Durable Dad with Tommy Geary
The Durable Dad podcast gives men the skills and tools they need to be rock solid for their family, their work and their community.
Durable Dad with Tommy Geary
074: Empower Your Team
We have impact (not control) over our employees.
And as their leader, THE most IMPACTFUL thing we can do, is clean up our thoughts about them – especially if it’s an employee that can get under our skin.
Here’s why: When we’re mildly annoyed by an employee, they feel it.
Humans can tell if they’re wanted in the room, or not.
And if they’re not wanted, they aren’t able to open up to their best, most authentic self. And they’re not set up to do their best, most inspired work.
The way to fix this is to fix the subconscious playbook you have for them.
Get all your judgements out on the table so you can address them or eliminate them.
Listen to today’s episode to bring the best out of your employees (and your kids).
This is the Durable Dad Podcast. I'm your host, tommy Geary. This show is gonna give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community and, most importantly, your family. All right, what's up? Episode number 74, durable Dad Podcast. Hope you are doing well, wherever you're at.
Speaker 1:Today. I am feeling good. My shoulder is healing, which is awesome. I think I've probably mentioned it on the podcast.
Speaker 1:It got me down a little bit, not being able to do all the normal things that I can do, even like picking up the kids hurt and I just got back from a PT appointment. I've been going every week and now it's every other week, and I just thanked him because he gave me not just the exercises and the needling and the treatment, but faith that I could heal this thing. I went in just like in my head I was like this is screwed up, I'm going to have to have surgery on this shoulder, and he was calm. He was very sure of himself that if I do these things, I'll heal. It's not that big of a problem and it can get better. A problem and it can get better. And looking back at it, I can see that his assuredness, his confidence, his belief in this healing, really impacted me. Like there were a couple times when I told him something was going on and I saw on his face that he like questioned it or twinged a little and I was like, oh shit, something's really wrong. And whether he recovered or not or whatever was going on in his head, he never stopped just telling me just keep going, keep doing the exercises. It's all about strength right now and it's working. He was right. It kept me going, it kept me motivated. I've been doing my freaking exercises every day, no matter how annoying they are. And, yeah, my shoulder's healing and this impact that my physical therapist had on me, not just with his knowledge but also with his confidence, is going to kind of be what we're talking about today.
Speaker 1:We're talking about playbooks again, so if you didn't listen to last week's episode, it might be helpful to go listen to that real quickly. Playbooks are expectations we have for another person and we're going to be talking about it in the context of our employees. Most of the playbooks that we have for our employees are out in the open. They're the job responsibilities. So there are expectations that both parties are aware of, reports that are due and when they're due, the amount of revenue you need to book within a quarter. Those are examples of playbooks the number of employees that you're responsible for on your team. Or you also see intangible playbooks Like you need to be flexible within reason and you need to be able to thrive in a fast-paced environment. Both parties are aware of them. They're communicated.
Speaker 1:Then there are underlying playbooks, unwritten expectations, uncommunicated. We're going to call these subconscious playbooks, and the thing to know is that these subconscious playbooks impact your employees' job performance. Your thoughts about your employees directly impact how they perform. You have all these different traits of a leader decision-making capability, communicate clearly and concisely, having vision for the company. Those are all traits you wanna work on. But if we're talking about getting the best out of one employee, an individual, the most impactful thing a leader can do is to clean up their thoughts about that employee, to have more positive thoughts about that employee, and I'm going to give you an example. I'm going to explain what I'm talking about here.
Speaker 1:So there was this guy that was complaining to his wife about an employee and his wife offhandedly said you know, you talk about this guy a lot and it doesn't really seem like you like working with him and that was kind of an aha moment for him. So the next coaching session that we had, he brought it up and we pulled out his playbook that he has for this guy right, his expectations, the thoughts that he has about what this employee should or shouldn't be doing and his playbook looked like this he shouldn't talk so much during his tours. He should be able to read the crowd better. He shouldn't say sorry so much. He should apologize less. He needs to better discern when to pull me in and when to leave me out of things.
Speaker 1:As we go through this playbook, he starts to see that he's like I got a lot of negative opinions of this guy and does this employee have things that he can work on? Yes, but having these negative thoughts and not realizing that they're just playbooks impacts how he's been managing that person. He kind of started to realize that he wasn't managing him well. He was telling him what to do instead of empowering him on thinking for himself, giving him helpful feedback. So we went through the playbook questions and you can go back to last week's podcast to kind of go through those.
Speaker 1:But then we looked at what this guy does well and he has actually done incredible work over the last few years and he's a good researcher. He's good at working independently, he can take the initiative, he's good at negotiating field work. All these things started to come out that he's really good at. If I ask him to get something done, he gets it done. So he's cleaning up his thoughts about this employee. He's looking at that subconscious playbook and then flipping it to the positive things that this employee does and after that he starts to see that, okay, what this employee actually needs is some positive reinforcement. I could give him a little more praise and suggestions on where to go to help lift him up and get to the next level, but his subconscious playbook was getting in the way. It was causing him to do the total opposite. And where this is really impactful is in our nonverbal communication. 93% of what we communicate is through our body language and through our tone of voice. Albert Morabian he's a psychologist at UCLA has done a lot of research on how humans communicate and 93% of it is not the words that we say. And that's what I think was happening. You know, back with me and my physical therapist, it wasn't just the words he was saying. I could feel the confidence that he had and that, like, kept me focused and moving forward.
Speaker 1:When I was prepping for this podcast, I kind of thought back to an employee I had, and she was this person that was dedicated, she showed up every day. She grew a lot while she was on our team. But I always battled with this subconscious playbook that I had for her she shouldn't be so negative and pessimistic about everything. She should spend less time on amenities for clients and more time on productive work. She should eat healthier and, at the same time, she shouldn't bounce on her exercise ball all the time. All of this was running in my background and those subconscious thoughts impacted how I communicated with her. She'd pop in my office and right away my brain would be like here we go again and I'd either sit back in my chair and kind of disengage from the conversation or I'd lean forward with my elbows on the desk and I put my chin in my hands. I'm kind of doing it right now.
Speaker 1:That look of like go on, go on, yep, say what you have to say so you can get the hell out of here and our employees can feel that A human knows when they are wanted and when they are not wanted. I was saying the right words, the words that I was supposed to say as a manager, but that's only 7% of what I was communicating to the employee. Our body language, our micro facial expressions, it's all there, it's all on the table for everyone to see. And our small frustrations, our annoyances, they're picked up on and they signal disapproval. And humans want approval. Our kids want approval, our employees as a manager, as someone that's leading them, they probably want our approval. I can think of managers that I performed well under and was able to be myself and be authentic, versus managers that I worked under, where I was feeling pressure and feeling like I wasn't doing a good job and had to do a better job.
Speaker 1:There's a difference and if you want the best out of your employees, you want to get rid of these subconscious negative playbooks, because the subconscious playbooks signal disapproval.
Speaker 1:So if you feel annoyance or frustration with one of your kids or one of your employees as a leader, you want to clean that up. You want to clean your thoughts up, which means writing down your playbook and looking at it, maybe laughing at it, because part of it's ridiculous. But this helps you become aware of how you're judging the person, but this helps you become aware of how you're judging the person. So, to wrap this thing up, you have a lot of influence on people in your life as an employer, as a manager, as a father the people in your life. They're usually pretty hard on themselves. You know, we are our own worst critic. So, as a leader, we want to try to lighten up on them a little bit, to believe in them, to see the best in them and get rid of our subconscious playbooks that are negative. All right, that's what I got for you guys today. Hope you have an awesome week and I'll catch you next time.
