Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Welcome to intentional power, the six essential leadership skills. I'm Jean Ann Nichols.And today, while large learning models and AI are getting better and better at creating really effective tools for us to be better learners and leaders, we need to invest in ourselves in our human interpersonal skills. One of my clients recently said, technology is relatively easy. It's the people that are hard. And one of the reasons the people are hard is because we have five generations in the workforce at the same time, and they have very different expectations of work. You know, millennials and Gen Zs are more than half of the workforce, and they're the most diverse generation and the most educated diverse workforce we've had in in history. And so getting greater skills, interpersonal skills, people skills, I call them power skills, can help you be an exceptional leader in this really dynamic change.

Josh Bersin, who's an HR executive, and analyst says, hard skills are soft, and soft skills are hard. Hard skills, technologies, subject matter expertise. These skills are soft because they're relatively easy to learn. You can take a course and get certified in them. And they change all the time. So new innovations appear, and old ways of doing things get obsoleted. But soft skills, people skills, interpersonal skills, they're hard. They're difficult to build and maintain. They're critical for success, but you really can't get a certification in some of the soft skills. And they're hard because they're enduring. People are going to work in teams, whether we're with hybrid AI co colleagues, but we're always gonna be in teams. And so the soft skills are really our power skills. They let us express our humanity with intention and use our power to make the world a better place.

So I'm glad that you're here. I'm Gina Nichols. And, after thirty years in the tech industry, I pivoted my career from a vice president at Intel into executive coaching and leadership instruction. I, also teach at Stanford University. And I pivoted because I wanted to help other women thrive in mostly male dominated fields. So I invite you to pause and think about your leadership. Have you seen leadership change over the last few years? How has your own leadership shifted? In this session, you're gonna learn about six essential power skills, leadership skills, that'll enable you as a modern leader to attract the best talent, executive support, and resources. So we're gonna talk about what Work at Work no longer does and why that is. I'll introduce you to the Harte Leadership Model.

You'll examine your own strengths, and I'm gonna give you a couple of leadership tools to grow your skills. Hopefully, give me a thumbs up if that's why you came to this session today. So what used to work at work no longer does? Traditionally, it was very hierarchical. This came off, after World War two. Many of the servicemen came back from war and set up companies using a very, leadership style that they had experienced in the army or in the military service. So it's very hierarchical command and control. But the modern leadership style is definitely democratic. It's much more collaborative. It's results oriented rather than being in face to face. As I've mentioned, the diverse the workforce is very diverse, and it's very people oriented. Today's leaders have to shift to that more, from profit driven to more people focused.

We call it the triple bottom line, right, with people, planet, and profits. And mastering these skills are gonna help you to thrive in the modern workplace. Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock Investment Company, said the more your company can show its purpose in delivering value to its customers, its employees, and its communities, the better able you will be to compete and deliver long term durable profits for shareholders. So what does that mean for us as leaders? Well, these dynamics require a new model of leadership, one that most of us haven't been trained on or prepared for. So we have to pay attention to all stakeholders. That means delivering value for our employees, for the communities that we're in, and even for the planet. Right? So helping our, employees align with that purpose is also a piece of this. So what does that kind of leadership look like for us? Well, as I mentioned, there's a shift from command and control to very collaborative. It requires leaders to be more inclusive, more innovative.

And rather than being rigidly in control, they need to encourage collaboration. They need to have an abundance mindset and communicate transparently. In the current social environment, our communities, our employees are demanding more transparency. We've got to be really good at communicating clearly and concisely. In the army, it was the old school tell to a new school of what. Like, instead of giving the directions, they would say, here's the objective. You figure out how to do that. And that happened because warfare objective. You figure out how to do that. And that happened because warfare changed, and the army released a new, US army released a new model for leadership that was the boots on the ground, have to figure out how to get things done. You tell them the objective, and they figure out how. It means giving up a lot of control for a leader, and it means enabling people.

It means delegating to them, giving them the vision and letting them figure out how to do it. And when we do that, we can innovate and create a lot more because we'll have a lot of different perspectives in creating the solution. So how do those leadership trends affect who's got power in the organization. Right? The session is intentional power. How do you use your power with intention? Well, the power dynamics have really shifted in this model. Power under traditional org models rests with the person at the top of the pyramid. In the workplace, that's typically the CEO or the c suite, the leadership team that are helping deliver the company, and increase shareholder value. But under stakeholder capitalism and in today's workplace overall, the power has shifted as much more of a web. It's much more collaborative. Power isn't automatically assumed or given.

It's earned because of your ideas and your contributions. Same with respect. Because technology, social media, and similar tools, leaders are being rated and companies are being judged like never before. So you think about how power dynamics have shifted where you work in your role. Are you seeing pressures to share more about supplier diversity? Or on a personal level, are you feeling you're gaining power or losing power? If you work in supply chain management, do you have more forms to fill out and more disclosures to make? If you work with customers, are they better informed about the products and demand assurances, about sustainability and diversity?

Or are they demanding that you don't talk about your diversity and inclusion? Just curious to see how that sits with you. You see that the leaders and strategy makers include everybody in their power. Customers have power. Investors have power. Government regulators have power. And and the open communication that we have is really shifting things. So let's explore a model that puts that into perspective. We call it the Hardy Leadership Model, and it's based on recent breakthroughs in cognitive and positive psychology, organizational design, performance management, and extensive research with thousands of leaders across all all industries globally. And it focuses on the core principles of what we are talking about here about modern leadership: humility, empathy, accountability, resiliency, transparency, and inclusivity. And research shows that companies with leaders that embrace and exemplify these traits deliver better business results and create cultures where employees can thrive.

So if you're on your keyboard, type in chat, if you had a yes today, what do you think your strength is? If you had to pick one of these six power skills, where do you have a strength today? Hey, folks. Folks in this room are consistent with our database of thousands of leaders who've taken a hearty quotient, which is an assessment. That empathy has really grown, and I think some of that came from the pandemic where we realized we had to give people and ourselves grace. In technical fields, accountability tends to be quite high. Empathy and accountability, actually, in technical fields, tends to run the strongest. Places where we have a little more challenge is humility, believe it or not.

And I want to define humility for you because I think it's important for us to keep that in account because we need a balance of these six power skills. So I'm going to share information about three of the skills because that's what we have time for today. I think you'll be interested to learn about humility. We could talk about leveraging your strength in empathy and continuing to build it. And we're going to talk about transparency because the modern environment requires us to be more and more transparent. So, this session provides an opportunity for you to enhance your existing skills. So if you're already strong in accountability, you continue to get better by adding more empathy, because we know that accountability without empathy can sometimes show up as really bullying and overly strong.

But accountability balanced with empathy makes you a better leader. If you have all empathy and not enough accountability, I call that the cupcakes and kisses leader, somebody who is always nice and doesn't hold their people accountable when they slip up or when things aren't happening. And so if you're overly empathetic and don't build in enough accountability, the morale of your team can go down, and your results may not happen as strongly. So creating a balance of these leadership skills is really critical. So let's talk first about humility, because that is something that, across the database, we find is a vulnerability for most people. Humility is comprised of four core components. Humble leaders are unaware of their own limitations. They understand their own weaknesses, and they're not afraid to acknowledge them. In fact, they hire staff that complement their skills. Right?

So if you know you have a shortcoming in one thing, you may hire someone on your staff or, invite a colleague to join you on a team so that you can shore up that limitation. Humble leaders put the team first. They understand that their success is tied to the team's success. So they ask for advice and they actually listen. They know they don't have all the answers, and so they delegate effectively. They share the credit and hoard the blame. Humble leaders operate with a service mindset. They are invested in developing and growing the people on their team. They focus on goals bigger than themselves or bigger than any one individual, and they take a long term focus rather than short term achievements. And they're driven by a higher purpose. They're not driven by their own self interest. They keep their personal biases in check.

So as an example, I'll use an American example. There was a US congressman called John Lewis, and he was a lifelong champion for equality and voting rights. He was gracious and down to earth. He was rich in gravitas. Right? But he wasn't boastful. He wasn't a pushover. He had a spine. He was led with backbone and heart. He held firm. In business today, I would say Indra Nooyi, who was chairman and CEO of PepsiCo. She was praised for her humility. She was known for soliciting and listening to all opinions before she made a decision. And she was seen as well connected with the workforce and and always learning from people. So as I said, humble leaders are not pushovers. They can be ambitious and competitive.

They're more likely to give credit to their team for success and stay out of the spotlight, but they ask for help and they listen. They give permissions for their colleagues to do the same. So, a lot of research shows that humble leaders, humble leadership results in increased team collaboration, more alignment on vision and goals, greater transparency across teams, and more engaged and productive workers. That means lower absenteeism, lower turnover, higher quality work. And, also, humility and humble leaders predict more ethical results. So humble leaders more often have a growth mindset. You may have heard of this. Carol Dweck wrote the book Mindset. So on the right, in a fixed mindset, people think that I was born with a certain amount of talent. I am what I am.

And this is a challenge if you want to be a model leader. I will say that all of us have a growth mindset and a fixed mindset in different areas. It's not you have everything one or everything the other. We often have both at the same time for different things. But in a really dynamic environment like business today, having a fixed mindset can be a real blocker, because if you think you are what you are, neuroscience shows that when we feel threatened or challenged, we jump into this fight, flight, freeze mode, right, where the hormones cause us to kind of shut down our rational thinking and managing our emotions so that we can run or jump or punch.

Well, that's not really what we wanna do in work. And research also shows us that social threats are treated the same way by the brain as physical threats. So we might not be in danger of our lives, but we feel that the hormones get released just because there's change and we don't know what to do about it. If I have a fixed mindset, that puts me at risk. Right? So if I can't learn new things, my career's at risk, and and that's really dangerous. But with on the left hand side, with a growth mindset, we say, I can learn anything with effort. I can get better. I can improve my intelligence or my skill or my capabilities. You know, I might not get as good at basketball as Steph Curry, but, you know, I could be a better basketball player if I practiced more.

So humble leaders are more likely to have this growth mindset. They acknowledge behaviors that they're not good at yet. They're able to detect and recover from mistakes. They actually seek out feedback because they believe they could do something about it. If you have a fixed mindset, you don't wanna know because you can't change it, so it's disheartening. Right? So what can you do in the coming week to practice expressing more humility? So here's a tool I use with my coaching clients. It's simple. It's powerful, and it's really actionable for you. So think of something you're not good at. You can type it in chat. You can say it out loud with me. I'm not good at networking. How's that feel in your body? I'm not good at networking. You see my chin came down, my voice got less loud.

It kinda became smaller. Do you mumble? Let's try it again using this tool. This tool is add the word yet to every negative statement. I'm not good at networking yet. Oh, my chin came up, my voice was kind of friendly, a little positive. Right? I'm not a good presenter yet. This tool allows you to shift your mindset, right? Because if I add the word yet, it means just not yet. There's possibility that I could become a great networker or a great presenter. Makes you a little bit more hopeful. Your shoulders go back and down. So I challenge you to find find find five times this week to reframe to a growth mindset. It will show your humility if you add the word yet. Do it for yourself. Do it for others. You might be surprised how many times inside your head you say something negative about yourself.

If you just add that yet, it gives you the possibility that you can do better. And if you have children, I encourage you to, help them by adding the word yet. My kids might say, I'm not good at cleaning my room. And I might say, yet, because with more practice, you'll get better at cleaning your room. Right? So this is the way to build more humility into your session and help those arouse you. Yes. And as doctor Shirley says, replacing no with not yet enables us to deal with rejection, disappointment, and failure really helps promote the growth mindset. Alright. Many of you said that you have a strength in empathy, and I might, add to your empathy by helping you see a bigger definition of empathy.

So the dictionary definition is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. But we look at empathy and break it into three components. Empathy is the ability to share the feelings and needs of others, but empathetic leaders are active listeners, they're compassionate, and they're deeply curious. So they're aware of the other person's feelings, but they also pay attention to how those feelings might shift the perception of the person, how those feelings impact how other people see a situation. It doesn't mean you have to agree with how they see things, but being empathetic means you're willing and able to appreciate what the other person's going through. It helps create a sense of belonging, reinforcing the belief that employees' perspectives matter, that different perspectives are welcome, and their voices are heard. An example of this is a little bit old, but Norway's prime minister, Erna Solberg, she had a COVID press conference for children focused on kids, and she said it's okay to be scared.

So she said out loud what they might be feeling and welcomed them and said, that's okay, you're okay. So empathy, three types of empathy. Cognitive empathy is basically being able to name the emotion, to put yourself in someone else's place, see their perspective. Emotional recognition is at the core of cognitive empathy, and it can be taught. Emotional empathy is when you quite literally feel the emotions the other person is having, as if you caught it. Right? So a colleague tells you there's sad news, and you feel tears well up in your eyes, and maybe your voice catches in your throat. Or a colleague tells you about how angry they are over injustice they've experienced, And and you feel your heart start pounding and your hands clutch. Right?

So that's emotional empathy. Compassionate empathy is feeling someone's pain and remaining in control of your own emotions so that you can offer assistance. So cognitive empathy is sometimes seen as underemotional. Right? A little bit cold because I'm just naming how you're feeling. Too much logical analysis. It might be seen in a sec. Empathy is actually can result in emotional overload, right, where you're actually not able to, help people. Feeling strong emotions, especially distress, makes us less able to cope. We, can't think and apply reason to a situation as well. It's hard to help someone if you're overdone with your emotion and you get emotional burnout. But in exercising compassionate empathy, we find the right balance between logic and emotion. We can sense another person's distress and express the appropriate amount of sympathy.

At the same time, we can also remain in control of our own emotions and apply reason to the situation offer. Would you like to be helped, hugged, or heard? And we can make better decisions and provide the appropriate support. So that's a big picture of empathy. But what does it matter to the work world? Well, there is a business impact of empathy. The World Economic Forum created a research called the empathy index, and it breaks down empathy in the corporate culture into a number of elements, ethics, leadership, company culture, brand perception, bunch of things. And they tracked over a 100 publicly traded companies, global companies, on these metrics and discovered a big difference between the top 10 and the bottom 10 when it came to business results. So companies in the top 10 generated 50% more earnings, They increased in value twice as much.

And within those top companies, they found an 80% correlation between departments with higher empathy and those with higher performance. Right? So companies with empathetic leaders deliver better better business results. But it's not just about profit. There's another research study, that shows how empathy impacts employees and retentions. So 93% of people reported they're more likely to stay if their employer is empathetic, and seventy eight percent of employees say they would work harder. We're all being asked to do more with less. So expressing more compassionate empathy can promote a workplace where everyone can do their best work, and it will accelerate your results. But there's a perception gap. 92% of CEOs say their organization is empathetic, but only 72% of employees say they work for an empathetic employer.

So what can you do individually as a leader to retain employees or perhaps engage any sort of quiet quitters. This brings us to our second leader tool kit, which is called bring awe, a w e, a sense of wonder to your next conversation. So awe. Empathy is really about listening and trying to see through someone else's eyes. To put it into practical, action, I invite you to bring some wonder, curiosity, awe, a w e, to your next conversation. People often take a bit of time to warm up. They're not used to being listened to, so they tell you what they think you want to hear, especially when there's a power differential, when you are the boss.

So you can hone your empathy skills by using this small phrase and using it a few times. You might try a different intonation, maybe inflection. So people, will offer more. You need to learn to sit in silence and wait. So when you wait, you'll experience something together. Now the other question I would have for you, if you're the boss, is if you feel the urge to speak, don't try and fix. Don't try and argue and win. You know, as leaders, this is hard. People come to us all day long expecting us to have the answer. In this particular situation, when you're trying to bring awe to the conversation, you need to to stay still. You need to stay quiet. So, you would ask to bring awe. You say, and what else? You know, somebody brings something in as a challenge. What else? Is there anything else?

Before we move on, is there anything else you wanna say about that? Because sometimes I call it, like, a blocking bug. Right? Someone will bring up a problem, but it's not actually the root of the problem. They might bring up a surface problem because very often, CEs don't wanna get the direct feedback, and they don't encourage it. So I'm gonna bring up the lightweight problem and hold back the deeper problem. So you really have to mine for information here as a leader. What else is going on? Is there anything else that I need to know about? Right? So we ask it multiple times, and you can change it from what else but anything else or, you know, is there more? Tell me more.

Those are all ways of bringing awe, and you need to sit and wait, and don't try and fix, and don't try and have an answer. Just let people talk. So if you feel the urge to speak or to challenge or to, give your answer, here are some other things you could say. You could say, I'm sorry that happened. Is there anything else you wanna tell me about that? Or thanks for sharing that with me. So you can use off for good things as well as for challenges. Someone brings something up, you say, hey. What about that went right? Don't let them stop at their first answer. Say, and what else went right? And is there something else we should make sure to do again? And before we move on, any other wins associated with that project? Right? So mine for more gems.

Whether it's a challenge or whether it's a big win or an opportunity, if you bring awe, you're gonna have more information. That's gonna help you make better decisions, and your team's gonna hear them say it out loud. And so your employees are actually gonna have better ideas too. Alright. There is a bonus toolkit here on empathy. And that is, some research that was done and published in Scientific American. And this leader tool is to walk in another's shoes. So Scientific American found that reading fiction improves people's empathy, the ability to infer other people's thoughts and emotions. Now I'm curious. Does that resonate for you? Why do you think that might be true? You type in chat. Well, reading reading fiction allows us to really walk, virtually walk, in another's shoes. Because when it's in fiction and it's written, it helps your imagination.

It gives you exposure, but you're actually seeing through someone's eyes. It's written down, which you can't do when you're face to face, person to person. Right? I can only see your actions. I don't know your intentions. But when I read fiction, I get exposed to the intention and the action. Right? It gives me perspective on different people's life experience, on their thoughts and emotions, and enables you to have that sort of compassionate empathy. Right? I can experience the emotion through someone else, but it's a little bit distanced because I'm reading a book or listening to a book. So I'm a huge reader, so I am really curious. Is there a fiction book or a movie that gave you new perspective by walking in someone else's shoes? So The Night Watchmen by Louise Erdrich gave me insight into the Native American experience in The US.

What the Fireflies Knew is a young Black woman's coming of age story. See No Stranger by Valerie Kaur is the SEEK experience in Fresno, the Central Valley Of California. So these gave me, like, I could kinda walk in their shoes. I could sit in their mind and look out and see what they saw. Anybody have a good recommendation? Because like I said, I'm always reading. Movies work too, but there's something about reading where you have to use your imagination to picture things that found that this was really, really effective at improving empathy skills. Harvest of empire. History of Latinos. That sounds good. It's helpful to learn about other people's paths and journeys. Yeah. If you want more vocal recommendations, just DM me or send me a note. Janine, I have not seen a specific research that compared audio to written books.

But my expectation is there will be a correlation that both listening and reading will help improve empathy, but there are some elements of using your imagination when you're translating from written to kind of your brain versus ears. But I think it's a great subject. If anybody's a researcher, I'd love to help you put that project together and see how we can find more data. Oh, nonfiction. Nonfiction and fiction, I don't know. I don't know, but that's a good idea. I think there's something about the emotions in fiction writing that can be, helpful. Yeah. I agree with you, Frankie. I kinda create my own story in my head. The only thing I don't have to do is invent how their voices sound. Oh, some great some great, recommendations in here. Thank you. All right. So we talked about humility. We talked about empathy. Now I'm gonna flip into transparency. This is a third power tool power skills tool we wanna give you. So what do we mean by transparency?

Well, in the dictionary, it says having thoughts, feelings, or motives that are easily detected. And I will expand that as a modern leader to say knowing what you stand for and making it clear to others. So transparency is a commitment to clarity and genuine intent when you're communicating with the goal of creating trust, which came up in the chat here earlier. Transparent leaders are trustworthy and trusting. Right? So not only do I trust other people, but people can trust me. You're not trustworthy if you're not demonstrating integrity. Integrity means you walk the talk. What you see is what you get. There's no hidden agenda. And when you're, having integrity, you're acting in accord with your why, your beliefs, your clarity of purpose.

So when you are trustworthy and consistently demonstrating integrity, integrity, your communications are gonna inspire and motivate your team to accomplish big goals. So having that clarity of purpose. Why am I here? Why am I doing this? And then building into, how do I communicate with candor? When you have the courage to stand in your why, you have the courage to communicate with candor in good times and even more so in bad. We often hesitate to share bad news. But the best direction I've been given as a leader is, make good news travel faster. I'm sorry. Like, make bad news travel faster than good news. So the idea is if you have bad news, I need you to text me, Slack me. Tell me right away. If you have good news, hold on to it and wait till when we get together and we can celebrate together. Right?

So make bad news travel faster than good news. That's a key component of your culture if you're a transparent leader. Leaders don't like surprises. Right? Because we have this innate feeling like, if I knew about it, I could do something to fix it. So make bad news faster travel travel faster than good news. And, my my sales corollary is never lose alone. So if something is going off the rails, make sure you are transparent and bring your leadership into the situation. Because like I said, no leader wants to be surprised. Transparency is powerful and is a critical dynamic that's core to modern leaders. Research shows that transparency increases trust and productivity. It's about being open and honest and direct in your communication with coworkers and business associates in all directions. You might say transparency is being honest before you need to. Right? It's about making sure that people are in the loop.

So some ways to get that transparency thank you, doctor Bloinkichap. We can get, some three sixty reviews if it's anonymous. In my coaching practice, I'll often do interviews. So I'll interview people. And getting through that transparency can be someone will say, she needs to demonstrate more confidence. I hear that all the time. And I get the opportunity to say, tell me more. I'm using my awe tool. In which situations does she demonstrate confidence? Oh, she's really confident with her team. Okay. In which situations would you like to see her demonstrate more confidence? Well, when she has to present to executive staff, she doesn't show up with enough confidence. Okay. So you've given me an example of a place where I want her to so having a three sixty opportunity in an interview allows me to dig deeper on with which people in what situations does that trait need to come up. One way of doing this transparency is you can also ask people what you're known for. So most people will tell you positive things.

If you say, give me three adjectives you would use to describe me, you can send that out to 10 people, colleagues, customers, suppliers, and see what comes back. And you can actually make a word cloud from those. And the frequency of the adjective that comes back appears in larger font. There are a number of tools online. You can do this for free. To give you an idea of, how am I seen today? Am I communicating in the way that I want to be seen? Is there a gap? The other thing about transparency here is trying to figure out what you need at the next level of your career, like, to the next job. And you do the same sort of thing. Talk to people that are in those jobs and say, what are the key skills? What are the three traits people need to be successful at this job? And you can kind of compare it to what you're seen as today. Right?

So then you can work on your transparency to express those traits that are desired at the next level. Right? So transparency is about being trustworthy and trusting. It's about demonstrating integrity. It's about knowing your why and just being able to communicate with candor. And I want to share with you a tool that we use. We'll double down on transparency and how modern leaders do this, to be trusting and trustworthy. And this comes from Frances Fry at Harvard. It's a great TED Talk. It's about building trust, and she calls this the leaders' trust triangle. So on the lower left is logic. You know, this is the head. I trust your reasoning. I believe your judgment is sound. On the lower right is empathy. This is the heart. This is, I believe you care about me and my success. And at the top, we have authenticity. This is a little bit about the hands, what you do. What you do and say aligns. I experience the real you.

There's no hidden agenda. So logic, empathy, and authenticity. So pause for a minute and think about those three traits. Which one is your strongest? Which one do you need to develop a little bit more? For many of us in in technical fields with our peers, logic is usually a strength. Right? People can trust our expertise because we demonstrate that a lot. But as a human leader, you also need to make sure that you're expressing some empathy. Do you care about people? Do you care about their success? And being authentic is really crucial as you move up the ladder. You've got to be able to express the real you in a way that people then feel like you've got their best interest at heart when you're transparent and open. Authenticity really works.

But coaching clients often ask me about authenticity, and they link it to imposter syndrome, right, where you feel like someone's going to find out you're a fraud because you don't believe in your skills. You have self doubt. And that's really natural and normal. Everybody's got self doubts. And being transparent and authentic doesn't mean we say or act on every idea that comes into our head. Right? You might have some fears or reservations about a path that you're about to take on, but you choose to take courageous action. So we can still be authentic and either act with restraint, like using discretion on what we share, or overcome our discomfort and take a big leap. We can act with compassion and be authentic. So to grow in our leadership, we have to start practicing behaviors that feel unnatural.

And you can read more in Hermione Abara's book, The Authenticity Paradox. It's an excellent way of kind of reframing for yourself, how do I show up authentically? Because when I go from job to job, if I move up in my career, very often what's authentic to me takes a little practice. I'll give you an example. When I was running computer sales for North America, I was dealing with a lot of local OEMs, local customers, and I was working with their CEOs. And it was a very personal relationship. So, authentically, I saw myself as a people person. And here's how that played out. My company sometimes ran into supply constraints. We couldn't provide enough product to all of our customers. So I would have to go to my CEOs in different states and say, hey. We can't supply you everything that you need this month, but I'm giving you a fair allocation of the product.

And the CEO would say to me, Jean Ann, that's really hard for me because I'm gonna have to shut down production. I'm gonna send my people home. They're gonna have to really scrimp on their budgets, eat rice and bean this week. And you know when I go to church on Sunday, all the people in the community are gonna know that people were deprived of their income because I couldn't keep my factory working. And just because of you? Because you couldn't supply the parts that I needed? Wow. That was really trying to force me to be very empathetic. The logic of it was really sound, but I had to be really empathetic. But I saw myself as that people person. I really fought for the little guy. I made sure things were fair. Few years later, I got promoted to a major accounts where I was running, $5,000,000,000 piece of business.

We grew it to $8,000,000,000 in business, an awesome team. And in that situation, it was all about the money. My customer would come to me or my CEO would come to me and say, hey. We need $200,000,000 by next week. Ouch. Really wasn't about the people. Or if I got into that same situation where we were in constraint, my customer would say, hey. I'm your biggest customer. You need to give me more product. And I would have to say, I will the portion of the product fairly. I will fight for everything you deserve. But it was really about the money. It wasn't about the people. And it was a shift for me authentically to say I'm a strong, tough business person, as opposed to I'm a fair and empathetic leader. It felt uncomfortable. But what was authentic to me was I still cared about my why. My why is about creating a fair business environment.

So I fought for everything my big customer needed as hard as I fought for my little customer. But the situation just made me have to put on a different jacket. The way I did it had to be slightly different. Right? So this idea of authenticity is, you sometimes have to put on a different trait to practice it, but you're not changing the core of you. It's just a jacket. Right? It's just something you put on to make the business work. So I encourage you to really kind of reframe how you think authentic authenticity is. It's not about doing it the same all the time. As you move up the ladder or as you grow your career, your authenticity is gonna build. It's gonna grow. So why does this matter?

Well, this trust trust triangle is important because when a leader does these things, it gives employees permission to do the same, and that has a positive snowball effect on your culture. So that brings us to this third tool in our toolkit. Ah, Margo, great question about book suggestions. Let me, let me think about that and give you something, because I think this is really true. So you have to manage through these elements. And I think there's more and more resource coming out for people that are on a spectrum. And if everybody has any ideas, I'd be delighted for you to jump in and comment on Margo's question. Yeah. I think this is absolutely true, Moe. That is an excellent analogy. You are your authentic self, whether you speak to children, teenagers, family, coworkers. Right?

You don't speak to children the same way you speak to your CEO, but you can still authentically be you. I love that. That's a great analogy. So let me move into a toolkit here that's gonna help you. So keeping this this model in mind, the leader tool here, the power skills for transparency, is candid communications. And this is adapted from a candid communications. And this is adapted from a book by Peter Myers and Shan Nix called As We Speak. So there are six prompts here that this is a surefire way to communicate transparently and build trust. It works in uncertainty. It works in crisis. It actually works in celebration as well. And I will caution you about candid communications and building trust.

When you, as a senior leader, sort of like what Moe just said, you have to meet your people where they are. So if you see something, you wanna say something, but you need to know when to use discretion with confidential or need to know information. Sometimes you have to hold your opinion and let other people speak first. And when you are more candid, when you are more transparent with your your employees or your colleagues or your customer, expect that they're going to return the favor, and they're gonna be more candid with you. So you kinda have to be ready, and you need to welcome that, candid, honest feedback as much as you wanna share your candid, honest feedback. So what we do with candid communication. So we start with why, we move to what, and we end with how.

And very often, I know I'm guilty of this, if you look at a memo you've written, or a communication you've done, very often, you drop out one of these elements. And it creates anxiety, it creates a little mistrust if we don't share completely. So we start with why. Here's why this matters. And then we move to here's what I think. Then move on to what. Here's what we know, here's what we don't know. And you end with how. Here's what you can do. Here's what you can count on from me. So I'm curious. If you think about the last time you had to communicate something, was there one that you dropped out that you think, oh, if I had said that, maybe it would have been good? Might have made my communication better, more transparent, and created more trust. I'll give you an example, a business example.

So maybe you are the CEO of a company that was going to get more funding from investors, and the last round on fundraising didn't yield the amount of money that you wanted. You might say something like, hey. Our last round of fundraising didn't yield the income that we wanted, and that means we're not gonna be able to fund all our initiatives. My gut reaction is things will get better, and it'll take about nine months before we see improvement. We haven't had a challenge in in fundraising in the past, and I believe in our ability to rebound. Here's what we know. We have cash in the bank. We had a solid backlog commitment from our customers. We don't know how long it will take before we go to market again. We think it'll be nine months.

And I need you here's the end with how. I need you to stay focused on our top priorities. We need to show when things get tough, our team delivers. I'll continue to give updates on the plan each week as it evolves. I'll continue to lobby the board for more resources that we need. I'm gonna push hard and support each one of you. Let's move forward together and stay true to our commitment to our customers. Right? So we start with, this is what happened. Here's what I think. We move to what, what we know, and what we don't know. And then you say, here's what I need from you, and here's what you can count on from me. So this tool is very often certain things get dropped out. Anyone have an idea of something that they forget to do? Sometimes we forget to say, here's what you can do.

Sometimes we're not transparent about what I think about things. Yeah. Very often, people are curious. They wanna know, and you have the opportunity to set a positive mindset, a growth mindset if you share what you think. It builds trust. Alright. So we've covered three leader tools to grow your power skills. For humility, we said add the word yet. For empathy, we actually gave you two. One was to bring awe, to ask, and what else? Is there anything else? And the idea of reading fiction, to be able to walk in people's shoes and get their perspective. And then this last tool with the six prompts for candid communications. If you wanna learn more about this model, this Hardy model, I've got a book called Intentional Power.

It's available in print, an ebook, and audiobook from any of your booksellers. I encourage you that, if you have questions about it, just shoot me a note. And if you'd like to assess yourself on this model, you can, just ten minutes, get insights about your leadership skills, that help you deliver triple bottom line impact. So you benefit people, planet, and profit. The Hardy Quotient will give you a picture against the thousands of leaders globally from all industries that have taken the assessment. It is a fee, so I don't I wanna be transparent about that. So you've learned to recognize how expectations for your leadership are changing. I shared with you power skills that help you attract the best talent. You can, take your you looked and said accountability and empathy in this group are very very strong, and I gave you three tools.

If there's a tool for one of the six skills that we didn't cover that you'd like, drop me a note on email or, connect with me on LinkedIn and ask for it. I can give you a tool on each of these. I've got a website that has leadership blogs that are helpful and offer complimentary career chat. I'm really delighted to help people with their leadership. So continue the conversation with me. I really appreciate it. Thank you for your engagement. I'm loving all the book recommendations, and the spectrum is a great challenge for me to build more skills.