Latest / Authentic Living / Connecting to Lead and the ROR: Return On Relationships with Sabrina Shafer
Transcript
- 0:01Welcome to authentic living with Roxanne, a place where we have as conversations about
- 0:08things that really matter in our lives.
- 0:11And now here's your host, Roxanne Derhodge.
- 0:36Hi.
- 0:37It's Roxanne Durgesh.
- 0:38I'm a mental health and wellness specialist and a corporate leadership executive coach.
- 0:43My new book, return on relationships, launching on June 10 2023, introduces the concept of
- 0:51return on relationship a new metric for business growth.
- 0:55Grab a copy.
- 0:56Let me walk you through how to be a better leader and provide you with exclusive tools to
- 1:00guide you in building your authentic leadership legacy.
- 1:03You can find the link in the show notes to pre order your copy today.
- 1:07Hope you enjoy.
- 1:09Hi, everyone.
- 1:09It's Roxanne Derhodge.
- 1:10Thanks for tuning in again to the today to authentic living with Roxanne.
- 1:14Today, I have a a colleague that I think I've just recently met.
- 1:17We've been spending a lot of time together Sabrina Shaver Sabrina, has a quite a
- 1:23fascinating background, that intrigued me, and, we recently did an event for international
- 1:30women's day with, women, younger, women, I would say, mostly across size and sectors of
- 1:37companies that were talking about work life balance, which was actually quite amazing.
- 1:43So her background is she's not only a corporate litigator, but she's a behave she studied
- 1:48behavior analysis, and I'm gonna be intrigued by that story about what kind of got her into
- 1:53doing what she does.
- 1:54And and she works with teams.
- 1:57She's, working to figure out what's most autonomous ways that teams can work together,
- 2:03and she's predominantly in the tech sector.
- 2:05So Sabrina, thanks so much for taking the time to spend with us today.
- 2:09Oh, Roxanne.
- 2:09You are wonderful.
- 2:10Thank you so much for having me.
- 2:12Like you said, we've been doing a couple different speaking engagements together lately,
- 2:16and each topic is more riveting than the next.
- 2:20This is something that couldn't be more relevant right now.
- 2:23It's a passion of both of ours, so I'm excited to dive in.
- 2:27It'll be fun.
- 2:29So tell me tell me a little bit about you, like, in in what's, I mean, law.
- 2:33You you know, nothing against, lawyers.
- 2:36I've worked a lot with a lot of governments.
- 2:40Tell me about what's what was your family into the legal profession.
- 2:43How did you kind of decide to and of all things litigation?
- 2:46Well, how did you end up there?
- 2:47Right.
- 2:48Not even close.
- 2:49So, you know, kinda truncating the whole story.
- 2:53I'm an immigrant.
- 2:54So I was born and raised in Germany, moved here.
- 2:57In elementary school, have the weird accent, and crooked bangs the whole bit, you know, the
- 3:03leader hosing and everything.
- 3:04And, You know, I think part of that instilled such an enormous pride, nationality and work
- 3:15ethic and loyalty to those around me.
- 3:19I also had to learn how to build extended families immediately because all of my family
- 3:24was in Germany, and we were in the US.
- 3:26And so I immediately had to kinda learn how do I make my second grade teacher, my aunt, and my
- 3:33mentor becomes, like, the grandma figure.
- 3:35And so I started learning that I, you know, could pull people into my life and they could
- 3:39They could fill these roles that maybe weren't as traditional, and how they got there, but
- 3:44maybe would be able to teach me skills and feed into me in ways that I didn't necessarily have
- 3:50in, you know, kind of my situation.
- 3:52And that has, you know, that has been my number one secret to success.
- 3:56I'll start right there.
- 3:57It has nothing to do with me.
- 3:59It's a 100% the people I surround myself with.
- 4:01You included, by the way.
- 4:03So, you know, I I dug into school.
- 4:06I love school.
- 4:07I was the kid who would make my own homework when we didn't have homework.
- 4:11And I had, like, an overhead projector as a toy.
- 4:15I was just that kid.
- 4:16I did summer school for fun.
- 4:18So, anyway, so I ended up skipping when I was in 6th grade.
- 4:22They wanted to put me in high school.
- 4:23My parents thought that might be a little bit too much kind of too.
- 4:27Anyway, so I ended up skipping 7th grade, and then I did end up skipping another grade once I
- 4:31went to high school.
- 4:33So Starting college very early, I had to figure out how am I gonna pay for it because there's
- 4:38no trust fund.
- 4:39There's my parents didn't even know what an application to college was.
- 4:43They just The expectation is you're going to college.
- 4:45You'll get straight a's and figure it out, kid.
- 4:47So I give my driver's license.
- 4:49I start college, and I'm like, well, I gotta pay for it.
- 4:51So I started a company.
- 4:54All in the same year.
- 4:5416 was a big year for me.
- 4:56And, I started working with children, primarily on the autism spectrum, but with more of a
- 5:03behavioral component and then just became obsessed.
- 5:06Just absolutely obsessed neuroscience, behavioral science, psychology as a whole,
- 5:12interests me, and I think a lot of ways, has impacted the rest of my career.
- 5:17So I was very, you know, I I ended up you know, kinda transforming that.
- 5:21Again, secret to my success.
- 5:22I was sixteen who's gonna listen to a six year old punk, but I ended up surrounding myself
- 5:27brilliant people with their master's degrees and plus and all these kinds of things and
- 5:31created almost some very similarly modeled after the cancer treatment of of America.
- 5:37And so I had a little bit of speech, a little bit of occupational therapy, a little bit of
- 5:41applied behavioral analysis, a little bit of verbal behavior, said all these different, you
- 5:45know, experts around me and was obsessed with learning and and the clinic ended up being
- 5:50incredibly successful And then I went on to law school and decided, it would be fun to
- 5:59litigate.
- 6:00I don't know why.
- 6:01I have no idea.
- 6:02It turns out it was.
- 6:03It was a blast.
- 6:05But I was working with and representing different tech companies.
- 6:09And one of the companies we've been incredibly successful with some, you know, work we had
- 6:14been doing.
- 6:14And they said, would you ever come to the sales leadership side?
- 6:18And quarter after quarter passed in No.
- 6:20No.
- 6:20I'm an attorney.
- 6:21No.
- 6:21No.
- 6:22I'm an attorney.
- 6:23And then finally, they said, okay.
- 6:24You write your contract, and so I did.
- 6:26And I wrote a great contract, and they they signed it.
- 6:29In the rest of history.
- 6:30And, I joke be mostly because it's completely true, these 3 careers are exactly the same.
- 6:37It's just a different name.
- 6:39It's understanding people.
- 6:40It's understanding what motivates people and how to get them doing more of what you want
- 6:45them to do, less of what you don't want them to do in working together better and faster than
- 6:50they have been before.
- 6:52That's it in a nutshell.
- 6:53I'm curious, right, because you talk working a lot of with autism and, you know, we talk so
- 6:58much with neurodiversity.
- 7:00In that role, What did you learn about neurodiverse?
- 7:05Like you said, people are people, and we all wanna do really, really well.
- 7:08That potentially you kind of foss pollinated with what you do today.
- 7:14Well, so much now in the tech industry, and we have a very, very neurodiverse team.
- 7:20You know, at continuum.
- 7:23One of the things I instantly learned, because I worked with a fair amount of nonverbal people
- 7:28which is very different than they don't have thoughts and feelings and opinions.
- 7:33They just sometimes people with a Lexia, for instance.
- 7:36Their brain wasn't communicating with their mouth, and they could have full on sentences.
- 7:40I mean, some of these people have even gone on to write books and beautiful poetry and all
- 7:44these things.
- 7:45They just can't verbalize what's going on in their brain.
- 7:48And so what I instantly found is that verbal communication is not the only way we
- 7:53communicate.
- 7:54And then, once I was able to tap into that, I think that was the secret to my success back
- 8:00then, was I could almost anticipate when when a child was gonna do something because I knew
- 8:05their behavior so well.
- 8:06Now granted my job was to analyze behavior.
- 8:09So I got kinda good at that, but You know, and then understanding what motivates people.
- 8:14Again, a lot of this nonverbal language, and components to human behavior that are
- 8:20incredible indicators.
- 8:21And still one of my favorite things to this day.
- 8:24It's called the behavioral panel on YouTube.
- 8:26They analyze different inter interviews just based on their behavior and, you know, blink
- 8:30rates and you know, if they touched parts of their face, all that kind of stuff.
- 8:34So, you know, it it taught me really about the power of non verbal communication and being
- 8:40able to read and anticipate those, and how you use that to create bonds.
- 8:46In relationships again without using a word, you know, and a lot of times I work with
- 8:50minority students who maybe didn't necessarily speak English, and I was helping them learn
- 8:54English and social cues, all that kind of stuff.
- 8:56And to be able to connect with somebody when you don't speak the same language is such a
- 9:01beautiful thing that you realize how little we need language for that human element to still
- 9:07show up?
- 9:08Absolutely.
- 9:09And I would think in the tech sector, and, I mean, obviously, you can you can share with me,
- 9:14right, a lot of people on the spectrum potentially have a phenomenal qualities that,
- 9:21you know, say somebody that was not neurodiverse couldn't you know, focus at that
- 9:26intently.
- 9:26I have one of my best friends, her son is autistic.
- 9:30And so of course, we've been friends for 30 years and, you know, didn't know.
- 9:34And then she went through the whole, you know, grieving process or whatever.
- 9:39But as this young man has grown, the intricate you know, there's a I think it was called
- 9:48connects or whatever, and we would buy him things and lead the room.
- 9:52And would come back and within minutes, he would have these phenomenal things built, and
- 9:58we'd be like, uh-huh, how?
- 10:01How is that possible?
- 10:02So it's interesting, especially with the with the sector that you are are in that that you
- 10:09you must get a broad spectrum, not just about, like you said, diversity, with people not
- 10:14speaking English, but just people with phenomenal qualities that to the quote and
- 10:20quote average person, they would be like, oh, they're different or they're they're difficult
- 10:24to deal with, or you know, they're not able to anticipate or whatever.
- 10:28So when you're when you're dealing with teams, let's talk a little bit about that because my,
- 10:34you know, when my world, obviously, in in my career as a psychotherapist, you know, I would
- 10:41often say that, you know, just I prefer if I'm used to be in my earlier years getting a new
- 10:47client to give me give me the video of them.
- 10:51And I would turn off the the sound because that would help me really, really get a get a sense
- 10:57of, that person because 95% behaviors, unconscious anyway.
- 11:03How about that?
- 11:04Wow.
- 11:05Right?
- 11:05Wow.
- 11:06Versus kinda getting the, you know, the yay high files that if you were to read everything
- 11:11about it, oftentimes people are pigeonholed or, you know, difficult or a diagnosis, that really
- 11:17takes away from you getting to the to know the core person, which is what I I love that you're
- 11:23saying that you, got to know, right, with with your path.
- 11:29And it was, I mean, some of my best moments I had before I really got, you know, before my
- 11:34career and IT really took off, at a extremely near death experience.
- 11:38I was I was so certain I was dying.
- 11:39I'm crying to the EMT.
- 11:40Please don't let me die.
- 11:42And I kinda had this moment of You know what?
- 11:45If this is it, I'm really proud of what I did.
- 11:49And the thing that stuck out to me the most is my work with people, with neurodiverse people.
- 11:54And because it it there's such a sense of fulfillment and the human element becomes so
- 12:02apparent in ways that we don't really expect, to your point, you know, a vast majority of of
- 12:08the smartest people in our world, including you know, a lot presume or assume that, you know,
- 12:15Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, you know, even Thomas Jefferson, ironically also or
- 12:20interestingly also the one of the first people to get the MMR, but in any event, you know,
- 12:25some of the smartest people in our world that have made massive contributions to society,
- 12:31including some leaders that we could think of now, or somewhere on that spectrum or or
- 12:36neurodiverse.
- 12:36You know, I work a lot with human trafficking survivors.
- 12:40And I just did a piece, with an amazing CEO, about how they're they're so uniquely equipped
- 12:48because of their PTSD to, be exceptional at cybersecurity.
- 12:54And understanding cybersecurity attacks and things like that because they're so attuned to
- 12:59detail.
- 13:00And they see things, and they they're good at watching just minor changes that could be a
- 13:05threat.
- 13:06And so it it's things like this where we don't realize the benefit until you kinda step back
- 13:13and go, oh, wait a minute.
- 13:15The same is for engineering.
- 13:16The same is for building teams.
- 13:18Not everybody can be the connector or the funny one or the whatever.
- 13:22You know, the one who remembers that your daughter's birthday was on Tuesday.
- 13:26You need those people in your team too, but then you need everybody else.
- 13:30You know, it's like any other community.
- 13:32You need folks who carry multiple, you know, different roles.
- 13:35And, that's what I, you know, that's what I see the neurodiverse community doing and what's
- 13:40awesome.
- 13:41My I mean, I think for both of us and and our teams and and friends is it's so much more
- 13:48accepted now.
- 13:48It's not perfect by any stretch, but it's starting, especially in IT, which you know, now
- 13:54I'm so close to.
- 13:55So I can't speak for every industry, but particularly in IT, in an engineering,
- 14:00especially it's almost like a badge of honor, and it's I couldn't be happier to see that
- 14:05evolve.
- 14:06You know?
- 14:08How have you found out the evolution?
- 14:10Now that I mean, you know, I've had multiple podcasts on people with neurodiversity and, you
- 14:15know, talking about it so that people can understand it.
- 14:19I think you know, in corporate, you know, 20, 25 years ago, it was like that if there was
- 14:25accommodations, I I definitely didn't know about it.
- 14:28Or even in schools when I talk, university and college just at the tail end of it when I, you
- 14:34know, was teaching.
- 14:35They've started to kind of you know, talk more about accommodation and short term kind of,
- 14:40concerns and how they can assist with people.
- 14:42Now it's completely different.
- 14:44So in IT, how has that flourished the industry?
- 14:49Like, I'm just thinking about, you know, specific, like you talked a little bit about
- 14:54somebody being able to read micro elements, to be able to decipher, if there's an abnormality
- 15:02behavior to around trafficking.
- 15:06So what kind of things would what kind of advancements have you seen in the tech industry
- 15:11to allow people that are new neurodiverse to be considered maybe at times with, say, maybe 10
- 15:18years ago, they might not have been.
- 15:20You know, I'm not I'm not close enough.
- 15:22I would love to get, you know, like, a panel of neurodiverse people and say, okay.
- 15:26Tell tell me the truth.
- 15:27But in my extremely limited experience and, just just extremely limited, you know, we work
- 15:35with several organizations Dell is a great example where they pull their teams.
- 15:39They have things like, employee resource groups and things like that.
- 15:43And they leverage some of their technology to be able to say, hey.
- 15:46You know what?
- 15:47This person is always turning the volume up really high.
- 15:50We should check on them and make sure they don't need these kinds of assistive technology
- 15:53tools or things like that.
- 15:55But, again, just in the the limited conversations that I've had in my limited
- 15:59experience, I don't know if we're quite where we should be when it comes to corporate America
- 16:05embracing it.
- 16:07I see it as the people of corporate America embracing and and just embracing that there
- 16:15were in enjoying.
- 16:16I mean, really, you know, in including, neurodiverse people, but I don't see corporate
- 16:23America stepping up the way that I would love to see.
- 16:26Now, again, I couldn't be more biased.
- 16:29I think it is, like I said, we have people on the spectrum on our staff.
- 16:33We have some of those brilliant engineers that identify as, you know, maybe on the spectrum or
- 16:38have been diagnosed with different things.
- 16:40And, like I said, I I I there's there's very few people who are more brilliant than them and
- 16:45more technical, though.
- 16:47And so I think the people in the IT industry see the value.
- 16:54I don't know yet.
- 16:55I in my experience, I don't think corporate America stepped up yet, and there's some pretty
- 17:00pretty significant things we could be doing it.
- 17:02We're just we're just now starting to kind of talk about mental health, but not really.
- 17:08We're just kinda now talking about, you know, oh, I have these traits too and things like
- 17:15that, but it's I haven't seen a big movement, a big step out even in marketing.
- 17:21We don't even see people with physical disabilities that much in, like, advertisements
- 17:25or anything like that.
- 17:26At least in the IT industry.
- 17:27I'm just now starting to see women with headscarves, so religious diversity in
- 17:33marketing, and even that's fairly limited.
- 17:36So I think we have a massive, massive way to go, from the largest of the large to the
- 17:43smallest of the small organizations in the industry.
- 17:46I just, I think there's a lot left to do there.
- 17:48So it's a beginning point.
- 17:49At least we're now aware, and we know that we should be more cognizant when, you have
- 17:56differences on your teams.
- 17:57So you start you swing from being a litigator into sales.
- 18:03And so tell me tell me did what was your role and and how did that get you into Was it sales
- 18:11teams, or what was your role when you started in the tech sector?
- 18:15Yeah.
- 18:16Yeah.
- 18:16It's You know, I'll tell you the the takeaway is it takes one person to believe in you.
- 18:23It just takes one person.
- 18:25So If there's someone that you see that you go, you know what?
- 18:28I think they've got it.
- 18:30Just do it.
- 18:30Just believe in them.
- 18:31Go push them a little bit further.
- 18:33There was one person.
- 18:34He knows who he is.
- 18:36His child was actually you know, he, was in one of my clinics.
- 18:41He worked with a lot of the therapists that, you know, I worked with And he had known my
- 18:46work ethic back then.
- 18:47And then, obviously, during law school and, you know, we have known each other as I became a
- 18:51litigator, And, he just saw something in me.
- 18:56And, he said, you know, would you would you consider?
- 18:58Would you consider?
- 18:59And he kept hounding me for several quarters.
- 19:02And I said, no.
- 19:03No.
- 19:03I I don't know anything about sales.
- 19:04I don't know anything about tech, and I don't know anything about leadership.
- 19:08And I never really seen myself, you know, with the first company.
- 19:10I never saw myself as a leader because I was significantly young decades younger than
- 19:16anybody had worked for me.
- 19:17I was just the conduit.
- 19:19It was like, hey.
- 19:19We should all get together and help some kids.
- 19:21You know?
- 19:22I didn't see myself as that, but he saw it.
- 19:25He saw how he could orchestrate how hard I work and how there is nothing more important to me
- 19:30than the outcome of the people I'm serving.
- 19:32It's it's truly an obsession.
- 19:35It it and not always in the best way.
- 19:37So don't follow my example, but he saw that.
- 19:39And so, you know, he, he handheld a lot of hand holding.
- 19:44So I came in as a sales director for a region for West Coast sales, and I had, I don't know,
- 19:51maybe 10 or 12.
- 19:53I can't remember exact.
- 19:54I had I had a fairly small team, and, it went like gangbusters.
- 19:59I mean, we nearly doubled the size of the business in 2 half years.
- 20:03We were doing 1,000,001,000,000 of dollars.
- 20:06When I first started, they wrote about a twenty five year old company, 20 something year old
- 20:10company, They're doing about 10,000,000 in business.
- 20:12When I left about two and a half years later, they were about $24,000,000.
- 20:17I mean, we were just knocking it out of the park.
- 20:21And it was the same skill I just told you about.
- 20:25I I think you have to be comfortable with not being the smartest person in the room.
- 20:31And then if you can really turn it on, be excited about not being the knowledgeable
- 20:37person in the room.
- 20:38And I have always my greatest talent is just surrounding myself with such brilliant people
- 20:44and listening.
- 20:46And asking questions and being very honest with I don't understand things because it happens a
- 20:50lot in in trusting them, but then building this network and this trust of communication to say,
- 20:57oh, I get what you're saying, Melissa or John or whatever.
- 21:01You know?
- 21:02But I think we need to tweak it this way.
- 21:04So having that open communication, I think there's a difference between surrounding
- 21:09yourself with really smart people and letting them take the helm.
- 21:12Versus working collectively and collaboratively as a team and getting the best out of each
- 21:17person without exhausting them.
- 21:19And so, So it started with that.
- 21:22By the time I left, I was running, you know, global sales and all kinds of different things.
- 21:28We were running global road shows and all kinds of fun stuff.
- 21:33And then the rest was history.
- 21:35The the rest was history.
- 21:36And now, you know, like you mentioned earlier, I'm the CEO of the company and you know,
- 21:41running multi $1,000,000 engagements, and it's just been such a wild ride.
- 21:49And it all kinda started.
- 21:50With this one person who said, you got it.
- 21:52You got it, kid.
- 21:53I see something in you.
- 21:55And, me going, alright.
- 21:57If you see it, I'll trust you.
- 21:59I'll try my hardest, but I don't know.
- 22:01And I had so many safety nets when I initially took the role.
- 22:08You know, because I was so scared, and and he was so willing to give me those safety nets, in
- 22:13order for me to feel that security.
- 22:15So I can't take a lot of credit for it.
- 22:17Again, it it pretty much my life comes back to surround yourself with brilliant people.
- 22:22Goodhearted, smart, hardworking people.
- 22:25The rest kinda takes care of itself.
- 22:27So he saw that, but you were scared, but you still took the step And, like, I mean, that's,
- 22:32you know, it's kinda like, you know, we talk a little, you know, you hear everybody talking
- 22:36about imposter syndrome.
- 22:37You're like, yes.
- 22:38Clearly, you have trans.
- 22:39A lot of transferable skills, right, like you, you know, having worked, you know, with
- 22:44diversity in in, learning or different kind of platforms, then Of course, you're going into
- 22:50litigation where you're having to understand reads, figure out what's in what's in the
- 22:55courtroom, how you're kind of shoveling lots of different nuances, I think, that of subs of
- 23:00skills that you eventually come to.
- 23:02And then, you know, someone obviously seeing the the capacity that you have to be, I I would
- 23:08say, like, a servant leader, like, to recognize.
- 23:12I'm kinda the I'm kinda like the glue.
- 23:16I recognize what my limitations are and I try to understand what are the strengths of the
- 23:22people around me and maybe also understand their limitations too and creating a space for
- 23:28them to, a place of safety, I would say, for them to be able to listen or maybe objectively
- 23:36hear the perspective, not just you on your team, but also the others on your team.
- 23:41Right.
- 23:42And a lot of times, you know, we had team meetings and we talked about investment blocks
- 23:46and I would bring in experts.
- 23:48I mean, that became kind of my thing to the point other people on different teams.
- 23:51Alright.
- 23:51Can I join your meetings?
- 23:52Because it wasn't a Sabrina show.
- 23:54It was, let's bring in this expert and talk about this.
- 23:57Let's, you know, and and the team would contribute and say, I don't understand this at
- 24:00all.
- 24:01You know, what's sassy?
- 24:02What's the edge?
- 24:03What's cloud computing?
- 24:04What are all these buzzwords?
- 24:06And we would bring in different experts to talk about it.
- 24:09So, again, I think coming in with some of that humility, I think to your point, understanding
- 24:14when you're skills transfer.
- 24:15I think that's something that especially early in career, people coming back into their
- 24:20careers, maybe they left sabbatical or for parenthood or something like that coming back
- 24:26and not really realizing how much of those skills transfer you know, as a litigator in any
- 24:32kind of legal work that you do, whether it's writing or oral or whatever, your job is to
- 24:37take and sanely complex things and truncate them to the most understandable, simplified,
- 24:44and convincing message possible.
- 24:47That's what we do in tech because tech is super complex, and you have to take this massive
- 24:53thing and and make it make sense to the person you're talking to and make it relate to what
- 25:00they're interested in or what they're trying to accomplish.
- 25:03So, again, it was the same job.
- 25:05I just didn't realize it.
- 25:06You're just plugging in different inputs, but you're still
- 25:08looking put on a different a different hat, but you took the skills that you were good with you
- 25:13and accentuated those as you went along.
- 25:15Exactly.
- 25:15Now let's talk a little bit about, we know, presently in the world There's so much going
- 25:22on.
- 25:23Obviously, the tech sector, has been, greatly impacted.
- 25:27I think there's a lot of layoffs that have happened are gonna continue to happen, but,
- 25:32obviously, there's amazing things also happening in the tech sector.
- 25:36What are you seeing out there in reference to, kind of the pulse of the tech sector in
- 25:42reference?
- 25:43So to all these changes that are occurring.
- 25:46You know, it's, it's unlike anything I've seen, and and the pandemic certainly helped
- 25:52accelerate so much of this.
- 25:54You know, we went through this hiring craze where, you know, CRO of giant company would
- 26:01call me and say you'll never believe how much they just poach the guy from me about, you
- 26:05know, you'll never believe how much this bonus is of these people they poach.
- 26:08So we went this went through this insane hiring craze, to now these mass layoffs.
- 26:14And again, some we support some of the largest organizations in the world.
- 26:18You know?
- 26:19And so we get an inside perspective that maybe you don't always get to see and, or at least
- 26:27until it's much later.
- 26:29So there's still plenty more to come.
- 26:31And, you know, between supply chain issues, manufacturing issues, obviously different wars
- 26:38and and, geopolitical conflict is maybe a safe way to say it.
- 26:46You know, there's a lot of unrest and uncertainty And I think, in fact, I was just
- 26:50reading some, you know, some research on this literally just yesterday.
- 26:55You know, what people are looking for now are resilient teams helping retain the talent that
- 27:01they do have because you have to do the same, if not more work with less.
- 27:05So now you not only do you have a demotivated team, which one of my sort of many expertise is
- 27:10around motivation.
- 27:12So you've got a demotivated team.
- 27:14Who have to do more with less.
- 27:16They're all remote.
- 27:17They don't feel connected, or maybe they feel semi connected.
- 27:21And it's a lot.
- 27:21They're worried about their jobs.
- 27:23So now they've got kinds of hormones triggered and, you know, we're it it's just a it's a it's
- 27:29a it's a mind mess.
- 27:31And so, from a team's perspective, from a leadership perspective, even as folks who are
- 27:38who are teammates who are influencing the culture of their teams, people wanna feel like
- 27:43they're being invested in.
- 27:45Enablement has never been more important.
- 27:47You know, here's the other interesting thing is the tech industry is is rapidly moving to
- 27:53solution sales.
- 27:54We're not talking about, hey.
- 27:55Look at this really cool new widget that spins even faster than this widget that we sold you
- 27:59last year.
- 28:00Or, hey, it's it's tech refresh time, and you've had that stuff for 3 years.
- 28:05Let's get you a new box.
- 28:06Now you're talking boxes and wires and software and it's it's incredibly complex.
- 28:13And now not only are you selling to IT people, you're selling to OT to the business side of
- 28:20things.
- 28:20So you have brand new relationships you need to make who have totally different interests, and
- 28:26you're worried about your job.
- 28:28It's a total cluster, but in in these kinds of times comes an enormous amount of opportunity
- 28:36if you can leverage it.
- 28:38If you can get on, you know, if you can get a hold of it, And so part of it is, you know, if
- 28:43we can enable our teams and show them, look, we're invested in you, you're important to us,
- 28:48it also equips them with the right skill so that they can be successful.
- 28:52Sometimes I say to my team, like, if I've got a salesperson who maybe hasn't had a sale in a
- 28:56minute, I'll say you just need to win.
- 28:58As humans, sometimes we just need a win.
- 29:01And so I've noticed that the more you can invest in your people and enablement is
- 29:05probably one of the strong ways, you can do that right now because it can be remote.
- 29:10It can be funny.
- 29:10You can have prizes.
- 29:11You can do gamification.
- 29:13You can be silly and still learn.
- 29:15It kinda ties in all those different pieces while still kind of telling them without
- 29:21telling them.
- 29:22I'm invested in you.
- 29:23Your worth investing, so your job is a little bit safer.
- 29:26Those are the kinds of things that I'm seeing really work when it comes to retaining talent.
- 29:33And nurturing a culture for growth and more success.
- 29:38This was such a great interview that we decided to turn it into a two part series be sure to
- 29:43tune in next week for part 2 so you don't miss out on the amazing content.
- 29:48Thank you for tuning in again.
- 29:50Before I sign off, I wanna you to consider.
- 29:53What is it disrupting your bottom line?
- 29:55Just a reminder that my book return on relationships will be available on June 10th on
- 30:00Amazon, and it's available today on my website at roxanderhodge.comforward/book.
- 30:06For more tools, insights in anecdote about your leadership story.
- 30:09Consider pre ordering, you'll find the link in the show notes.
- 30:13Thanks for tuning in to authentic live with Roxanne, creating the space for positive
- 30:19healthy change.
- 30:20Roxanne is a keynote speaker, psychotherapist, and coach to work with Roxanne, visit
- 30:26rocksandirhaj.com/blueprint.
- 30:30We'll see you next time.
- 30:32On authentic living with Roxanne.