Coaching for Leaders - Talent Management | Leaders
Creating Team Trust, with Susan Salomone
(upbeat music) Hi, Dave Stohoviak here, host of Coaching for Leaders. You ever had something work for you super well for many years and then it doesn't? I think about the title of Marshall Goldsmith's book fairly often. What got you here won't get you there. That's a reality in all of our careers and it's an even bigger reality, the higher up you go. Susan Salomon ran into that and I'm sharing her story with you today. The things she had done in the past weren't working quite as well. So she decided to shift just a bit. Here's my conversation with her. Today I'm talking with Susan Salomon, who is one of our academy graduates and a very long time listener of the podcast. Hello, Susan, good to see you. - Hi, Dave, good to see you too. But let's start with a bit about you and your role and I mentioned even listening for a while and I want to ask you about that, but would you tell me a bit about your role today and your leadership responsibility? - Yeah, sure. So I am the leader for a workforce development and career solutions team. So it's a long title, but really if you wanted to summarize it quickly, my team does outside in and inside up for healthcare professionals. So we work with individuals who are outside of our organization and we assist them to get the credentials that they need to come into a healthcare organization. And then we also work with our employees who are already here and help them grow their careers, both through getting credentials, but then we also have career coaches who work with them directly. We run a mentoring program that helps them find mentors who can help them advance their careers and grow with the organization. And then we provide financial assistance as well to nursing students and students in allied health programs to help them. Again, they might be employees, they might not yet be employees, but programs to help them gain the credentials that they need to come into the healthcare space. - Super cool work you're doing for the next generation. Yeah, yeah, indeed. And you, I mentioned in the introduction that you've been listening to the podcast for a while, was it right at the beginning or shortly after? And do you recall how you came across the podcast? - Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was very close to the beginning. I was living in Louisiana, which is where I am again. And I was interested in going to a coach training program. And so I was searching through podcasts to try and find a podcast about coaching and coaching for leaders popped up. And I thought, well, this could be really interesting. So I started listening probably 2013, 2014, way, way back when I was starting to run too. So I loved listening to you every once in a while. You would mention your running habits. And so I would listen to the podcast often while I was out running or walking our dog. - That's when I'm listening to podcasts too, out for runs for sure. You listen for a long time. We eventually got to know each other. You applied for our pro community. And then you decided at some point to apply for the academy. After listening to the podcast for many years, what did you want to get from the academy? - I really wanted to work on how I worked with my team. So when I got here to my organization, I was coming into a team that had had a lot of change, especially it was post pandemic. The team had redeployed to do other work and then they had been coming back to do the work that we do today. But there was just a lot of change happening for the team. I had replaced a leader who'd been here and very respected and loved by the team. And so it was quite a shift for me. And I needed to rethink how I built relationships with teams in the past that had always been very easy for me to do that. And I had to be more intentional about it, I would say. I couldn't just let it happen. And so I think that was part of what I wanted to get out of that experience. And then one of the other things that I think is this role has a lot of interaction with government organizations. And so understanding how to work with government administrators, politicians is all new to me. And so I also wanted to have an opportunity to learn from other people that were doing more work in that space already and maybe had experience that they could share. - You came in during a time of transition of having taken on this role. And as you know, a big part of what we do at the start is, thinking through, all right, what does two to three years look like for me as a leader and where I'm zeroing in? And we spent some time doing that and you zeroed in on three focus areas. What's one of the places you zeroed in on that you decided, hey, I really want to work on this and improve my skills here. - Yeah. And I love one of the things we did was do the Clifton strength finder. And my top strength is related and goes back to, I was found it very easy to build relationships in the past. And so I really had to and the way I called it was redefine relater. So I couldn't use my relater strength the way I always had and I had to redefine what relater meant to me as a leader. And that was one of the things I worked on while we were in the academy. - What led you to think that you needed to approach that in a different way and like approach that strength in a new way? - Yeah, I think I'd always, I almost want to say, took it for granted that I would be able to build relationships more easily. And I think what led me to it was, it was not as easy to build relationships with the team when I first started. And so I had to, I didn't have to, but I chose to rethink what, you know, how I wanted to work with the team. And as I mentioned, being more intentional about relationship building. And I think one of the things that has been a learning for me through the academy and other experiences relating to people well, it doesn't always mean being nice. And I think you hear that in Kim Scott's book, right? Clear is kind. And I think that's become one of my mantras. Clear is kind. - And I know you've heard Lisa Cummings work many times who's been on the podcast and is doing so much great work with Strengths. And one of the things, of course, we focus on in the academy is trying to, rather than improve our weaknesses. I mean, we all need to address some things that we're not good at or at least be mediocre at, right? But we spend a lot of time really aiming, thinking about how do we aim our strengths at new situations that they came up? And so you thought about like, here's the strength of relationships and getting closely connected with people. And now aiming those strengths at a different situation, at a different environment you walked into, what did you decide to do? 'Cause we got into like the commitments and starting to take daily action on that. How did you approach it differently? - Yeah, I think one thing for me was to get really clear in my own mind about what I wanted to see from each of my team members, what I thought great looked like for each of them, and then have those conversations with them to get really clear and very granular. Well, you know, we've talked about strategic thinking on a number of occasions. And I had to get really clear in my mind of, when I said strategic thinking, how did that break down into some component skills? Because when you talk with people about developing their strategic thinking skills, that feels very murky. Like what exactly does that mean? And so I took the time to do some research and really get clear on what do I mean by strategic thinking and how would I break it down into skills? And then how can we start working on those individual skills? And there were definitely skills that my team already had that I didn't need to work on. So it helped also show where they had capabilities already. And then what were the parts that were still in development? As you did that, what happened with the team and your relationships and the dynamics? It has really helped in terms of building trust and having open conversations. I feel really blessed because the team does have open conversations with me, even when I've done something that has made them feel less than or not valued, they've come back and been able to talk to me about what happened, how I approached it. And then it's given me an opportunity to apologize 'cause it's never my intent to make anyone feel devalued or less than. And so it's given me that opportunity to apologize and then it's given me a lesson to learn on how I do come across. Because we all talk about intent and impact and that what your intention is, is not always the way it lands with someone, but unless someone tells you how you impacted them, you're going along very happy, go lucky, thinking everything's cool. And I try to remind my team that if you don't tell me that something's not working, I'm assuming it's working. And so that it's really important for them to give me feedback. So I think that, and then I've gotten better too about when something's not working, having that conversation and helping people see what would be better, or at least from my perspective, what would work better for me? And then we can talk about how do we work together more effectively. - Yeah, and you've also been so good on, through all the commitments in the academy, but just who you are of like, one of the big things we focus on is seeking feedback from others and thinking about what's the right question I can ask that really actually opens up the opportunity for people to speak a little bit more truth and you've done that consistently and you have heard some truth from people on many occasions that then led you to like deciding, sometimes not changing something, but oftentimes like, okay, let me shift to do something differently. So I have the impact with the intent that I want and a yay that you've done that. - Yeah, thank you. It hasn't always been easy to hear the feedback and I'm very, very appreciative that my team gives it to me and that they feel comfortable enough to give it to me too. - And it's one of the reasons we do this in community too, but rather just one person of like when it's six or seven of us working together and we do hear some tough feedback. We all hear that at some point and so it's easier. It's never easy, but it's easier when we've got each other supporting each other and helping us to like, all right, we hit an obstacle. Now how do we get unstuck? 'Cause that often then opens up the door for what's the thing that does make sense and does really shift behavior. And if you think about how you show up today, Susan and how you showed up when you started this role, what's different about you? - I would say much more ease and speed to have conversations about things when they're not working. I think in the past, I would stew about it. I would think about it. I would plan for the conversation. And now I'm much more likely to just message someone and say, hey, can we talk? Or if we've got a one-to-one coming up, I'll just put it on the agenda for the one-on-one and we'll talk about it during our one-on-one and find a different way to work together. - Part of shift in behavior learning is changing our minds on things once in a while as since beginning the academy, what did you change your mind on? - I think it goes back to what I was saying earlier about in my head, not consciously, but I always had connected related to niceness. And I think redefining it truly to move away from relating being nice to relating being kind and also recognizing that in a way, I was not being my authentic self and that if I really wanted to have true relationships with people, when something bothered me and I hid it, I was actually making it harder to have a real relationship. And so it was up to me to be open about things that were bothering me so that the relationship was based on real, actual, honest relationships and not just pretend. - Susan, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. I so appreciate it. - My pleasure, I enjoyed it. - What Susan described noticing the need for feedback and thinking about it, but then not actually always doing it, I've been there myself especially earlier in my career and I learned that the grandest intention is way less significant than the smallest action. I'm so proud of Susan for jumping in on more of those conversations. It's part of what Jonathan Raymond calls the mention and his accountability dial. None of us do this perfectly, but boy, what a difference it makes when we start shifting to daily mentions and conversations instead of just saving things up for that one huge conversation during a performance review. Maybe you're trying to get better at that right now too. And if you're at an inflection point, I hope you'll consider applying to the Coaching for Leaders Academy. So we might support you with structure, accountability and dare I say finding the joy in growth, both yours and others. If that may be right for you, go over to coachingforleaders.com/academy before the end of the day on Friday the 13th, September 13th. Do not be scared that it's Friday the 13th. There is nothing scary on that page. You know what is scary? Trying to improve a lot of skills without support and without a community to cheer you on. Thanks for considering the Academy at coachingforleaders.com/academy. And as always, for the privilege to support you through the podcast. You