Three Rare Skills You Really Need Right Now!

Everyone (including us) talks about being a good leader and some of the facets of that. What often gets looked are some basic, learnable skills that set you up. In this episode, Paul Simkins, The Values Coach, talks three rare skills that allow you to develop and grow as a leader. Learn these skills and you will have increased influence with your team and your organization.

Plus, Paul shares an excellent recipe for Dinner in a Pumpkin. Cooks this over coals or in your kitchen oven. You can find the recipe, and many more, on the Smoke and Ash Facebook group or by emailing paul@BoldlyLead.com.

You can get a copy of Paul's eBook 15 Innovative Ways to Show Employees You Care and Not Break the Bank by emailing him at paul@BoldlyLead.com.

Join the discussions at our Podcast Facebook group here.
Learn more about Paul Simkins on his website.

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Transcript

Producer: 0:00

The tech leaders toolbox podcast is brought to you by Paul Simkins and the BoldlyLead program, focusing on helping tech leaders like you, and the frustration of low performing teams, and losing excellent employees. So they can increase productivity by 50%. Go home on time, and sleep better at nights.

Paul Simkins: 0:22

Hello, and welcome to the tech leaders toolbox. I'm Paul Simkins. And we're here because how you lead today determines how your team succeeds tomorrow. And I want to remind you don't doubt it for a second that you are a leader. It's all about influence. And so great leaders seek to increase our positive influence by growing each and every day. Now, this is Episode 39 of the podcast. And we've talked a lot in previous episodes, about a lot of the traits of leaders and about a style of leadership and, and what it's all about, and what gets missed in all of that are some skills that you need to develop in order to get that way, and people don't talk a lot about them. So today, that's what we want to talk about, I want to talk about three rare leadership skills that you need right now, in order to be more successful with your team or within your organization. Are you ready? Let's go. See, leadership is demanding. Even when you don't do it? Well, it's demanding. And unfortunately, most don't do it. Well, you can have a title, you can be called a leader, and yet not really do it very effectively. Now, it's even more demanding, though, to lead well. And that's why really not everybody is meant to be in a leadership position, per se, everyone has influence and therefore leads in certain circumstances. But not everybody is meant to be a leader, at least not until they have developed themselves and gotten the skills they need in order to be effective at it. And it requires a sacrifice. It demands that you put your ego aside in every situation, that you put others first, that team unity and success is greater than your personal agenda, that you spend time somewhere other than in your office. It also takes your priorities, your time your brain and many other parts of your well, as well. It's very demanding. You have to deal with disappointment, both in circumstances and people. The demands that you ask a lot of yourself and of others, and it commands, commands that you are intentional always. And it's so demanding. It's why we say if you really truly don't like or don't care about people, you have no business, being in a leadership position. If you're the owner of a software company, and you care more about the programming than you do about the people doing the programming, and running the sales department in the back office, you should really stop trying to be a leader, hire somebody else in to be the leader of your organization. But here's the thing, with very few exceptions in this in this world, we all do care about people. And sometimes our priorities get a little distorted. And sometimes we just don't know how to care for people are how to be the leader. It's it's not always a natural thing you hear about born leaders. And one of my favorite quotes from one of my mentors, john Maxwell is is the people ask me or is anybody born to be a leader and he goes, Well, I haven't met a leader yet who hasn't been born. But to be a great leader is not born in you. It is developed. And it can be developed over time. But in order to do it, you have to care enough to want to learn those skills that you need to be an effective leader. So if we do care, it just means it matters to us to try and do it. Well. The guest I have on my podcast myself, we focus on the skills it takes to do it well. Now our current circumstances, creative and more demands, including what we perceive as new challenges on how to lead people in a remote workforce. But the truth is, the skills you need to be a great leader right now. Are the same skills you needed and face to face environment. No different changing circumstances, same skill sets you need. Quote, I heard from Tom Peters, who was the author of In Search of Excellence not too long ago, he essentially said, there's no difference if you're a lousy leader face to face your allows you leader in work from home environment. So we've talked a lot about those skills, the characteristics you need, and what leadership is all about. But there's some foundational skills, you need to set yourself up for that, in order to be able to do this well. So we're going to talk about those three skills. The first skill I want to talk about is talk about empathy. It's a good jumpstart on this empathy. And here's the best way I can use to describe it something you might be able to relate to, if you're a fan of Star Trek The Next Generation, then you know all about counselor Troy right. Counselor, troi was an empath. That's the way she was described. She was from a certain planet, and she was an empath. And in the show, what that means is that she can sense and feel other people's feelings, which allowed her to provide insight to Captain Picard, when he had to make decisions about how to interact with some other person or some other life form. Real Life empathy, in simple terms is very similar. It's defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. And it's not the same as sympathy, which is when we experience emotion related to someone else's feelings or circumstances, with sympathy, you can feel sorry for someone, and yet not really experienced impact or emotion beyond that you can be you can have sympathy, and yet be distanced from the circumstance. Empathy is different empathy is much more connected. Because you are identifying more directly with the feelings that someone else is having. You ever hear somebody say, well put yourself in their shoes. That's exactly what empathy does. And empathy, where it also differs from sympathy is that empathy requires action. Sympathy may demand nothing more than saying, I'm sorry for what happened, or sending a card to somebody. But empathy is more connected, it's more emotional, which means we have to put feeling into action. So why is empathy such a critical skill for a leader? Because without it, we can't really relate or connect to anyone else. And what we end up doing then, is we make assumptions about circumstances that we don't really understand. We assign motives for other people's behaviors, based entirely on our own emotions or agendas. Without empathy, it's when coworkers and employees assume that we're out to get them. With empathy, we can build understanding, and we can build connection that allows us to move past competition, to cooperation and collaboration. The simple act of showing empathy allows us to build rapport with others. They feel heard, they feel appreciated, and understood. Another one of my favorite sayings, and you know, I love quotes. One another one of my favorite sayings is that people don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care. Empathy allows us to do that. People will open up and learn to trust someone who empathizes with them. This year has been highly stressful for everyone, with COVID-19, with the elections going on a lot of different crises going on this year. No matter where you stand on it, it's just stressful time in all of these situations, even a little bit of empathy can go a long way towards bridging the gaps and reinforcing or rebuilding relay relationships. So make sure though, when you do empathy, because here's the only risk you take with empathy is that because it is so emotional, that it can test your emotions a lot of the times as well. So you have to make sure when you're going to do use empathy, when you're going to practice empathy. Spend time In self care as well, so that you don't burn yourself out. So here's some quick things you can do that will help you develop empathy with your people, be curious about them, ask questions about them, not to make judgments, not to provide solutions. And in fact, one of the smartest things you can do as you're developing your empathic skills is not to try to solve problems, ask questions, listen, try and ask questions that tries to get to the true feelings of a situation and try to relate how you feel to how they feel, practicing your active listening skills, which we've talked about in previous episodes. And that's going to help you develop that empathy. Another real important skill for you is adaptability. We're in changing times, well, in Truth to be told, we're always in changing times. One of the it's been said before, one of the one of the only things you can really count on is never changing is the fact that we're always going to have a change. The person who can change with the times stays relevant and succeeds. When Bill Gates was the CEO of Microsoft, he made the statement one time he said in three years time every product or company makes will become obsolete. The question is, is whether we will make it obsolete, or someone else will. Now for me, this is one of my thrive zones, I've I'm proud of the fact that I have always tried to be adaptable. In fact, my personality style is one in which I need change. In order to stay vibrant and effective. I love adapting to something new, I love looking at what's on the edge there I like to be on like, I like what they call the bleeding edge. And I like to be one of those people that jumps on board. Now. I'm not one of the people that runs and stands in line for the next iPhone or anything like that. But I like to take a look at what's happening, how that's going to affect me how that's going to affect my team, how that's going to infect affect the circumstances around me, and what I need to do to adjust to that. And that's what being effect adaptable is all about. My foray into technology, I was not a technologist in school. My major in school was organizational communications in college, I was not a technologist. But I recognize in the field I chose, which was training and development at the time, there was a trend towards incorporating technology into it. And I knew that in order to stay on the edge, I needed to adapt to that. So I learned technology as I needed to learn technology to be on the edge. And because of that found myself a lot of times, teaching other trainers and training developers how to leverage the same technology. JOHN Maxwell describes that there's three kinds of adapters, there are what they call early adapters, mid adapters, and late adapters. The early adapters are the ones who see the value of something very early on, and will quickly grab it and run with it. And again, we're not talking about getting in line for the latest toy, but we're saying seeing the value of something and grabbing hold of it. Now the middle adaptors, well, they need a little bit more time to process things. They'll get on board willingly. But they've got to kind of take a look at it a little bit more and maybe see where it's going. And then there's the late adapters, the late adapters will come on board. Once they know they have no choice, sometimes reluctantly, but they will eventually come on board. Now there is a fourth one there, which is the never adapters. The never adapters typically are the ones who do the dinosaurs, they're going to die off. They're the ones who have rejected the use of technology in the workplace have rejected the use of social media and things like that as as being a total waste of their time. And they still want to stick to the way they've always done it just because that's the way they've always done it. They're typically very uncomfortable with change. They're going to stay where they are. So it's the early adaptors though that typically learn the Most about it and usually end up setting the standards. adaptors aren't afraid to question their own mindset and what they think they know, their listeners, they're learners. And they usually will develop great vision. Great example of this is one of my former employers, who is still a good who's still a good friend of mine, his name is Michael Werner. And he founded a company called info source, which initially provided training, technology based training solutions to people. And he was one of those people who had tremendous vision is one of the things I've always admired about him. Because he was so adaptable, because he listened because he paid attention to what was going on, he was able to see back in the early 90s, before most anybody else, that the internet was going to become a big thing. And that, therefore, is a technology training company. We needed to be on board with that we needed to develop training on how they use the internet. And so he placed me in charge of the team that developed our internet, our courses on how to use the internet. And again, this is back in the early 90s, even before the World Wide Web came to the forefront. Why, because he had that vision and be an early adapter, he jumped on board. And we were able to help set the standards for how that kind of training is provided, and ask questions in every situation. Why, what, how and plan adapters plan, I have to confess I'm not a big planner at least is not as much as I should be. But what I've learned over time, is that while being adaptable means you have to variate off of a plan, you can't really do that, unless you have a plan. So adaptors will make a plan, knowing that the chances are, that plan is going to not go through and it's not going to be the same as when they set it. So they learn to adapt. And finally, relationship building is a vital skill. And this is where all of the other skills come in handy. No matter what type of organization you belong to, no matter where you are in that organization, from the CEO on down. Relationships are a crucial part of leading, you have to build relationships with colleagues on the same level as you, you have to build relationships with those who are in positions above you, you have to build relationships with those on your team. All of that is critical. It's a crucial part of leading, because you're building a community. Whether that community is the gesture team, whether it's the entire organization. And when we build relationships with people, we communicate better, we learn to trust one another culture develops within the organization. And the result is a significantly higher level of collaboration, the ability to easily as an organization to easily adapt to easily look forward to easily spot new trends and come up with new ideas and jump on board with them and make them happen. And the more we build those relationships, the more that makes a difference. And here's one more thing about relationship building. Most importantly, when we build relationships all around like that. We also develop other leaders. We help make others the star instead of trying to be the star of this show ourselves. And when we do that, when we build those relationships, we make all the difference in the world to our organization. Because ultimately, that's what it's all about.

Unknown: 19:27

profits,

Paul Simkins: 19:30

pioneering new product lines, sales. Everything comes as a result as a result of building strong relationships within our organization, with our clients, customers, with our vendors, with everyone, and we'll be back in a moment

Producer: 19:59

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Paul Simkins: 20:28

All right, this week I have a really cool recipe for you. Those of you who listen regularly know that on the last part of the show, I always share an outdoor cooking recipe because I love outdoor cooking. You know it started as you know, when I was a kid as a Boy Scout and of course living in Florida, we have cookouts all the time and things like that. So I have always loved outdoor cooking, I still do a lot of it today. I have a nice little smoker in my on my back porch with a side firebox and, and I use whole logs whole wood in there and do a lot of smoke cooking. I do a lot of grilling, I have a grill as well. I have Dutch ovens and I'll cook over open fire a lot specially when I go camping. And so I also like to share that with others. So I have actually created a Facebook group called smoke and ash. And on smoke and ash, me and all my friends we go out there we share cooking recipes, we share techniques, we tell everybody what we're cooking this weekend, share a lot of pictures man, you can get really hungry out there and and have the latest tools and gadgets and all that. And you're welcome to come and join us out there. It's called smoke and ash. And I also take the recipes I share on the show and I share them out on the smoking dash Facebook group as well. Well the one I have for you this week. This is a really cool one. And I thought it would be timely because when this episode's coming out, it's just a little bit before Halloween. And we're getting into that fall weather and this would be a cool thing to do. It's called dinner in a pumpkin. And now I'm going to give you this recipe for doing this outside but you can do this inside of in your in your oven as well. And I'll talk about that. So dinner in a pumpkin. So what you need for this is you need about a pound of ground beef. And this is going to serve somewhere in the area of about maybe four to six people. You want to pound the ground beef. You want about two cups of cooked rice. Any kind of rice you like white rice, brown rice doesn't matter. You want to dice up a bell pepper, can of cream of mushroom soup and a can of tomato soup. A small can have mushrooms and you're going to drain the juice out of them. About a half a cup of water. A half a teaspoon of cumin, maybe a little bit more of you like cumin. I like cumin, I probably would go more like a teaspoon with it. And two teaspoons of whiskey share your sauce, or as we often call it. What's this here sauce, two tablespoons of brown sugar. And if you like hot sauce, you can put a few dashes a hot sauce in there. And of course you're going to need a pumpkin. You need a pumpkin that's about eight to 1010 inches in diameter. Ideally, if you can use a pumpkin that's, that's grown specifically for making pumpkin pie that will help because it'd be a nice flavor. I think they're called a sugar pumpkins or something like that. So you want to pumpkin that's about eight to 10 inches in diameter. You're gonna cut the top off, you know like you were going to make a jack o' Lantern, cut a little lid in the top of the pumpkin. And then you're going to clean out the seeds and the stuff inside. Save the seeds and roast them by the way, delicious little snack. So once you've got all that together, you're gonna cook your ground beef in a skillet. crumble it up real well. If you want you can dice up an onion and throw it in there and cook that with the ground beef season it was salt and pepper or what I really like to do with camp dishes is I use what's called Everglades seasoning. You can find that in your stores. It's delicious. So season up that ground beef. And then combine all the ingredients the cooked rice, the dice, bell pepper, everything. Combine it all together in a bowl. Then put it inside of that hollowed out pumpkin and put the lid back on top. Then you're going to if you're going to be cooking this outdoors, you want to get a whole bunch of coals going and I mean a whole bunch of coals going and you're going to double wrap your pumpkin with aluminum foil, making sure that you cover every little millimeter of it. And again, double wrap it seal it real well. And then once your coals are nice and red hot, you're going to make a well In the middle of them, you're going to place this pumpkin down and that will bring the coals up the side until only the top third of the pumpkin is exposed. And you'll want to have other coals going like in a charcoal chimney being ready because this needs to go for about an hour. And you want to make sure that there's heat being applied all around. So you'll cook it for about an hour and until the pumpkin starts to feel soft. And then you'll clear the coals away, take the pumpkin out and unwrap it. And then all you have to do is take off the top, stick a serving spoon in and you're ready to go. Now if you're making this at home, you're going to cook it on the bottom rack of the oven, you probably won't need the foil by the way you can forget the foil. If you're cooking it at home, you're going to get your oven preheated to 375. And you'll just stick the pumpkin on the bottom rack of the oven and cook it for about an hour check to see if it's softer, if it's softened up. And if not cook it another 15 minutes or so. And again, just take it out, put it on a serving plate, pull the lid off the top and put a serving spoon in it. And one of the cool things about it is pumpkin is actually a great vegetable. So in in addition to all the stuff you put you stuffed inside that pumpkin, you can scrape some of that pumpkin meat out of the inside as well and serve that as part of your dish. So there it is dinner in a pumpkin, minimal cookware, easy to make and a nice little gimmick, maybe even draw a jack o' lantern face on the side of it. And that'll thrill the kids. All right, so this week we talked about, we talked about three skills that you need in order to develop your leadership within your organization three rare skills that leaders must have in order to be effective in developing their leadership. And we talked about being adaptable. We talked about having empathy for others, and building relationships with everyone within your organization. Three critical skills. If you'd like to know more about this, we have a Facebook group where we talk more about what happens on the show. And again, it's called the tech leaders toolbox and we extend the discussion out there. If you have any questions about what's on an episode, if you want the recipe that I share, if you want to know more about the subjects that we share, or more about what I do for organizations, all you have to do is send me an email to Paul at boldlylead.com. That's Paul at boldlylead.com. If you're listening to this on a app, on Apple Music, Apple podcast or Google podcasts or anything like that, be sure to subscribe so you know when every episode comes out, and also leave us a five star review and share this with others so that they can find out what's going on as well. And of course you're always free to suggest topics you'd like us to talk about. That's all we're going to talk about this week. Until next time, go out and be the leader. You were meant to be