Podcasts

Episode 37- Decoding AQ with Ross Thornley Feat. Shannon Waller - Entrepreneurial Team Success

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Intro

Hi, and welcome to Decoding AQ, helping you to learn the tools, mindsets, and actions to thrive in an ever-changing world.

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Ross  

Hi, and welcome to the next episode of Decoding AQ. I have a really good friend with me today, and I can't wait to share her insights and amazing story. Welcome, Shannon Waller.

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Shannon  

Thank you so much, Ross. I am thrilled to be here and having this conversation with you.

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Ross  

Magic. I’m relooking because we've known each other for a little while now, and relooking back to just check how long has Shannon been a Strategic Coach, and LinkedIn tells me it's two months of 30 years.

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Shannon  

I'm glad you looked. Yes, July of 1991 was when I started with Strategic Coach.

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Ross  

Wow, wow.

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Shannon  

Which is a very long, that's a number that most people, like most people expect me to be way older. When I say 30 years, because like three to five years is long now. So the world has changed a lot.

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Ross  

Yeah. Is that I mean, a life sentence is 25, right? So in essence, it's a job for life that you've already had. 

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Shannon  

It's true I'm also not employable by anyone else. Let's just be clear. So there are some factors that make it work. 

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Ross  

They are blessed to have you Shannon. And it's not just one Waller. It is a family affair, isn't it? 

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Shannon  

It is, Yes. So quick, quick history because this could take a while. So I joined Strategic Coach in July of 1991. And I joined as actually the salesperson under another salesperson because she wanted to be able to take these thing called free days that we talked about at coach. And then six months later, I joined the company officially because of a tax ruling actually, which is kind of a tax law that came in. And so that's kind of how it started. But then, so I started building up my own team within Strategic Coach, and that I first hired, I think I hired Marilyn first. I better get this right, because otherwise they'll yell at me.

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I think I hired Marilyn first. And she's just a phenomenal relationship person. And then I hired my sister Julia, and I made sure that she did a particular profile. And she was a little bit miffed, I think is probably the polite word, when I made her do it first. She’s like, “won’t I get the job?” I'm like “well the last thing in the world I'd ever want to do is hire you for a role that you're not suited for, or that would make you unhappy, that would make me a pretty lousy sister.” She was like, “Oh, it's not mollified, or somewhat.” Anyway, she had more than enough talent for the role, had me organized within six months and then got bored. She outgrew me really fast, as did Marilyn. And both of them are off.

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Ross  

Marilyn’s your mom, right?

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Shannon

Marilyn’s my mom, Julia's my sister, although if you call Marilyn my sister, she'll be very happy. She looks like my sister. But she does. And so they both went on to their own leadership roles in the company,after that they both outgrew me. And but it's great. It's great having family in the company. And like most family we work complementary it’s good if we don't work all together all the time. But it's fantastic. And yeah, so there are three Wallers at Strategic Coach.

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Ross  

And for those rare people in our podcast who don't know, Strategic Coach, it's the the place for entrepreneurs to go and be their best selves. And there's a range of programs, I've been part of it, it's completely changed my life, and that of my families. And I have now what I believe an extension to my family of my Strategic Coach family. And I think many feel the same in terms of these thinking tools, these areas in which we can go through our freedom, our self-managing organizations into then growth of that organization through 10X. And then create new free zones and collaborate with people that we couldn't have even imagined before, the capabilities that we can do. How big was Strategic Coach when you joined? And how big is it now?

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Shannon  

I was team member number six. So I was, we were a little, our goal was to get to 500 clients, I remember that. I don't remember how many clients we have when we started, I remember we were in this little tiny office on Queen Street, West in Toronto. And I was really happy when Dan was Dan Sullivan, co-founder of company with his wife, Babs Smith. And I was really happy when he was gone on sales calls or a coaching or I didn't know what he was doing actually. And because I got to sit in the conference room that was his office. Otherwise, I had nowhere to sit.

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So two months after I joined we move to the space actually that you're familiar with, in kind of western side of the city proper in Toronto. But yeah, so that's how that worked. And so now we have goodness, multiple more clients, we've got over a hundred team members in the US and the UK and Canada. And it's expanding. And now thanks to lockdown, thanks to the pandemic, which sounds odd to say, we have a new global virtual workshop. And so our client reach, we've always had people from lots of different dozens of different countries in 60 different industries. But now they're from multiple more countries, which is really, really exciting. And often going to the UK virtual workshops, actually, which is fun.

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Ross  

And we'll cover that in terms of the many adaptions, some by design and desire, others by necessity and need. But always with intent and choice behind these things is an interesting part. And I think one of my fondest earliest memories was, when I joined, I was running a brand and marketing agency and I had a team and we were doing an activity all around teamwork. And we had all of these initiatives, it was a small team, we were about 25 people, and we had everyone had done their Kolbe profiles, we were embedding this within the organization, working with communication builder tools, and we had the golden cup, where everyone would put something they're grateful for of another team member into that cup. And at the end of the week, we'd read these things out as teams, we had all of these things to build an intentional culture, in the design of how an entrepreneurial business would work for team success.

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And one of our, handbooks in its title and use was the Team Success Handbook, and that guided us and impact our firm beyond say, how Strategic Coach impacted me as an entrepreneur, to how it supports then the wider teams that support the entrepreneur. And I know that's been a big passion, an area of yours as the author of the book and you kindly recorded a video for our sort of annual I don't know, if you remember, an annual celebration at the end of the year, and then sort of planning for the next year session, and we hired out a local cinema.

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And we had the team there, were going through various things, and there was kind of this prize, because we'd split them into sub teams and working on things and everybody contributed to essentially then who had lived our mindsets the most, who'd shown the behaviors and values of team success, all of these things. And you recorded a video that we played on the screen that I just felt in awe and amazed that I could get connected to somebody who had written the book and share and announce who at that time that team members were that had done that. So a very giving, and person who genuinely cares in the people you meet and their teams.

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Shannon  

Thank you. That's very kind. I've totally forgotten about that. But I do remember doing it now that you mentioned it. And I am extraordinarily passionate about entrepreneurial teams, I think one of my beliefs, mindsets, experiences is that business is one of the most incredible places in which to grow as a human being on the planet. I think the opportunities for growth in a company are huge, you learn more about yourself, more self awareness, more opportunities for growth, and adapting than almost any other situation, more than families, more than corporations, more than most other industries especially. Now if you know the entrepreneurial organization, that's the pinnacle of having needing to grow, to just to keep up. And so when someone shares that passion like you do Ross, and shares it with a team and gets it into. I just want to go “Yay, I'm so excited.” So it was a real, real pleasure. Because there's a like-mindedness. You know, when you find people who are resonating on or vibrating on the same frequency, it's pretty special. And you're one of those people. So an absolute pleasure to do that.

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And I'm glad that the Team Success Handbook was useful because it's important people for people to know, especially if they come from a larger organization or more corporate one, that this is a different beast. An entrepreneur organization is fundamentally different in its mindset, and its behaviors and its expectations. And if you come from one, the language of business is the same. So if you come from one into the other, you're like, “it sounds the same, but it doesn't feel the same.” And really, this book is a primer for how to put the mindset on straight for someone joining an entrepreneurial company.

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Ross  

And that shift that people go through is one of adaption. We have to understand the levels of flexibility how open we are, how decisions are made, what do we need to leave behind and unlearn certain processes or thoughts or accountability and responsibility. So all of these things, we go through our careers, and we go through our lives. And I want to borrow, as sort of essence from the moving futures with you. And this is an activity that looks asks us to look back over a certain period of time in this context, it's normally 90 days, what are you most proud of that, gives you this momentum forward.

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And I want to really stretch your mind and thinking of your career at coach three decades. And if you think about that, what have been the sort of significant moments where you or the team have had to adapt or chosen to adapt in order to grow, in order to obtain a future desired state or something that you feel, “Wow, that's a moment that sticks in my mind, I'm really proud about some of those things,” perhaps share a couple of highlights that you feel very proud about the changes or adaptions that you, the team or the organization made?

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Shannon  

There's a bunch when you ask that question, it's a great question, because I've lots of answers. So one of them was a very personal one, that was a while ago, and the other is a much more recent one. So I'll share that one's more team involves some personal change to but definitely team change. And so the first one was, there was a point when our organization got to about 12 people. And used to be there's a great expression more caught than taught. And that's a real advantage of people sitting in the same space, nowadays, to be on the same Zoom Room, or sitting in the same space overhearing one another. Everyone knows what's going on with almost every client, because you're part of, you can hear it at least one side the phone call, and you lobby and answer that someone says, hang on a sec, I don't know. And you're like, 25, you throw it across the room.

And so I was really used to that. And as we were starting to get bigger, and I remember talking to my colleague, happens also to be named Ross, I’m like “Ross, I think it's getting too big. I think I have to look for somewhere new.” Thank God, I did not do anything stupid. But I wasn't adapting because now we were more into teams. And we were more physically separated. And our space we moved into are now there were different floors, and we couldn't catch everything. And I was having a hard time. I actually remember that struggle more than I remember the wind. But fortunately, I did adapt. And I did pull on my big girl pants and sort of get with the program and recognize just how much bigger the future could be if I could adapt to that.

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And that party. Also, I mean, I've always been interested in people in business. That's been my passion since I was 18, which was a while ago now. And but for me, it was like, “Okay, let's figure out how to make that work. Let's pay attention to how do people change? How do people grow?” So that kind of fed my spirit a little bit. So I did adapt. And I did stay and built my own team, and all the things. So that was, but that was one really pivotal point, where did I want to stay in a smaller company, or was I willing to be part of the growth. So that was a key to sink in for me.

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Ross  

Let’s just sink in that one first, for a moment. So this was an environmental shift, in terms of the organization itself was going from something in which you had a sense of reward, knowing and knowledge.

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Shannon

And safety.

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Ross

And safety, say you could catch what was going on, you felt valued in involved in all bits, because you weren't missing out. And that contribution gave you the energy, gave you validation. And probably part of what you were doing at that point in small teams is to contribute in all areas, yes we have a unique ability. But by nature, in small, we can't help ourselves, but to do things in a lot of collaboration. As that scales out we can feel a sense of loss. And it's this balance between losing something that we already had, for the uncertainty of a potential as you said, a bigger future. That's unknown, but what you had was known.

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So there's a couple of very important things that are happening through what you just described there of an environmental shift. You're going from a known state in which there was comfort and reward and having to get your mind into a future state that's unknown. That is requires let go and loss for that hopeful gain. And I would imagine what happened for you in a few of those things was the motivation, we have a motivation style. And this is different than say “I'm motivated by money or mastery or contribution,” what we look at is in the moment of change, what's our style? Is it as we call or I like to talk about it a burning ambition, or a burning platform?

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So the company had placed a burning platform there, that you it was either there's the door, because you said, this isn't for me. Or you get on “Oh, am I motivated by the burning ambition of what it could be those things?” and that shift, we are ambidextrous but we have some moments where that shift. So I just wanted to cover a little bit deeper into what you just described there. But take us through the next one. So the next significant moment?

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Shannon  

Well, first of all, that's a brilliant context, plural to put around it and valued and evolved, what a great term I'm going to share, I'm going to borrow that and give you credit, but I love it. And I am a generalist by nature. So I loved being connected to all the things and I think that was one of the things I was afraid of losing was less connection with those. Now, I do have unique ability. And I do have a specific audience that I want to deal with so I did focus on the ambition, but that's a great, those two things are polarities to manage, the other ones, you don't want to do all one or all the other, you need to stay on the upside of both. But that's a great articulation. So the second one is much more recent, and probably not unlike what a lot of people have experienced in the last 14-15 months since March 2020, is that went to global lockdown pandemic, and we stayed at home, our business Strategic Coach’s Coaching Business is an in-person workshop program.

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Ross  

Yeah, up before that point, almost 100%?

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Shannon  

Almost, I had done one video program for team members, that was the only one. And there were some phone programs like teleseminars, but that was also live, right? So we were 99% live. And so massive shift, put pause and everything until we figured out Zoom and had some amazing help. Shout out to my friend taki Moore, who introduced us to Zoom breakout rooms and some other really capable people who helped us. And so our whole team has had to, actually I hate the word pivot, I much prefer adapt. Just so you know, we've had to adapt to an entirely new way.

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Ross  

Reimagine. You had to reimagine the proposition. 

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Shannon  

Totally but what was fascinating is we had so much depth and so much capability, our team is incredibly strong and capable. And I would say resilient. But even imagine one of our roles, Workshop’s Success Director, right. I'm not even talking about the coach right now, basically used to be that they would bring the chimes, heard the cat, set up the rooms, lay out the materials, it's all very physical. And all of a sudden, they had to transfer all of those talents and those skills into a virtual world, and did so phenomenally well. All the way from music to timers to all the things and adapting to all the upgrades that were happening in the technology.

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Thank goodness, I would say our entire team had to adapt. And it was a matter of survival. I mean, we're in good shape. But still the runway isn't forever, the runway. And so our team has adapted brilliantly. And now as I mentioned in the beginning, now we have a virtual option that really allows for global clients and new capabilities and things that weren't as strategic before and more strategic now. And so it's been fun. And I actually have to say, I love coaching on Zoom. I'll be doing it three days next week. So for me, it's actually fun and easy and focusing to be able to do it this way. So it feels much easier now than it did when I was younger. I don't know if it's what I'm adapting to or because I'm more mature.

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But certainly, it's been a major adaptation that I have to say, I mean, not that we didn't have a few, head-butting sessions in terms of designing what it would look like. But we absolutely came out the other end and it's working brilliantly. And our future is now, here's the interesting thing Ross, our future is now much bigger, and much brighter, like the team programs the thing I started 25 years ago, 26 years ago, the future for it is now exponential, whereas before it was only incremental. So now it turns out, it's way easier to send someone to a Zoom Workshop than it is to ship them across the country. Who knew, right? So that program my part of the business has a much much bigger future now than ever did. So I mean, I'd love to see you, hear you unpack that because you're seeing things, I know you have a framework and a lens which I don't yet, working on it. So I'd love to hear your breakdown because you probably see some things in there that I haven't even seen yet.

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Ross  

It is interesting because what you talked about in terms of this shift to using other technologies to expand your opportunities existed before March 2020 and it did for many businesses. And it comes back to this thought of what is our future desire, what's our ambition, and what you had was fit to serve the purpose of the mission that you had. And some people call that “Oh its comfort zone or not.” I know Coach well enough that it was still hugely ambitious, still huge about impact, about all of those things. But it knew what it knew. And it was getting reward from the processes, systems and delivery mechanisms it had. Then the external factor came along. And rather than those who perhaps adopted, let's call it virtual coaching, digital coaching, before March 2020 did it because they saw the game, they might have had less to lose. That's where a lot of disruption comes from, as soon as you at some point might have to cannibalize what you have in order for the future.

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So if we rewind to your, “I'm connected to everything, there's 12 of us, I cannibalize and lose some of the things I've got for new things tomorrow.” It’s hard to let go and do that when you are in a good place. Sometimes it takes a knock from an external for you to then refigure that out. And what I've observed and noticed, I just want to make a couple of points, many have taken what they did before, and now replicated that in a virtual way. What I liked about your delivery, and some of the best is to reimagine what we're doing, because things are different. And I like the term of task redundancy, not job redundancy. So you had these people that one organization might have gone, “All of the tasks you do in your job role is now redundant, we don't operate in person anymore,” so we don't need somebody to chime, to do this, to play the music, to herd the cats, to do all of those things. Sorry, we're now doing this.

To think of it those tasks have become redundant. What are the new tasks that are needed and can those people adapt in order to do that to provide the glue or value of what the outcomes were of client success or program success? So that shift. Yes, you had the ability to do it, but also the mindset of the team that you had a muscle of continual adaption. In an entrepreneurial environment and world, there's always new creation and new creativity and shifts and change. And you're plugged in to that through your audience as well. So that would have given you confidence. And therefore, yes, and necessity and survival, but also the assets to be able to do that. A lot of had the necessity but didn't have the skills, didn't have the muscles, didn't have the assets in order to get through that.

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Shannon  

That's a really interesting point. And I think, one of the things that in the program we talked about is really appreciating everything that, how can you repurpose your past to make it useful for the future? What do you want to leave behind and what do you want to bring forward? And the reimagining is powerful because we, a lot of the workshop feels the same. We just happen to be doing it not in person. You're doing it from your, someone's doing it from their bedroom, someone's doing it from the dining room, someone's doing it from Dubai, someone's doing it from Hong Kong, someone's doing it from England, someone's doing it from Toronto. So it's kind of fascinating, but there's a lot we could translate, I guess? And because we had the same goal, we just had to figure out a very different way to get there.

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And we're kind of used to that. Now you've made one comment that Dan, you said virtual conferencing was available long before. It's true. And Dan would want to have, Dan Sullivan talks about this all the time. He said I would want to have like Zoom calls or what have you. He said but other people didn't want to.  The value of the network wasn't big enough yet. But now when everyone had to go into a virtual, then it's like I've never, I don't think we'll ever see this again in our lifetime, maybe. But where everyone jumped and by everyone, I mean business people, jumped in capability in such a short timeframe. 

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Ross

Like this accelerant.

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Shannon

Oh my gosh, and I don't know that will ever, I've never seen in my lifetime, Dan’s ever seen his, I'm not sure if we will again. But what an incredible opportunity because now we're all on the same different page. And I think that's been really useful. There's so much about, how we do things that coach and we are entrepreneurial, and we are encouraging change and improvements all the time. So this was just and we're not really negative about the change. You know what I mean? It's not like we're like, occasionally we're like, “Oh, I really know most of us miss lunch, miss the catering, do you miss Christopher's food?” But we're not that nostalgic. And so it makes it, I find it makes a lot easier to look forward. Because it kind of is, as you said, it is our normal it is what we're used to. Now, not all of our clients are as adaptable for their own reasons, which is completely fine. But I have to say, I mean looking back to March 2020, I'm super impressed with how adaptable we've been. It's actually is a total morale moment as you put in that context.

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Ross  

And, the ability to do that has been a build up to the point in which it was required. And this balance of change being consistent, but can we sustain at the speed and pace. So even the most fit physical athletes couldn't continue to operate at their peak performance in perpetuity. So in business, if this new environment of continuous adaption stuff happening all the time, and we think at the moment, we can't see or forecast, another impact of change to the order of magnitude as the pandemic. But it could well be that we are just at the starting point. And in two years time we look back and go “Wow that pandemic we thought was a big impact.”

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So one of the challenges is this, where you had deep connection, and take your workshops, they were an entire day of that interaction, we can't imagine now an entire day of in a Zoom Room, all of those pieces that we have to break up, we have to shift and so we had to reimagine certain bits, even if some of it might feel the same. So it touches on a couple of points about in coach, there's an exercise of what stays the same in the future version of you in 10 years time, in 25 years, what's going to remain the same? And we need some elements to anchor ourselves of what will stay the same and what will change. And that will give us an ability to stay sane, into certain extent.

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And so in terms of a team, that whilst maybe a leader or an entrepreneur might be more predisposed to live on the edge of continual change, and those in an entrepreneurial team, by nature, orbit around that and build up their muscles and are constantly dealing with it. As you discussed earlier, many are making this transition from a maybe larger, more corporate environment by necessity to now find themselves either on furlough becoming a gig worker, shifting and transitioning into a different way of working. What could they learn from how entrepreneurial teams operate, that they could expect to go through and deal with, that they're now maybe right in the middle of that you could express some of the bits to help them navigate?

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Shannon  

Oh, my gosh, what a great question. You asked really good questions, Ross. It's interesting there, what you reminded me of is a chart that I, this actually took me as long as the rest of the book took to write in terms, of the book is basically about how a team member can have an entrepreneur attitude. But I needed to make a distinction between, I call it that a bureaucratic attitude, which is much more. You know, we talked about, there's a balance between innovation and consistency. No, you can't be changing all the time. Nor can you be so consistent that you just don't innovate ever. So we need that balance.

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And I'm not allergic to structure, I'm not allergic to consistency, I think those can be really healthy and good things. But one of the things to be aware of is I think self awareness, you and I have the same value on this. Self awareness is absolutely essential. It's important to know the type of environment in which you thrive, and which maybe you don't have a choice about that. And so many people, what I find really interesting about this pandemic Ross, is that people who thought they were okay in that other environment, they're like “Actually, I would really like to be more in control of my time. I would like to be, I don't want to have to work with jerks, so and so.” So they're actually because they're clear, we would call it the four freedoms freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationship and freedom of purpose. And people are kind of discovering that when they're not so tied to the habit structure of going to a large office or corporation or bureaucracy that they're like, “Hmm, I kind of like this independence.”

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And so you made the point before we started that the world is becoming more entrepreneurial. And I think that is 100% true, which I kind of love. But it means you actually have to be really aware of your talents and your skills and kind of, not from a bragging standpoint, but also not from a too humble standpoint, either. You just have to be factual about “here are my gifts, here are my talents, here are my passions, here's how they can come together to help you with your bigger future.” When you can have that conversation articulately, if that's a word, then it's pretty, then people are like, “Oh, okay, you know yourself, I like that, I want that,” or “Glad you know yourself, no I need this instead.” You know what I mean? So I think that that piece is key.

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And then there's also some ways I think, and I just want to read through some of these characteristics, an entrepreneurial way of doing things is to learn by doing, to recognize that not everything is structured, if it's brand new, you've never done it before, you can't tell what the structure is. It's very fluid, there's a sense of ambiguity, in entrepreneurial environments tend to really value emotion as well as reason.

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Whereas I think most bureaucratic companies, you have to have all your logic reasons set up. It's about a contribution, it’s focused on results versus time and effort. It's relationship focused, not just getting stuff done. It's about change. And really, there's an abundance mindset, which I know you know a ton about from hanging out with Peter Diamandis. But there's this sense that there's enough that there's more happening, we can make the pie bigger, we don't have to be scarcity, and life is not a zero-sum game.

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And I have to say, at least for me, and the people I work with, and people I coach and the people I'm talking to who are now freed up to the marketplace. They're like, eating this for breakfast. You know, they're like, “Oh, I didn't know I had shackles on but I did.” And now does it mean that it's comfortable being in a totally fluid unstructured environment all the time? No, it doesn't mean it's easy. But I think, people can again, know themselves trust themselves that I think there's there's a massive opportunity for reinvention. I'm gonna borrow your word reimagination. That actually leads to people being much, much happier with their life, and also still making contributions and living, which is I don’t know, seems pretty fantastic to me.

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Ross  

It's exciting, isn't it? And as much as we might get excited, there are people who see the same things we see and are then full of anxiety and fear. There's a difference of everyone becoming an entrepreneur to everyone operating in an entrepreneurial environment. And so what my personal view is not everyone is about becoming an entrepreneur, or even every gig worker is an entrepreneur. No, we're in an entrepreneurial environment, which is all of the things you talked about there, of where we are learning by doing, because many of the things are brand new. Because there's more ambiguity, because we then need more results and less structure, all of these things, that's now the environment that we're operating in.

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And so how we show up, a few things have to happen, you use the word shackles, that people might have found they had these shackles on, we're so close to what we do in our tasks and our role to then who we think we are in our identity. And that for many can feel a sense of loss. So I was this person, because I did these tasks, it provided this value to someone else or the world. And if I'm now not doing those tasks, if the world doesn't need those things, I find not valued, what is my identity? So that shift where, “Oh, I'll not mind my identity shifting, I'm excited, I can do all of these other things.” For many, it's that loss. I knew who I was.

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So I'm interested this transition of team members that this is happening at scale, lots of organizations are, not existing, and many are being forced out. Because the organization couldn't adapt to the new environment, the new technologies, the new way of operating or the new rules of the game of what we can do. And just talk a little bit about, the experience of when, I know that you've had many team members and many teams that thrive in an entrepreneurial environment and many struggle. Have you helped the ones that have struggled to thrive? What does that really look like in practical terms?

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Shannon  

Couple of different answers for that. You turn on all these cascade of thoughts in my brain. So one of the things I did and that's actually why I wrote the Team Success Handbook was to let people know the different environment that they were in, so they could be successful. And I could coach them on how to have a more entrepreneurial attitude, how to focus on results not just the time and effort, so there's 12 different focus on results, one of them have an ownership attitude, have patience and compassion for yourself and other people.

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So there's lots of that letting people know what in fact are the success strategies in those environments? And what will be rewarded? Being right all the time isn't actually always the answer. It's like, are you willing to experiment and test and go quickly yes, quickly no, right? That's what gets rewarded in an entrepreneurial environment not being perfect. So progress not perfection as the expression goes. So that's one thing. But I want to talk about the point that you made a moment ago is that if your identity is attached to your position, your role in the organization, that's a very extrinsic way to focus your attention. Your, I'm just gonna say your ego, your sense of status.

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Ross

Your validation.

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Shannon

Your validation.

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Ross

Or maybe your meaning.

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Shannon

You have more nicer, more neutral terms more than I do. And that's one of the word like, basically, it's about contribution versus status. So the other people that I noticed, really struggle are the people who are desperately in need of status. And they do not, they need that structure, they need that corner office, they need the title. And I'm not sure I'm actually the best person to say how to help them, because I don't see that they fit into an entrepreneur organization. They're the ones that tend to build their own little kingdoms. And it's actually why I wrote my second book. Multiplication by Subtraction, because I kept seeing entrepreneurial companies bring in high powered, capable, talented leaders, but who were there for their reasons, not the reasons of the company.

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So I guess my coaching for that is, please be aligned with the vision and goals of the organization. Or go create your own and very few, you need to be entrepreneurial, you're totally right Ross, but very few people are, I hate to use word true entrepreneurs. But once you thrive with all of the work that incredible amount of work it takes to be an entrepreneur.

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Ross  

Just a quick shout out to Gino Wickman, the creator of EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, and his latest book, Entrepreneurial Leap, which talks very much to that, that it is a very rare breed. And to understand that, and I want to dig in a little bit to the next book of Multiplication by Subtraction and what that really means. And this aspect of something I'm passionate about of ethical exits. So in terms of when we haven't been able to a relationship between the organization who it serves, and who serves the organization and works inside it, when it's out of alignment, and a redundancy happens, how do we do that ethically? And how can that help both parties grow for new opportunities?

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And you talk about that in a state of singularity of an individual, and removing to multiply the company because of not alignment, not fate, as you said, worst thing you could do for your sister was help her get a job that made her miserable. I think we need a next Multiplication by Subtraction 2.0. That looks around not the entirety of an individual. But as I said, those tasks and roles. So for somebody to adapt to a new ie reskill or upskill, to a new career, to a new area, how can we provide employability for everyone that's there?

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Whether they choose to stay within the organization is the match of alignment of that, but the responsibility to always be in working on employee mobility across organizations because those skills that we can multiply by subtracting redundant skills, attitudes mindsets of those sorts of things. And then at the worst, yes, we might have to cut off. We might have to say, that is not right fit. We don't have right fit. We aren't in alignment to help. But I do it in a way that's a gift. So yeah, I'm interested in your thoughts about that and just expand a little bit of maybe some of the success and stories of where that has worked very well for people of the both sides in terms of multiplication by subtraction.

Shannon  

I love it well and I love it because ethical exits is a great way to put it in, and the subtitle of the book is “How To Gracefully Let Go Of Wrong-Fit Team Members,” and most of the book is not on how to exit somebody, most of the book is on how to figure out what the right fit is, right? And, and there's tons of like, I wrote down, there's charts, and there's models to follow. And there are really three main ways and this goes back to a model that I learned from Kolbe. And so if someone doesn't have the right intelligence, smarts, training, or background for the role, that's a cognitive issue, then often what people everyone puts us down to personality, but this is our fact. This is your drive, your motivation, your preferences.

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You know, I've got a Grumpy Pants on reception, that can be a problem, you know what I mean. Whereas they might be brilliant technically, and I need to keep them, I don’t want to say in the back room, but doing their work without interference from annoying humans, then that's a matter of simply moving someone around, or and one reason why I love the Kolbe profile so much is that is if someone have, everything else is right, intelligence is there, motivation is there, but they simply don't have mental energy for that type of tasks that the role requires. Well, that sounds like a phenomenal team member for your company, we just find need to find a better role for them, right? They've got the smarts and they've got the attitude, let's find a role that is a better fit.

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So a lot of it is about moving people around. And I love the task redundancy versus the role of redundancy conversation, because this is why we profile everyone before we hire them. It's why I started using in my team programs before we even did it for clients. When you joined Strategic Coach, it's what you do between Workshop 1 and 2 is to know your Kolbe. Because we find it so useful, and it has nothing to do with intelligence, nothing to do with personality only to do with how you strive and problem solve. And business is about solving problems. So you need to know this information, so we do a ton of that. 

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Like in our own company for example, everyone knows their Kolbe, their Strengths Finder, we have another one called Print, we do DISC, we do WonderLit which we don't share, which is intelligence one, but we want people to be incredibly knowledgeable about themselves, so that they can be a partner with us. I don't want to be Big Brother, Big Sister deciding “Oh, you're suited for this role, and you're not,” or that's a little patriarchal. Not where I want to go. So one of the things I think that we do is we help people get really tied into what we call their unique ability. And those profiles really help give the groundwork in their language.

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Ross  

That's a specialism of your sister, right? That's exactly where she focuses on is how do you uncover deep insight to your unique ability?

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Shannon

Yes, she’s amazing.

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Ross

A beautiful gift to do that. We're coming to the final kind of chapter and wrap up for this, I know that we can both have conversational jazz for hours. I want to touch on something that I'm coming up against. And I'd love your insights and views. And this is around this challenge where I know there's huge value in the data and insights of knowing ourselves. Talk about Kolbe, we know that they've had enough time and enough longitudinal studies to be able to say that's fixed over time. Now, in our world of adaptability of giving ourselves permission that we can be someone else, Ben Hardy collaborating with Dan Sullivan on lots of things that hugely successful, Who Not How book next one coming up The Gap and The Gain, one of his earlier books was Personalities Isn’t Permanent.

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And this concept of being able to envisage our future selves, that has different personality traits, and types and attributes and aspects and how we can design a different version of ourselves. Now that might be that, at worst it's about split personality and bipolar and all of these bits. But at the other side it's “I have certain things that don't serve me anymore.” I now know that desire to be that version of myself requires me to do things. Do I put in the hard work, do I re-engineer that or am I always in a state of delusion that “No, my true self isn't that and I'm just waiting to fall over because I will revert back to pretending to be something else.”

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So I'm just really fascinated with all of your work between this view of future self, be anything you want. Is that pretend? Or is it that we can truly create a different set of personalities or different set of attributes or skills? Just fascinated about that as we wrap up because, this I know is going to be a life's work to understand that. So I want to get your insights early.

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Shannon  

Well, actually, I think you've already answered that a little bit, because there are some things that are stable, that are consistent and there are some things that are incredibly mutable, right? And that we actually can change. And I think one of the things that's so incredible about human beings, and I was actually just reading the draft book of Dan’s version of The Gap and The Gain and that's the thing, like we're not static. Goodness, we grow thank God. It's like we're capable of incredible change. But do you want to… No, one of the Kolbe descriptors is Quick Start, so Quick Start’s somebody has a ton of mental energy for new ideas of a 9 out of 10, not that's something to aspire to, it’s just a measure.

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Ross

It’s who you are.

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Shannon

It’s just who I am. Is that going to change? Hasn't since I was, when I first took the Kolbe over 20 years ago. So I'm still going to approach situations the same, but I may choose different situations to approach. Does that make sense? So my way of doing it, I'm quite happy that being consistent, thank you very much. That part of me, I don't need to reinvent, I have become measurably more extroverted, the longer I've been on the planet, I've become way less shy, we can all look back at our previous versions of ourselves, say, this is how I grow in. And that's going to happen again. And I think that's powerful. I mean, I'm someone who can be quick to get angry. Well, if I slowed that down a little bit, a lot of people will be really appreciative of that growth, I have gotten better, just saying. So I think it's exciting to think about how,  it mostly is in the realm of our mindsets, our beliefs, our preferences, our behaviors, we have incredible, I would say 360 degree choice around how we behave, that is 100% under our control, don't let anyone tell you different. And but you know how I do things, whether or not I choose to take action? How I choose to do that in terms of reactive or creatively responsive? Whether I just go “Oh, that's interesting. Can I help?” So, I think that is under our control, when I do take action, it probably will be in a Quick Start way.

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And by the way, there's four different modes. And I'm not even giving nearly enough credit to anyone's profile. But I'm going to do it in the way that my Kolbe plays out. But I'm going to choose what I want to apply that to, with whom I want to play within the playground. What goals am I going to use that to contribute to and to serve? What greater purpose do I want to have an impact to. So that, oh my gosh, there's just like, it's so big, what we can do. So I think that is completely open and exciting. But at the same time, I know there's some aspects of myself that I'm quite happy with and I don't feel like I want to change or need to change. And probably would be trying to get wired to go uphill if I were to do that. Does that, that's my take on it. I don't know if that's helpful or not.

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Ross  

Yeah, it's very, very interesting piece. And I think, sometimes take for example, Quick Start, you've been identified as that you get reward with that. And so it's not going to change or ever change, because you've not decided to want to. So therefore, it could be viewed in one way it is stable over time and that's it. But if you said, “You know what I want to change that, could Shannon be in a year's time not a Quick Start? I don't know.” It's a bit like years ago in the marketing, I'd go to somebody and they’d go “Ah the Yellow Pages”, it was a physical book, big thick book, where people would advertise and they get the new business from, and I'd go and say, “Oh, so where do you get your new business from? Oh the Yellow Pages? Okay, what else do you do? Oh, we only do the Yellow Pages.” Ah, so that's the only way you're going to get business from because that's all you do.

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So in a certain aspect, whilst the science and research we know what we know today, I'm flexible to think that all that we know today might be replaced with new knowledge tomorrow. And so in every aspect, that for some can be so uncertain, and so damaging to think about, but it keeps me I think humble around knowledge, that it has a time of knowledge. But what is different and there is eternal is the principles, the methods, the questions. So if we constantly ask ourselves the questions be open and not bias to “No I'm just looking for the result to give me the same answer I had before,” that we might uncover a new answer that opens up a new realm.

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And to finalize it, you beautifully articulated it for you and many me included, I see a massive future I see no need to change. I'm very comfortable with my Kolbe, for example, and I operate within it, within a hue, there's areas where I now feel with me, I want to work on that. I've been given myself now a new insight about something about either my environment, or how my character might influence, how I change or the impact it has on others. What are certain skills I have about even my ability to unlearn things, and I go, “Ah, now I've seen that, I've become aware, I can then make a choice of what to do with it.” And that's the way that I think the best people can live their lives through it. So we've spent, it's flown by our time, I really want to thank you so much. Some great insights, More is Caught than Taught, one of my favorites. And I thank you for sharing that, loads of great stories. And I look forward to our next connection together, Shannon.

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Shannon  

I think we definitely need a part two. Ross always a pleasure. And just one last final thought. I mean, I think we can always increase our intelligence, you mean that is measured. And we can change our preferences and how we show up in our personality. There's a reason why Ben did not include Kolbe in Personality Isn’t Permanent. And that's tested, but don’t take my word for it.

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Ross

But it’s not personality right that Kolbe is looking at?

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Shannon

It’s not and that’s why it’s not in the book. Exactly. And I think, one of the things that gives everyone confidence moving forward is what about myself, it's stable. What do I want to stay the same? What can I count on? And then how can I use that to address to be adaptable to all those changes that are coming out? So I have loved this conversation. And I hope we get to do it again. Thank you so much, Ross.

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Ross  

Thanks, Shannon. Thank you.

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Voiceover  

Do you have the level of adaptability to survive and thrive in the rapid changes ahead? Has your resilience got more comeback than a yo-yo? Do you have the ability to unlearn in order to reskill, upskill, and breakthrough? Find out today and uncover your adaptability profile and score your AQ visit "AQai.io" To gain your personalized report across 15 scientifically validated dimensions of adaptability for limited time enter code "Podcast65" for a complimentary AQ me assessment. AQ AI transforming the way people, teams, and organizations navigate change.

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Outro

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