
00:23:10:15 - 00:23:36:12
Speaker 3
And and there also another issue with that. So the tenured people and the newbies is contract status. So really strange thing where in that arena and that field of work, many people are not contracted long term. It's you are on a one year contract or a two year contract. And so that affects what you do and how you how how much risk you're willing to take.
00:23:36:24 - 00:23:58:22
Speaker 3
And the Orioles, if you recall, a couple of years ago, they were basement dwellers. They were right at the bottom. And so they needed to do things differently. And it starts with their player development, right? Their future, the product they put on the field next year and the year after. Is there signs of it in the minor leagues right now and what they're doing with those players?
00:23:58:22 - 00:24:11:19
Speaker 3
So so this is their future plan. Like this is it. This is their strategy for how to get better is to grow and facilitate their the leadership within their player development team.
00:24:11:19 - 00:24:32:00
Speaker 2
I love that it's a long term strategy too, you know, and in baseball it's a lot more accepted, you know what I mean? That you can take that time, five years to develop this championship team. You know, in basketball it's like two or three years. And in football you better win the championship next year. Your coach is on the chopping block kind of.
00:24:32:00 - 00:24:32:17
Speaker 3
Stuff, you know.
00:24:33:08 - 00:24:53:07
Speaker 2
So that that makes a lot of sense. But what I like about it is that okay, instead of us just clashing, you know, old ten year, new ten year old school, new school, whatever the case is. And I do really like the Moneyball analogy that you used about that part of the business because it was very much that.
00:24:53:07 - 00:25:06:02
Speaker 2
Right. And I actually just watched it a couple of weeks ago. So it's funny that you referenced it and it very much was about that. What's his name, Brad Pitt's character? Of course. I remember Brad Pitt, not the actual guy's name.
00:25:06:16 - 00:25:07:00
Speaker 3
Yeah.
00:25:09:05 - 00:25:42:11
Speaker 2
But, man. And it's right there on the tip of my tongue. But anyways, so he came. He he got this way of doing business that was not baseball's way of doing business, right? And created a strategy around it. And it revolutionized the league, you know. And so the same thing they're trying to create the same thing within the Orioles organization, but around psychological safety, which makes it a ton of sense because if you just keep doing the same thing and you're losing, I mean, how are you going to turn it around?
00:25:42:11 - 00:26:00:14
Speaker 2
Right? And you need those new ideas. You need those fresh ideas. And then I think the most important thing is a strategy for when the class does happen. Like you were saying, a real strategy and not just like, all right, whoever screams loudest is going to going to win this way. You know what I mean? Or you got one person that see at the head of the table.
00:26:00:22 - 00:26:01:07
Speaker 3
That.
00:26:01:07 - 00:26:26:01
Speaker 2
Ultimately makes a decision and everything falls on them. And that's got to be exhausting. So I can imagine two pieces of my staff coming together and coming to a conclusion together and then coming to me and saying, Hey, this is the way we want to do this versus me having to see these two opposing point of views and then having to like make this decision in my head where, you know, one's going to be upset and one's going to be happy, you know what I mean?
00:26:26:07 - 00:26:42:00
Speaker 2
And then if it's the wrong decision, it all falls on me versus the creation of that decision with those two together. So what do you think are some good strategies to handle conflicts like that when two people are very rooted in a, in their strategy towards approaching the marketplace?
00:26:42:15 - 00:27:05:16
Speaker 3
Yeah, the the skill we point to and train folks in is the skill of reflecting process. So what is what does it mean to reflect process? Well, maybe I'll start with reflecting content. So there's three levels of reflecting, reflecting content, reflecting feeling and reflecting process. And I'll start at the top because it's pretty easy and understandable when you reflect content, someone says something, you reflect it back.
00:27:05:17 - 00:27:24:09
Speaker 3
You, you paraphrase, you don't want to parrot, you don't want to say word for word what they said. But if they're saying, hey, I'm really you know, I went made ten phone calls and here's what all those customers said. So then you want to paraphrase back, oh, so you made a bunch of calls and you're hearing the same thing again and again from the customers, and it's blunt.
00:27:24:23 - 00:27:48:07
Speaker 3
And that allows them to go, Yeah, you're right. That's that's exactly what I heard. Okay. So it's reaffirming for the other person that, okay, they understand me, they get it. And then there's reflecting feeling, reflecting feeling is, oh, so you made ten calls and it's it was frustrating for you or illuminating or whatever emotion you want to use to describe what they're saying.
00:27:48:07 - 00:28:11:09
Speaker 3
Often when we communicate, we don't say, I'm angry, I'm frustrated, I'm upset, but you can infer it. Right there is there's a you know, people are saying words and you can infer what that emotion is. And by reflecting the emotion, again, it has someone go, oh, yeah, you're right. Yeah, yeah. That is really frustrating because maybe they didn't even, you know, the, the sentiment was there, but they didn't they couldn't put their finger on it.
00:28:11:09 - 00:28:28:05
Speaker 3
Right. So when you say, hey, it sounds like you're really frustrated. They're like, yeah, that's what you're aiming for. You're aiming for that. Yeah, you're right. And the beauty with checking in and saying, hey, you know, it sounds like you're frustrated. You got that right. It allows them to go now. It's not frustration, actually. It's a little bit more sadness.
00:28:28:09 - 00:28:49:05
Speaker 3
I'm just I'm kind of sad, like I'm bummed and totally bum that I haven't. I made ten calls and I'm not getting the response. I wanted. Yeah, okay. You're. You're bummed. Got it. So then there's reflecting process. So this is where, you know, to use a sports analogy, you want to think about where and we're working. We're often on the field, right?
00:28:49:05 - 00:29:08:12
Speaker 3
We're we're carrying the ball. We're hitting the ball, we're on the field. And what you need to be able to do is take yourself above and put yourself into the stands and point out what you're seeing on the field. So when two people are coming together and it's like two rams bumping heads, you want to say, okay, I'm noticing we're at a bit of a standstill here, guys.
00:29:08:12 - 00:29:27:15
Speaker 3
There's heated emotions and we're not going to come to an agreement if we just keep duking it out the way we are now. So how can we approach this differently? So notice how I'm just I'm just shining a light on what's going on and what I'm seeing. And then inviting participation, saying, how can we deal with this differently?
00:29:27:15 - 00:29:47:06
Speaker 3
What might we do differently? And then that causes people to kind of stopping, reflect and go, Oh yeah, crap. You're right. We aren't going to get anywhere here. I'm. And then you might even be able to point out like, look, are you guys just disagreeing because you're both stubborn or you disagreeing because you have a fundamental difference in beliefs?
00:29:47:16 - 00:30:05:09
Speaker 3
Or are you you know what? Like, let's get to the source of the matter here and and being able to call attention to what's actually happening and that that's a challenging skill. It takes it takes practice to get it right.
00:30:05:09 - 00:30:30:21
Speaker 2
Yeah. And you know, the first two pieces of it make a lot of sense. I feel like the execution of the third piece is where the magic happens. You know, that facilitator, knowing how to structure the strategy to execute the third piece that's like, you know, $1,000,000 skill, you know what I'm saying? Because that it that that is really where the magic is going to happen.
00:30:30:21 - 00:30:51:12
Speaker 2
But the first two pieces, you know, honestly, what it sounds like a lot to me is the way that salespeople talk to customers. Right. And this is just people in general. You're having a conversation with your wife, you're having a conversation with the customer. You're having a conversation with a peer at work. It's like validation is the first step, not you're right, but I hear you, you know what I mean?
00:30:51:12 - 00:31:14:20
Speaker 2
And then validating their their feelings on top of that, what they're going through, because you can't tell someone what to feel. They are feeling what they're feeling. And you may not always know it. Like you said. And so they might identify and it lets you know, okay, they're in this headspace, you know, I'm saying so I need to bring them out of this headspace so that we can find a solution because they may just want to be in that headspace, you know, and that's not productive.
00:31:14:20 - 00:31:23:02
Speaker 2
Right. So I love the strategy and I can see how a lot of our listeners can use that with their businesses or their sales team. So I love it.
00:31:23:02 - 00:31:44:13
Speaker 3
Yeah, it's the same thing, isn't it? It's basically the same skills and that's what we've noticed with interpersonal skills. They're the same thing everywhere. Oh, we originated our work in the world of counseling. Yeah. Where, you know, you have therapists who are sitting in a room talking to someone and lo and behold, their skills are the same skills as a salesperson.
00:31:45:00 - 00:32:06:19
Speaker 3
You want to be able to have the other person go, Yeah, you get me, you understand me? Right? It's a lot easier to make a sale when the other person is confident that you know where they're coming from. And you're not just trying to push something on them, you're seeking to understand them before you try to just force them to buy something that you want.
00:32:06:19 - 00:32:24:18
Speaker 2
Okay. So now I'm curious, skill set outcome, the way you described it was it's flight simulator for interpersonal skills. So how does that program work? And, you know, so I see the problem and how you guys solve the problem through training and education has skills that are done somewhere.
00:32:25:13 - 00:32:58:19
Speaker 3
Yeah. So skill setter is the it's the practice component. So often I suspect you've done training with sales staff and you go through role playing and you know, you go through scripts and you have people rehearse scripts and what to say and how to say it. Well, skill setter is just one additional means of practicing. And the way it works is we have simulated environments, team based, work based environments where you'll have a one on one interaction or could be a team based thing.
00:32:59:05 - 00:33:36:00
Speaker 3
And there are clips that are challenging. So it's, you know, it could be other clients and yeah, I'm not sure, you know, they're presenting some sort of objection. Right. And then you have to respond to that. So respond by not just trying to convince them, but respond by saying, okay, I understand where you're coming from. And when you practice responding and you're responding using your webcam and your microphone all that, just like you would kind of talking to a zoom and a zoom meeting and and you want to be practicing one skill at a time.
00:33:36:06 - 00:34:01:03
Speaker 3
So we try to break it down and we take clips that really require one or maybe two skills at once so that when you're practicing, you're practicing those those skills. So in sales, right, there's a series of steps you might take throughout to go from sort of interest to close. And so we would maybe look at a number of those steps and try to break down just one of the steps.
00:34:01:03 - 00:34:28:03
Speaker 3
Okay, let's just work on this one today and tomorrow, work on step two and then step three, step four. So that in a real game, in a real life call with real person, you put them all together. So that's how it works. And sorry, there's one additional piece that I failed to mention, which is you get a clip, you record a response, and you're provided with a rubric for what it looks like when you effectively use that skill.
00:34:28:03 - 00:34:49:16
Speaker 3
So when you're reflecting emotion, for example, or feeling, it tends to look like this and we give people tips and then they can self evaluate so they can go, Oh wow, yeah, I didn't quite capture that right. Or and then they get to rerecord because of course when you're practicing basketball or practicing piano, you get to try again and again and again.
00:34:49:19 - 00:35:09:03
Speaker 3
Same thing here. We take the same principles. You practice again and again and again until you get it right. Then you submit your response. And we have people on the back end that are interpersonal skills experts who give you feedback, say, Oh, you know, and often what they're giving feedback on is not what you said, but how you said it.
00:35:09:17 - 00:35:33:19
Speaker 3
So we're often looking at those, you know, those nonverbals or your tone, because what we find is that so many people have the right skills, but they don't have the same impact because their emotional expression or, you know, the words kind of stumble a little bit. And if it could just be a little bit more fluid, it'll just land better.
00:35:34:16 - 00:35:39:18
Speaker 3
So that's it in a nutshell. What questions do you have regarding that? Okay.
00:35:40:06 - 00:35:58:00
Speaker 2
Well, I mean, I just want to point out that, you know, we in in my industry and I'm a sales of work, so we've we've done solar, we've done security, you know, and it's mainly door to door. So things like this are really important to us. But what we do is we, you know, we do role play on a daily basis.
00:35:58:11 - 00:36:21:15
Speaker 2
And what happens is you got you have the more experienced guys kind of going through the motions in their eyes or glossing over to here and role play. They know exactly what to say and they know exactly how to overcome the ejection and they're losing their interpersonal skills and how they deliver those things. So the the idea in a lot of role play is to take them to the max of their emotions, you know.
00:36:21:20 - 00:36:44:10
Speaker 2
So we'll like play music in the backgrounds to make them talk louder, will have things going on around them to like irritate them a little bit, you know what I'm saying? To kind of stretch out their ability to focus and concentrate and interact with the customer and the body language is really important too. So we'll do role play where we're over animated in the body language, right?
00:36:44:20 - 00:37:17:08
Speaker 2
But by the time they get to the field, they're back to center instead of starting from zero, they've warmed up, they've overdone it all. And then they get to the field and now they're just a little bit above average. So where they need to be when they they experience these things with that customer. But the idea that maybe a 2:00 in the afternoon when there are already too a rough start, they could log into this program and go through some role play and go through some of those that training and then go back out to the field and kind of reset if they need to or that we don't have to do roleplay every day
00:37:17:08 - 00:37:38:19
Speaker 2
because we are doing this. This this type of training I think is pretty cool. And then the way I'll break it up, too, because I think that's important. You were talking about the sales process earlier. You know, in ours is very simple, very intro, qualify percent clothes. And when we role play we'll role play a piece of that first and then we'll kind of graduate into the whole thing.
00:37:38:19 - 00:37:43:19
Speaker 2
Right. And so I imagine that that program works similarly.
00:37:44:19 - 00:38:09:20
Speaker 3
Yeah, it's flexible. So it can be designed that way for sure. You know, I'm not I'm curious if this system could address the need that you just described, one where you're out in the field, it's two in the afternoon and you're feeling a little flat. One thing that the system allows and this maybe depends on, I guess, how you do the role play, but what it allows people to do is see themselves.
00:38:09:21 - 00:38:33:07
Speaker 3
They get to they have to rewatch and they have to assess their own skills. So I think it brings a greater level of awareness, especially if someone can point out, oh, notice how flat you were. Like, for example, one of the things we might do is we have people rewatch what they said without any words. You can't hear it, no audio.
00:38:33:08 - 00:38:34:06
Speaker 2
Oh yeah.
00:38:34:07 - 00:39:01:16
Speaker 3
Right. So then you see your emotion. You're like, Oh, wow, I had no emotion. And, and I talk for one minute. I literally made no noticeable emotions with my face that so often happens. And you're unaware of it, right? You're just. So perhaps this type of training would elevate people's self-aware genius so that they can modulate their actions a little bit more when they're out in the field.
00:39:02:11 - 00:39:25:15
Speaker 2
And just right away, I think, you know, when you're starting out just recording your role play, you know, could create so much perspective for your people. And just that it does that function, but it does it through something that, you know, probably in my organization would be a level of training they have to go through to to get promoted or to complete their training.
00:39:26:01 - 00:39:43:02
Speaker 2
Whatever the case is. And it kind of requires it to be done and they have to see themselves like that. You know, we tell them all the time, practice your pitch in the mirror and pinch yourself, you know, and you know, maybe like one out of four of them do it and then they come back in the next day and kind of give us the feedback on what it was like.
00:39:43:02 - 00:39:59:19
Speaker 2
And then the rest are kind of like, Oh yeah, it was fun. But you know, the ones that really did it because they have a deep, you know, they have deep questions about it and they have an understanding of the way that they look when they pitch, you know. And so, yeah, anything that does more of that is going to be going to be huge for them.
00:40:00:18 - 00:40:16:24
Speaker 2
So with all three of your your business is and it is centered around, you know, coaching interpersonal skills and psychological safety. What is kind of next for you or your organizations? What, you know, what are you all looking to do next?
00:40:16:24 - 00:40:41:04
Speaker 3
Well, the yeah, what we're doing is setting ourselves up to really scale on the training side. So we've got the technology piece with skill setter saranga. So being our training arm is leveraging skill set of we're a customer of skill setter because we needed to make sure we make a distinction between the software product and the training because they're, they're, they're interrelated but they're not the same.
00:40:41:04 - 00:41:13:01
Speaker 3
Like a, we wanted to be have that distinction. And so for us it's about, yeah, being ready to scale and knowing that there's also really great AI coming down the road very soon. Right now, scaling strategy relies on a lot of humans, especially those feedback providers. They're the really critical, unique element that we have. So when people record their responses, we give them accurate yes and useful feedback, right?
00:41:13:01 - 00:41:34:13
Speaker 3
Because you don't want to overwhelm people with too much. If folks are a little bit on the weaker side. Right. Like you want to be able to make it helpful for them. And if you tell them here are the 28 things you could do better, it's too much. Yeah. So so that's a skill in and of itself is noticing where they're deficient and what the lowest hanging fruit is.
00:41:34:13 - 00:42:04:19
Speaker 3
You know, if there's only one thing they could improve, what would that be? So about what we're uncovering with AI, which technology is just accelerating so fast? It's amazing. We're looking at three different things and being able to provide instant feedback to people, which is, number one, we're looking at tone. So no matter what the language is, you know, when someone's yelling, you know, when they're mad, you can detect emotion from words or rather from tone.
00:42:04:19 - 00:42:25:05
Speaker 3
So we're assessing, we're creating A.I. that can give people feedback, saying, here's what emotions were detecting from your tone, and then you can modulated accordingly. The second is we're looking at the words that you say, and the way that's being done with the AI now is it just gets transcribed to text, right? And then that text can be analyzed.
00:42:25:05 - 00:42:56:07
Speaker 3
So it can be analyzed for things like, are you being judgmental? Hmm, or are you being open and approachable? And so we can give people feedback on that. And then the third one is on your nonverbals we can detect I think we talked about that like detecting emotion when there's no sound at all. So it's just looking at the, the visual cues and determining a, what emotions are you presenting, if any, and B, is it congruous with where the client is at?
00:42:56:08 - 00:43:16:05
Speaker 3
Right. Because if the client's telling you, my dog just died, you don't want to be smiling. You want to have the right affect for that particular situation. So these are all technologies that are coming down the pipe and we'll you know, we'll have those eventually. But in the meantime, we have to bridge the gap with humans. And so that's that's a long answer to your short question.
00:43:16:05 - 00:43:20:06
Speaker 3
What's next for us in terms of our business now?
00:43:20:07 - 00:43:40:16
Speaker 2
I love it because it really is what is next for the virtual sales industry when you think about it that way? Because just imagine your company and you have, I don't know, 50 sales conversations a day and to every day be able to take all the data from those sales conversations, evaluate it, break it down.
00:43:40:22 - 00:43:41:03
Speaker 3
And.
00:43:41:03 - 00:44:12:13
Speaker 2
Then turn around and see, okay, what was the most successful tone? What was the most successful dialect and what was the most successful body language? And then have your new salespeople coming in and being able to train them on that. You know, and I've interviewed a few other CEOs that have softwares that are kind of going towards that, you know, and but they do still have the human element into it, like a like an appointment center, you know, a software where it's the CRM and the human element sets the appointment, you know what I mean?
00:44:12:13 - 00:44:33:00
Speaker 2
And then they're tracking the sales conversation after that, you know, and this is where it gets really heavy and to, okay, how do I collect all this data and package in such a way that makes one? I can train my current people, but train the new people coming in. This is, you know, how we how we look when we say this thing and this is the words we use.
00:44:33:00 - 00:44:56:01
Speaker 2
And I mean, you can just create a assassin sales team by doing that and I get real nerd it out on especially when we're talking AI. And one of the questions that I typically ask around this is, okay, at what point does AI just replace salespeople all together? What do you think?
00:44:56:01 - 00:45:23:23
Speaker 3
Hahaha, great question, right? AI is really getting to the point where what's that? What's Turin is that his name. I can't remember the researcher who basically developed the test for AI and it's, it's when you present the AI to humans, can they detect it's a robot. Okay. Yeah, right. That, that's basically the test and a lot of AI is at that point where like am I talking to a real human or not.
00:45:24:08 - 00:45:54:23
Speaker 3
And so obviously with, you know, any form of chat communication where you can't see the other person, it's easier to replace the human with a bot of some sort. Yeah. And I, I can't see sales completely going away. Like, I just don't see it. I think human interaction is so important and we will discount when it's a robot, even if that robot is really, really convincing.
00:45:54:23 - 00:46:14:13
Speaker 3
I think there's always a part of us that's like that's just a robot. And so I want the real human being, I want the real thing. And so in terms of sales, I don't think it's going away. And so that's that's our motivation for building our technology is not to replace humans at all. In fact, it's the opposite.
00:46:14:13 - 00:46:19:11
Speaker 3
It's to empower humans to do human things better.
00:46:19:11 - 00:46:20:01
Speaker 2
Absolutely.
00:46:20:13 - 00:46:43:18
Speaker 3
And let the bots do what the bots do better. Let the computers do what computers do better, which is, you know, heavy computation and that kind of thing. But interpersonal skills that aren't going away, I'm sorry. Teams are always going to have to interact with one another in a sales environment. Sure. I think there's some elements that can be replaced with humans, can be replaced by robots, but not the whole thing, I don't think.
00:46:43:18 - 00:46:48:14
Speaker 3
What what what are your thoughts? I'd love to hear from you, Doug. You're you're you spend all your days in sales, so. Yeah.
00:46:49:03 - 00:47:11:06
Speaker 2
What are your thoughts? I would agree with you 100%. There's a, you know, in in 100 years, it's going to be called a machinist or something. I don't I don't know how to say it, but you want to deal with a human. There's a preference to deal with humans. And it's because we're human. That's how we connect. There's a reason it's called interpersonal skills personal, which is people, you know.
00:47:11:22 - 00:47:30:03
Speaker 2
And so the idea that a robots or A.I. technology is ever going to be able to replace that, you know, I would agree with you, but how you stay ahead of it in terms of not being replaced, I guess you could say, is using the A.I. in order to benefit your sales presentation or your sales conversation, whatever the case says.
00:47:30:18 - 00:47:57:06
Speaker 2
You know, Chris Pearson was a Bell Technologies. I think they have a CRM software very much like I told you. And I asked him that in the middle of it because I was inspired by I was like, okay, but what you're talking about is eventually going to replace the salesperson. He's like, No. And here's why. When you look at the character of text, that character contains about seven bytes of data, right?
00:47:58:04 - 00:48:33:14
Speaker 2
And in order for a human to trust another human, it takes something like 15,000 bytes of data. Well, that same amount of data can be achieved by a human talking for 7 seconds. So know you think about, you know, the amount of text you would have to write out and type out and the story you would have to tell when a human can get you to trust him in about 7 seconds and the know like a trust factor in order to create a purchase, A.I. has a long way to go, you know?
00:48:34:01 - 00:48:53:05
Speaker 2
And, you know, we we know that that will scale. But at the same time, it's going to be incredibly difficult to replace that human factor, because we are we are machines ourselves. We are the first A.I., you know, I'm saying, so how are you in? And we're constantly evolving in that sense, at least in the brain, you know.
00:48:53:19 - 00:48:59:24
Speaker 2
And so how are you ever going to catch up? I don't I don't see computers catching up to us. Yeah, that's my man.
00:49:00:11 - 00:49:07:17
Speaker 3
They did the day they do. Maybe as a species will no longer live. I don't know. Yeah.
00:49:07:17 - 00:49:09:13
Speaker 2
We'll have a lot more to worry about.
00:49:09:13 - 00:49:36:10
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah. I want to highlight just one thing you said there that know like and trust piece. I think ultimately that's what we're trying to help people with with the interpersonal skills training is increasing that quotient, you know, and a lot of it, like you said, there's so much data. So we're collecting so much data when we're interacting with one another that tells you, I know this person, I like this person, I trust this person.
00:49:36:22 - 00:49:51:14
Speaker 3
And and so increasing that quotient, we don't use no like trust, we use AETA. So it's demonstrating expert ness, trustworthiness and a is basically attractiveness or likability. Mm hmm. Yeah.
00:49:52:07 - 00:50:12:08
Speaker 2
Now, that's pretty cool. I like that, Etta. So I'm curious if all so obviously you coach the individuals in the organization, right? But what, what can an organization do as a whole to increase that psychological safety and interpersonal skills, you know, besides hiring you.
00:50:12:08 - 00:50:13:06
Speaker 3
Case like.
00:50:13:06 - 00:50:42:05
Speaker 2
Whatever so some things you know I would imagine so one one of my I guess favorite CEOs in terms of culture is Todd Peterson with Vivian. Right. So not only did he create a visual culture for his salespeople, but he also was able to foster a community culture. So like each sales team in different cities and stuff had their own basketball league that they that they were a part of.
00:50:42:05 - 00:51:00:00
Speaker 2
They were on the basketball team. So one of the reasons that their turnover was so low is because the salesperson wouldn't just say, I want to quit because I don't like working here. They would say, Well, I don't want to quit because I have a basketball game with my team next week, you know what I mean? So created this community within the company.
00:51:00:08 - 00:51:14:11
Speaker 2
So that would to me would be something that would that would be could be initiated from company standpoint. So when we're looking at like psychological safety and interpersonal skills, what are some things that companies can do to promote to promote those?
00:51:15:18 - 00:51:48:24
Speaker 3
Yeah, it's an awesome question. And I wish more CEOs and leaders would be thinking about that. So the first thing I'd recommend is to create a to number one. And this comes out of Amy Amundsen's work and her most recent book called Fearless Organization or Fearless Organizations Plural. And she recommends number one is you set the frame. So as a leader you want to be able to say, look, folks, yeah, we need to sell widgets or, you know, build better machines or whatever it is that we do.
00:51:49:11 - 00:52:11:21
Speaker 3
We also want to do that. So the vehicle through which that we want to improve is psychological safety or you can, you know, maybe you call it a fail safe work environment or speak up culture. You know, use a phrasing that makes sense for you and your organization. And then and then think about invite inviting participation. That's sort of step two.
00:52:11:21 - 00:52:33:17
Speaker 3
So step one is sort of setting the frame. Here's what we're interested. This is what's important to us. Step two is inviting participation. And you need to ask what makes sense in your organization? How do you want people to be contributing their ideas? So, you know, if you want to have a better restaurant, you might want to put little cards that people can fill out when they're out there sitting at their table saying, This is what I liked or didn't like.
00:52:33:17 - 00:52:58:14
Speaker 3
Or maybe you have an NPS score popping up for customers, or you have an internal employee NPS score, whatever mechanism you create, you want to make sure that it's allowing people to contribute their ideas and might be something as informal as, Hey, let's create a basketball team. Because when people are hanging out, playing basketball, they're inevitably going to be talking about work and they're going to share ideas.
00:52:58:14 - 00:53:31:02
Speaker 3
Right? That's there's there's some cross-pollination there, even if it's not the explicit number. One reason for having a basketball team. So inviting participation, how do you do that? Ideally, you can get your team to kind of contribute ideas there. And then the third thing is you want to make sure that you're responding productively. So you want to make sure that when people are giving their ideas, whether it's on a little, you know, a little cue card or some sort of survey or on Slack, you're responding in a way that says, okay, I hear you, and it gets incorporated into the business in some way and not always.
00:53:31:02 - 00:53:51:05
Speaker 3
Like sometimes you'll say, okay, great idea. I totally disagree and here's why. And that's okay. You know, it's not about agreement. It's about making sure people are heard. So, for example, there's I know some of the structures that companies have put into place. There are things like weekly check ins. So with your manager, you have a weekly check in.
00:53:51:11 - 00:54:07:20
Speaker 3
And here's the structure for that check in. And you might want to be considering now that you've heard about psychological safety, like you might want to tailor your questions to things like what thought? What are you not sharing? Yeah, what have you not told me about.
00:54:08:04 - 00:54:39:07
Speaker 2
Yeah. Do you feel like if you give your manager an idea that it's going to be shot down or getting hurt, you know? Yeah. So, and, but here's the whole deal and I coach this too is those weekly check ins or like, you know, so I had 110 salespeople at one point, and so I had a hierarchy of check ins, essentially, but every week or a couple of weeks, you would get a check in from your manager, your regional VP or me, right?
00:54:39:14 - 00:54:59:01
Speaker 2
And so you were being checked in on in terms of your progress and then your immediate manager was the assistant manager in that hierarchy. And so they were dealing with you every day, you know, but you're that that 15 minutes of checking in and saying, hey, one, how are you doing? You know, that that question could be the whole 15 minutes, you know.
00:54:59:10 - 00:55:16:05
Speaker 2
And so but then, yeah, the next question being, hey, if you bring something to the table, whether it be, you know, if you think we need to work a product you think we need to sell or whatever the case is or are you feeling like that's going to be hurt? You know, and it may happen naturally in the conversation when I asked, How you doing?
00:55:16:15 - 00:55:20:10
Speaker 2
Oh, I'm doing great, but I think I'd be doing a lot better if I had this, you know.
00:55:20:16 - 00:55:21:03
Speaker 3
And that's.
00:55:22:02 - 00:55:48:09
Speaker 2
You know, that's that natural means. So much can be solved and so much perspective gained by just especially when you're in a large organization by just calling that entry level person and listening to, you know what I mean? Because you're you're hearing from the middle management every week, you know, you'll have meetings set out for that. But a lot of times that communication from the top all the way down can create such a great pulse on the organization that you see things coming before anybody else does.
00:55:48:17 - 00:55:49:05
Speaker 2
This is really cool.
00:55:49:05 - 00:56:10:00
Speaker 3
Yeah, super great insights there. Absolutely. Like, I love what you said about the question first being how how are you doing? And that might be the whole question. And just think about that for a second, because we're all about results and we're all about making more sales, make more money and all that sort of stuff, solving big problems.
00:56:10:11 - 00:56:36:12
Speaker 3
But if someone goes on a 15 minute sidebar conversation about their kids and how their child is struggling with whatever and this and that like that, think about how impactful that 15 minutes is for them and think about how likely they are then to contribute. Whatever ideas, whatever, you know, their sense of psychological safety is going to go through the roof.
00:56:36:21 - 00:57:03:00
Speaker 3
Yeah, because someone just. Yeah. Because someone just gave them the time of day. Right. That's really powerful. So don't forget about that as a manager. Sure, you want to be all about results, but that humanness, I think, is so important for psychological safety, for building an environment where people feel like they can say what is of concern for them and someone will be there to hear it and.
00:57:03:19 - 00:57:24:21
Speaker 2
Yeah, and you know what inspired that? When we created that program that we did that with, it was we were on a road trip and I went out to meet the team on the road trip to to show face, shake hands, kiss babies, you know what I mean? And in my head, that's what it was for. And then one of one of the guys says to me is like, So what do you do here?
00:57:25:02 - 00:57:44:03
Speaker 2
Or Who are you? So that was the first indicator like, all right, so our branding needs to have me, you know, we need to have our leadership team in there. So we, we put that into the branding at the opportunity meetings and the orientation and stuff. But and then he was like, Man, you're freaking rich, aren't you? You're like a millionaire, huh?
00:57:44:17 - 00:57:52:17
Speaker 2
In his head, that was a reality, which I wasn't. I mean, I think I did like 300 grand that year, you know, and it was my first year that we actually blew.
00:57:52:17 - 00:57:52:24
Speaker 3
Up.
00:57:53:10 - 00:58:17:10
Speaker 2
In business. And so I wasn't a very good business owner yet. And so so basically I allowed my entry level salespeople to shape the idea of me versus giving it to them, you know what I'm saying? And that's when those 15 minutes straight conversations started helping out. And I was able to relate to them about the kids in school and struggling in school.
00:58:17:10 - 00:58:35:11
Speaker 2
Yeah, my kids are going through the same thing right now. You know, I'm human, too. I'm not. This, like, mythological figure that can't be spoken to or you know what I mean? You can't. You can bring me your problems, you know, I'm problem solved. That's why I'm in Summit, right? And so I could see how this thing could really evolve.
00:58:35:15 - 00:58:51:03
Speaker 2
And I love the work that you're doing, and I love talking to you today for sure. So one of the last things I'd like to ask at the end of my episodes is what is legacy mean to you and what legacy do you want to leave behind?
00:58:51:03 - 00:59:14:23
Speaker 3
Yeah, legacy to me is just that. It's like it's what persists after you're gone, what carries on. And I think a great it doesn't have to be after you're dead. It's after you're no longer involved. And so a legacy is really all about empowering. It's like coming up with the vision, the concept, and then creating an infrastructure, an environment where other people can run with it.
00:59:16:07 - 00:59:44:22
Speaker 3
And so empowering those to keep it going and what I want to leave behind ultimately is I want to create workplaces where people feel like they can show up and give that give it their best. So the enemy in my world is ambivalence. It's someone who's like, yeah, punching the clock. Yeah. And, and I want to create environments where everybody feels like they can show up to work and be their best.
00:59:45:02 - 01:00:05:22
Speaker 3
Really lean in that, that that's my legacy. And when people do that, of course, then I really think that the world's biggest problems are all going to get solved hunger, climate change, you name it. We as humans, we have a capacity to solve all those problems if we all just show up and give it our best. Because right now, I think it's the tip of the iceberg.
01:00:05:22 - 01:00:10:14
Speaker 3
Maybe 15%, maybe 20% are doing that. Yeah, that's a lot of people.
01:00:11:05 - 01:00:14:22
Speaker 2
If you even get to 50%, it's a game changer. You know, I think.
01:00:15:15 - 01:00:23:07
Speaker 3
Absolutely even, you know, even to go from 25 to 30% would be a game changer. Mm hmm. That's a lot of people.
01:00:24:08 - 01:00:56:10
Speaker 2
So much of that is like being responsible to the employee or salesperson versus, you know, trying to figure out, okay, what is in it for me? You know, I've sent several people out of my organization because I didn't see them growing in, you know, maybe I refer them to another entrepreneurial friend or whatever the case was, but not being selfish with them because they make you a few more sales a week, you know, and that, you know, equates to a few more hundred dollars in profit, you know, when genuinely they're wanting to help people and put them in the right seat versus the profitable seat, you know?
01:00:56:19 - 01:00:57:16
Speaker 3
And they love that.
01:00:57:16 - 01:01:19:09
Speaker 2
Well, we all got to run businesses, you know, but we should all aspire to run that 30% business where everybody's bought in and and keyed into the same mission or 50% and so on, and build it from there. All right, brother, I appreciate you coming on. The podcast gave us a ton of value today and perspective on psychological safety, interpersonal skills.
01:01:19:09 - 01:01:35:02
Speaker 2
I think they're incredibly important to building great sales teams. If you guys get a chance, go to the range goal.com for its last free PCR for a free site safety and assessment. And then if they want to reach out to you, the best place for that is LinkedIn. Is that correct?
01:01:36:03 - 01:01:48:13
Speaker 3
Indeed, yeah. Follow me on LinkedIn. I think you'll probably put the URL in the show notes or. Yeah, yeah. If not, just search my name, Stefan Widner, and you'll find me there. All right.
01:01:48:13 - 01:01:49:23
Speaker 2
Stefan, I appreciate you coming on the show.
01:01:49:23 - 01:01:52:19
Speaker 3
Today. It was a ton of fun. Thanks, Doug.
01:01:53:16 - 01:02:01:01
Speaker 2
All right, let's get building.
01:02:01:01 - 01:02:22:05
Speaker 1
Thank you for tuning into this episode of Building Great sales teams. Be sure to execute on what you just heard. And let's get building as always. Remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you consume podcast. You can also head on over to building great teams dot com and sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date with everything that's going on with the podcast.
01:02:22:18 - 01:02:25:16
Speaker 1
See you next time.