welcome to the green ocean weekly
podcast
a show to inspire current and aspiring
leaders in real estate
i’m paige ward your host so welcome
to part one of a two-part episode
one that’s kind of near and dear to my
heart because it gets you in the feels
and i love that
so but we’re really going to talk today
about
meaning and purpose and mattering
because
when it comes right down to it it’s such
a basic human need and we all want to
belong
and we want to all feel like we matter
we have a special guest today
helen chung who’s amazing and she’s
going to be sharing her
insight and i know that we’re all going
to really benefit from that
so i want to uh really quickly touch
base
on what went well that’s something we
like to do every week as you know and so
helen i think you’re probably familiar
with this so
since you’re our special guest what went
well for you this week
that’s a great question i was looking
forward to i was looking forward to
answering this one
so a highlight for me this week
was actually it occurred last night
my our youngest son his name is james
he’s 15. decided to make dinner
you know sometimes he gets a little bit
grumpy
when he cooks and and i i haven’t always
been
sure about why what’s the cause of the
grumpiness is it because like
he’s resentful that i’m not cooking for
him
or is it you know what could it be so i
decided
to take a break because i was working
all day in my office i decided to take a
break go into the kitchen
and i just helped him out by
cleaning up doing the dishes asking him
oh what are you going to put in next
um suggesting why don’t you try putting
in some basil
you put in at the end it doesn’t cook
all the way through
and he was not at all grumpy
and you know the finished product itself
was
was delicious and we all enjoyed the
pasta
but it was a process that was a little
different this time
and i realized oh i
i need to make myself available for
these
moments when he’s in the kitchen because
usually he’s upstairs in his room on his
computer
so i’ve got to take advantage of that of
those moments and
not take control but just be there
and support and he was really encouraged
by that he didn’t say it
to me but i felt a difference in the
energy
and i got to enjoy his delicious pasta
so
that’s something that went well this
week well helen thank you so much for
sharing that
and let’s uh let’s throw it to jason
what went well for you this week jason
well this is sort of a double-edged
sword but it was
my birthday this week and
so a couple things yeah well yeah
and uh the first thing is i woke up and
i thought i was 48 years old so i spent
about half my day
uh being a lot closer to 50 than i was
really comfortable with you know
and it was until my uh mother-in-law
called me and said happy 47th birthday
and i said what 47 and she corrected me
and i realized i got a year younger so
that went really well uh but um what was
really amazing though is that my
incredible wife
uh put together a surprise birthday
celebration weekend for me
and she got together a lot of our
family and a bunch of my close friends
and we were able to take them up to the
property
and although i spent the entire weekend
barbecuing setting up and cleaning
that feels good to me i love having
everybody around
i love being of service and i love just
um you know the fact that people were
willing to come out
in in these times especially and
celebrate with me was pretty awesome
that’s a that’s a sign that you’re
maturing jason is you always think that
you’re the
year older than you actually are i don’t
know what it is about that i don’t know
if you guys have that problem
but you always think you’re like the
next one so yay
happy unbirthday thank you
so howard what went well for you this
week i’m gonna
i always like to uh punch it back over
to you first so what about well for you
i should have seen that coming do you
know it was really interesting
um a few months ago i was
friended on social media by a gal
in media and um and we have very similar
interests and it’s funny because
i forgot to actually ask her i don’t
know why she friended me in the first
place because i never met her
but over the last few months we’ve
really been communicating more
um over social media we she has a cool
podcast i’ve been listening to that and
it’s like everything she was saying
sounded like something that would come
out of my mouth so finally we decided
that
okay we have to meet this we have to
meet in person
and um so i met her over in factoria
on friday uh sitting on a little bench
out in the sidewalk
far apart you know and we just had the
most wonderful conversation and
it’s just that people reaching out
to others even if they’re complete
strangers but you may have shared
interests
and and being willing to take the time
to
to nurture that and find out and you
know you could come away with that with
a really cool new friend and that’s
exactly what happened and
so i’m i’m excited about that she’s a
she’s a really cool chick and
you know we just it’s really interesting
the people that we know in common
but um so that’s always kind of a fun
thing too so yeah that just made my
heart happy
so that went well so right back at you
howard
well you know i think i i often talk
about my kids um and something that
like helen did you know as far as like
what something that went
well and it’s often in relation to time
and and some kind of activity
um and i think we’ve all heard that you
know it’s just like how do you spell
love right how do you spell love for
kids and it’s t-i-m-e right with time
now quality of time but just time right
time itself
and uh my you know my mom is uh kind of
stage four-ish uh
alzheimer’s my dad’s a full-time
caregiver uh saw him a couple nights ago
you know they live pretty close and yeah
he he just called me up and just said
hey can you just come over
mom needs to just see your face right
and
and when he says that i also know it’s
like he needs to see my face
he needs to have engagement because my
mom doesn’t speak anymore unfortunately
and so he just needs that social
dialogue and interaction and so
just sitting with them and smiling with
them and watching tv with them
having you know uh you know a little
food with them
it just makes a big difference so what
well nothing
crazy or spectacular it was just that
that moment where we could just
reminisce and
um i just got it just got my dad to talk
about uh what a blessing it’s been to be
a first generation
immigrant and all the history and life
together and
and um i think there is power when you
get to even
reminisce right and retell your own
story even to your own family member
it was just a reminder of what a
blessing
it is uh you know just to live life even
in difficult circumstances
so that went well you know uh just
spending that time and
getting a chance to re-hear his story um
because it’s always a little nuanced you
know
that is beautiful and good for your dad
for reaching
out because that’s not always easy and i
know he reached out on your mom’s behalf
but certainly you all benefited from it
and good for him and so maybe that’s
just a good reminder to all of us to
make that phone call or it’s okay to ask
for company
and and conversation uh so today
um again back to you this is actually
gonna be episode one
of two we think that this is a subject
matter that
warrants a little bit more extended
conversation
and so today uh again we’re going to be
talking about
about mattering and um helen you’re here
to
you’re quite an expert on this and we
want to really kind of start with you
and hearing
let’s just let’s start with our baseline
here and then we’ll build from there
and so i’m really looking forward to
hearing what you have to share with us
today
let me just i’ll just share a little bit
about my background and then i will
move into this idea this concept of
mattering so uh i my name is helen chung
and i’m an
um assistant professor of industrial
organizational psychology at seattle
pacific university
and so that my background is org
psychology
it simply means um the study of
psychology
applied to the workplace and so our job
is really to help
organizations be more effective
sort of at you know that individual team
and sort of the macro level outcomes for
the organization
and then i wear another hat which is i’m
also a leadership development coach
um that’s a little bit about me this
theory of mattering
is something that i recently stumbled
upon
and um the theory comes from a community
psychologist named
isaac preltensky and i can’t promise
that i’m saying his
last name correctly and um
so i stumbled upon an article that he
wrote it’s actually very recent and it’s
called mattering at the intersection
of psychology philosophy and politics
and essentially what he proposes
is that human beings have a fundamental
need
to matter and there are two sort of
complementary sides to that
to experiences to mattering the first is
to
to matter to others and that’s to feel
valued
to feel worthy to have a an experience
of dignity
and the other side of that is to
give value to contribute
value to oneself
and to others in the community
so it’s really two sides of one coin
one side is to feel valued the other
side is to give
value and what i really love about this
theory
is that it doesn’t just stop at the
individual interior level because
sometimes i think in western society and
culture
we tend to think about well-being at the
individual level
of who am i how am i doing
um but you flip the
the coin and we’ve got to think about
the question
who am i in relation to other people
um not just in the sense of mattering to
other people but
also having the power agency
and some control over affecting
other people’s lives in a really
positive way as well as being able to
affect one’s own life in terms of having
that
autonomy i find it really interesting
that we all shared our what went well
and it was all about time spent with
people we cared about jason with your
family up you know at the
cabin and howard with your parents and
helen with your son i mean
that right there is the first thing that
i noticed
is that you talk about giving meaning to
your life
and truly i think it is about
it starts with who you have around you
yeah paige i find it interesting that
helen didn’t mention the fact that she’s
married to me
and so you know i’m sure some people are
making an assumption that we are
married right i mean she’s literally
downstairs right now in her office i’m
upstairs in the in the bedroom makeshift
office here
but yes we are married uh helen and
that’s a whole nother story we met in
jerusalem of all places right
uh uh just very randomly uh
and uh uh but that’s a whole nother
story but you know one of the things
that uh she and i were talking about
before
um we got started is the fact that and
she shared this video with me this
youtube video
um you know uh of isaac i don’t want to
attempt as uh
say his last name but he starts off the
conversation
with disengaged workers right around
the world not just the country but
around the world there’s so many people
who are disengaged with work and so i
think
you know a lot of thought can be put
into oh why are people disengaged with
work is it the leader is it the boss is
it the
team around him is it the work itself
and um and so
all of a sudden it’s like this mattering
and i think there’s almost maybe
a flip side to the word mattering which
is meaning
right is this work meaningful am i doing
meaningful work and so
i mean i think we can all have
experiences you know um ourselves and
others where
if the work isn’t meaningful if the work
doesn’t matter
i’m going to just naturally be
disengaged
and you know we’re talking about the
real estate industry where
frequently in fact probably the majority
i don’t have the exact specifics
but we you know just uh know in general
that the
um people who come into the business
this is generally a second
a third or even a fourth career right uh
the average age of the realtor who comes
into the industry they’re not in their
20s they’re actually still in their 50s
right upon the most recent study that i
saw
and so it’s like they’ve had work done
before and they want more meaning
you know so it’s not always about money
but they want to have more control they
want to have more meaning with the work
and they feel that real estate um the
home ownership experience
the transaction experience is such an
important piece
and so they decide to come into the real
estate business for meaning
for mattering i mean helen can you i
know elaborate a little bit
maybe either on the disengagement or you
know uh
the fact that people are looking for
meaningful work
yeah i think that at the core of
meaningful work
is um you know are do people
get to do something that you know gives
value to them and
and across individuals that might be
defined a little bit differently like
i mean there might be um an individual
who
is working a job that brings
instrumental value and what i mean by
that is that
they get a paycheck out of that job and
that paycheck enables them
to take care of themselves and to take
care of their family members if they
have family members
um so there’s that instrumental value
to work in that you know it enables us
to
to live to take care of ourselves and
others
there’s also meaning and work in terms
of the work
itself so it in and i think
to some degree what you’re talking about
with disengaged workers there is a
definitely a phenomenon worldwide of
workers not really
feeling engaged with the work
for any number of reasons one of those
reasons could be that
they don’t understand how their work
matters for the organization
like how does what their their piece of
the work
actually um you know contribute
to the final product if it’s a product
or to the final
service for example and i mean you think
about
like how a restaurant is run you have
many components and you have many
different
employees in a restaurant you have the
front and you have the back staff
and so you know a leader in that
restaurant would want to ensure that
every employee understands how what
they’re doing
adds to the whole sort of restaurant
experience
for the customer um and so being able to
understand that larger picture
uh can help with that sort of with that
work engagement
um also another aspect of feeling
engaged to work would be gosh does the
individual feel like
they have the right training and the
right skills
to do the job well are they being
developed
on the job um in a continual manner so
that they can continue to
you know grow in their competency
to reach a level of mastery and then to
go from there to expand their skills
to be able to do to do other things so
growth on the job
in terms of competency toward mastery
in the addition of new skills that’s
also an important
aspect of work so there are kind of um
many layers to this so we could probably
talk about additional layers but
those are some of the pieces of me
finding meaning
in work i’m going to bring in the fact
that you you do like to watch these
korean dramas on netflix
it’s kind of her go-to i think like you
know in order to
recover after literally uh
many many hours all day long of research
and work
she did she does like her korean dramas
and there was this one that was
fascinating uh you know i kind of caught
glimpses of it here and there
um and it was all about the workplace it
wasn’t a romance it wasn’t like one of
those type of dramas it was
just about this individual belonging to
a
team in the workplace that particular
drama that you’re referring to is called
mishang and spelled m-i-s-a-e-n-g
not that uh jason or paige you you may
not be too interested in it but you know
what i don’t know
i might be married yes there are
subtitles
but you know the um it’s a it’s it’s not
a typical
korean drama in that it’s not really it
doesn’t revolve around romantic
relationships
it’s about the team members
relationships
and um this particular drama highlights
a sales team and
in east asian sort of work culture
tends to be very hierarchical so you
have the team lead and then you have
you know kind of the second in command
and then you’ve got maybe the third in
command
and then there’s always that intern
so yeah who tends to be the college grad
um and in this particular series the
the intern is not a college grad he
doesn’t have really the right
credentials
so everybody around him um
sort of dismisses him and they say gosh
who is this person he must have had a
personal connection
in order to get this job he didn’t
really earn it on his own terms
uh this intern just
he becomes so invested
in the work of the team and just pours
his
himself his life into
making contributions and it makes a
difference and
but there are struggles along the way
and what the drama really highlights is
at the end of the day um
how we interact with our team members
the meaning that we have in those social
relationships
the ability to make a contribution
to be recognized for the contribution
those are really important elements for
finding meaning in work
so i love that drama because it’s like
it puts a
a real sort of spotlight on
how we derive a sense of purpose
and meaning and fulfillment in our teams
and i know in real estate uh teen team
dynamics are
are critical right yeah so helen i
i have a question for you and i know how
we kind of touched on this a little bit
before we were talking but
as you know somebody that does um
own a franchise and i’m building my team
now um
with with having to do everything by
zoom and virtually
i am finding it a little bit more
challenging to
like you mentioned create culture like
how do we do that on zoom calls how do
we do that if we’re not having
mixers and and social engagements and
um i can share one thing you know like
i’m lucky enough to be part of john l
scott which does a lot and
as far as keeping us trained and
providing a ton of information and
awesome tools
uh one of those is they provide me with
a sales meeting
um powerpoint each week and
uh you know the first couple of weeks
you know we’re kind of new and we’re
just like okay what are we doing and i’m
following this powerpoint
you know maybe a little bit too closely
and
uh there’s probably not a whole lot of
engagement
and so um my partner and um
our uh what we’re calling our agent um
development coach uh we all put our
heads together and we’re like okay what
can we do to better this situation
how do we get people involved and so
we’ve been working pretty hard at that
one of the things we’re doing is we’re
picking
one agent each week and we’re kind of
interviewing them
and then we’re also using the what went
well strategy and we’re going around the
uh the room and asking everybody went
well for the week and so the meeting has
really turned a corner and i feel like
everybody’s really involved and feels
like they’re a part of
and feels really good about it but what
are some other things that we could be
doing
i love the strategy that you talked
about jason
and i’m glad to hear that that’s working
well you know
they think about the virtual format
uh there’s there are some things that
um are more difficult to do
so some of that is just building
personal connection
so we think about when we meet face to
face um like if you have a sales meeting
if you know a face-to-face sales meeting
for example there’s always like the
before and the in-between and the after
those little hallway conversations or
those little
side tidbits that you share with your
peers and with your colleagues
um and it that doesn’t tend to happen as
much
in the zoom or the online spaces because
there’s a clear structure you kind of
get right to it right
so some of the sharing of divulging of
personal information
and history and oh and what’s going on i
love the fact that you’re doing what
went well because that’s personal
um i think the more that that we can
build
in some of that personal space of
connection
um whether it’s informally the first
five minutes
or maybe staying on the call a little
bit you know after the formal meeting
ends if you stay on the call for a few
more minutes
um just for just to you know share
stories or
you know give people time to ask
additional questions um
build in some of those um kind of
marginal spaces that we have lost
in the online format and that’s to build
that personal relationship and
connection i think
that’s where some of us are feeling
somewhat isolated
and lonely because we just don’t we’re
not having those side conversations
um as much anymore i also think that
um you know giving space to people to
talk about what’s going on in the world
and how it’s affecting them
an example of this would be in one of my
in one of the courses that i taught in
the spring and that was
done just on zoom
um this this was right after
the murder of george floyd and and
you know i was feeling really heavy and
i knew my students were feeling
extremely heavy
about what was going on and and i opened
the the next class with you know i can’t
go on
just like with class like it’s business
as usual
i open the space with you know i just
want to share with you what i’m thinking
and how i’m processing this
and i gave my students an opportunity to
also process we did that for about 15
minutes
um it so it took up a little bit it took
up a quarter of the class
but i i knew that if i didn’t do that
and if i just sort of skated over
then i’m not really thinking about
educating the educational experience
you know at this holistic level i mean
we are human beings and we’re
experiencing things that are happening
personally and societally
um you know the classroom should be a
place
where we can debrief some of this stuff
and i think that you know the research
shows that
people want to bring their whole selves
to work they want to you know not that
they’re bringing all their personal
problems but it’s more
i want to be able to show up at work and
be open with my thoughts
and with my feelings and with some of my
you know
personal identity uh you know concerns
and the more that work is a place
where we can do that the freer that we
feel
um there isn’t this
this uh sort of boundary between my
personal life
and work life because work life is
personal
right the the boundaries there really
aren’t these separations in terms of the
way that we think
and live and yet the way work is
structured sometimes
forces us to create these separations
and then to kind of
oh i’m going to work i’m going to check
myself at the door here my personal
values my personal feelings or
convictions and
my struggles well we’re just kind of
suppressing that
and that doesn’t that doesn’t really
lead to good outcomes so
we’re finding that when people can share
more of what’s going on
um that can be helpful
and i know you know we have limited time
in these online meetings so i think what
you’re doing in terms of what went well
giving people an opportunity to share um
personal things i think that’s a great
strategy i also think that
um the value of frequency like frequent
communication
becomes more important in the online
remote format
because now i have to i’d have to look
at the research on this but
my hypothesis is that when we have
in-person meetings there’s
a lot more residual effect that carries
forward in terms
of the interaction that happened in
person
we can have wonderful interactions
remotely and i’m surprised when
you know students well actually students
are surprised by
how good discussion can be in a remote
format
in a zoom platform or a microsoft teams
platform for example
but the effects of those interactions
the sort of the positive effects they
don’t seem to last as
long and so that’s why i think
consistency and frequency of meaning
becomes pretty critical in the
uh remote format building in space for
some personal reflection and
conversation
how do you create that for the team that
they feel
safe because you know a leader can say
well i want you now to talk about your
personal life or you know
we’re going to allow time for that but
how does that person open up and feel
safe if they share some of that part of
themselves
it’s such a great question be in it
it goes to this idea of how do you build
trust in a team environment
where people do feel safe to to share
personal things
it’s like um does the vulnerability
happen first or does the sort of
trust happen first like so in other
words
do you need to trust somebody in order
to be vulnerable
or do you have to be vulnerable first in
order to build trust
it’s like yeah is that that’s like a
chicken and an egg thing are we ever
gonna know the answer
so this is where i kind of look to the
work of brene brown
who is she’s a social scientist um
in social work and she’s done so much
qualitative research around
vulnerability and courage
and it seems to be that in order to
build trust you have to be willing to
take the risk to be vulnerable
so there’s risk taking involved and i
think this
is where the leader that team lead
is going to need to go first
and s and model the behavior that they
are are trying to really cultivate in
the team
so whether that’s you page or or you
jason if you’re leading a team
you can’t expect your team members to do
something that you’re not willing to do
and also as a team lead kind of
considering
are there some rules or guidelines that
we should all
agree to in terms of how we’re going to
interact with each other
and treat each other and those could be
very simple things but
sort of rules that everybody has
consensus around
um like a simple one confidentiality
if if i share something that is personal
i don’t want howard to go share it with
somebody else right
so just even going over that guideline
of hey
what is said here of a personal nature
we won’t share outside of this group
unless we get specific permission
to share your story with somebody else
right
so something as simple as that so it’s
really i think
team leads need to set the the model
they need to be risky themselves in
terms of vulnerability
and i think that’s part of the beginning
place
of cultivating trust on a team
there is a bit of a movement now with
brene just being so popular with her
books and her ted talk and of course and
uh
you know um her netflix special and what
have you
so there’s more of an awareness that’s
happening i think as a result about
vulnerability transparency
um but you know we have a perspective of
leadership
right like oh if i’m a leader i’ve got
to be strong
and stoic which is almost contrary to
being vulnerable
and transparent right and i think this
is
uh the space that we’ve really got to
dive a little bit deeper in on
especially
as it comes to very uncomfortable topics
such as black lives matter such as
diversity equity and inclusion
especially if there hasn’t been training
for that leader i mean i think
nowadays leaders uh real estate leaders
all leaders but you know leaders in
general who
have basically worked up this rank up to
management or ownership or what have you
it’s not like they were fully equipped
or we were fully equipped
that you know there’s all this
leadership training and specifically how
to lead conversations how to run
zoom meetings how to create
vulnerability and transparency and trust
circles right all of this is it’s kind
of new and so
unless a leader does in fact take time
to reflect
to learn create awareness um you’re just
not going to
have mattering happen i might have to
have you repeat the question but i
wanted to say something really quick
about vulnerability and and the shifting
culture
in i think in businesses in corporations
around
what do what do we want from a leader
and it used to be um that
we really the prototypical leader
has always been male
and usually demographically speaking in
terms of race white
you know that landscape of leadership is
shifting as we have more women
moving through the pipeline and moving
into the upper ranks of leadership
although
we still don’t have enough women there
um we still have a long ways to go in
terms of
uh race and ethnicity and other
identities
just thinking about lgbtq so
still a long ways to go um
you know we used to kind of want the
command and control leader
and now we’re moving to a place where no
we really need leaders who are
empathetic and caring um
you know are willing to be vulnerable
and willing to make courageous decisions
that are not always popular so brene
brown
she’s doing actually a ton of consulting
work with uh with
organizations in this space and there’s
something that she
said that i really kind of latched on to
i think it came up in a podcast
conversation she had with krista tippett
who’s the host of on being
and i’m a huge fan of that show but um
she brene brown says um we need to kind
of
cultivate
a sense of being or a being where
we have a soft front strong back
and a wild heart and what she meant by
that is
we need to be able to be vulnerable
that’s the soft front
the strong back is knowing what our
boundaries are
knowing what our convictions are what
our moral compass is
so that when those are violated hey we
can
kind of put up our hand and say that
enough is enough
and then we have a wild heart which
means we’re willing to dream
we’re willing to move into spaces where
we don’t really have all the answers but
we’re
going to take some risks um
so i wanted to to share that because i
think it’s a great
visual it’s a great kind of it’s become
a mantra for me
saw front uh strong back and wild heart
you’ve kind of created this this picture
of this next generation of leader i mean
obviously we’re talking about the real
estate space and
people have been in the real estate
business for so long uh they haven’t
necessarily
had that training or even exposed to
those ideas to be honest right
um and and that’s what is is the i mean
we’re trying to help
uh create uh you know this next
evolutionary leader
you know to have the strong back moral
compass piece
because that is part of leadership and
that soft front i i do
love that as well that vulnerability uh
that jason you were living to earlier
just
and the collaboration that you had with
your other leaders
just even talk about hey how do we do
this you know that wasn’t just one
person saying well this is the way we’re
going to do and that’s it
it was rather this dialogue and
conversation to for the betterment of
the culture of your team
so i think you did really respond that
is an amazing picture i i really do
appreciate uh
i think that perspective vulnerability
is a
is a bit of a trigger word for some
people because it makes them feel
vulnerable and who wants to feel
vulnerable right that’s a scary scary
thing
and again and i know we’ve we’ve
referenced brene brown here but kind of
building on
on what you had shared with us helen is
that she gives permission
to be awkward and that it’s it’s almost
cool to be awkward it’s okay because
you’re being
yourself and and in creating the
environment where people
are going to encourage you when you’re
awkward because really aren’t we all
you know first of all i just wanted to
know you described to me physically
before soft front strong back with a
wild heart but uh
so how do i
incorporate that
into uh you know my my business
philosophy and i
and um i i i try to be
real vulnerable and i think
vulnerability to me a lot of times is
kind of uh being humble
right it’s humility um it’s being okay
sharing um not just the successes
but you know the losses and we try to
listen
and and allow you know allow that to
come out because it it’s real
right and especially right now a lot of
people are really struggling
and it’s it’s hard conversations to have
that actually does lead me to a question
in that
sometimes like one-on-one is fine you
know let’s all get vulnerable
and you know let’s really talk about
what’s happening but
um like in the group setting you know
like
what what’s okay you know how much do we
you know how much do we talk about
how vulnerable do we get in the group
setting
you know that’s a tricky that’s a tricky
question because i think
you know each person on a team is going
to have a different threshold for what
feels right i don’t think the objective
is to have everybody spill their guts
and
for work the workplace to become
a fair a place of therapy
um because you know there are
some things that people may share that
um others may like hey that’s really
that seems really out of the boundary
here
i don’t know that um that’s appropriate
and so you know that level of
appropriateness it takes
wisdom and discernment to just to kind
of
gauge that but as time goes on moving
into
some of our values and then as time goes
on
i think more and more will come out so
i i’m gonna let some of the sharing
emerge uh organically but i’m also going
to
be intentional about the kinds of
questions
that i do ask um and
start with levels um you know
up here and then moving a little bit
further down and then giving people the
freedom to
share as they are comfortable
um and also i think creating some
guidelines and boundaries around
how we are going to use the information
that we hear from each other
and we are we’re going to respect that
information
uh that will be something that i will
lay out
up front with my team for emerging
leaders and perhaps people that are new
in that position or maybe one that has
established themselves for a while but
is looking for a change
in their company culture what are some
maybe
tips that you have of things that they
can do
to start sort of bringing their team
together
you know in thinking about what emerging
leaders can do
i think i have two thoughts and it’s
related to the concept of
mattering so um earlier i talked about
two sides of one coin so the first side
of the coin is
feeling valued so the emerging leader
if they’re you know leading a team um
can think about how do
i value my team members
do they feel like they’re acknowledged
for who they are
in the individual differences that they
bring
do they feel included in the in the team
meeting do they have a voice
on the team um those are all elements of
feeling
valued so that’s one side of the coin
and then as a bridge to the other side i
want to
give this i actually want to read this
quote that comes from the
pre-loltenski article and he writes
being valued is a necessary but
insufficient condition for mattering so
i’ll say that one more time
being valued is a necessary but
insufficient condition for mattering
because if we flip the coin the other
side is
um as human beings we need to be
able to make a contribution to ourselves
and to
and to others so then as the emerging
leader would need to ask the questions
of
okay have i is are all my team members
equipped and empowered to do this work
have they been trained um have they been
mentored
or coached on some of their
gaps or some of their challenge more
challenging
areas am i checking in
with my team members to see
how they’re feeling and sort of are they
meeting
the outcomes the goals that are
important to them
and that also by the way um
contribute to the overall you know
teams goals and the output of the
organization
so if you take care of the individual
team members your team is going to
benefit and the organization is also
going to benefit
but in order for the organization and
the team to benefit the individual
really needs to be able
to do well in their work to have
competency and mastery and to also have
some decision-making capability
you know so that the team leader you
know
i think and just thinking about coaching
for example
a team leader can be a tremendous
coach um to the team member
but it’s a reciprocal sort of
conversation and relationship
it’s not just that the team members the
team leader
is telling the member here’s everything
you need to do
um it’s more the leader inviting the
team member into conversation about
well you know here’s here are some
things that that we can think about
what do you think about this what are
your personal goals
what would you like to work on what are
some ways that
i can support you and getting better
at those things and in meeting your goal
so it’s really a conversation it’s a
two-way conversation
um and so that’s how i would
those are some of the initial kind of
questions that the emerging leader can
ask
of themselves in relationship to their
team members are they feeling valued
and are they do they have the
opportunity
the training the ability the empowerment
um
to add value to this team we’ve all
experienced moments where
we really felt like something that we
did mattered
and that we mattered right we’ve all had
that experience
and i think all of us have also had the
opposite
feeling the emotion and uh it’s another
m word because we’re talking about
mattering we’re talking about
meaning but uh feeling marginalized
and if we’ve ever felt marginalized in
any way it’s one of the worst
emotional and just you know
psychological i think uh
experiences it stays with you for a very
long time
both on the meaning and mattering as you
feel
you know amazing you you remember that
since you’re a child
but you can also feel the opposite where
boy i feel marginalized right now
and i think that and that is a word that
i know uh that professor also
used in his in that uh or the yeah the
talk that he gave
um and i think that’s a good uh
thing for us to think about as leaders
boy do any of my people
feel marginalized and it’s like even you
can even say the word
and that can even strike up a an emotion
or a feeling in somebody
who has experienced that because it’s
it’s
not a pleasant experience at all and so
i do think that’s something we want to
maybe delve into a little bit deeper
we’re going to give you guys a break for
now we’re gonna slide into part two soon
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