The JYLP 080 with Relationship Practitioner, Mediator, and Author Juli Geske-Peer - Personal Success

[00:00:00] Juli: One will be the one to tell their story Using their own words however they want to tell and the other is invited to listen carefully and really hear what the perspective of the one who's speaking is and then it flips the other person will get their uninterrupted time and the other will listen and what's beautiful about uninterrupted Time is that i can see either in nonverbals or people sometimes actually say i've never heard that before i never Knew you felt that way they are surprised by some of the things that they hear during Reality

[00:00:52] Jacob: Ladies and gentlemen hello i hope you're well I have Juli here with me today um Juli you want to go ahead and give me Let's start out with kind of a bio so kind of how you got to what it is That you do and then maybe give us a low down on what it is that you do

[00:01:04] Juli: Okay awesome well first i'll just say Thank you for having me here today jacob i appreciate it and Hi to all the listeners um I currently run my business which is Peer Performance Solutions and we help organizations and individuals to lift performance and so um through that i use Consulting coaching training and even at Times mediating skills that i've amassed Through various mechanisms i've um You know i have a couple of degrees a ba in communication and then ma in organizational leadership but i also am a certified coach a certified executive coach and a certified emotional intelligence coach as well as a qualified neutral in the state where i live which is minnesota which is a trained and certified mediator so those are the skills that i use in working With organizations teams boards and um i really find it or even Individuals i really find it very helpful and um wonderful work because um The impact with people is amazing to watch so prior to starting my business back in 2014 full-time i worked in a

[00:02:22] Juli: Number of consulting and research firms previously Where i was leading teams delivering services to global and smaller clients and then my last full-time gig right before i started my business was leading a team at the university of minnesota foundation where the team that i led was supporting from The operational side the major gift effort around the university so helping all the frontline fundraisers with research lists predictive modeling things like that so i've kind of come through a varied career coming to where i am the last two gigs that i had full time i was hired specifically to turn teams around a little bit um improve the interface with the group uh improve some team dynamics some cultural elements and uh i was successful in those um thanks to The good work that the people around me did i just set the stage if you will and then let them shine but uh I found that i really like doing that so when i work with clients i work with clients who are struggling in some way

[00:03:35] Juli: Whether it's you know an interface issue a client service issue or even how to motivate a team how to Keep them performing well so i enjoy That kind of fixer role if you will

[00:03:35] Jacob: Right yeah geez yeah you have a lot of great experience in that too So what is The what does the actual Boots on the ground typically look like for you when you're when you're actually face to face with these people with these organizations what are the conversations that come up um what are the common ailments that you seem to see throughout well sometimes i'm just doing helping with planning so facilitating planning sessions or retreats uh figuring out where they want to head strategic planning if you will so that's kind of broad and big and fun Because you get to be creative and innovative and all those things Other times it's helping to repair so if Uh i've been called in where a team isn't gelling well if you will to help them Address their team dynamics i've been called in to help performance whether a management team or Managers in working with their team members but report to them uh

[00:04:51] Juli: What i like to say because i hear it all the time is that accountability conversations are the most difficult part of leadership right i mean those times when you're asking somebody to do something differently than they are those are tough times and so i get called in a lot for that kind of a thing sometimes i'm working directly with the person who needs to kind of adjust sometimes i'm working with the manager to help them work with that person differently so you know helping them to build those skills so it can be both of those

[00:04:51] Jacob: So are people typically you know if they're in these situations where they're calling you in or asking for your guidance and assistance are they pretty um are they reluctant to listen to what you have to say at first or is there is there common difficulties because i imagine i mean you mentioned emotional intelligence um and i think

[00:05:43] Juli: A lot of this area and a lot of kind of like being aware of our own actions and how our own over overreactions our own emotions get the best of us sometimes that's kind of difficult to look at within ourselves you know so i imagine you coming in saying hey here's what we need to be doing and here's how maybe you're not helping or you know should prepare don't say it like that but um So yeah so what comes up in that in that area so sometimes i am called in to Work directly with the person who is having some kind of performance issue and um i usually am coming in as a coach In that case so to differentiate and kind of explain how i think of these and often in the industry they're thought of this way consulting is providing advice

[00:06:27] Juli: And coaching is really helping the person surface their own knowledge their own plans their own goals their own action steps to reach those goals and that kind of thing so i come in with a consulting mindset even if i'm hired to repair something so i'm asking a lot of questions and yes sometimes if i've been hired because You know executive says this leader needs to change the way they're working this leader may not be super welcoming at first but because i'm going in with a discovery mindset where i'm asking questions i'm asking their perspective of the situation i'm asking them how can they work differently within the situation to address whatever the executive is saying to them because it's a it's a clear you know the executive saying to both of us what needs to be worked on so we're all on the same page if that makes sense though the person who has to do the work might not agree um i asked them things like

[00:07:25] Juli: What's gonna happen if you don't make this change how is that going to go for you so i'm going in with a lot of questions and trying to help them see where it's in their own best interest to make a shift to think about things differently whatever the case may be and more often than not i've had maybe a couple where it's kind of stalled out but more often than not they do Kind of see that light and start making changes to the degree that they are able and um It does have positive impact i have had a couple where things just stalled out and that's you know not great for anybody right but you know if somebody isn't performing we're say an executive needs them to be that can go a direction toward maybe they lose their job or something so it can be hard in those circumstances but Most often the people are wanting to Keep their jobs they are wanting to be successful and it's just helping them figure out how

[00:08:25] Jacob: Okay yeah that makes sense so you kind of I like to use the term Ushering of epiphany i feel like so sometimes do you probably present them with um like So if you get them to say out loud okay if you do it this way and it happens like this what do you think will happen or what's gonna happen if you use this decision so having them hear themselves say it or talk it out probably is very helpful to what you do i love your phrase Ushering in epiphany i love it Yeah to be honest i think i stole it from somebody else that i heard on a podcast but it definitely sparked my interest and i was like oh that's what i like to do too in some sort of way so um so the word the word leadership to You what does leadership mean so to me leadership doesn't isn't specific to a role so i think of leadership and i sometimes call it personal leadership can be exhibited

[00:09:22] Juli: Anywhere and actually probably should be exhibited anywhere i think that we all Exhibit leadership to some degree in our day-to-day roles at home in the community at work when we put somebody into a leadership role it heightens that to a new degree Because you have people um reporting directly to you their Um their way of working is gonna in some way be inspired by you and impacted by you so there's a heightened level if you're put into a direct reporting kind of role but i think we all have the opportunity to show leadership and i think leadership is really just for me It's it needs to have an inspirational Motivational element but it also has to be for good so um i like to think of Positive impact not harming so to me Those are all elements that are important in leadership right so i would say we all have some sort of leadership capability within us you know it's kind of about finding your own greatness or your own leadership whatever roles in

[00:10:30] Juli: Your life that you're a leader so i've been um i had a couple kind of leadership roles even back in high school i was like sophomore class president that sort of thing and then after um i was manager and assistant manager at some retail stores that sort of thing and uh i always and now that i really Enjoy philosophy and just kind of like studying all of this whole this whole area and how people think differently and i kind of observe um and ask myself how do i think differently um as a leader like how does me being in these roles as a manager or You know a supervisor whatever it is how do i j just in order to do my job well in my Opinion how do i think differently than the people who are you know working underneath me or the employees um

[00:11:14] Juli: And it's very interesting because when you step into that role you kind of do see um it does you know i my skills are accented my skills are kind of brought to the front when i step into that role of okay i understand that i see these things differently than other people do because i'm not so they're doing this task and they need to be doing that task um so it's so it's Very it's just it's interesting to me to see where we can really snap into so do you find um

[00:11:14] Jacob: Do you find that people if you can kind of push them towards it or usher them in towards it rather um Do you find people who didn't think they were leaders before but you can kind of spark it within them do you ever have an experience with that absolutely i've had people reluctant to step into a leadership role that i was asking them to step into and um I think that many leaders

[00:12:08] Juli: Even those that have been leading for a long time can lack confidence i think we as individuals as humans can often lack confidence right it's a it's a human trait that can rear up lots of times and places and i Think that confidence thing is hard to To um tackle because it requires some Internal work and it requires a supportive environment as well um so i've had people um i'm thinking of One like that i'll kind of talk about um without naming names of course very reluctant to step into a leadership role but was but i saw already how she was leading Without being in a leadership role and The organization i was leading a multi-faceted team um broad team with Different functions under it Really needed leaders over each of those functions and i was asking her to step in to lead one of those functions and

[00:13:09] Juli: Um we had some very um honest and forthright conversations she was honest with me about how she was feeling i was honest with her about what i was seeing in her and ultimately she did up to step into that and she's been fabulous um she's been promoted since i Know even though i'm no longer you know in where she has her um work being done but i know She's being successful and i'm so Gratified that i could help be that support that helped move her into that

[00:13:43] Jacob: Um you're i wanted to circle back to something else you said too that idea of we're stepping into a leadership role we might think differently than other people and we often do um i think that some people lifted into leadership have that ability To sing think broadly strategically Um visionary while also managing the work that needs

[00:14:10] Juli: To get done managing the people who are doing the work i think some people are such good individual performers or contributors that they get lifted into leadership and they are given the support they need to develop these skills that some people innately have and so some of the work i do is actually helping with some of that kind of thing where an individual contributor has been lifted and they weren't given the tools initially and some issues are coming up and now i'm called in to help with that right yeah so they have some sort of quality some sort of traits but um maybe not the strategies to implement them you know and you help with the strategies that's awesome um Yeah i think uh leadership is just something that you know in today's day and age i know our news media makes us so crazy about everything but um it's hard to it's hard

[00:15:01] Juli: To i imagine if you if we are younger people you know like i think about like teenagers if they're looking up who's the leaders who do i listen to you know we have influencers on social media and all these sorts of things um but you know a lot of the people in shirts and ties have podiums the last you know however many years they seem less and less like leaders you know is in um you know you probably you may you may i'm not sure uh you may cringe eve even more than i uh because you're a mediator when you listen to the way that a lot of our leaders speak to one another um in the non-we don't Solve any of our conflicts we just exacerbate more it seems um

[00:15:34] Jacob: So what do you think about do you think about kind of um what the younger generation may be seeing in our um leaders that we have Now and then do you think of a way that maybe we could shift it or make it better or maybe even a way that our current leaders could start to maybe act more like leaders of course this is a broad you know not every single politician or whatever is evil but there can be and you know i hate to label anybody evil no matter but i think That you are correct that we have Some people in highly visible leadership roles whether that's politics some of our very large multinational organizations um you know even in churches or what Have you there can be leaders who are exhibiting what i would call or what i would say are not leadership traits so i Mentioned earlier that i think it's very important for leadership to exhibit a positive impact and not do harm i think We can all think of times when we've

[00:16:42] Juli: Seen leaders do harm whether that's with The rhetoric they use the way they're talking whether that's with um some of The actions that they're taking those some of those things can be harmful and i don't think of them as leadership like Um additionally i think that we have so that's a leadership umbrella and then you mentioned kind of the mediator thing i think of that as a relationship umbrella i think we have some crises in both arenas to be honest

[00:17:12] Juli: I think that the way we treat one another uh it can happen on social media it can happen on within our news media it can happen within the leaders but there are bad ways of interacting there are bad ways of trying to solve conflict which is sometimes shown as trying to power my way over your way and that's not really a conflict resolution the way i describe it so there are a lot of opportunities for us to shift them some things in terms of how our youth and young adults and that kind of thing see those of us who are older more seasoned shall we say um i'm sure they're appalled at times but i also think they've been trained at times by some of those very people that are doing the practices that aren't helpful and so there can be both sides of that right and i don't i think that we who Are more seasoned we who are in leadership roles have to take responsibility for what we Are putting out into the world and how our modeling so we all we often talk about modeling our best opportunity as a

[00:18:26] Juli: Leader is to model that which we want to see so if we're modeling certain things That we wouldn't want others to exhibit we need to be doing some self-reflection and shifting some things that we're doing because if the thing that just came out of your mouth you would be appalled if somebody said to you that's probably a mismatch and you might want to be thinking about that yeah so

[00:18:31] Jacob: Do you think that When i think of leadership i think of a growth mindset do you think um all leaders have a growth mindset of some sort so i think often if you're put into a leadership role in an organization growth is part of it um i think that it's possible to show Leadership which is influence and positive impact Without necessarily having growth um You know you can lead in your family you can lead in your church without necessarily trying to grow those right so i think that we can still show leadership without necessarily being in a space of needing to grow but if we're in an organization growth is often a part of it especially a profit organization um i think you know one of my personal leadership philosophies is that uh the organizations that focus only on

[00:19:46] Juli: Profit and only on how much money we make for whatever the stakeholders are that realize the money you know whether that's shareholders or you know private owners or whatever it may be if that's the only thing we're thinking of i think we're missing out on our impact on other stakeholder groups we're missing out on how are we impacting our employees how are we impacting our customers or people we serve so i think thinking broadly about The stakeholders that we impact and making sure that we're not benefiting one group at the detriment of others if that makes sense yeah definitely certainly um yeah so Sticking on growth um mentioning in Your book a little bit of your bio it sounds like you've had your own growth you've had your own trials and tribulations just like all of us in this human experience you know um and it led You to your book um to find

[00:19:46] Jacob: Five Senses For Success um So tell me a little bit about your growth and then how it led to your book and then tell us about your book sure so it's funny because i started the

[00:20:48] Juli: Writing of the book back in 2015 and i When i started writing i thought that the book's ideas had started coming to me in my early career as an adult but as I got further into the writing process and because i was sharing some personal stories in the book as well and it was causing me to do a lot more self-reflection i realized that it really started back in childhood so i Grew up in a somewhat dysfunctional home um it wasn't as dysfunctional as some homes that exist but it was definitely dysfunctional and um There wasn't a lot of good relationship or good leadership happening in that home so i wasn't learning those skills as some people who happen to be gifted with a home where the people modeling behavior are modeling good behavior um i wasn't getting that so i wasn't learning those skills early on so i had

[00:21:44] Juli: What i call a late launch in life so i quit high school before i graduated i went back and graduated i didn't go to college right away i just started doing kind of some admin type work and then later realized okay i need to You know think about how am i going to do more in my career be more successful make more money because honestly the living paycheck to paycheck was a little tough and so i was decided to go back to college graduated with my ba when i was 31 so i was older Than typical and then um during that time up till Then i was having a lot of difficulties with relationships as well so i was Harming myself in some ways by the situations i would get into Being in harmful situations in some situation in some cases and You know every one of those that happened taught me something that i took with me so i started i think of that journey as kind of collecting learnings Along the way that later i realized came Into this book um so the five senses

[00:22:54] Juli: Um is a twist or an elevation of our Typical five senses so most of us realize the senses of see hear touch Taste and smell and i realize that some people don't realize some senses i Understand also that they have heightened other senses usually when that case when that happens but generally speaking we have the five senses and what i did is i shifted those Into what i see as deeper and more meaningful senses of observe Listen feel engage and appreciate and why i see they're deeper and more meaningful i think that when we experience the world with our five senses sometimes it's kind of passive we may hear sounds but we aren't attending to them sometimes we're in conversation And we aren't attending to it we may see something especially peripherally where we aren't you know noticing um we Could be in a conversation and not notice the nonverbals of the other person we could be in those situations And not paying attention to our own self what we're thinking and kind of

[00:24:04] Juli: Seeing observing ourselves listening to ourselves um and so when i think of the journey that led to this book i think the observing started way back in my youth where i was observing the parents and the family to try and avoid trouble right i was a keen observer of what was happening in the house i later learned to observe and listen More in skills with within my career so early in my career i was asked to be a focus group moderator which is highly listening oriented and i Learned that as much as it terrified me because i wasn't somebody to want to get up in front of a group and you know so that was another kind of lesson along the journey as i was going through and then when i went for my master's degree a little bit later i started moving into the leadership thinking and um and i oh in my 20s so the feel which is The new sense for touch um i was going through therapy because i had a lot of stuff to unpackage from my youth and i had times when i the

[00:25:12] Juli: Therapist would ask how does that make you feel and i would say i don't even know because i don't know what i feel i don't know what a feeling i don't know because i would shut that down before it was like i was just meant to be quiet not bothering anybody and so i had shut all that down so i had to really go through a time period where that i had to get in touch with that stuff and so all these little lessons i feel like really helped me in the end to Build a successful career in leadership in organizations i think i used all those skills in the work i did with the teams i led with the people that i worked with as colleagues and then my managers and other executives that might be above me um and And by building that success and feeling Like these skills were paramount in how Um we get work done in how we

[00:26:07] Juli: Show up with one another almost every goal that one needs to achieve or wants to achieve needs to be done with the collaboration of at least one other person almost every there are a few where you don't But most often you need to be able to work with others and so these skills are really important and as i gathered all those skills i wanted to share them with others so that's what the inspiration of the book was and just to kind of talk a little bit about the last two senses so engage is The new one for taste is a multi-sensory sense right we can Smell the food we can maybe touch it we Feel the touch of it in our mouth so it's multi-sensory so too is engaging Whether we're engaging with others or with ourselves so another thing i talk about in the book is that these senses are used both with others and really should be used for ourselves too And then appreciate which is often the hardest one to use for ourself because

[00:27:08] Jacob: We easily see our failures or our mistakes or our downfalls and we can have negative self-talk and all those things that happen but if we really truly learn to appreciate ourselves that helps us show up better in the world and when we take that appreciation to others i mean sometimes we'll think the idea of appreciation for something but we don't take it and bring it to somebody in some way whether that's with words with the act of kindness with something um and so i think of

[00:27:40] Juli: Appreciating as making it active i think of all of them as making them more active and engaged and purposeful intentional yeah i like that the difference between just the word itself and something that's just so passive and into something that's being that's more active so instead of seeing it's observing right yeah so i yeah i really i really like that um i love how you laid that out so um i'm a i'm a meditator i have been for the last few years um in something uh in the mental Health world i dealt with a lot of disassociation and something that really helps me is doing these meditations um using my five senses so you take you know all their own individual time you take it slow but you really concentrate on touch and you feel you know all the spots where your shirt is touching your skin and where your feet are touching the ground um you know and you do that for all of your senses and for me um someone who struggles with disassociation from time to time really helped me kind of understand um my senses that we just

[00:28:42] Juli: Pass over we just plow through them you know our minds are just running our running our thoughts and our actions so often that we don't really slow down and get to what our senses are so i mean yeah i really love how you laid that out um i think a lot of people kind of even if they just take that and just contemplate their five senses a little bit more deeply what is the experience of each of those five senses and then we can kind of get a little bit more in tune with our emotions and feeling you know our intuition our gut feeling that the stuff that we all kind of miss out on in our modern culture i agree i love your meditation too focused on The senses i meditate as well maybe not

[00:29:24] Juli: Every day like you do but i do it pretty regularly and i've never thought to just do a meditation like that i'm definitely going to try that out because i think that's a wonderful way to meditate because we don't fully utilize our senses in the way that we could they just kind of are whatever senses we realize we just kind of become used to them being there we aren't conscious always about what feedback what um input am i receiving from the world from these senses yeah 100 um

[00:29:24] Jacob: I would recommend Is she's a meditation teacher i think she teaches it's called the ziva meditation or the z technique her name's emily fletcher she has a book it was fairly short it was pretty um uh

[00:30:11] Juli: It was like not overly scientific like she has a couple good studies in there um but it wasn't too over the edge where it's really dense or anything it was very surface level she seemed like a very sweet person i watched her on some interviews and read her book emily fletcher z technique or something like that yeah i definitely recommend it um okay so let's shoot on over to the world of damage relationships or repairing our relationships um so let's expand you Know so let's talk co-worker relationships you know family relationships friendships all of this how do we how do we repair and how do we you know communicate more forthright and better yeah well i'm a big obviously because i wrote the book i'm a big believer in using our senses well to do that um but I'll to start talking about this i'll Talk a little bit about what happens in a mediation because it's really powerful in my mind and i hear other mediators say the same thing so when a mediator is called into a conflict and it can be i've mediated Conflicts between Members between community members like

[00:31:20] Juli: Say neighbors i've mediated Situations that were in a chips child in need of protective services situation i Have mediated um conflicts that were under the human rights umbrella where an individual and organization may not be agreeing about Whether a human rights issue had been violated so i've mediated a wide Gamut of types of situations and um One of the tactics that mediators facilitated mediators like myself do Is after kind of talking about the process and how it will work they allow each side some what we call uninterrupted time And i really love that concept of uninterrupted time so you know the parties will decide who will go first i do not as a facilitative mediator i'm not deciding they are deciding and One will be the one to tell their story Using their own words however they want to tell and the other is invited to listen carefully and really hear what the perspective of the one who's speaking is and then it flips the other person will get their uninterrupted time and the other will listen and what's beautiful about uninterrupted

[00:32:38] Juli: Time is that i can see either in non-verbals or people sometimes actually say i've never heard that before i never knew you felt that way they are surprised by some of the things that they hear during that uninterrupted time and by just setting this container around them that's different than the way they had been working together you know in whatever capacity whether it was work family whatever By doing that they often listen differently and the there's not the interruptive thing that happens often in conflict so i'm sure all of us i certainly have betting conflicts where you start kind of talking over each other that's not full listening and we're instead of listening to what the other person's saying in a conflict often we're thinking about what's next that we're gonna voice or how we're gonna argue their point they're just making and so with this uninterrupted time idea it's the idea of really just Sitting back trying to put your ideas aside for a bit and just listen it's just about listening and it's really quite magical

[00:33:54] Juli: What can surface and then what else we're looking for as mediators during that time and beyond in the discussion that goes back and forth following is where are the commonalities so even When people are in conflict there are usually some commonalities so maybe there's a family conflict between two parents but they're so they're both really dedicated to the growth and nurturing of their children maybe they have different ideas about it um how to do it but the commonality is they really want to nurture and love and help Them right so it's finding those commonalities a solution can be built on so Those are mediator practices but any individual can take that those ideas into any difficult conversation or Relational situation when i go when i so sometimes i will Do something called conflict coaching where i'm just working with one person who's in a conflict but the other party hasn't decided to do a full mediation but even by working with one person and asking them to show up with an idea of discovery instead of you know let's talk

[00:35:05] Juli: About this conflict but really an idea of discovery and asking questions to fully understand the other person's perspective it starts to change the way The relationship goes even if just one side starts it so anybody can take that into any difficult situation those kinds of ideas and there are more in the book to try and shift the way relationships Are going and it's really quite magical but it often does shift things

[00:35:36] Jacob: Yeah i bet it is i mean it's yeah

[00:35:36] Juli: Anything that you can i like the finding the common ground that commonality because it shifts from um sometimes we're unconsciously kind of trying to win you know or our ego is really like running the ship to protect us from the painful emotions and so it's really is trying to win and prove itself right or whatever it may be but if we can shift out of that notice we're having that and shift into a wii versus the problem um that certainly helps that's something that i have um of course you know i have my shortcomings for sure so it doesn't always happen but i do try to approach conflict or relationships with them with one another as it's us versus the problem there's really never a time where i'm gonna feel good about winning or one-upping on someone you know i'm not unless i'm in like a slam dunk contest or something it's there's no point in trying to slam dunk on it someone i'm having a relationship with yeah um so uh let's see performance optimization um operational and performance optimization so what are some basic strategies for optimization

[00:36:41] Juli: In um in our relationships with one another Let's say family as well as co-workers just optimizing and getting better just as a maybe a general statement towards uh our relationships okay so when i Think of performance optimization i'm often thinking of organizations i'll talk about that first and then i'll try to translate that into family and community kinds of ideas so with performance optimization most often i'm working with the leaders around accountability practices so and sometimes project management type practices so some of the leaders are Challenged with The strategy development the putting a Plan in place to address or reach that The strategy and um and then the constant monitoring of Progress and the heightening or lifting up of risky situations where progress isn't being

[00:37:45] Juli: Made to the degree it should and then helping them address often that can be a performance issue somebody not pulling it away that kind of thing or maybe even a team not pulling their weight and then how to address that so it's kind of this trickle-down effect so it depends on the unique situation where i might spend my time i will say that i spend a fair amount of time in the how to have those accountability conversations so um when i've me so i've been a leader and i've had to have accountability conversations with individuals who weren't pulling their weight fully and when i do that and this Is what i encourage the people i coach as well to do is go in with that you heard me say the word discovery a while ago go in that with that sense of discovery so i have a perception an observation that somebody isn't pulling their weight for some reason what if i'm wrong what if i don't understand the full situation so first of all check my understanding of the situation right so going in asking so here i've observed

[00:38:51] Juli: Let's say it's missed deadlines i've observed a few missed deadlines lately can you tell me what's going on instead of you can't miss these deadlines you know there's different ways to approach it and so i'm going in with the idea of um what can i do to help them understand the situation from the other person's perspective so maybe there's a Barrier that's causing them to miss deadlines that exist somewhere else in the organization and that's the thing that needs to be addressed so you really want to take the time to understand what the situation is before you um

[00:39:29] Juli: Make the assumption that it is that place you think it is right yeah go ahead go ahead continue so that's kind of the performance aspect when it's So often And so often leaders can be visionary or Strategic but not good at The day-to-day how do we get there right So they might have good strategies vision they might even have some good goals outlined for say divisions or departments but then when it comes to the day-to-day work that has to trickle up into those to make them successful they aren't sure how to make that happen and they Some of the project management type of um practices i was mentioning are what are important in that in those cases so Taking the time to document who is responsible for what Timelines deadlines status meetings to make sure progress is being made again lifting where there are risk factors something's lagging and other things depend on it so i help them learn

[00:40:38] Jacob: Some of those practices when needed as well now when you take that into the family or into the community i think you have opportunity to do some of that but it's you know like if i were to sit down and say let's put this project plan together with my husband on a certain thing he may not be super open to that so it's maybe you do it in a little different way you have a conversation about how you're going to move forward on something and you repeat it and is this what we're Agreeing to and getting that more verbal Type of thing and then maybe planning a check-in can we check in on this in a week or a month or whatever it makes sense and see how we're doing and so you can still use some of those ideas of project management even though it's a family situation sometimes so my husband and i are actually raising our first granddaughter and she has a neurological disorder and so

[00:41:34] Juli: Sometimes we actually do document some things out for her to help her visually see some things but it's not like you can't do that sometimes there is a way to do that's appropriate um so you can use those there and then working in organizations the same kinds of things like let's say you're volunteering for your church or a non-profit somewhere you can still some use some of those organizational practices i mentioned even in those cases so if you're volunteering and you're let's say you're on a board or you're working to help um deliver services for

[00:42:08] Juli: A nonprofit you can say can we like get this down on paper can we see what this looks like when we document it you can ask these questions and often people will say yeah that's a great idea so you can try to embed some of those it's kind of showing that leadership idea without having a leadership role always and trying to get them to employ some of them right do you do you find yourself having a lot of success um just narrowing down goals like just kind of deciphering going into these places or with these people and maybe helping them designate hey like where's the front of your ship directed because maybe that's the problem we're just going wherever we want here is that something that comes up often one of the things that happens pretty frequently is There will be a strategy and plan And it seems good but then the whim of a leader will Suddenly redirect action another way

[00:43:01] Juli: So whether that's an executive director a vp you know an owner an entrepreneur it could be any scenario they could say oh we need to do this well when they say that it's a new thing that wasn't part of the strategy so what it does is it takes effort away from that strategy so those whims need to be considered before they're you know moved on if you will so sometimes

[00:43:27] Juli: It's working with leaders to understand where they're impacting their own plan if that makes sense right yeah you can't just suddenly pivot whenever you have a gut feeling i think yeah you have to Implement strategies and plans so do you see that um i mean we kind of like are uh again going more broadly our How does how do our leadership skills because i think about a lot of the times when we're shooting for our goals um especially in business a lot of times it's going to be profit right you know of course that's what shareholders stockholders that's what they want that's what capitalism does it's what we're doing here we're making money of course do you do you find you have to kind of like remind them that yes profit is a goal but not the only goal do you do you find um a way of uh getting because there's got to be a balance of keeping the human aspect in businesses you know in

[00:44:22] Juli: The uh finding more reasons why a company is doing what it's doing uh maybe their purpose again towards their goals they're shooting towards these um you know we're shooting a basketball tour towards the net what it what is the net what's the hoop um but yeah so do you find that uh maybe we get a little bit jaded or a little bit lost in between is this for profit or what's our goal yeah i think i mean if you're talking about a corporate organization a for-profit organization you're almost always talking about trying to maximize profit of course that is one of the goals But it i would hope that it's also about providing a meaningful product or service that helps people in some way um Most are but you know there might be some that aren't um and if i'm working with a leader where The focus is so much on the profit That it is negatively impacting team members whether they're colleagues or the people that report to them um i again approach it with that coaching mindset of and often i'm called in because there's an issue because 360 degree um feedback

[00:45:42] Juli: Things happen and they're getting lots of negative feedback and trying to and then i might do interviews to try and figure out why that's happening and then this surfaces as an issue and so i try to ask the question so i Unders and i always recognize that there is a ton of pressure on leaders so leaders have especially at the executive level have a very high pressure job you know they have those different stakeholder groups all clamoring for their needs to be met right whether it's the shareholders whether it's the employees the customers and what they need to do is figure out how to balance that and so when i start talking to this leader this fictional leader that i need to help you know or and i have helped some of them um is that How can we rebalance this In a way that meets more people's needs more stakeholders needs and i really So often they can come up with ideas so I'm trying to ask enough insightful questions based on what i hear from them that they can find their own solution

[00:46:50] Juli: And if they even after i'm asking all sorts of different questions they aren't finding it then i'll ask can we brainstorm together is that okay because coaching is their session it's their you know they're driving it but i'm the guide if you will and um and when we brainstorm together even if i start with i've seen people do this or that just by virtue of brainstorming they start bringing up ideas and often one of their ideas or maybe one i brought up will work for them and they'll start trying to shift it now there's typically when anybody tries to change behavior there's typically a an attempt and a backslide an attempt in the backslide so there's time that goes into the resolving of it right but it's working through that over time and hopefully i'm building enough trust with that person and that's something i'm aiming definitely to do that they're bringing the challenges to me that they're experiencing so that we can talk about them um problem solve figure out strategies to do it differently next time whatever it may be um and with that trust thing in mind i

[00:48:01] Juli: Think it's really important whenever we're working with people in organizations and our families in our communities we can get so much more done if we're in a trust state with people and the best way to be in a trust state Is to co-create or co-develop something together so um there are institutions that have done studies where they do functional mris on Brains of people who are in trusting states and they see that the brains actually end up mirroring each other so it literally changes the way your brain is showing up so when we so some of the elements that go into that trust stator definitely not what we say we're gonna do building safe spaces to talk about whatever is needed not blaming not putting people down for their ideas or thoughts or actions and um trying to get to that point where Ideas can be shared we can co-create together and it's a beautiful thing how um how that shifts things and so i'm getting i'm trying to get that leader that we're talking about to think about those elements right yeah that's so

[00:49:18] Juli: Interesting that's really cool thinking about how our brains mirror each other when we're when we're in a trusting state it's like you know with the opposite of that fear response you know the state that our news seems to put us in at all times nowadays it's the opposite of that yeah uh i was actually listening to um uh he's a A professor from up in canada i think john vervicky um he has this whole series on uh the meaning crisis it's fascinating um but he was talking this morning uh about the importance of like the dialogues the logos um the which is just like uh the dialect our conversations with one another and that's kind of how uh you know back in the day how our democracy and all the things that we do and experience today how it's built you know we have these long conversations with each other and ideas and being in those trusting states are really what makes humans so cool you know we can we

[00:50:12] Juli: Can collaborate and create things together by having our guard down being trusting when you can trust that the other person is going to you know watch and observe their emotions and you know try their best to help you solve the problem without um emotions or irrationality stepping in you know so yeah we can really when we're in that trusting state is really the optimal like if you have a business if you have a company if you have something that you're trying to get done i mean it's like the ultimate performance hack let's learn how to you know control our states of mind and be in a trusting state so we can accept each other's ideas and not put each other down and you know steer the ship in one solid direction so um what would you say through your journey i mean you've gone through so much you know just with writing the book um all of your schooling all of your mediating all of your coaching what like if you kind of had to look back at all of your journey glancing back over your shoulder what do you feel that you've really learned about not just people but maybe even about yourself and all of this

[00:51:20] Juli: Wow i have learned so much about myself um so i can say that the practices i put into the book were learned the hard way yeah learned by me making a lot of failures along the way and um having some negative outcomes as A result and uh learning how to shift the way i showed up um i did take advantage i'm so i don't Know the strengthsfinder paradigm gallup strengths finder i am definitely a learner in that and so i soak in information all the time it's just who i am and having done that through different avenues whether formal education or not um that has helped me a great deal And so i would say that you know for me and for others Look around find the things that are different than what you know exactly now and try to understand how they might fit and how those practices could be beneficial to Um i had to do that a lot in order to Come to where i am today i had to

[00:52:29] Juli: Realize that what i knew at any given point in my life it could be you know basically every year of my life okay what i know now is not everything i need to know i still have to keep trying so i think of Hume as i think that we as humans have This wonderful opportunity to keep expanding our knowledge and expanding who we are and how we show up throughout our whole life and um i think it's unfortunate when people might do that early on and then kind of stop and live Out the rest of their days without that continued bringing in new ideas so i I guess i would bring that up and i would also bring up the way i finished my book no matter where anybody has been and i believe this for myself too because like i said i've made a lot of mistakes no matter what we have done There is always hope for a better And improved future state and we just

[00:53:29] Juli: Have to figure out how to get there and how to bring ourselves there and others with us right so i always think of that hope as well yeah i love you bringing in the word hope with that's that's so great uh yeah and we really are you know having a constant growth mindset you know every year becoming the new version of the butterfly and last year was the caterpillar you know we're such we're such fluid creatures everything is so fluid we're always um as much as we want to kind of take our take our report card down it's like here's what i've accomplished and here's what i've done here's what i haven't done or whatever you know if sometimes we'll internalize our shortcomings by just okay here's

[00:54:08] Juli: Here's where i'm at right now um but remembering that i could be more tomorrow than i am today i can be more today than i than i was yesterday you know always having that constant state of growth is really important it kind of kind of seems like that's a little bit of maybe what you've learned too is um just always be growing and always be improving and looking for ways to improve those mistakes that we make because we all make them we are human humans are fallible those mistakes we make are learnings they aren't catastrophes in most cases i suppose there are some where it may feel like a catastrophe um i have volunteered with Individuals who were in prison or in jail and um you know there might be times when that feels like a catastrophe that they ended up there but i can also tell you that in working with those individuals and i worked with teen girls and then men in jail um there is that sense of hope And there is that sense of things could

[00:55:11] Juli: Get better and um the type of work i was doing with them was helping them learn some of the conflict resolution type skills and so they were Seeking to learn right so no matter what Your mistake remember you know if you're Blessed with the ability to walk When we first started to walk we couldn't do it right we fell on our butts or our knees or whatever all the time for a long time as we were trying to figure it out so think of all those mistakes as the times you fell in learning to walk if that's what your experience has been and

[00:55:48] Jacob: It's the same if you've learned to play the piano or learn to sport or whatever it may be you had to fail make mistakes practice and so i talk about practicing a lot too or experimenting We have to try in order to move forward and we're gonna make mistakes in the trying because we don't know everything right away right so i made a lot of mistakes and i've continued to try and i am still continuing to try and i would encourage others to find what they are passionate about and experiment in the growth Toward that and keep going yeah keep

[00:56:27] Juli: Going that's so perfect that's what i was going to say was just keep going that's always the most important thing i learned to ride a um a unicycle when i was younger and that was this something that clicked in my head was whenever you feel like you're about to fall just keep pedaling and it was it's this dorky thing that somehow it's just i haven't ridden a unicycle in years and years but uh it is something that helps just keep going just keep trying you know it's never a like i said we want to take out that report card and judge ourselves and here's what i'm getting it's no you failed you did something incorrectly or you maybe you went on the wrong path for a little while no you're not done keep going you're good adjust pivot um cool Hey so i just want to make sure can we get can we send the audience to your

[00:56:27] Jacob: Website Where can they get your book let's give them all the info where can we find more about you

[00:56:27] Juli: Sure so i have two websites one is peer P e r performance solutions dot com

[00:57:18] Juli: And the other is my name Juli j u l i know e geske g e s k e peer p e p-e-e-r. com No hyphen in there and um the book is Available via either of those amazon Wherever you'd like to go barnes and noble whatever site you would like to go Awesome wonderful yeah it's on kindle as well which is always nice um so let's end with one more question uh i Was i was thinking of one i think that you would have a good answer too how about um if you if you were to you know looking in the camera imagine you're speaking to the leader within every listener like this is you're speaking to the leader within all of us we have something that's a leader what's a message that comes to mind what's something that we could all hear or maybe would help us all kind of lean towards our leadership version of ourselves what do we need to hear so what immediately came to mind Is that sometimes and i can say i've been here sometimes we think we can't change something sometimes we

[00:58:22] Juli: Think the situation we're in is just too Bad too difficult whether it's a toxic work environment a toxic home life a toxic whatever we think it is impossible for us to have impact on it but if we look inside of ourselves and figure out what little changes we can make if we show up to a relationship differently if we ask questions if we share our ideas because i bet in Those circumstances there are a lot of ideas floating in somebody's head i've had that happen um if we are willing to experiment with those ideas Of the questions the sharing the Um thinking what i can do We actually can have impact we actually Can help things shift even when We think it's hopeless even when we think it's too much um too difficult too overwhelming um so try to find that little place inside of you and i believe that we are all given you know a strength a light i call it i

[00:59:35] Jacob: Think we all have a light inside of us and find that light inside of yourself and that light is meant to shine positive energy on others right and yourself and so if you can find that internal light and let it give you courage to try and experiment and See what shifts i think you'd be surprised at what What influence and impact you can have in the end um wow that was fantastic thank you so much that was a great answer Juli i'm definitely going to clip that out but okay well hey thank you so much for your time i really appreciate it thanks for the work that you do thanks for um writing your book so uh again i really Appreciate your time and i had a great conversation today Juli thanks so much for having me on jacob it was so great yeah so um i'll be in touch we'll post the episode probably in a few weeks here but if we need to talk We'll be in touch via email okay all right sounds great thank you all right Take care listeners Love yourself

[01:00:20] Outro: Drink some water stretch and uh check out Juli's book have a good rest your day thank you Junkyard Love Podcast At what age do we learn how to have better conversations At what age do we learn to have better conversations with ourselves