Jen Brown (00:00)
my question would be, what's the sustainability of your company, your organization, your own leadership? Because at the end of the day, emotional intelligence is what does help to develop that next generation of leaders. And if we're not tapping into that, then we're not building capacity that can outlive your own leadership.
Dee Davis (00:29)
Good morning and welcome to the Management Under Construction Podcast. I'm your host, Dee Davis, and today we are joined by Jen Brown. She is an amazing coach that is going to help us talk about what it is to lead and how to lead with intention. Not only how to lead with intention, but when you're a high-performing leader, it's even harder and it gets quite lonely at the top. Jen and I met over LinkedIn, over an article discussion, and we just connected from there.
Jen, please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your coaching practice.
Jen Brown (01:03)
Well, thank you so much, Dee. First of all, it has been such a joy to get to know you. As you mentioned, I am a leadership coach, but my journey started growing up in a small family run construction business. And I have four younger brothers, close knit family, and I saw the hard work that went into construction. And then fast forward, I ended up joining the Department of State as a diplomat and spent about half of my career living overseas in Latin America.
leading teams. And that's where my own leadership journey really started to grow. Getting into the thick of what more responsibility looks like, the challenges of operations and personnel. And that's when I got my own leadership coach. So when I left the Department of State last year, I transitioned into my own coaching business where I get to work with leaders doing the same thing I was doing.
growing teams, growing ourselves first as that foundation. And it's amazing to be able to come back to the construction industry where I just have such respect for people who work so hard on our key infrastructure.
Dee Davis (02:09)
Sure.
Yeah. And your background is so amazing. I remember when we first connected on LinkedIn, it was over the conversation about celebrating wins. And that is something that I feel like in construction, we do an especially poor job of celebrating wins. we're such achievers. We're such box tickers, we hit a milestone and we're like, that's great, what's next?
And and we forget sometimes to celebrate the milestones that we do hit and even the small victories. Sometimes you'll work on resolving a problem for weeks in construction. And when you finally solve it, you just go, Great, done, move on. And we don't we don't celebrate our little victories. We don't take any time. There's no confetti, there's no band, there's nothing. And I would like to talk about celebrating those milestones. And when it happens, sometimes because there's no parade.
And maybe we feel especially achieved when we've done something and there's no parade, there's no confetti, and we get a little disappointed, like, wow, that was kind of a big deal, but nobody seems to care. They're too busy, doing the next thing. It's part of leadership skills. So how do we how do we talk about that celebration piece?
Jen Brown (03:19)
Well, you're right. We did connect over that. And I love adding in celebration. And we think celebration needs to be those parades and confetti, when in fact it can be actually much smaller. And I think that's a wonderful way to kick off building in celebration as part of our practice. When we think about being high achievers, we have so much on our to-do list. We are going from one thing to the next thing, and that's what keeps the momentum going.
in many cases. But when we don't stop and reflect the wins, we're not building evidence along the way of how far we've come and how far our teams have come. And so it's also when we look at no one else recognize that win, that's the externally driven celebration piece versus the internally driven piece of how do we stop and reflect.
on our own growth, on that journey. So it's really twofold in the sense of how do we build that into our own practice of recognizing celebration? And I would start by saying as we are laying out that project and we're breaking it down into milestones, add in that celebration step at those milestones, at those small steps along the way. Because when we start to build that pattern,
And the momentum keeps going, that's what will help us when we hit the challenge. That's what will help us when things don't go according to plan. We missed the deadline. We already have evidence, though, of where we have made those wins. And then in terms of the externally driven piece, it's really up to us as leaders to set the tone for our teams. So what does a small celebration look like with the team? Is it a small breakfast, a small lunch?
Some people don't want to be recognized in public. So knowing your team and knowing how they want to be recognized along the way is also super important. we don't have to have that big parade, but if the team wants the big parade, maybe that's an opportunity for the leader to to create that for the team and keep them going.
Dee Davis (05:28)
Yeah, it's hard especially if you've got a big team, what that looks like. Some people, shrink away from the celebration and and don't want to be holed up in front of the crowd, in front of the whole team and it feels embarrassing to them or like they're the center of attention. They may not like that. quiet celebrations are okay too. The point is to celebrate, right? And to recognize the achievement. Have you seen people quietly dismiss their own victories?
because they feel like the celebrations should come from the outside.
Jen Brown (05:56)
Absolutely. Absolutely. I've been guilty of that myself. I you know, I think it's an inherent part of strong leaders when you're so focused on that next project, right? On making progress. And we overlook celebration not because it's something that we're against. It's just not built into how we operate. And so really being intentional about what does that small celebration look like.
For ourselves. that can be let me just take 30 minutes this week, go take a walk, let me sit down, make a list of the wins for the day or the week. And that's actually something I've been working with leaders and doing on a more frequent basis, creating that evidence list of where things went right, where that momentum is growing. And then when you look at that list, what is something for you that would feel like, wow.
Look at what I helped to lead this week. Look at how I showed up in the face of adversity, in the face of a hard conversation. It doesn't need to be this big, way to go. It it can be that small list of I did something differently or I paused and I let my team take the lead on something instead of me jumping in.
Dee Davis (07:17)
Yeah, in construction, there's no line item for celebration. Right. It never appears on a project schedule we have in construction a tradition of new construction, a topping out ceremony. And that's about the closest thing I can think of that happens there on the site. Everyone that's there at that time is usually invited. We just had one on one of my recent projects.
And that's probably the closest thing to a job celebration. it doesn't really appear on the schedule, but it happens almost every time when you have a steel building. there's a big to-do, all the executives come out, they usually feed everybody, but that's kind of at the beginning of the job. There's no big celebration at the end. And I think that's one of the things that I always feel deflated at the end of a job. You have
worked so hard and my projects are years long. So this is this is a marathon, not a sprint. And you get all the way to the end and it's like, okay, Friday is my last day. Okay. But nobody's throwing parties at the end of the job. So it can be very deflating. At the end you just feel like, that's it. I'm done. Okay. I guess I'll go start the next job. So we need to build that celebration into the goal, I think is kind of what you're getting at.
Instead of treating it like an afterthought, right?
Jen Brown (08:33)
Absolutely. So there are smaller milestones along the way. And so what can it look like at each milestone to say, wow, let's take a moment here and look at how far we've come. I also like to throw out there when you're doing a team meeting, start with what are the wins? What did we do well? What did we learn? And I would celebrate failure.
So what did we not do right, but that we learned something from? And how can we grow more? I know that sounds counterintuitive. Nobody really wants to talk about failure, but that's really where some of the the best golden nuggets are for celebrating. So that then we again build that momentum of keeping going. You know, I think that there's also I can only imagine right after years, because when I was assigned overseas, I had several year assignments. And so at the end of it,
You're right. It's that pack up and we're ready to move on to the next thing. And there's a little bit of letdown of, but I've been a part of this team. I've seen this happen. we built this. And I think when we celebrate along the way, we know that we're taking pieces of that with us. It's not just a one and done and now we're moving on. So we've been bringing part of that with us the whole time and getting to really stop and look at.
As we hit this milestone, what did that mean for the next phase? Because it's harder to track growth if we're starting at point A and just going straight to Z. But if we're starting at A and maybe we go through D and then we look at that section of the project, then guaranteed we'll see the growth that happened along the way. And we get to think about how that laid the foundation for this next phase and how many people will be changed as a result.
of all of this. So when we don't lose sight of the people and we put people first, the teams we're working with and the people who will ultimately benefit from the project, then that celebration becomes the why, why we're doing what we're doing in the first place.
Dee Davis (10:39)
Yeah, I would say one of the best I don't even know if I would call it a little celebration, but it was like a presentation that happened I've done it on a few different projects where we brought in, building pharmaceutical plants. A lot of the clients that I have, they're building treatments for people with rare diseases, they're building treatments for people with cancer. And they've actually had some of the scientists come in and talk to the construction crew.
and explain to them what is going to be made in this facility and why it's important and who it impacts. And I had I've had that happen on hospital facilities where we're building a hospital, but we're building a very special kind of hospital and what that looks like and who's going to be treated and who's going to be helped. And it really motivates the crew to help them understand it's it's not just a building. It's a special kind of building that's going to serve a very specific group of people. And maybe one of them is your family member.
Or a friend or somebody that you care about. And so that really helps connect people to the work. And I think that helps it make it easier to celebrate what you're doing on a daily basis because it's not just steel and and concrete and drywall it's a building that's gonna be there for decades and serve millions of people in whatever way it's doing that.
Sometimes we have to celebrate ourselves a little bit. we can't always rely on other people to celebrate us or our own achievements. What does celebrating yourself look like?
Jen Brown (12:03)
You're so right on that. People are busy. So even if they have the best of intentions, they may not be focused on celebrating you, right? So celebrating ourselves looks very different from person to person. Do you want to take yourself out to a nice dinner? Do you want to take a family member or do something, right? Do you just want to sit and reflect and look at again that evidence of, wow, I did these things this week and here's how I've grown.
I can tell you working in in coaching, when I can be that mirror for clients, they may not see the growth themselves, but being that mirror for them, I can say, look, from here to here, three months in, six months in, here's how far you've come. And that's like the wow, I wasn't even really aware. So whether you work with someone or whether you take notes and reflect.
It's so important to build that evidence list of how we are growing and then honor yourself in a way that feels right for you. For me, I love to go take walks. So being in nature and really stepping back and saying, wow, like giving myself that space to just be positive, which can be counterintuitive again, right? Because my mind is like, but I have all these things to do. And yet.
If I'm not celebrating where I have gotten it right, then I'm just rushing through the next thing instead of being present in an intentional way. So again, celebration can show up in many ways. It can be quiet, it can be small, it can be big, it can be a vacation at the end of a project, right? And encourage that because we need that shift in our thinking in order to be able to then move forward in a very present way.
Dee Davis (13:52)
I joke about this all the time. It's it's funny, but It actually happened on an especially tough day, and this could also be a celebration, by the way. I'm thinking I need to change this into a the reflection of a tough day versus a reflection of a celebration. Is for dinner, I had ice cream with scotch port over it. Just saying. It could be a favorite meal. It could be
a little weekend getaway or a vacation. it could be something small, it could be something big, it could be your favorite dessert. You know, I get to order my favorite cherry pie when I achieve this goal or something like that. hey, if ice cream and scotch is your thing, that's that can be a celebration too.
Jen Brown (14:27)
There is no judgment and celebration. There's no like must have SOP on how to do it.
Dee Davis (14:33)
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Nice bubble bath, whatever works for you. You mentioned, we kind of get absorbed in what we're doing or kind of put on autopilot. Why do so many leaders operate on autopilot? what's up with that?
Jen Brown (14:47)
Well, and I love this and I wanna start and say autopilot sounds like it's a bad thing, right? But it's not inherently bad. And this is where I start to geek out a little bit because when we think about how we received feedback as kids even, we learned what our strengths were. And we learned that if we did X, we might get Y. And or if I do this, then I you know, then this bad thing doesn't happen.
So we learn all sorts of feedback regarding our strengths. Fast forward, think about how many decisions our brains making a day that we're not even aware of. I mean, I can tell you I'll get up in the morning and go get a cup of coffee and I'm not thinking intentionally about going to get the cup of coffee. That's just I know what I'm doing, I know where I'm going. Same as sometimes you get in the car and you drive somewhere, you're and you show up and you're like, wow, I wasn't fully present as I was driving, right?
Kind of scary, but it's true. So our brain automates certain parts of our lives because we don't mentally have that capacity to make so many decisions a day. So think of a crisis. We train for crisis preparedness. If there's an accident on a job site, you know what you're doing. You know those first steps you're taking. We need to be quick in that moment in a crisis or
In certain situations where we're not required to be so intentional. The challenge becomes when we're dealing with people and when we are trying to lead ourselves, when we are leading ourselves. Because if we just keep operating on autopilot, then we may not realize when we're stressed. We may not realize how we're showing up to communicate with others.
what work we are taking versus delegating out to other people to keep projects on track, growing that next bench of leadership of leaders to grow capacity. And so the autopilot danger, if you will, is when we don't become intentional at recognizing where we're on autopilot and we just keep operating on default.
And I like to use this as an example of if I am going from a stressful day at work and coming home to my family and I don't make a transition, what maybe worked at work is likely not going to work at home. And in the business sense, maybe what worked in the beginning is not going to work where I am now at this level. So
Catching that autopilot, being aware of where the default decision making is, the default stress reactions, the emotions that come up. Nobody wants to really talk about emotions, but if there's an emotion of control and lack of trust, that's going to shape that reaction.
Dee Davis (17:49)
Yeah, absolutely. and that's the whole point of autopilot. We don't realize we're doing it, right? So snapping out of that autopilot and trying to pay attention a little bit more to what we're doing without realizing that we're doing it can be really tough in the midst of the, ten meetings and all the running around you're doing every day. It can be very difficult. How do people start noticing when they're reacting instead of leading?
Jen Brown (18:13)
Such a great question. First, there's not like an overnight fix for this, unfortunately. it starts with the small steps of recognizing one where am I showing up stressed and paying attention to how others are receiving that. So I did a training with senior law enforcement officials not long ago. And I asked this question: where have I reacted in a way that I wish I hadn't?
Have I snapped at someone? Have I just been short and irritated with myself? maybe I'm running late for something and I'm not showing up as my best self. And that can be the start of it. When we think of that autopilot sense of, I have all these things to do, they're all on my list, and I'm frustrated my team isn't stepping up to the plate. Well, there's a disconnect there. So
Have I intentionally reviewed what's on the plate and built the team up in a way to be able to empower them to take on more? If I think about where maybe I'm avoiding a hard conversation, yeah. Who wants to have that hard conversation? So avoiding a hard conversation can be an autopilot decision that we're not even conscious of. So recognizing what am I putting off? What am I holding on to?
Where am I showing up stressed out? And maybe even people pleasing comes into this too. We think that, I'm here to take care of my team. Great intentions with that. I'm here to take care of my family and the community. Great intentions. And yet what can sneak in behind all of that is frustration and resentment that maybe other people aren't recognizing what all that we're doing for them.
And giving back the same way. So we feel like we're giving, giving, giving, but not getting anything in return. And so really that autopilot starts with awareness, just starting to be aware of how am I showing up? What feelings are coming up? What emotions are coming up for me? What thoughts are coming up? Am I frustrated at everything that's happening during the day?
Is my team coming to me asking a question and I'm just giving them an answer and feeling like a revolving door? That can be an autopilot leadership reaction. The intentional flip of that is when I catch that autopilot thought, and I can step back and then ask, what outcome do I really want here? How do I want to show up?
Do I want to be frustrated that the team keeps coming to me asking all these questions that they should know? Why aren't they doing what I already told them I need them to do? And so that intentional question is, where's the gap? What conversation do we need to have? And how do we need to communicate for them to understand what I'm saying? And so it seems faster in the moment to delegate, but
That can be an autopilot reaction instead of intentionally carving that conversation of let me help shape this for you so that you can truly own it.
Dee Davis (21:29)
in describing that situation, I'm reminded I've worked with people that we call Teflon. you come up with little nicknames for behaviors, and that's the Teflon behavior. I've had bosses where I go in and I say, Hey, I have this issue, I need some guidance on this, and you walk away, still owning it, but not really having any more guidance or answers than you did when you walked in. And those people I call I refer to them as Teflon people,
Somehow they're able to deflect, nothing sticks, there's no responsibility at all. And I think it's that autopilot response you're talking about that where they have a pitch that they give you to make you turn around and walk back out that door no further ahead than you were when you walked in the door. Not a good place to be. I love that you mentioned the difficult conversations. We actually have an episode of this podcast called Difficult Conversations. And
In there I talk about some of my leadership failures. conversations that I didn't want to have, maybe conversations that I didn't handle as well as I could have. we're all growing all the time. That's the whole point of this podcast. We're all growing all the time. We're changing, we're learning. I'm far from perfect. All leaders are far from perfect. Your boss, even the person you most admire in the industry is far from perfect. They make mistakes too.
So we're all human and this is how we grow and we learn. Is there a simple practice that helps someone pause and choose a better response?
Jen Brown (22:58)
Absolutely. And I want to back up for a moment because I truly respect what this podcast stands for and your comment about we're all making mistakes, we're all learning. And it's when we can sort of lower the temperature and say that's not terrible. Right. Like that is part of leadership. And how do we share it? Because then we help others to own it and to grow from it. And so going from that autopilot to intentional.
I work with a few frameworks and one of the frameworks I love is think of emotional intelligence of knowing yourself, knowing others, and then taking it up a a notch in the sense of what's going on in my in my brain, in my body that's causing me to react this way. And that framework is positive intelligence. And what it really does is just take a few
A few seconds, 10 seconds to be able to step back from that autopilot spiral of the brain and reconnect with the body. I am not a woo-woo person. I love meditation, sure. I love, connecting, grounding my feet, all of that. But that's not realistic in the real world. And when you're on a job site, when you're in a meeting,
You can't go do those things. You can't close your eyes and take those deep breaths the same way that you might at home or in in the privacy of your office. So this is for me one of the most simple techniques out there. I will take two fingertips together and just start rubbing them and really feeling like the texture of the skin, the temperature of the skin. And when I start to focus on that for 10 seconds, I'm not zoning out of a conversation.
But I'm redirecting my brain from the crazy over here of autopilot to okay, this is this is my skin, got it, right? That brings the temperature down so that I can then decide how do I want to show up? What is that outcome that I want to create here? And that's where the intentional response lives.
So there are many other ways we can do that, basically using our senses. I will say too when I am super stressed out, like I will tense my hands and just start to tense my body and hold that for 10 seconds. And then when you release, it is a physical reset in the nervous system. And that's what allows us to tap into what I call smarter thinking. Do I really want to snap at that person and say what might be
on in the back of my mind over here in autopilot? Or do I want to be that intentional leader to be curious? What's going on that they are not getting it? What's going on that they're not owning this mistake? what's going on that my boss is not giving me an answer over here and listening, trying to listen at a deeper level. And from that place,
I am able to ask what I think are more open ended questions that try to start peeling back the onion a little bit more.
Dee Davis (26:10)
Yeah, I love that. pressing your fingers together, rubbing them together. Something I learned when I was learning to be a crisis response person, a coach, I guess. One of the things that they taught me, and this works probably better if you have fingernails like I do, is to dig your fingernails into your hand when you're having an emotional reaction to something positive or negative, to center yourself and ground yourself a little bit more
It keeps you from having an emotional response that you might automatically happen. It's automatically happening. It's happening. You can't control it. and it just creates a little bit of pain, to be honest, but it's enough to make you go, wait, what's happening here? and I found that to be very useful in many cases. I need to exercise it more when it comes to those moments. I snapped at somebody last week. 100% happened last week. I realized I did it.
In the moment, and of course it was already done. I got fifteen people standing there. I can't correct it at this moment. of course it stuck with me all night, that whole rest of that day and that evening. And I went back to that person the first thing I saw him in the next morning and I said, Hey, I snapped at you yesterday. I apologize that had nothing to do with you, and it truly didn't have the thing to do with that person. It was the situation.
that was happening at that moment and they happened to just be right there. And, you know, I just I apologized to them probably three times because I felt terrible. And that's not not good on me. That's as a leader, that's not acceptable. It's acceptable, to have some humility about it and apologize, recognize it and apologize. But hopefully I will not do that again. Dig those fingernails into that hand.
Jen Brown (27:48)
I love the fingernails into the hand. That's part of the tensing, right? Like you're tensing your hands and you can feel the tensing in your body. And Dee, thank you for being so human about it. Because we think as leaders that we're not allowed to make mistakes and we're not allowed to have that sort of emotional reaction, but it's going to happen. And the key to all of this is consistency helps us prepare. So when we do the finger.
Tip rub when we squeeze our hands outside of the situation, that's happening. We get to recognize I'm in this spiral faster. It doesn't take us as long to recover. And so, think of when we're brushing our teeth. I believe in not.
creating new habits for the sake of a new habit here. So if you think of atomic habits and how do we habit stack and build something into a process, into something we already do so that we associate, okay, I know how to do this. If I'm brushing my teeth in the morning and I rub my fingertips, I'm doing one thing. I'm not creating a separate exercise, a mental exercise for me to do.
Or if I'm brushing my teeth and I feel that toothbrush against my teeth, what I'm doing is training my brain to tap into that physical element of resetting and not being focused over here or running wild. And so in the moments that something may happen, we can recover quicker. We also can start to look at our calendar and anticipate where we can't anticipate everything, but
Where might there be some challenges during the day? If I know I'm having a conversation with someone that can be tricky, I can do some of those mental reps, mental fitness reps ahead of time. And I call them mental fitness reps because if I want to go to the gym to get strong physically, well, this is a way to help our brain get stronger in an intentional way.
So think of how can I do mental fitness reps before I know I'm walking into something that might trigger me, trigger that stress pattern. And when we do that, we get to show up and recover faster. The other piece of this, I love how you went and you apologized to him. You recognized it. When we also share our own growth journey with our team and say, hey, this is something I'm working on.
In advance. Help hold me accountable. I've done this with teams and I'm I've done it with my son. I have said this to my son, like, hey, when you see me start to do this, call it out and say, Hey, mom, this thing's showing up. And what that does is it helps the other person know what your stress patterns might be. It brings them into your own growth journey and starts to normalize it for their own awareness that maybe they can start to say,
Maybe I show up this way. And so again, destigmatizing any sense of woo woo or, that reaction state. Sure.
Dee Davis (31:00)
Yeah, this
is up in every part of our lives, as you say, with your family, with your friends. I've apologized to my best friend on a number of occasions because when I when I go to work with her and I work with her in her business, I'm in business owner mode and that's just where my brain goes and I wanna do things the way I do things. It's not my business. It's her business. And it's 100% up to her how that business is run, not mine.
And I've automatically just kind of tried to take stuff over when I'm there. And I'm like, whoa, I gotta back off. This is not my arena. This is not my place. I'm sorry. I'll go back in the corner and be your employee for a minute. it shows up in every piece of our lives, our personal lives, our friendships, our marriages and personal relationships. something you said earlier made me think of, that sounds a lot like negotiating.
These emotional responses when you've been married for 25 years. you get into these patterns and we automatically do things or we feel like this person's not appreciating me. This this stuff shows up in every aspect of our lives. So it's yes, it's helpful for work, but it's also helpful for every other piece of our lives.
I do want to say that this is mid-episode, So if you like what you're hearing, boop that like button and share it with a friend. Come back and listen some more to the rest of this episode. Emotional intelligence shows up in real leadership every single day. How does that show up? What are the signs that a leader isn't emotionally aware versus not?
Jen Brown (32:29)
So true. And really emotional intelligence has framed how I look at leadership. leadership really starts with leading ourselves before we can lead others, before we can lead the business, the project, whatever it is that we are leading in a work sense. And when we think of emotional intelligence, it's really, do we know ourselves?
Do we know what energizes us? What frustrates us? Where those stress triggers show up? Where are the gaps in our strengths versus areas we're not as strong? What is framing our, I'll say reactions, but I prefer responses, What frames that intentional response? And when we start to know ourselves, then we start to become curious about the people around us.
What is driving them? Where are their strengths? What are their stress triggers? How can I listen deeply to where I'm not formulating my response to whatever it is they're saying, but I'm really pausing. I'm so honed in on what they're saying. I'm recognizing their body language. Are they talking with their arms crossed? Is their face like all scrunched up? And they're saying, Yeah, everything's fine.
Well, that doesn't compute. And when I look at the energy around them, the environment they're in, then I pick up so much more. And that can frame what's that next question I ask them. And then be quiet. You know, we love to fill silence, but emotional intelligence allows us to tap in to something for me that is foundational connection. Connecting to ourselves to be able to connect to other people.
And that's what builds trust. And I know you had an episode on trust, and it's so true. When we don't have trust, then how are we delegating work and counting on people to do what it is they say they're going to do? So this all starts with that emotional intelligence. Because when I know myself, I can communicate parts of that to other people so they can understand where I'm coming from.
And I can be curious about who they are and we build that relationship so that then we can adapt to each other.
Dee Davis (34:51)
I know for some people might be thinking, this is getting a little touchy feely, but I gotta tell ya that leadership is a little touchy feely. It is. We don't like that aspect of leadership always, but the reality is, is yes, we're there to do a job, but our job is to lead. And leadership involves people, which involves emotions and personal lives and all the things that we don't like about bringing this stuff into the workplace. You there is no clean separation between
work and personal. People bring their whole selves to work every day, whether we like it or not. And we have to deal with their whole selves and we bring our whole selves as leaders. And that includes, if you got in a fight with your spouse the night before and you're having feelings about that, you're bringing that to work. Or you're frustrated about something with a client and, you're bringing that into this meeting that has nothing to do with that client. we've all been there.
that self-awareness is something that is so incredibly important in leadership. How does it change the way somebody leads a team or makes decisions?
Jen Brown (35:56)
I love how you said first that this might be a little touchy-feely. But the thing is, people are messy and we do bring our whole selves. I used to think I could compartmentalize what happened at home, would stay at home, and I would do my best to show up in a different way at work. People know when you're not being authentic. People can read you. And when I realized that, I started realizing.
I don't want to say vulnerability in a way that is like, let me go share everything that's happening in my life. But when I can be more transparent and be a bit vulnerable with my team, I get to then build more trust, more of that circle of support. We're in it together as opposed to I'm the leader and they're here. Right. They're they're down here and I'm capping them. So
When I have that awareness of what's going on with me and what's going on with my team, guess what? I get to be more strategic. I get to be more strategic about who's best suited for this type of project, where are their strengths aligned, what stresses them out. I get to be more strategic about, okay, these are the mission goals. How can the team help shape that approach instead of me being top down to them? And so that
Awareness builds in the visioning of where is it that we're going on the job site. And I also get to know does so and so have some other issues going on that maybe this isn't the best thing for them right at the moment? Maybe there's something else that's better for them right now. You know, having that conversation and really lowering, I'll say lowering the leadership perspective of I'm leading from a position versus from influence.
Dee Davis (37:45)
And
I think that's an important difference in being a boss and being a leader. I don't view those as the same thing. I being a boss is organizational, top down organizational. Being a leader is how you behave. And you don't necessarily have to be in a leadership position to lead. I see that happening all the time. There are people that
Jen Brown (38:05)
will lead
Dee Davis (38:06)
Without being in that titled position of leadership. It's not doesn't show up that way on the org chart, but it shows up that way within the ranks and file, if you will. So that is just something that happens. It's human nature. Somebody who is a natural leader, people will naturally gravitate towards them. So as a leader, if you're in the leadership position or in the boss position, and there's somebody on your team like that, I hope you recognize that quickly.
And make sure that you're taking good care of that person because that person is going to be helping take care of the rest of your team and making sure that they're okay. That'll help lighten your load. And that's probably somebody that you should look at promoting at some point as well. what do you say to leaders who think emotional intelligence is soft, soft woo-woo squishy stuff? What do you say to that?
Jen Brown (38:55)
Well, I would really question that because it's at the heart of what makes for the hard leadership. So going into those hard conversations, going into making strategic decisions about, what's the future of the company look like? Are we growing? Are we scaling back? What what are we doing? We need to, as leaders, understand again ourselves and understand what's going on around our teams to be able to make
those hard decisions. So I think it's just foundational. I mean, we can lead from a position, but my question would be, what's the sustainability of your company, your organization, your own leadership? Because at the end of the day, emotional intelligence is what does help to develop that next generation of leaders. And if we're not tapping into that, then we're not building capacity that can outlive your own leadership.
as you were talking about that emotional intelligence being woo-woo piece, I would just love to say what I'm really seeing is even with several construction clients with whom I'm working, they recognize the value of tapping into emotional intelligence first in order to be stronger leaders.
in order to know how to show up to communicate because I might think I'm communicating clearly. Chances are people are hearing me differently than I intend. And so emotional intelligence is what helps us to understand if we're actually showing up as we think we are.
Dee Davis (40:30)
Well, and I love what you just said about the communication piece. We're speaking English. We think we're saying the words that people are gonna understand. They're not hearing it the same way we're intending it. And the number one breakdown in construction is communication. We have more ways to communicate now than we've ever had before. I mean, at work all day between phone calls, emails, text messages, instant messages, we have a zillion ways to communicate and we're making more noise than ever before.
But we're communicating very poorly still on a regular basis. It happens every single day that we have communication failures and breakdowns because we don't communicate clearly. We're coming from a position of let's hurry up and get this over with, and not a position of wait, let me make sure that I'm being clear. So this is the end of episode one. We're going to continue this conversation in the next episode. So
Please join us for that. Jen, thank you so much for being with us. We'll see you next time.
Jen Brown (41:32)
Thank you, Dee
