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The Doing Business in Bentonville Podcast
To create an ecosystem that connects leaders of all kinds – industry, community, student, educational, civic, investment and entrepreneurial – to help overcome Omnichannel Retail barriers through exclusive, insight-rich content.
The Doing Business in Bentonville Podcast
Ep. 121 - Mindset First: How Leaders Survive Change
Change doesn’t just test a strategy; it tests a leader. With Elise Mitchell in the chair, we go straight at the hard stuff: why your brain fights change, how to flip from threat to opportunity, and the exact conversations that pull a team out of frustration and into forward motion. Elise brings a rare mix of neuroscience, hard-won CEO lessons, and clear frameworks you can use today, including the five questions that reset a stuck team and three core principles for leading through uncertainty: embrace reality, be decisive, and connect the dots.
We unpack how to recognize an away mindset, quiet the amygdala, and fuel the prefrontal cortex so you can think clearly when the stakes rise. From there, Elise shows how to make courageous decisions without perfect information, cooling emotions, widening inputs, and sharpening discernment to balance risk and reward. Her story about selling her firm grounds the theory in real trade-offs leaders face with their people, clients, and communities on the line.
Communication becomes the force multiplier. We explore the cascade of messaging, from inner circle to broader team to clients, and a simple three-step frame to create context, connect individual roles, and cultivate confidence without pretending certainty. The throughline is trust: you’ll only lead people as far as they trust you. Earn it by telling the truth, inviting participation, and showing your work. We close with a teaser for part two: removing roadblocks, including the uncomfortable moment when the leader realizes they are the bottleneck.
If this sparked a new way to lead through change, follow the show, share it with a leader who needs it, and leave a quick review so others can find it. What’s the one decision you’re ready to “break glass, pull handle” on this week?
Well, hello everyone, and welcome to Doing Business in Bittenville. I'm your host, Andy Wilson, and thank you again. And we have such a special guest today, and I can't wait to get to it. But but just before I do, really quick, thank I want to thank all of our viewers for all of you doing. Thank you so much. It means so much to us. Uh, you know, because of you, we're in over 100 countries today, uh, over 2,000 uh downloads today on our podcast, and you you are making that happen. So thank you. Thank you. Okay, straight to our guest today, Elise Mitchell. Welcome.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, Andy. I'm so excited to be here.
SPEAKER_00:It is so great to see you, to have you back, have you on the podcast. I would say, let me just tell all our viewers one thing. I've been thinking about this for years. Uh, ever since I met Elise and I I started doing this podcast, she is one guest I wanted on, but before I invited her, we had to have to be in over 100 countries. So here we are. So we're doing this. Let me tell you a bit about my friend. Elise Mitchell, she's uh experienced CEO, entrepreneur. She's a leadership strategist, and she's chairman of her company called Mitchell. We will get much more into that later. But she's also one of a best-selling author called Leading Through the Turn. Leading Through the Turn. We are about to talk about, we're going to talk about that really uh in just a few minutes, but before she uh she's a keynote speaker, she's uh entrepreneur, as I mentioned, she's focuses on leadership, she's extremely busy. You can check her her writings out and publications as entrepreneur, uh hush hush, everyone. My editor's here, Huffington Post. You can check her her uh information out there. Uh also this is something about her that's so phenomenal. She has received numerous awards, including Entrepreneur of the Year. Wow, Lise, that's so amazing. And also, she's um uh associated with the female executives, and I will tell you she's just more and more about her. You need to check her out and and go deep into her background and her so at least Mitchell, today we're going to talk about change. And let me say a couple things before we get into our topic today. I spent over 25 years at Walmart, and one thing that Sam Walton always told us was that the most consistent thing at Walmart was change. Well, you know what? If you think about all the way back when Sam founded Walmart to where it is today, then one of the most consistent things was change. Change, change, and he increased, and he was demanding on us to accept change. But here's the thing we're gonna get into today. Not only change your company, but change yourself. And we're gonna get into laying the foundation of change. So, Lise, we want to hear from you. So you take it from here.
SPEAKER_01:Well, Andy, thank you. You were way too kind on the introduction. I will tell you, I guess the best way to think about how we approach the top of change is what our experience has been as a leader. Mine was being an entrepreneur, building a company from scratch, scaling it, selling it, having Walmart as a client for over 20 years. So I've sort of lived in that same world that you were in, right? Is not only having clients like Walmart who are masters at change, but then experiencing myself as an in-the-trenches leader. And I love, I love that experience. People often ask me, are you are you sorry you're not leading your company anymore? And I have to say, well, you know, I certainly miss those days of being in charge of a large team, but I love what I do now, working one-on-one with leaders and with leadership teams. And this is the topic that seems to come up over and over again. I would say nine times out of 10, either at a coaching or consulting session or, you know, a team engagement, whatever it may be, this is the this is the problem or the dilemma that leaders are facing. How do they lead through change? And I love all this because um when I actually when I pivoted after I sold my company and I pivoted to what I do now, executive coaching, consulting, I did some training with the Neuroleadership Institute. So if you're at all into neuroscience or behavioral science and how the brain works, you'll love this, which is, you know, it all starts right up here. You know, what's in our own mind, as you said, sort of leading change in ourselves, this is where we have to begin. Before we could talk about leading our company or leading a team through change, we have to talk about our mindset about change. And this I thought is so fascinating to really figure out is how the brain goes into threat mode when it thinks about change. Why might that be? Well, just a little side note on that. The reason the brain is perceiving change as a threat is because it is uncertain and it brings up fears and anxieties and tensions around change. And there's there's kind of two parts to the brain. The the thinking part of the brain is the prefrontal cortex, this part right here behind your forehead. The thinking part of the brain is where we think about strategy or decisions, things like that. Really, really big part of the brain for critical decision making. Um, there's another part of the brain though that works just opposite to that. It's the limbic system. So if you've ever heard of an amygdala hijacked, the amygdala resides in the limbic system. The limbic system is in the unconscious part of the brain, and it's the part that that protects us uh when things go wrong. It also houses emotional memory, things like that. So, what's so interesting about this and why this relates to change is that these two parts of the brain do not work well at the same time. Why would that be? Because they're both fuel intensive. If we're thinking deeply or if we're in protect mode, our brain is using a lot of brain fuel, which is basically water, glucose, and sleep. And so to perform cognitively at a high level or to manage our emotions or stress and pressure well, we have to feed our brains properly. So that's sort of one little side note for leaders is get, you know, stay hydrated, get good nutrition throughout the day, and get your sleep so that your brain has a lot of fuel to work at a high level. But I loved this concept because I did not understand that when one part of the brain is working well, the other part kind of sits down and takes a nap, which sort of explains why when we are under stress and pressure, when we're facing uncertainty like change, our limbic system takes over to protect us from the uncertainty. And our prefrontal cortex kind of sits down and takes a nap. And so we are not thinking clearly. And this is sort of an aha moment for us is that we have to put ourselves back in a thinking position when it comes to change. We call that in the neuroscience world, they call that being in the away mindset, which is I'm moving away from potential threats, and the toward mindset, which is I'm moving toward rewards. So I move away from threats, I move toward rewards. When I'm in a toward mindset, my prefrontal cortex is I'm thinking my way through a situation. When I'm in an away mindset, I'm in a threat mode, my brain kind of closes in. I I miss things you're saying, I jump to conclusions, my inner critic gets really loud. And we've all experienced this of ourselves as leaders, and we've also seen our team members go into this sort of away mindset, right? Where they're protect, protect, protect. That's all they're thinking about. So I think this is really key as we even begin to approach the topic of change is how do we get ourselves in a thinking, open toward mindset that is moving toward opportunity, toward uh potential. We're thinking more creatively, we're being more open. This is the thinking mindset. So, in essence, it's kind of tells us, oh, I've got to reframe how I think about change and how I help my team think about change to say, oh, instead of yes, it's going to be challenging, but there is the potential for reward, for opportunity, for development of new skills, for achieving ambitious visions, whatever it is. But it's sort of putting the brain into the chord or the reward mindset when thinking about change rather than going into protect mode. So let me just stop there and see see what's coming to mind as you're thinking about this and maybe what you've experienced like this.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think one of the things you're doing right up front, which I think is excellent for our viewers, Elise, is that you're making it personal. And it's not the company's going to change or someone else has to change or my department has to change, is how I lead change in my life. And I think that's very practical next step to what you're teaching us about the brain and how it works. So help us as you begin to guide through this. You know, how how do we manage change as individuals? What is the process? Walk us through that. Now, this is where we really need to begin. Everyone needs to take notes and lean in because you're about to get taught. So am I, okay, because I'm taking notes. How what is the process?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. No, it's that's exactly right. We should put our minds into more of an open mindset. How do we shift our teams into more of an open mindset? How do we get teams to follow us as we lead through change? Because sometimes change is imposed upon us. Like, I don't really like this change, but I got to lead my team through it. Certainly, our people are feeling that way. And I agree, Andy, it it helps to have sort of a practical framework or a roadmap, if you will. Like, how do I actually do this? I understand this concept, but how do I lean through change? And I will say the building my company and going through making all the mistakes I made, all the lessons I learned. Wow, you know, I really got a frerocy to understanding how and to and how not to do this and what I learned along the way. It's certainly the work I have with clients today. I learned so much from them. So I will tell you first, maybe a story might be helpful to sort of set up, you know, when is a time I've ever gone through a really big change? And you and I, of course, have known each other a long time, and I have lots of examples I can share. Here's one maybe first story to sort of set it up. Maybe the hardest moment I ever went through as a leader, kind of hitting rock bottom, if you will, facing an indescribably difficult change. So um, this actually came after I sold a company. And there's lots of ups and downs in building a company and post-sale as well. We had a period of time, actually stayed seven years after I sold my business with my peer company. There were always ups and downs. But there was one extremely frustrating time. And I remember I was, you know, against what was happening. I was sort of fighting what was happening, and then I became a little bit bitter about what was happening. And I sort of came into a moment of paralysis. And I think it was a little bit of the emotions as well as the frustration, and that everything I was trying was not working. And I thought, at some point, you have to make a decision. Are you going to sit in this position of bitterness and frustration, anger? Or are you going to try to figure out how to go forward from here? So it's sort of, you know, bitter, or am I going to let this change make me better, bitter or better? What's it going to be? And this is part of what why it starts with you as a leader. In your mind, you might have to make a very difficult decision like this. And what I realized, I was just wallowing in the frustration and the anger and the resentment. And it was preventing me from taking action to find a new way forward. So I remember thinking through, I sort of hijacked my leadership team meeting one day. And we sat down and we actually extended this meeting for several hours, kind of into the early evening, and we asked and answered five questions. And I remember sort of writing these on a flip chart. And I said, okay, you know, I got to come clean here. This is what's going on. So the first question is, what is our reality? What is actually happening here? Let's talk about what is happening. So what is our reality? The second question was, what can't we control about our reality? And of course, that's the time of the conversation when everybody starts saying, Oh, yeah, well, I don't like this. I don't like this. This is frustrating. You're like, yep, that's right. Let's get it all out. Yes, all those things are things we can't control and we don't like. Then the third question is this is sort of when the conversation turns. What can we control? So, sure, there's things we can't control. The third question, what can we control? And all of a sudden, the mindset goes from the protect, you know, threat, anger, frustration mindset to the toward mindset, which was, oh, wait a minute, that's right. There are things we can control. Well, what are those things? And we started making a list, and it was everything from our culture to how wonderful our clients were and our people and the opportunity. And we could still try to hit our goals and achieve our wins, but we might need to change our strategy. So the fourth question was, what do we want to achieve now? Right? Do we need to redefine what a win looks like now? And then the fifth question is, how does our strategy need to change? Which basically is we still want to get to the mountaintop. Maybe it looks slightly different. We're gonna have to find a whole other route to get there because the route we're on is we've just hit a dead end. And these five questions, so simple, but they produced a tremendous amount of mindset shift and change in my leadership team to where we all kind of said, you know what? Okay, we need to make a new plan to go forward, but we still want to win. And that was huge, a huge turning point for them, certainly for me as a leader, but to try to get buy-in from my key leaders to figure out, well, what's our new way forward?
SPEAKER_00:A couple of things come to my mind. Um and the reason it comes to my mind, I've been there. I've been there with my teams in the past, and um because I've been frustrated. I've I've I've been angry, I've had anger, uh, and uh I've been bitter. I've I've I've had all that, I've experienced all that. And when I looked in the mirror, I seen the problem. It was me. And why I don't want to be too hard on our guests, but I want you to you to look in the mirror and and really be honest about you and and as a leader, and one of the things that that this process taught me, and you know, when we were in in a graduate school, we went through Carter's eight steps, and and you know, that that was wonderful, but what you're doing today, you're bringing that to a very personal level, which is wonderful. But one of the things that that I had to do is be honest with myself. And again, here's the thing. You can only lead your team as far as they trust you. Now I want to say it again. You can only lead your team or an individual as far as they trust you. Trust is critical. Trust is the thing that will make this work for you and make this work for your team. Talk about that, at least, and in some of your examples. Yeah, I love that, Andy.
SPEAKER_01:You're so right, is that's part of why I like this idea of you gotta start with yourself, you know, and saying, how do I as linear need to show up differently right now? You know, and for me and the story I just shared, I wasn't showing up particularly well. And and looking in the mirror, as you say, and getting honest with yourself. And then I think now looking back at that moment, I'm so glad I was honest with my team. I apologize to them. I said, I am really bit in the game, you know, and they all said we could tell you pretty upset. We just didn't know what was going on, right? So it's sort of letting your team know what's going on in your mind, being a little more transparent with them. And I know there's some things we hold back from our teams, but other times we just need to tell them what is so, what is, what is happening right now. And to your point of building trust, I think that's the first step with trust, is to say, let's call it what it is. This is what's happening to us right now. Like it or not, you know, we're facing this change, or like it or not, something has happened. And we've got to embrace what is so before we can move to what's next. And I think that's where your team says, now I'm with you, right? You're coming clean, or you're being honest, or you're being forthcoming, you're you're telling me the things I need to know, and you're role modeling for your team, what it looks like to move through the personal frustration that you might have as a leader. I remember something I don't remember where I actually do. I think I heard it from a really good friend of mine who also went through a very, very difficult time as a leader. And we've probably heard this from our pastor or a grandparent or something that life doesn't turn out the way that it should. It turns out the way that it does. It's what you do in response to what happens that matters most. And I really sort of love that because it's allowing me to sort of let go of my expectation that life was should have done X, Y, Z, should have turned out this way. It isn't fair, it isn't right. If I were really respected, dot, dot, dot, you know, fill in the blank of what it is that's making you feel that this expectation you had is not being fulfilled. Expectations are disappointments waiting to happen. Is it so we sort of have to say, okay, life is a fear. Life doesn't turn out the way it should. It turns out the way it does. The real question is what I'm going to do now. And this is where role modeling for your people begins to build confidence and trust in you as a leader to see you ruling through the process of accepting reality and beginning to say, hey, isn't it a better use of our time and energy if we begin to find the new way forward? Instead of sitting here in problems swirling and complaining, which sometimes can be fun, but isn't particularly productive, right? There's a place for that. That's the question of what can't we control? But you've got to get good at turning the corner on the conversation to say, and where do we go from here?
SPEAKER_00:Now here's what's going to happen. Uh Alicia's done a great job laying uh what I what I call the uh foundation here. She's laid the foundations. She's encouraged us to look at ourselves. She's helped us through that. So now you're ready for the next step. And the next step is that she's going to share three principles of this, this change and how you can you can adapt this change in your life. Part one, we will come back with a part two podcast, and she will share the other four principles because there's a total of seven that she's going to teach us here. So I'm ready. Okay, I'm ready for number one. I'm ready. Okay. I've looked in the mirror, I've thought about it. So let's go do this.
SPEAKER_01:Right, great. That's great. So, so principle one, I would say, is this idea of if accepting is embracing reality, accept what's so in order to move to what's next. And this is so key as a leader. We've got to be able to make that move ourselves. And I think part of what we have to ask ourselves questions as a leader is what am I holding on to? Sometimes as a leader is we're very um uh we're we're committed to getting to a destination, but sometimes we're overly committed to the path to get there. And we want to control how something's happening or we want to have things go a certain way. And there's a little bit of stepping back from that that I think is really important in this idea of accepting reality. Some of that as a leader is knowing that I'm not really particularly in control of a lot. I I'd like to be in control of more, but I may not be in control of everything. And so, how do I put my time and energy into focusing on moving my team forward, especially if I don't really know what is coming? I can't promise certainty to a team who would like that. I can't know exactly how every decision is going to work out. And maybe I'm dealing with my own emotions, or I could see they're dealing with their emotions. And so it's beginning to help people process a bit, which sometimes this is part of where good communication really plays into how we lead through change, is putting things out on the table more and talking about them intentionally. Here's how I'm feeling, here's what we're facing. But it's basically saying, you know, this is where we are, and we need to accept what is so before we can figure out what is going to come next.
SPEAKER_00:I think that's so wonderful. Um uh what you've taught what you've talked about is really accepting reality. You know, again, that's that's that goes back being honest with yourself, and and and again, I think it's such a foundational piece. Um so we we're going to face um difficulty with our team, it depends on your relationship with your team and where you've been. You're gonna face that. And I think Lise, what you have shared, what you you really the first principle is that we have to understand reality with that, right? Okay, Elise, thank you so much for that principle one. That's wonderful. Okay, now I know again, as I said earlier, there's two more to go, so let's go there really good. So talk about the second principle.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So I always think to myself, you embrace reality, this is where you are, what's so, what's next? And then a lot of times your team looks at you going, okay, what do we do now? And as a leader, of course, this is where the ball is back in our court, which is we've got to figure out what to do next. And I think to myself, this is where you really have to make a lot of crucial decisions. And decision making is tough. So I've principle two, let's just go ahead and claim that one. Principle two is to break glass pull handle. That's my sort of visual way of saying be decisive. So if you embrace reality, except what's so now you have to be decisive. You got to figure out what's next. How are we going to get where we need to go next? But being decisive in times of change, oh my goodness, Andy, so hard. Why? Because I don't have all the information I need. Usually I'm being forced of changes maybe forced on me, and I'm trying to figure out what to do, but I don't have all the information I need. And I'm gonna have to try to figure out what to do from here. There's also a lot at stake, usually. There could be it could be financial, it could be positional, um, it could be competitive. There's so many things that could be at stake in a major change. So you feel sort of the weight of that. Also, very likely when you're making big decisions, people are sort of lobbying you, you know. Well, I wish you would make the decision this way, or or make the decision based on this criteria. And of course, the other thing about any decision you make a year is everything's a trade-off. You're not going to be able to get all you want. You're gonna have to weigh different things such as risk and reward or opportunity, uh potential to make an impact, whatever it might be. So um let me share. Is it okay if I share another story?
SPEAKER_00:I've got another story. Oh, yeah. Yeah, at least too. But you know, one of the one of the things that I I just want to underline, okay, for our guests, and you said it already, but I love what you said to your example of breaking the glass, pull the handle. That's that's action. You know, and so I think uh what I just want to underline to our guests, you're gonna have to you've got a lot of difficult decisions to make, but you've got to begin. And you got to break the glass, you got to pull the handle, you got to step through uh in order to make that happen. So um it's powerful, at least what you're talking.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and it's easy the the what is it, the analysis paralysis, right? It's sometimes we sit with something and we are afraid to make that call. So I agree with you. Being decisive is also a key part of gravitas, our executive presence, how how we are perceived by others is being able to make decisions, oftentimes with more courage than confidence, which we'll talk about later. But let me share an example of when of a difficult decision that I remember I'd made. It was probably maybe one of the more difficult decisions um that came before the story that I just shared about um, you know, facing a very difficult moment in time. And that decision was whether or not to sell my company. And for entrepreneurs, this is probably one of the biggest decisions they will ever make in their careers. Should I sell my company? So I had built Mutual Communications Group. We were a public relations marketing firm based in Northwest Arkansas. Um, we got there. I established the firm back in the late 1990s, so it was sort of actually in the early days before Walmart even was forged number one and began to expand internationally. So we enjoyed uh we we benefited from all of the growth of the region working with Walmart, Tyson, JB Hunt, many, many vendors as well. We loved it. It was such a great ride. And uh, but I started out really small, Andy. I started at a kitchen table and over time built it slowly. And as the region and as our clients grew, we were able to grow as well. So actually, I was 18 years into building my firm when the opportunity came to sell a company. And I always said I would never sell, it was never my goal. Being big, selling a company was never the goal. Being best was the goal. What I learned later was oh, well, when you're really, really focusing on serving your clients with excellence, being innovative, all the things that make you best, you're probably gonna grow. And there might be people who want to buy your firm, which never occurred to me until it began starting to happen. And I actually said no for some period of time. I didn't ever want to sell the firm until I began to talk to more potential buyers. And I always say one thing I learned in that was take every conversation because you'll learn something from every conversation you have. Even if it's what you don't want to do, you're going to learn so much from having conversations with people. So I did have the conversations just to learn about what that would mean for us. And I did eventually make the decision to sell. And I remember thinking to myself, wow, you know, how do you decide this? I mean, you often think about what am I giving up versus what am I gaining? What would be the impact for me, for my team, for our clients, for our community? You know, what happens, you know, what opportunities we have, but what what happens if we don't have the skills that we need to succeed in a new environment? There was so much on the table for me. I was really struggling with how to think it through. And again, as an entrepreneur, you usually you you sell one company in your lifetime and you want to make sure that you don't make a mistake in doing it. And I I look back on that time now, and I think for any leader, whether you're an entrepreneur or not, it doesn't matter, you're facing big decisions in your career and you're trying to think through things. And some of the lessons I remember learning was try, for example, trying to play down that threat mindset, you know, the worry, the anxiety, trying not to let emotions cloud my judgment, because then you're you're really not thinking clearly. You're tending to let your emotions kind of guide things. So setting aside emotions as much as you can or processing them so that they don't become the dominating factor in your thinking is one really helpful thing to remind ourselves as leaders. Set your emotions aside as much as you can so it doesn't cloud your judgment. The second thing is to get out of your own head and out of your bubble. This is the idea behind take every conversation, because you need to listen to different points of view. You need to figure out what you don't know, because there may be things you don't know that if you considered them would change your mind and help you make a better decision. So, sort of going into a learning mindset, which is not just, oh, I think I know exactly the way to do this, is what else am I considering? Who else should I talk to? What are some different ways of thinking about this to ensure that you are thinking broadly enough about an important decision? And then I think it's simply, you know, and this is part of, I guess, lifelong learning as a leader, honing your discernment skills. Like, how do I get better at thinking about risk and reward? Understanding what is the tolerance for risk on my team or in my organization? How do I think about how to weigh trade-offs fairly and evenly? How do I avoid, you know, having decision-making bias, you know, such as confirmation bias, which is basically listening to people that are basic are confirming what you already think, as opposed to listening to people who have different points of view? How do I get better at um reading the room? How do I get better at sort of scanning the horizon and seeing where the storm clouds might be headed my way? How do I get better? Better at using useful data? How do I get better at trusting my God? There's so many sort of parts of discernment, Andy, that I think are challenging to us as leaders might be useful to think about is as I'm approaching decisions, they're important. How do I kind of go down a checklist of some of those things and say, hey, where am I on this? What do I need to do to make a better decision in this moment?
SPEAKER_00:Wow, those are great. You know, I'll we have to pause there because I think there's some more teaching here that I that as I hear you go through the biggest decision in your life. And then you're now challenging us to personally to grow, to develop, to learn, take the appointments. I love that. You know, take the conver every conversation, uh, set aside the emotions. So again, you you're really getting to our heart and to our mind here. So, Elise, um, what other advice do you have? What more advice do you have to um to how you communicate with the team? Because now you're going through this personal change as the leader. Now your your team has to catch up with you because now you know more than your team. So talk about the team a bit here.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I think that's practically one of the biggest challenges that we often face as leaders is slowing down enough to let our teams catch up with us. So it's yeah. So we're thinking about decisions, right? Break glass, pull, handle, principle number two, uh, being decisive, honing our own thinking skills to make better decisions. What you're saying is is absolutely the next step, which is how do I do a better job of connecting the dots for my team? If I'm making a big decision, at what point do I bring them in? I will tell you a side story here. I remember one time my team kind of beat me up about this. They said, at least you never let us know how you're thinking about something. And I said, Well, well, uh, because I haven't made the decision yet. You know, I've I don't have anything to tell you. They're like, no, no, no, that's not what we're asking for. We want to know how you're thinking through the decision. I was like, oh, very important difference, right? I was trying to formulate it all in my head and then pronounce the decision. And they were like, can't we can't we participate with you in thinking something through? And I thought, oh my goodness, that would be such a better way for me to not only benefit from their point of view and for me to think more broadly, for me to, you know, consider data better, all the things I just talked about. And also to teach them more what I think and to be able to communicate more effectively about what we think and how we're thinking about something. So I think that's an important sort of side note for leaders is how do you bring your trusted other leaders into your decision-making process instead of keeping it all a big mystery, you know, behind the curtain, so to speak, and then boom, you know, I've made this decision. When actually we probably made a better decision had we brought people into the process with us. So that's that's a key sort of side point to all this. But it leads to principle number three, which is connect the dots. It is how do I, you know, once a decision has been made or I am in the process of making a decision, how do I communicate about it? And as I said, I think this is probably one of the biggest challenges we have as leaders. Why? Because most of us tend to be sort of the visionary leader, right? We think of things, we see the future, we know where something's going. And even if you might not consider yourself a visionary, so to speak, you certainly have access to information brought more broadly in the enterprise than your team has. So just by virtue of being in the role of a leader, you know more than your team does. And I think this is part of the challenge, is that we've got to be more intentional to help our team see what we see. And that requires us to be better communicators.
SPEAKER_00:And that is the key, it's communication. You know, it's not to leave the team behind, as you said. It's not to leave the team online, it's to put them in the car with you or whatever, put them in there with you, put them in the room, close the door, take them someplace, get out, whatever it takes, and get the team on board. Because you will be better with the team. You will not be as good without your team. And in fact, there'll be no one to execute that, and and to carry your mission, your vision, your purpose, all of that forward. And because you want that team just, you want them to be as involved and connected as you are, even better at times, you know, because they're gonna take that and they're gonna push it through, they're gonna break through all those barriers, and it could be your barrier. So you could be the barrier here. I was the barrier, okay? So I'm talking about me personally, and and I was the barrier until I was to to I I have learned some of these principles that you're talking about, but but the hardest part was the team. That was the hardest part.
SPEAKER_01:I agree with you. And that's again, this idea of slowing down long enough to bring your team along with you. So I remember building on the story I just shared about how do I decide, how did I decide to sell my company? At some point, I had to tell the world, I had to tell my people I'm selling the company. And that was one of the hardest times I've ever had to communicate, Andy. All those years that we worked with clients and trying to help them navigate media situations or investors or whatever it may be seemed so easy because, of course, it's always much harder to work on yourself. But I remember practicing and rehearsing and thinking through what am I going to say to my team? And thinking about the cascade of communication. So I here's a really good principle for us to keep in mind. When you have important things to share, you start in the center of the bullseye with the most important people. Sometimes that might be your key leadership team. So I did, I started, got my five key executives, then we had a 12-member leadership team. Beyond that, I started there and worked outwards once those individuals were all the way informed and in, you know, in the boat with me, so to speak, on where we were going, and we talked to the employees, then we talked to the clients, then we talked to our community, on and on and on. So you sort of start inwardly and you work outwardly based on who needs to know first and why. So it's we call it sort of the cascade of communication. But it's a very helpful, useful way of thinking about who to tell when and how. But part of it all, even beyond the cascade of communication, is the frame. How to frame the message. It's funny now, and a lot of the clients I coach or consult with, it's remarkable how many times that question comes up is how do I say it? And I always think to myself, well, that doesn't seem like it would be so hard. I think, yeah, but at least you had a communications background. So it's easier for me to say, oh, well, this is how you could frame it. But I think about sort of stopping yourself to say, how do I frame the message? This is really a key point, is thinking about what to do. So I'll give you here's a simple three-step frame, if you will, as a leader to think through. Certainly, people could modify it based on what's useful for them, but I always say there's three things you've got to do to frame the message. The first one is you need to create the context. And this is to your point of sort of slowing down enough for people to sort of catch up with us, is I need to communicate what has brought us to this point in time. Why are we here? What's going on, right? So create the context for the team to go, oh, I get it. Because again, you may be privy to lots of information that they're not. So you need to stop and say, This is what's going on. This is a little bit like, you know, embrace reality. This is what so, right? Sometimes you need to say, This is what is going on. This is what's brought us to this point in time, and this is where we're going next. So it's a little bit of past, present, future is creating the context. That's step one. Step number two is connecting the dots. And here I think about this is the art of good communication as a leader, which is helping each person to see how does this impact me? Because, of course, that's the question that's on everybody's mind when you're leaning through change. Well, I get it that there's a change going on, but like what does that mean for me? Am I gonna lose my job or am I gonna have to change my skills? Or what if I what if I can't go through this change? What if, what if I'm not gonna be able to do like all the fear and anxiety that comes up in people's minds. This is where you stop and you say, here's how this is going to impact each of us. And here, more importantly, is how each one of you is going to help us get to where we want to go. And this is basically the your work matters message, right? Connecting the dots so that I can see myself in the bigger picture of what is going on. That's number two. And number three, this is maybe one of the most important things you can do at this point in time, is to cultivate confidence on the team, which is sort of recognizing that this is a time of great uncertainty, stress and pressure, which a lot of my clients this year we'd say we're going through a lot of uncertainty for a variety of reasons. How do I cultivate confidence in the team when we don't know exactly what's going to happen? And this is where I say the key message here that really helps people back to your point of building trust is we say, we don't know everything. We don't know for sure exactly how dot dot dot this is going to play out or what's going to happen next. You sort of call it what it is. You know, we don't really know. But here's where you say, I am confident that we can figure it out as we go. We have the right people, we have the skills, we have the minds, we have the past experience, whatever it may be. What are the things we have going for us that tells us, you know what, whatever is going to happen from here, we are smart enough working together that we can figure it out as we go. I think this is a huge message for people, which is this idea of, oh, that's right. Like we've always sort of figured things out in the past. Why would this be any different? Right? Remind your team they have what it takes to figure it out as they go.
SPEAKER_00:I don't want to stop, but we are getting close to the end of our podcast. And I would like you to do um, I would like for you to do something. I would love you to set up uh principle uh the second session, which was principle number four. But before you do that, um let's let's think back just for a moment um and underline a couple of things that you talked about. Uh first of all, thank you for the challenge. Thank you for hitting us as individuals straightforward and being for us to be really look in the mirror and be honest. You've given us a great roadmap and principles for that. And uh you know it's accepting reality. Accepting reality goes back to what we talked about is really building trust and being true to yourself and looking in the mirror and saying, okay, what is reality? And sometimes you've got to have those people you trust on your team that you can go sit down with them and say, tell me the truth. Because um you want people around you like that, right? You want people in your team that you can that will speak so honest and open with you. We need that as leaders. Uh, if you don't have that as leaders, uh you could fail. Um so you you taught us about reality. Uh you tell us about stepping through, going forward, breaking the glass, making pulling pulling, and you taught us about connecting the dots. And and I think that's wonderful about how we envision a new future reality. Um, we're gonna get she's at least gonna tell us before we do that, I I want to say something that's touched my heart today that you talked about. First of all, it is about changing ourselves, it is about changing our companies and our leaders, but I'll tell you why it's about changing culture or how you operate. You know, all of us are have grew up in different cultures and organizations and families and all that. It's all part of us and who we are. What Elise is offering us today is a way to change, it's a way to be better, to be more efficient, and be much happier about yourself as a leader, which equals success as a leader. None of us want to fail, but we do that, but we learn from that. So I'm gonna tell you if you're in failure, if you have failed, if if you are in the space where you failed in your organization, maybe family too, if you want to get very personal, but we're focused on business. If you have failed, go back and listen carefully to what we Alicia's taught us. She is gonna help you get back up and she's gonna help you break that glass and pull that handle and and and and become a much better leader. So the other thing is is it you know, it's taught us to to uh really look at trust, you know, and and what I've said, and I've learned this the hard way you will only lead your team as far as they trust you. You yeah, back to what Alice has taught us. It's just about you, it's about trust. So Lise, I can't thank you enough. What a wonderful, what a wonderful wonderful session. You're welcome. Okay, set up the button.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, and if I could, I'm just gonna build it. By the way, it gets harder. That's right, that's right. I was gonna say we're only part way through. But I love your thinking, Andy. It's you be beautifully said, is you're only gonna lead them as far as they you have earned their trust. And part of that, as you go through even the step three that I was talking about, connect dots and communicating with your team, is inviting them into the conversation with you. We talked a little bit about how you invite your key leaders into maybe making a decision, but when you're talking to your broader team, inviting them to co-create, you know, the way forward from here, co-create what the vision would look like of what we're trying to accomplish. Talk through as a team what would be the benefits that we're going to enjoy once we get to where we want to go. So it's sort of inviting them into the process of change. I think that's a really a key part of all of what we're talking to here, but it leads right to your point of trust is as a leader, I'm going to get more buy-in. I'm going to have those change ambassadors to help me broadly throughout the organization if I invite them into the process with me. That's a little bit part of step three. But then step four, as you said, it is a little harder from here. So you sort of painted the picture, right? This is where we're going. I've invited you into the conversation. And now what happens? And this is where step four is really about removing the roadblocks, which is that's a huge part of our job as leaders, is how I am able to take away the things that are holding the team back from getting where they want to go. So I know you and I don't have time for this story, so we'll save it for next, but I'll sort of set it up is what happens if you are the roadblock? And so that's a story, that's a story we'll tell next time, which is um that back to looking in the mirror. But it was a very important, sort of pivotal moment in my career as a leader where I had to wrestle with the fact that I had become the roadblock to my team. And that involves a little bit about a motorcycle and a little bit about an intervention. So maybe that will entice our listeners to to come along us with us for the next part of our conversation.
SPEAKER_00:All right. Okay, I can't wait. I can't wait to hear the motorcycle part and all the other and uh Elise. Elise Mitchell, thank you so much. It's been so great to have you. And all of our viewers, thank you for this. Uh, we'll be communicating part two. All of this will be uh communicated to you well in advance. You won't you don't want to miss part two. It's gonna be exciting. Elise Mitchell, again, thank you so much. It's been wonderful being with you.
SPEAKER_01:It's always my pleasure to be with you, Andy. Thanks for having me.