There’s been a seismic shift in leadership…
Leading with power and control doesn’t work anymore…
It’s all about meaningful connections.
But how do you build these connections & better serve your team?
Dr. Michelle Johnston is here to discuss her book The Seismic Shift in Leadership.
Listen to learn:
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How to own your journey
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Why you need to give up perfection
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How to identify your communication style
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The power of values alignment
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How to listen from the heart
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Tips for owning your calendar
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And more
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Michelle Johnston: The seismic shift refers to that old command and control leading with power and control is just no longer effective. The way that a leader can successfully lead nowadays is through meaningful connection.
Voiceover: You’re listening to the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast with professional speaker, coach and consultant Nicole Greer.
Nicole Greer: Welcome to the Build a Vibrant Coaching podcast. My name is Nicole Greer and they call me the vibrant coach and I am here today with Dr. Michelle K Johnston, who is the Gaston Chair of Business at Loyola University New Orleans College of Business. Dr. Johnston is an executive coach with over 20 years experience and she was named to the prestigious 100 coaches group who consists of the top executive coaches around the world. She has her Ph.D. in communication from Louisiana State University and her new book, The Seismic Shift in Leadership shares what she has learned in her years as an executive coach. Primarily, that connection with yourself, your team, and your organization is the key to a leader’s success. Welcome to the show. Michelle, I can call you Michelle, can’t I?
Michelle: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Nicole, thank you for having me.
Nicole: Yeah, it’s my pleasure. Yeah. So I just right out of the gate, I ask one question at the beginning of every podcast. I’m collecting definitions of leadership. And you’ve written an entire book. Don’t miss this, everybody. It’s number two on Amazon this week, go over there real quick and snag it. The Seismic Shift in Leadership. So tell us what your definition of leadership is?
Michelle: Yeah, I think an effective leader can influence through meaningful connection. And so how do we do that, and that’s what I wrote my book on it. The Seismic Shift refers to that old command and control leading with power and control is just no longer effective. The way that a leader can successfully lead nowadays is through meaningful connection. And it’s never been more true coming out of this pandemic. And we’re all trying to struggle, how do you connect and what is now a hybrid world? And I don’t know if it’s gonna go back. I just saw an article in The New York Times, about the New York Times employees kind of revolting and saying, we’re not going to be forced back into the office. So a leader’s job right now is to get results to influence, right. And how do you do that? You do that through true connection.
Nicole Greer: That’s fantastic. Yeah. And you know, the other thing, I think that is out there is this whole thing of employee engagement. And really, it’s not necessarily that you have to feed everybody or have the Employee Appreciation Day, although I love all those things. It’s like if my, if I feel like my boss, and I, my leader and I are connected, that’s that’s everything to me. I feel like I’m understood. They know where I want to go in my career. It’s all good. So your book has several parts to it. And the first part is about connecting with yourself. And in chapter one, you talk about a leader needs to know their own story, their narrative and their brand. Will you share a little bit about how we figure that out?
Michelle: Yeah, absolutely. So I’m now calling it own your journey. And I go through this exercise, I just delivered a keynote last week to a big room of female leaders. And we went through this exercise. I just taught my leadership class last night at Loyola and I go through this exercise. It’s so important to own your journey. What I have found Nicole, is so many people are really self conscious of their journeys.
And they feel like they have something that makes them different, that they’re uncomfortable with. You know, they, they think that everybody else had a better than they do. And that’s just not the case at all. As humans, we have all struggled, we’ve all had major challenges, life is hard. And your ability to recover, to grow, to learn, to improve, to evolve, your resilience is what’s going to get you to the next level. So the exercise of owning your journey is so important. So what I do is I just asked them to share a significant life event that made them who the leader that they are today.
So if you’re listening right now, just think about a significant life event that really made you who you are today. That impacted how you lead. That significant life event is so important because the leaders who are successful and can get to the next level, they own it. They say you know what, I went through a really challenging time. Maybe I went through a really tough divorce. Maybe I was a child from you know of divorce. Maybe I had abusive parents. Maybe I had a real jerk boss that just messed with my psyche for years. You know, what was it? What was the significant life event that was really challenging, but then how did you get over that? How did you grow? How did you get stronger? That moment, is what really makes and differentiates you from the rest.
So it’s the ability to own that journey. This is who I am. I’ll give you an example. One of my students a number of years ago, did this exercise. We do it the first week of class, before there’s even psychological safety. We’re like, own your journey and share it with the class. And he stood up and he said, my name is Juan. I’m from Honduras, a very, very small, poor country in Honduras. He said my family was very poor. I’m incredibly, I feel incredibly blessed and grateful to be here at Loyola getting my MBA.
He said, the significant life event I’m going to share with you, I only shared, my family knew and my best friends, but this was the last thing that I was going to tell people when I started here at Loyola in New Orleans, Louisiana. He said, when my grandfather died, my grandmother moved in with us, and I had to share a bedroom with her throughout my high school years. He said, I was so ashamed, I couldn’t believe it. And that again, that was the last thing I wanted to share until she passed away this past spring. And now I realize I wouldn’t trade those years that I had with her for anything. And it made me who I am today.
So I am Juan and I’m owning my journey. And that was one of the most powerful stories that I’ve heard Nicole, because you could see in him telling the story, you could see him get more confident and bigger and fill up his space because he finally wasn’t hiding his story anymore. He finally was was giving himself permission to own it, and not feeling any shame about it. And then you could tell all the students in class, we’re like, bravo, Juan, we want to be friends with you. Well done, my friend. It changes everything. You’ve got to own your journey.
Nicole: Yeah, I love your story. And what I love about it, too, is that, you know, Juan is a young man of character, right? So I heard he was brave, he was courageous, and probably patient. Some other things living with grandma in the same bedroom, you know, you know, had to exercise, courtesy, kindness, you know, just all sorts of great things come out of these stories. If we can recognize them, own them, like you’re saying, and then learn from them. Now, you threw out this really great phrase, and I’d love for you in case somebody is like, what does she mean by psychological safety? So will you talk just a skinny second about psychological safety? Because I think that that’s a huge concept that maybe not a lot of people are familiar with.
Michelle: Absolutely. And so when I was researching with my colleague, Dr. Kendra Reed, we were publishing on high-performing teams, and what were the differentiating factors between low-performing teams and high-performing teams. And we came across the research that Google did. And they called it Project Aristotle. And then one of them was Project Oxygen. And they really wanted to figure out what were the necessary characteristics so that they could go after hiring the right people. And their assumption at Google was that there were technical skills that they needed to look at.
Well, after going through all of the data, they realized, no, it wasn’t. iIt was actually the ability as a as a team to make each other feel safe. And if you as a team could make each other feel safe, so people feel like they could, you know, ask questions and take risks and potentially make mistakes, all of the parts of brainstorming that leads to innovation. And so they named it psychological safety. And they realize that that really is the most important thing to have a high-performing team is to have psychological safety amongst yourselves.
Nicole: Yeah. And so, you know, if I was thinking about that, it’s like that old saying, you know, I want to work with people I like, know and trust.
Michelle: Well said, That’s exactly right, Nicole. And, and so that’s why connection is so important these days. And we’re losing opportunities for organic connection to happen at water coolers and coffee pots and in the hallways and running into the restroom and eating lunch in the cafeteria. We’re losing a lot of those organic opportunities. And so what I’m telling people is you really have to be intentional with connection now. And what does that look like. And so some companies like Salesforce and Qualcomm, they’re not, their employees are saying they really value flexibility, and they don’t want to come back to the work to the workplace full time.
And so they’re having to pivot and just and what they’re telling me is, they’re saying, okay, we want our employees to have their flexibility and to have quality family time. And we’re going to embed time for connection. So if you’re gonna come in the office three days a week, we want it to be team teamwork and collaboration. If we can’t get you to come into the office, because we’re spread out all over, we’re going to spend the money and fly you in quarterly so we can work together face to face. We’ve got to be able to create psychological safety and trust in order to get the results you need.
Now so that’s companies that are really doing well that have the money to say I’m gonna fly all of you all in. Or like Juan Martin of Kind Bars, who’s in my book, and I interviewed him recently and said, how are you connecting? And because his employees also in Manhattan from Mars, they said, well, we’ll work from home Mondays and Fridays, and we’ll come in Tuesday, Wednesday. So he said they blew up the office. He said, Michelle, I don’t even have an office door anymore. We realized that if the world’s gonna get our employees in the office Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays, we want to do it in a way where it really focuses on team collaboration and connection and engagement. I said, okay, so that’s all well and good.
But let me ask you, how are you connecting on Zoom on Teams? And he said, he lifted up his expresso company said, Michelle, I’m a European at heart, even though I’m now in Manhattan. He said, my leaders all over the world know that in our one on ones, we have 30 minute one on ones every two weeks, that for the first five to 10 minutes, we’re lifting up our espresso cups, and we’re talking about personal matters. Because that’s how you build connection. So we really have to think differently about connection, and we have to embed it into how we meet with people. Because again, we’re just it’s just not happening organically anymore.
Nicole: I love it. I love it. Okay, so chapter two, you your title of that chapter is called give up perfection. So you know, is perfection what prevents people from connecting? They don’t want people to see kind of their, you know, things, places where they fall short? Is that what the issue is?
Michelle: Absolutely. I realize, and that’s why I have the quote in the book perfection equals disconnection. Because the leaders that I was coaching that prompted me to write this book that were getting pushed out of their organizations, when I would conduct interviews there, people would say, well, I don’t trust this person, I don’t trust this person. So of course, going back to the definition of leadership, in order to be a successful leader, you have to have the trust of your people, right? You lose trust, you’re no longer seen as a leader. What I was finding, Nicole, because whenever I begin a coaching relationship, I begin with a 360 feedback.
And so I interviewed 10 to 15 of key stakeholders above, below, across hence the name 360. And I do most of it qualitatively. So I have this rich qualitative data. So they were telling me that they couldn’t trust their leader. And what I was realizing is that the leader was trying to be perfect, whatever perfect was in their eyes. What their boss was, like their mentor was like what they thought the Vice President of Finance in a company looked like to them. And a lot of people just don’t feel comfortable enough in their own skin to say, I feel comfortable enough, I’m going to show up and do what I think success looks like they just follow a model in their head. And a lot of times, that means that they’re kind of covering up pieces and parts of themselves, right.
And they’re just trying to be perfect. And then those who are trying to be, who are perfectionists, end up putting so much pressure on those that they lead to be perfect that it ends up creating cultures of fear. And that’s what I found. That perfection equals disconnection. And perfection also equals cultures of fear, which is the exact opposite we need right now. We need to be innovative. We need to think differently. We need to disrupt everything, right? How we work, who we work with, how we meet. I mean, if not now, when? Right? This is the time to disrupt and you’ve got it, in order to disrupt you have to have going back to that psychological safety. And you have to have that connection with yourself and with others.
Nicole: Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I’m putting together a program right now for a client, he and he requested this. He said, You know, I want a program on authentic leadership, which I would imagine is the exact opposite of what you’re saying. And I would just, I would just say this too about your thing about figuring out what your journey is and own it. I can remember when I was young and coming up in the ranks, I wanted to understand how did the people above me get where they are? Like, how do you do that? How do you be as successful as them? And if we got, if we were lucky enough that our leader was authentic ,they would share those stories and be like, oh, if they got there, I could get there too. Yeah. So how does the word authentic play into seismic leadership?
Michelle: Yeah, so when I figured out that the key was connection, and that perfection equals disconnection, I then went and interviewed 18 leaders from around the world to understand what connection looked like and felt like and sounded like. And so in those interviews, I asked them about connection with self, connection with team, and connection with their organization. Because to me, those are the three necessary levels of connection. And when I was conducting all these interviews and transcribing the data, what I found the foundation of connection with yourself is authenticity. You have to be able to give yourself permission to show up authentically.
To really own your voice. And for me, that took a while because I had to figure out what what what did authenticity look like? And it takes a lot of time for self-reflection, taking assessments and personality tests to really understand you as your person what how did you come out of the womb? What are your superpowers? What are your strengths? What are your blind spots? You know, how can you show up authentically. Marshall Goldsmith is my mentor and he and I’ve had conversations about this. He’s of the belief that you can’t really be truly successful and be 100% authentic, right.
So much of it is emotional intelligence and knowing you know, what cards to show and, and how to adapt your style. And there’s a little bit of truth to that. I think times have changed enough in 2022 that we now want. And what I’m saying is, we want you to be real and genuine. That’s what I’m saying just be real and genuine and adapt to the culture, of course. You know, you can’t, you can’t show up in shorts and a T-shirt if the culture doesn’t allow shorts and T-shirts. You know, you can’t just say, well, I’m being authentic, this is what I wanted to wear today. You’ll appreciate this, Nicole.
When I was teaching during lockdown, and we were online, some of my students would turn, I would say you have to have your cameras on this is a communication or leadership class. And they turn their cameras on, and they would be horizontal in bed with their PJs. And I’d say you can’t show up to class like that. Right? You just get into but to Marshall Goldsmith’s point, my students would say, well, but this is what I’m feeling like. Well, that doesn’t matter. You know, there, there’s, there’s a dance to this, right. But authenticity is absolutely key to have that connection with yourself.
Nicole: I love what you’re saying. Yeah. And I think the word that’s bubbling up in my mind as I’m listening to you. It’s like, we want you to be authentic. But don’t lose your professionalism.
Michelle: Bingo. You said it better than I did. Ding, ding. That’s exactly right. We want you to know who you are and feel comfortable in your skin so that you can show up and present your authentic self and your gifts and be professional.
Nicole: Right? Because we’re trying to do business here. And that’s part of the deal. Or we’re trying to run an organization. That’s right. Okay. I love that. Now, you said something that made me just all get all flustered on the inside, because nobody loves a good self-assessment or a personality test, or whatever, better than Nicole Greer. And you say in chapter three, that you’ve got to own your communication style. So I heard you say, I take people through assessments, and they do reflection exercises when I coach them. That is fantastic. So how do you propose that people figure out their communication style? How do you go about that?
Michelle: Yeah, there are hundreds, probably 1000s of communication inventories out there. On my first sabbatical, I developed a communication inventory. It’s called the communication preference profile. And I had, you know, we all have taken a ton of assessments in this field. And I you know, I appreciate the StrengthsFinder. And I appreciate Myers Briggs and I appreciate Lumina Spark. What I found, what clients were telling me is the most challenging situations had to do around communication. So I really wanted something that was pretty easy. Easy to remember, easy to take. So I developed a 24 item, communication assessment that identifies whether you’re a high people communicator, which really, you speak and listen, and you focus on relationships, when you speak and listen.
Or are you a high-action communicator? Do you speak and listen, focusing on results? Or are you a high-content communicator? Do you listen for details and information and data? Or are you a high technology? Is it just all about efficiency, and you don’t need to be in a meeting, you just can send a text or use whatever technology is available. So I collected all kinds of data and ran the stats. And we found that it’s reliable and valid. And it really helps you figure out how you show up as a communicator. What your preferences because usually your preference is how you’re going to speak and listen most of the times, right?
And people who are highly relational, really will spend time before a meeting saying, hey, is anybody calling in from Florida? I know Hurricane Ivan, or is it Ian, Ian is heading your way? How are you all doing? Really trying to connect. Now if you’re a high-action communicator, you typically go into that meeting, you don’t even mention the hurricane and you say, okay, let’s accomplish our goals. That’s right. And so as executive coaches, it’s, you know, it’s our job to help them figure out, well we know your natural tendency is to show up like this. And diversity pays off. So you need to adapt to the diverse people in your room and how they communicate.
Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So my imagination tells me, Michelle, that they can definitely get up with you and you will be glad to help them. Have them take the assessment and get their whole team to take the assessments. That’s fantastic.
Michelle: It’s on my website. Absolutely.
Nicole: All right. Okay, so you’re either a people, high relationship communicator, action results communicator, content details, information communicator, or a tech efficiency communicator. So I love those four quadrants. All right, very good. All right. So we’ve talked a lot about connecting with yourself, right. So I like to ask this question to my clients is what is it like to experience you? And so if you do all the work that Michelle just mentioned, you’ll be able to answer that question.
And really, it does all start with knowing what’s going on right here. Alright, so now I have had a little self-awareness takeover in my life. And now I go, I look out and I’ve got all my people out here. You say, it’s really important to show care and compassion. So tell me about your research around care and compassion. And I’ll just say this real quick. I’ve had people say, I don’t, I don’t really care. Like, no, you have to care.
Michelle: With leaders nowadays, you really do have to care. I had one of my good friends, her husband came up to me, my daughter just graduated from high school, and I just sent her off to college. And so at the graduation party, one of my good friend’s husband, who owns a company came up to me and said, I read your book. I said, great, but he didn’t have a smile on his face. And I said, oh, my gosh. And he said, yes, Michelle, it’s a great book. He said, I realized I’m doing everything wrong. I said, oh, no, what do you mean? He said, well, because I think what you’re trying to tell me, is the guy who came into my office last week with this look on his face, and he’s holding this phone, and I’m thinking what machine broke, what client did we lose, what’s going on?
And he runs up to my desk, and he shows me the video of his son taking his first steps. He said so you’re trying to tell me that I really need to care. And I need to remember next week that that guy’s son took his first steps. And I said, yes. Yes, we really do need to, it’s that’s the shift, right, moving from command and control towards connection. And in order to connect with your team, we really need you as a leader to show that you care about your team as a whole person, as a whole human, not just the results that they bring to the organization.
And this is as easy as just beginning a meeting asking about is anybody, how you guys doing with the hurricane? Or if it’s a meeting right after Labor Day, just saying, hey, where’d you guys go Labor Day? If it’s a meeting right before Thanksgiving. It’s hey, what’s your favorite Thanksgiving meal? I mean literally, it’s so easy. It’s just asking questions about them. I have this in my book, I’ll never forget, when my father was going to night school, I would sit in his study and take down the books and, and read them and one of this was the late 70s. And I remember his study had gold shag carpeting. I remember being on the floor with my dog and gold, shag carpeting and taking the Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People off the shelf.
And the opening story in that book was Dale Carnegie’s favorite pet growing up was named Tippy. And he said, I learned from Tippy that you make more friends, by showing interest in others than you could ever make in trying to get them interested in you. So it’s just this switch, right? You as the leader is really showing interest in your people, and showing that you care about them. Again, I’m not advocating for you to be their best friends, for you to know all about their personal lives, and God forbid to be their therapist, not at all. It just show interest in them as full human beings.
Nicole: I love that. And when you’re doing that chapter five, you got to listen. So I mean, I know the value of listening, because I’ve been listened to well. I don’t I think sometimes people have never been listened to well, so they don’t really know how valuable that can be in their lives. So I think got blessed that way. So talk about listen to lead. Give us a little bit on listening. I think it’s huge.
Michelle: Yeah, we deconstructed this in my leadership class last night is we realize that so often, people struggle listening, because they can’t get out of their head. When they’re listening they’re just thinking about what they’re going to say next. They’re thinking about, oh, that happened to me. They’re just thinking, and we need this shift to go from head to heart. So the really great listeners are listening from the heart, they’re listening with empathy. They’re not listening, thinking about what they’re going to say next, or that that event happened to them, and they can’t wait to talk about them.
You really have to let go of ego to be a great listener, because you got to make it about the other person. And you’ve got to be patient and let them talk and not guide and steer where you want the conversation to go. You have to fully focus with eye contact and lean in and show the nonverbals and nod their heads and ask, you know, appropriate questions. So it takes a lot of energy and effort. And we’re surrounded by so many distractions these days, that listening is just difficult. But we figured out last night, if you can get out of your head and get into your heart, you’re going to be a much better listener.
Nicole: I love that. I love that. All right, and then chapter six, you say you’ve got to be a servant. And I think some people, some leaders look at that like wait, I worked so hard to get up here. Now I have to serve everybody. So I love that we’re maybe using the upside down pyramid right now. So talk a little bit about being a servant leader in case somebody out there is going, I don’t know this concept. It’s been around awhile.
Michelle: You’re right, Nicole. When the fact and how you just turned the organizational chart upside down, this was surprising. Again, I didn’t know that I was gonna have to write these chapters. Right? You know, all I did was go and interview 18 leaders to try to deconstruct connection, what that looked like, felt like, sounded like. And here they are telling me that even though that they were CEOs at the top of the organizational chart that they realized in order to be successful, they were really at the bottom. And it was about serving others as their leader. What can I do to best help you? What barriers can I get out of your way? How can I best develop your leadership skills? I don’t want to tell you and micromanage and tell you exactly what to do.
Let’s figure this out together, I bet you have the solution. So it’s just this shift from commanding and controlling and just directing and telling to let me, I’m here to serve you. I’m here to guide you, to mentor you and to develop you. That’s what it is. It’s this shift, I am here for you as your leader. I’ll give you an example. We talked about this last night, when I worked for a consulting firm in my 20s, 20-20, the news program, ABC News came down twice, to do episodes on leadership with us. And this one episode, they were they were profiling this leader who was a really bad listener. And he was about to lose his job unless he learned how to listen better. And this has to do with servant leadership.
Because what happened was, he had been a really great salesperson who got promoted to all of a sudden lead all these other salespeople, but he no longer was selling. And now he had to lead a team. And he didn’t realize that it wasn’t all about him anymore. So all he did was walk around and tell stories and stories and stories. And that worked when he was in sales. But it didn’t work as a leader of a team. But had to do that, make that shift and make it about their team and sit and really listen. So that he knew how he could best help his team. So it’s just this shift to I am here to support you. I am here to develop you. I am here for you.
Nicole: I love it. I love it. Yeah. All right. So I can just see that guy. And I think the little hidden nugget in there everybody is when we go to promote people who are going to oversee teams, we need to get Michelle’s book out, relook at all of these chapters, and then produce some, you know, some criteria for who we’re going to promote into a leadership position, or get the gentleman who’s in sales into a leadership program, get them an executive coach, help him to see all these things before we put them in there.
So that will, that will solve a lot of issues inside organizations right there. All right, so we’re finally at part three, but I am totally loving our conversation. I’d like to find out, okay, we’ve connected to ourselves, we’re connecting to our team. And now we have to connect to our organization and you say, you’ve got to personally align with your organization. Talk just a smidge about that. What does that tell us?
Michelle: Again, I didn’t see this coming. So many of the interviews that I conducted, the leaders would say, well, in order to connect with the organization, you have to do some soul searching. And you have to make sure that your personal values are aligned with the company values. So one of the leaders in my book, David Callicott, he was working for he was the CEO of a nonprofit health system. And he said, my first job was for a for profit health system. And he said, and I rose rapidly up through the ranks. And all of a sudden, I was in charge of buying these hospitals. And then, you know, trying to get everybody on board, but then having to turn around and fire them all.
And he said it just was excruciating. And he said he was in an airplane, 911. He’ll never forget it. Going to fire more people because they had just purchased the hospital. And he realized when the airplane landed that he couldn’t do that anymore. He couldn’t be that person. And so then he shifted to work for nonprofit organizations. So that’s what we’re talking about. I’ll give you another example. Going back to Juan Martin of the Kind Bars of the global President of Kind Bars. He said people work for Kind, because he does, he’s not just evaluated on how many bars he sells, he’s evaluated by how many acts of kindness. He, they really believe that Kind that it’s kind, it’s in order to put healthy ingredients into your body, you’re showing kindness to yourself.
They truly believe that and you’re evaluated at the company of how kind you are to others, and how kind you are to the planet. And so, and so people who work for work for Kind Bars believe in that, right. I mean, they believe in kindness, and that would be really tough if you were told jerk person and you didn’t care about any of that. And you didn’t care about the planet or showing kindness and compassion to others but yet you’re working at Kind, right? Its values alignment, making sure that you’re aligned with the company and you can really believe in their vision.
Nicole: Yeah, Yeah, and she’s right. There are some of those jerk people out there just saying. I don’t know why they’re not listening to this podcast, apparently. Okay, so then we’ve got all these people aligned, we’re all being kind or we’re in an organization, like, I love the Zappos core value. Everybody needs to be a little weird, whatever it is. So you’ve got this thing where you need to create a positive culture. So I would think people aligned with things that are at their core are pretty stinking happy. So tell me about creating a positive culture.
Michelle: Yeah, that comes from the leader. And that’s got to be really intentional. I had a guy, two guys on my podcast recently called the Seismic Shift. And one of them runs a hospitality company. And he said, they worked so hard on building this positive culture. But it started with the values first, and he said, our first value is I see you, I love you. I said, Robert, Robert is his name. He’s here in New Orleans. And it looks like Robert, on paper, but it’s Robert Loblaw. And he said, yeah, we have these. He said, every single day at our two big team meetings, we talk about our values, I see you, I love you.
We want this to be a place. He said the hospitality industry is not known for work-life balance. We want you to leave at the end of the day and not have to worry about anything. We want you to focus on your family. We don’t want you to have the burnout and the drugs and the alcohol of the things that the hospitality industry is known for. So we worked really hard to create this positive culture where you can have solid quality relationships, good home life, and be productive and come to work and really enjoy it because it’s I see you, I love you. I thought that was incredible.
And then I had this other CEO on my show. His name is Larry Closs. He runs a company called Max Home, which is one day bathroom renovations. I said, well, how did you build a positive culture? He said, Michelle, happiness is at the core. I said what do you mean happiness is at the core? He said that is our culture, happiness. We want our customers to be happy, we want all for employees to be happy. We have happiness breakfast, happiness summits. I said, Larry, there are going to be so many listeners listening in that think, oh my gosh, there’s no way that you can have a happy culture in my industry.
And, Larry, I want you to tell everybody remind them what is your industry? He said construction. I said exactly. So you don’t have to have this like new age or, you know, California or high tech company if you really want to create this positive culture. You can have this culture built on happiness. Even in construction. He goes, yep. And his company is known as one of the best places to work.
Nicole: That’s fantastic. That’s fantastic. All right. And so the next thing you have is this idea of owning your calendar. You gotta get your time management straight. Tell me a little bit about that.
Michelle: Yeah, so I interviewed Warner Thomas who is the CEO of Ochsner Health, our largest employer in the state of Louisiana. And I said, I want to learn more about connection with the organization. What do you do to truly connect with Ochsner? He said, first and foremost, you have to own your calendar. And I said, what? I didn’t see that coming. Again, I didn’t know I was gonna be writing the chapter on owning your calendar. He said, Michelle, think about it. He said, in order for you to be a successful leader, and successfully connect with your company, how many you know at the time, he’s got 36,000 employees.
He says you have to look and identify the key stakeholders that will help you be successful. And then you’ve got to look at your calendar, and you’ve got to play it out for an entire year. So he said how often do you want to meet with your direct reports? Is it one on ones every other week? How often do you have team huddles? Is it morning? Every morning? Is it weekly? Is it monthly? How often do you have town halls? When do you meet with your peers? When do you have do skip levels? When do you do town halls? When do you have customer summits? He said you’ve got to really put time into thinking and those key stakeholders then you own and he calls it the operating rhythm.
So now you own your operating rhythm. He said, and here’s another thing, and I do a lot of coaching for his CEOs. And he said, Michelle, here’s another thing. I’m paying you to coach a lot of my high high-level leaders, and you better make sure that they’re embedding time for strategic thinking in their calendars. Because if they’re not embedding time for appreciation, for rounding, connecting strategic thinking, then all of a sudden all they’re doing is reacting. And we can’t have an organization that’s just based on well, I didn’t have any time today because all I did was was I had to go to all these meetings. Exactly, exactly. Put fires out. So he said you as a leader must own your calendar. And that’s how you connect with your company.
Nicole: That is fantastic. And you have a little COVID endnote in the book. So share with me your thoughts on COVID and just we’ll and then we’ll, we will talk about the, all the things that you’ve shared. We’ll give them my high-level regroup here at the end.
Michelle: Yes, so this this book on connection was going off to be published finally after four years of writing it in March of 2020.
Nicole: Congratulations.
Michelle: All of a sudden, I’m in, I’m in lockdown. It’s March 2020. And now I’m in lockdown. And the whole world is in lockdown. And I’m looking at this manuscript sending it off. And it’s a book on connection. And I called my publisher, I said, I cannot publish a book on connection when the whole world is disconnected. I said, give me I didn’t know it was going to be another two years, I said, but I’ve got to go back and circle back with all these leaders. I circled back with nine of the eighteen leaders to figure out how we do connect in a time of disconnection.
So that’s what I did during COVID. I figured out from interviewing these leaders how you connect in a time of crisis. And I, and so when this book finally was published, which was just February 22nd of this year, in 2022, coming out of the pandemic, I think that’s why it’s an Amazon Best Seller. Because we’re all trying to figure out how to connect in a time where we still feel disconnected. And I don’t think that I would have that really robust information if I had not circled back with these leaders.
Nicole: That’s fantastic. All right, everybody, I think we have gotten major downloads from Dr. Michelle Johnston, she has done a great job. And so let me just tell you what she’s told us today for you know, high level just to cement it in your brain. We don’t get things the first time. Number one thing you need to do is connect with yourself. And inside of that, we have to own our journey. And we have got to get rid of perfection. This perfection thing is going to create a culture of fear and we want a vibrant culture for sure. We definitely want to connect with our teams, you’ve got to care, you got to show compassion, you got to take a look at the video with the baby making its first steps.
Hello, who doesn’t want to watch that anyways. That’s fantastic. You got to listen, you got to be a servant leader. And then finally, connect with your organization, get your core values figured out, make sure you’re in the right place, make sure you’re the right guy or gal on the bus in the right seat. Go back listen to her story about her leader that changed his trajectory. You got to create a positive culture, own your calendar, and bottom line you gotta connect. So I know there’s one little listener out there that’s like wait, wait, wait, one more nugget. One more nugget from Michelle. So if you wanted to leave us with one more nugget, what would you leave us with?
Michelle: Yeah, that you really have to spend time looking at your calendar, looking at how you want your life to play out and make sure that you’re connecting with the right people. Because at the end of the day, we all want to live meaningful lives, right? We want to show up being the best person we can be. That’s how you feel satisfied with life. And to be a leader is this beautiful opportunity, right to really influence others and make a difference in their lives. And let’s do it together in a kind, compassionate way. And how to do that is through connection.
Nicole: That’s fantastic. All right. So Michelle, we want to get up with you. We want to take your let’s see communication preference profile. We might want to hire you as our executive coach. Can you tell everybody how to find you?
Michelle: Yes. At my website, michellekjohnston.com. That’s m i c h e l l e k j o h n s t o n.com. Would love to hear from your listeners. Yeah. Thank you so much, Nicole, for having me. And thank you for all the listeners for tuning in. This was really great.
Nicole: All right. Everybody. It’s been great to have you listen in to another episode of Build a Vibrant Culture podcast, and I’ll talk to you next time.
Voiceover: Ready to build your vibrant culture? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with her strategies, systems and smarts to increase clarity, accountability, energy and results. Your organization will get lit from within. Email Nicole@nicolegreer.com. And be sure to check out Nicole’s TEDx talk at nicolegreer.com.
