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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. 122 - From Burnout to Breakthrough: A CEO’s Turning Point
Change doesn’t wait for us to feel ready, and that’s exactly where real leadership begins. Andy sits down with Elise Mitchell, CEO-turned-coach and bestselling author of Leading Through the Turn, to unpack seven hard-earned principles for guiding teams through uncertainty without losing your grip on what matters. From a personal “intervention” during hypergrowth to an unforgettable motorcycle lesson about focus and risk, Elise shows how to balance realism with optimism and keep your eyes on the line you want to exit.
We dig into accepting reality as the gateway to progress, making decisive calls when data is incomplete, and communicating in a way that creates context, connects the dots, and builds confidence. Elise goes deep on fear, fear of failure, of losing control, of not having every answer, and explains why courage must come before confidence. You’ll learn how to remove roadblocks that slow change, including the uncomfortable moment when the leader is the roadblock, and how to “ride loose” during people challenges so you can read the room, address conflict early, and stay present under pressure.
Then we shift to staying close to your people with genchi genbutsu: go and see for yourself. Get out of the tower, visit the frontline, praise effort as well as results, and create a culture of try where experiments are safe and learning beats perfection. Instead of rescuing, ask catalytic questions that return ownership to your team. Elise closes with practical cognitive tools, reprioritizing, distancing, identity-based motivation, and reframing, to help you manage yourself, show up as your ideal self, and keep momentum when the turn gets tight.
If you’re navigating change, leading a messy people problem, or just need a fresh dose of practical courage, this conversation will meet you where you are and move you forward. Subscribe, share with a leader who needs it, and leave a review with your top takeaway so we can keep bringing you conversations that sharpen your edge.
Well, hello everyone, and welcome to Doing Business in Bentonville. My name is Andy Wilson, and I'm the executive director and your host of Doing Business in Bittenville. We're back with Elise Mitchell. Elise, welcome.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, Andy. I'm glad to be here.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my goodness. This is session two, we're about to talk about, and I can't wait to get in there. But let's just talk about Elise for just a moment or two. You know, Elise is such a she's such an experienced CEO and entrepreneur. She's a leadership strategist, and she's a former uh founder and chairman of Mitchell, which we will talk about her company and that she sold back a few years ago. We'll talk about her wonderful company. She is also the best-selling uh author and book of Leading Through the Turn. And you're going to hear more about Leading Through the Turn today. We'll talk about that. So exciting. So, Leash, welcome back to Doing Business in Bentonville.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, thanks, C and D. I loved all my years in Northwest Arkansas, the chance to work with companies like Walmart, Tyson, JB Hunt, so many, you know, entrepreneurial companies, uh, entrepreneurial great companies. It went on to become something really big, so inspiring to be there. I love those years.
SPEAKER_01:Well, good. Well, I met, you know, we met years and years ago at her office in downtown Fayetteville, and a good friend of ours introduced us. And ever since, I have admired herise. I've read her book, I have watched her uh lead and and in so many different ways in this in this area. And now she's moved away, but she's close and she's here live with us. So wonderful. Now, yesterday we had session one, laying the groundwork for change. I would say we're gonna get into um as I mentioned, we're gonna we're gonna get into session two, but we're gonna do a quick review of session one. But now if you're watching uh us here or listening to on session two, you've got to go back and watch or listen session one, right, Elise, because we have to put this all together for our viewers, correct?
SPEAKER_00:Yep, yeah, that's right. So session one, we talked about, you know, the the the really our overall theme is leading through change. How do you do it? Which of course is the trick everybody wants to know these days. Um I now the nowadays after I sold my company and now I do executive coaching and consulting work and I work with a lot of leaders, and it doesn't really matter what industry you're in, you're trying to figure out how to navigate change and particularly how to get your how to mobilize your team and get people to follow you through change. And so it somehow kind of ends up back on your desk, you know, is how do I lead change effectively? It's so tough, and it really doesn't matter what type of change you're dealing with. There's there's some really tried and true playbooks like Cotter's, you know, John Cotter's eight, eight-step playbook that for leading change, that's a classic. But you and I, especially in the last session, we started to talk about like, but what are the in-the-trenches lessons? What what are the principles? What are the things that that I've learned or that that uh you've learned or that we are hearing and seeing other leaders have learned that are super practical. So that's why I like where we were in session one. So we've been talking about, you know, we said, let's go through the key principles of how do you lead to change, how do you make it happen. Session one, we talked about first of all, you have to think about your mindset, which is sometimes you have to start right up here, you know, between the ears, yourselves, look in the mirror, and flip the script on change as something to be anxious about or afraid of and not liking the uncertainty of it and say, oh, wait a minute, this is a great opportunity. We're gonna learn, we're gonna grow. I've got to be positive about change and get my team to think opportunistically about change. So I think that's really important from people who say, yeah, got to start here, and I got to get my people thinking more about potential for change and the good that can come from it. Then we talk about a couple of key principles. The first one was you've got to accept reality, which is sometimes we face change and we're like, oh, I don't really like this change. Um, I'm gonna fight this change. And of course, we see it in our people too. They they become resistant. So the first principle is to accept what's so, so you can move to what's next. And that's that sounds really easy. It can be challenging, but we talked through all of that in session one. That's a, I think, a really a key place to start as a leader. Accept reality. Session two, my sort of shorthand term for being decisive, I said think of it as break glass, pull, handle, you know, like when the fire is raging around you, now's the time, right? You have to be decisive as a leader. How do you be decisive? How do you how do you hone your discernment skills? Because of course, in change, there's so much we don't know, and it makes us sometimes uh kind of, you know, freeze, you know, the paralysis analysis kind of thing. Or we or we get lobbied by people to change our minds. And so in session one, you and I talked a lot about how to hone your discernment skills and how to feel like you make decisions, better decisions in times of change to keep your team moving forward. So that was principle two. The principle three was connect the dots. So once you have a vision for change and you've begun to define the destination, like where are we going, you know, uh how are we gonna get there? We talked about the importance of being a good communicator as a leader because you've got to be able to talk to your team and you've got to be able to bring them alongside you and you not run too fast and leave them behind and how you do that. And we said there's really kind of three things. You have to create context, which is what brought us to this point in time, where are we now? Where are we going? You've got to connect the dots, which is basically help each person on the team see how their work matters, how they can impact the team's ability to get where they want to go. And then we talked about cultivating confidence. You know, how do you help your team believe in themselves to know, hey guys, you know, we don't have all the answers, but we can figure it out as we go, right? I'm not worried about us having all the answers now. Nobody does. We we will we will get where we want to go. So giving your team that confidence in their ability to problem solve and think through together and lean on each other to actually get where they want to go. So I I think it was a really good way, you know, to kind of get the the beginnings of how to lead through change. And then then we said we're gonna stop and we'll wait for session two on what happens once you're in the change.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Well, here we go, uh everyone. We're going to session two, but let me just give you one other statement that Elise said yesterday that I have been thinking about since yesterday. Because when she finished the three principles that she just reviewed, she said on principle three, okay, now it's time to help others, your team, others envision a new future reality. Here we go. I am excited about moving forward to this new reality that we need because when you need change in your team, in your team, it's it's all about creating that new reality. So Lise, principles four, five, and six, and seven, let's go do it.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, we're ready. Okay. So I remember you and I were first talking about this idea of hey, let's do a podcast conversation together. I was like, oh Andy, that means I have to tell some stories of be honest, right? You said yes. Of course, I want to hear those stories. So, and to be it to to be open with your listers of viewers, I of course I want to tell my stories, some of my stories of failure, some some of my worst times, because that's how we learn, right? Those those moments when things are tough really define us as leaders and sort of the trial by fire. And I look back now and I see, oh my goodness, that's absolutely when I grew the most, when I was at my worst, or I made the biggest mistake, or I had the biggest failure, whatever. So we're gonna talk about some of those failures today and some of the lessons I learned. One of the biggest ones I have to start. Before I tell you this story, because it was one of the most difficult times in my life, personally and professionally. And it is, it's my story of um how I came up with the title of the book Leading Through the Turn. So let me tell you what happened. So I started my company when I moved to Northwest Arkansas. I was in the public relations field. I started my firm in the beginning. It was called Mitchell Communications Group. Then we just shortened it. People knew us as Mitchell for many years. We worked with Walmart, Tyson, JB Hunt, Parker Gamble, Hilton. We did a lot of really, we worked with many, many wonderful clients. We're very blessed to be working with so many fantastic clients. And um, in the early years, the firm grew slow and steadily, and then it just took off and it just grew exponentially. We grew over 500% in five years. And people sort of looking on the outside, looking in, like, oh my goodness, you know, what a success story. Everything's going so well for them. And that was true the way it appeared on the outside. But the truth of it was on the inside for me, I was a lot of things were falling apart for me personally, not the company, but me personally. And the problem was because as the company began to grow, I became just fixated on growth. And I became just myopic in my thinking about the company. I I didn't want it to fail. I wanted it to keep growing. And I I it was all I could think about Andy. And it was okay to be, I was all I've always been a very driven person. I always wanted to achieve success, but but when it became real in my life, oh my goodness, it it took over my life. And I became a classic workaholic. And I wonder if any of your listeners could relate to this because this is what happens, the slippery slope we go down when our drive, our ambition, our determination, all these things that are good, wonderful skills and abilities, all of a sudden they just take over our lives. And I became just um solely focused on the business. And I'm not so sure I was really a great leader or a great teammate. And one specific instance, it all came home to me. And it was um a period of time where we the pressure was kind of rising in the business. I was the one who kept setting higher and higher expectations, of course, for myself, but also for the team, delivering excellence to our clients. And I just kept convincing myself, I don't think the team is trying hard enough. Team needs to do better. We need to do better, better, better. And it just never stopped. And I thought to myself, one day I've got to take my top two people with me to lunch, and I've got to talk to them and I've got to tell them the team is not performing. We need to get the team to perform at a much higher level. So sure enough, I took everybody to lunch, these two people. They were two of my top two people, and I sat there with them and I had this conversation. And Andy, uh, as the conversation went on, I found myself pounding my fist on the table. Which I sort of look back now and I think, oh my goodness, I don't know why they both didn't just get up and walk away. Like she has lost it. But I found my fist on the table and I said, the team is not performing. And I remember in the moment they just sat there and they they looked at me. They listened, they didn't say a word. And I remember thinking to myself, good, my message is really getting true. Now things are gonna get get, you know, things are gonna get ship shape around here. And we went back to the office and the rest of the afternoon I worked. I went home that evening. And after dinner, my husband approached me and he said, Let's sit down here at the kitchen table for just a minute and need to talk with you. I said, Okay, about what? I thought maybe it was about the kids or something like that. He said, I got a call from your office today. I said, You did. He said, Yes, Elise, I did. And he said, What has happened to you? Who are you? We don't even know who you are anymore. Where's the old Elise we all used to know in love? He said, Everybody still loves you, but nobody really likes you very much anymore, including me and the kids. And I sat there, and you know, Andy, to be honest, it was my turn not to say a word because I knew he was right. And I remember saying to him, I said, you know, I know I need to change. I don't know how. And of course, you know, the tears began to fall because I I was faced with that reality of I know I'm not showing up very well, but I was so afraid if I changed that the business would fall apart, right? If I let up on the gas, that everybody would just coast, which of course is so silly to think that. And to be honest, the conversation went on for some period of time that evening and it didn't stop there. Of course, it had to go on for much longer than that. But one thing happened in that moment in that conversation, where my husband said to me, You know, we haven't been on vacation together, you and I, in a long time. Just you and I. I was like, Well, yeah, my first thought was, Well, I can't go on vacation because my company can't live without me. And he was like, Oh, I think they'd be really happy for you to go on vacation. And so um, we agreed to go on vacation together. And in a moment of insanity, I agreed to get on the back of his motorcycle and take a 10-day trip. And I remember thinking, this is such a bad idea. Like, you know, now a side side note here. My husband always loved motorcycles and fast cars and things like that. And I always thought they were pretty look at. I never got gotten on a bike before. But I agreed to go on this trip. And I thought, this is gonna be a really bad idea. You know, it's not gonna be very comfortable. You know, you gotta wear helmets, your hair doesn't look very good. What if it rains? The view can't be very good from the back of a bike. And worse yet, of course, I wasn't gonna be, you know, holding the handlebars. I was gonna be in charge. I was gonna be on the back of the bike. But I will tell you, I got on the back of my husband's bike and I never looked back. I was hooked on motorcycling. It was the most amazing experience. I mean, it was just intoxicating. The sights, the sounds, the smells, being on a bike, you know, your every sense just comes alive. And I came back from that trip. And I often also say I think that trip also helped me rediscover joy in the journey. But I came back to the trip. I was like, this was just fantastic. And he said, Yay, Elise, I knew you were meant to ride. I said, absolutely, right there on the back of your bike. He said, No, no, no, you're meant to ride your own bike. I was like, ride my own bike. Oh, I I don't know about that, right? Because my first thought was that sounds really hard. Like, what if I can't do it? Um, but sure enough, on Friday night, I found myself at a motorcycle dealership there in Springdale, Arkansas, to take the motorcycle safety course. And it was on Friday night, you have to pass a written test, and then on Saturday is the driving test. And so Friday evening, you're kind of paying attention to your instructor. Our instructor's name was Big Mike, and he looks just like you would imagine. He was a big guy, tall leather vest, tattoos on his arms, and he's an excellent rider and a great instructor. And he was teaching us things, you know, that's going to be on the test. You got to pass the test. And then at one point in the evening, he said, I'm going to teach you something that's going to save your life. Of course, we all sort of put our pins down and set up and said, Oh, what's that? He said, Well, the most dangerous place you could be on a motorcycle is in an intersection for obvious reasons, right? Because all the cars turning and such. But he said, the second most dangerous place you could be is in a turn. We were like, in a turn? Why? What's the big deal about a turn? He said, Well, in on the road, in a turn is where usually all the hazards gather that would make your bike slide, like gravel, oil slicks, sand, cow manure, you know, all these different things. He said, not to mention the trajectory of the turn itself. So if you sort of guess wrong on the trajectory of the turn as you're turning your bike, you might end up in the in the ditch. Worse yet, you could end up in the other oncoming lane. So you don't want to be in either place. So he said, here's the trick. He said, as you approach a turn, you look into the turn and you assess the potential hazards that are there. And he said, um, you make a plan for the hazards you see, kind of based on your instincts experience. You know how to navigate through those potential hazards. But he says, you don't stare straight into the turn. If you do, there's a term for that. It's called target fixation. And he said, here's the problem. Where you look is where your bike goes because your bike follows your eyes. So he said, you stare into the turn, you make the plan, but you don't, that's not where you look for very long. Just kind of glimpse at it. And he said, you keep your eyes focused on where you want to end up. And he said, it's called looking through the turn. And Andy, at that moment, I was like, oh my gosh, like, what a great principle, not just for successful motorcycle riding, but that sounds a little bit like a great principle for life, right? Which is val this kind of keeping one eye on the road in front of you to think about the hazards, make a plan to adjust your item, but don't fixate on the potential problems. Keep your eyes focused on where you want to end up. So one eye on the road in front of you, one eye on where you want to go. The balance of that is the key. And I will tell you from I I passed my test, pass got my license and all that. But the best thing that happened from that evening was I walked away going, ah, I think I have a new metaphor for leadership in life, which is I want to be a person that can look and lead through the turn. I think I'll enjoy the journey a lot more. And I think I won't become so fixated on all these potential hazards. I think it'll be the right balance, right? Of looking in and stepping back. And I thought that's kind of the whole art of leadership. So to me, this just became this mantra, if you will, of how to think about life and leadership. And I think it also helps us as we think about leading through change, because life is full of these twists and turns, right? These things we can't see, the hazards, where's the road going from here? I don't really know what to do. I don't know what's around the next turn. And it's this idea of sort of keeping your eyes focused on where you went to once and get up, and you'll get where you want to go eventually. So that's that's my intervention story. I will tell you that a lot of my team later they would say, Well, there was pre-motorcycling release and there was post-motorcycling release. Guess which one we like better?
SPEAKER_01:You know, that is such a great story, Elise. And, you know, and as you're telling that, I'm visualizing making that turn. I'm a you know, I'm a cyclist, so I'm not I don't ride motorcyclists, I'm a cyclist. But you're exactly right. The bike follows where your eyes are. And uh, you know, intersections are you've got to really be careful. But the turns are just like, but I think the example though is that we've got to stay so focused on where we're going. If we don't stay focused in that turn where that turn's going, I think that's where you lose you know your direction or your missteps or you waste a lot of time because you now you've got to start over, you've got to do some things, and uh I think it's brilliant. So um what a great lesson. What a great story.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it leads us right to that that principle number four that you alluded to a minute ago, which was when I had this sort of awakening, and of course, you know, the side story takeaway for all of us is you know, don't be a workaholic, be live a whole life, have a hobby, you know, find a way to live a more balanced life. But it helped me begin to step back and think about this journey of life and leadership. And principle number four, as you lead through change, became this idea for me about how do I remove the roadblocks that inevitably are going to arise? Going to this turn, and oh my goodness, there's a hazard, or there's a detour, or or something, the road stops. You know, what do you do? And my sort of takeaway was, wow, you know, I think I was the roadblock for my company. In so many ways, I was holding us back because I was not showing up as a complete leader. I was too harsh, I was too um narrow-minded, and I was not as relaxed. And I was not um, I was not more courageous. And, you know, when I think about what it is that holds us back, what are these roadblocks we face we lead through change? There's a whole lot of them. But I think it could be organizational dysfunction, it could be lack of resources, competing priorities. There's a lot of things that that I think hold us back in type of change. But one of the worst ones, Andy, is fear. And this is a big one as you think about yourself leading through change. Like, what am I afraid of? And what about what are what is my team afraid of? Why does my team seem fearful? And how do I help us move through the fear of what is going to happen? And there's so many common fears that we all face, you know, not even just times of change, but but in all of leadership, you know, fear of losing control, fear of failure for sure. That was my biggest one. Fear of the uncertainty of the outcome, uh, concern over your loss of status in a change, feeling uh the fear of being overwhelmed or being intimidated by change. Here's another big fear is people afraid they don't have the skills or the abilities needed to move through the change, right? They may be confident right now in their title, their corner office, what they do. But now you're asking me to develop a whole new set of skills and think differently. And oh my goodness, what if I can't go? What if I can't make a change, right? This becomes a big fear that holds people back. So face your fears is a really a big part of thinking about leading teams through change effectively. Of course, like you told you said last time in our first conversation, you got to look at the mirror first, right? You got to start with yourself. And for me, I knew, you know, through all of the changes that I faced, my biggest fear was a fear of failure. I was so afraid of failing. And, you know, I think about it later. Why was that such a big deal to me? You know, and it it just was. I mean, I think it's not uncommon, but I guess I was so worried that people would think, well, you know, they were just lucky, she was just lucky, they're really not really that smart, they're not really that good. Like that it would be somehow a failure, it might be a commentary on me as a leader or on our company, which again, so silly, you know, but you kind of tell yourself this story in your head of like, oh, if this thing happens, it's gonna be the worst thing. I was so afraid of failure until I failed, until I failed pretty spectacularly. And then I realized, A, everybody fails, B, I don't think anybody cares that much about anybody else's failures, right? Nobody was paying that much attention to me. And C, when you fail is when you grow, right? This was as I was alluding to a little earlier, from from your your lowest lows can come your highest highs. And we've got to sort of shift our mindset to think about failure differently. And I think this is really key. I sort of calling this, you know, facing your failures. This I sort of say stare down your tigers, if you will. You know, the tiger that has you crouched in a corner because you're so afraid of it. And for me, when I began to face this failure and overcome it, of oh, I'm not so afraid to fail anymore. Why turns that it wasn't that big of a deal? And there are so many things that are good in my life that I don't need to worry about this or that failure because the the things that matter the most are still intact for me. And it became this freedom from fear, the the folly away of the fear that was really kind of holding me back. And it it kind of brought to light for me this concept that I work with my clients a lot on, which is this um idea about courage and confidence. And here's why I bring this forward at this point in time in the conversation. As leaders, a lot of times we say, I'm going to wait until I feel confident about a decision, about, you know, moving through a change, whatever it may be. I'm gonna wait till I'm feeling confident. And so what happens is we wait, we wait, we wait. We don't feel particularly confident, right? And sometimes our fears get so loud. So I always say, you know what, that's the wrong way to think. Like we've got to say, confidence doesn't come first. Courage is what comes first. Courage is taking that first step, even if you don't know how it's going to go. If you, even if you don't have all of the skill and the knowledge you need, even if you're not exactly sure it's going to come out perfectly, you know, we're just sort of fighting back this desire for perfectionism. And it makes me think of this the quote from the late great Nelson Mandela, this idea that courage isn't the absence of fear, it is the triumph over it. And that is so key. It's moving forward despite your fears. Because your fears are still there, but courage is going forward anyway. And I thought, oh my gosh, like that's such a key difference. Courage comes first. So when I take that first step, which is usually the hardest step, right? Things begin to come together. I learn, I try, I get better, faster, smarter, wiser, whatever it may be. I learn as I go. And then all of a sudden, I feel more confident. So it's courage comes first, confidence comes next. And I think that is a key difference and a really important point for us to roll them model as leaders. Like means we have to do it first, right? And to show your team, hey guys, we may not have all the information. We don't have all the answers. We're not sure it's going to work precisely, but we're going to figure it out as we go. We're going to get smarter, faster, wiser as we go. And we know we can do it. We've done this kind of thing before, right? We have the innate ability to solve problems and find and you know, climb big mountains, whatever it is. So it's role modeling courage for your team. And I think, Andy, that helps empower them to show up more courageously themselves instead of sort of letting their fears hold them back. So that's that's kind of principle four. It's like remove the roadblock, especially if you if you're the roadblock, face your fears and help your team overcome their fears as well.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Excellent story. Face our fears. That's first uh I mean that's that's that's personal that's the next principle that she and that is the principle she just talked about. So facing our fears. Um it's harder than it than you think it is, but you must do it in order to move forward. And so great, principle number four. Now here's the thing, Elise. Now we gotta deal with people in dealing with people, there's always issues with people, always. And as a leader, you have to recognize that, you have to deal with that. So, how do we now deal with people issues on our team?
SPEAKER_00:Yep, that's exactly right. It sounds really good. Oh, you're just gonna be courageous, you're gonna help people move through all this. It's so easy, right? No, and it leads to principle number five, you know, which is to toughen up, right? Because if you're gonna remove the roadblocks and help your people and show up courageously and on that, you're still gonna run into these issues. And I will tell you, in all the work I do with clients now, nine times out of ten, the topics they bring to our conversations around people. And, you know, I look back and I think to myself, well, I guess it's not surprising, right? Because we need people to do what we do. Very few of us can can do things independently. We usually rely on other people in our work. And, you know, people are messy, complex, they change their minds, you know, they're they're not controllable. They're they're their own individual, of course, right? And so we should expect that people challenges might be things that we would face, not just our day-to-day leadership, but as especially as we are leading through change. Because when you insert change into the equation, it becomes exponentially more difficult for everybody. And this is part of where I say, and I've learned this myself the hard way many times was you're going to have to toughen up and build a reservoir of resilience to help you deal with the stress and the anxiety that comes as you lead a team through change. And especially when it comes to navigating the challenges with managing people and leading a team through. Change. So here's another little story, another motorcycling principle. For those fellow riders out there, you guys are going to like this. But I remember a principle I learned in motorcycling. I learned it during COVID. My husband and I, you know, you couldn't travel that much, but we ended up taking like three different two-week trips on uh motorcycle together. We went out west mostly, and our goal was to stay off at interstate. And I think only twice did we ever have to get out of interstate. Instead, we were on county roads and state highways and back roads everywhere. We went all over the Pacific Northwest and um Montana, Idaho. And I remember one trip, one time we found ourselves in the state of Washington, and I was on, I was usually riding on the back of my husband's bike for the these long trips. He he would ride, I'd be on the back, and I was a navigator. So I would have my phone in my hand, you know, and I'd be like, oh, turn here. Wait, oh, turn here, you know, because we didn't really have any place to go particularly. We're just riding to find great roads. So one time I had him and a friend of ours uh who was on their bike behind us, I was like, quick, quick, quick, turn here. Because I saw this road that went through with this beautiful sort of on your phone. It showed up as a green area, which usually means it's a forest or a state park or something like that. A road that went right through and I thought, oh, this is gonna be beautiful. And sure enough, we turned off the road, it became sort of a narrow little one-lane road, nicely paved for about a mile, and then it turned into a gravel road. Oh, Andy, oh my goodness. For motorcycle riders out there, they're probably going, she found herself on a gravel road. It was, and we were way out in the middle of nowhere. And oh my goodness, my first instinct was stiffen up, like hold on tightly to my husband and think, oh my gosh, I've made a terrible mistake, right? But my husband, his body language was entirely different. He set his shoulders back, he relaxed, he loosened his grip on the bike, and he just let the bike go. I know this sounds counterintuitive, but I'm telling you, it was brilliant. It's because he is a very experienced rider. And here is the concept: you, it's called riding loops. You relax your grip on the handles and let you let your bike find its way forward through the gravel. Oh my goodness. Well, as it turned out, it was a few miles. We were on, I kept thinking, is this road ever going to eat it? And of course, I could look at my phone and say, well, yeah, we're getting to, you know, the where we're gonna go next. We pull after we got through it all, we pulled off the gas station to fill our bikes for gas. And our friend and my husband were like, wow, you know, that was really challenging. And they were like, Elise, you sent us on this road. I said, I'm so sorry. They said, No, no, no, it was so it was fine, right? It was fine. Because they were very experienced riders. And these two guys were overhearing us. They walked over to us. They said, Did you just ride your motorcycles on that gravel road? And we were like, uh-huh. They said, Wow, you know, you guys are good. And I remember thinking, Oh, I just can't believe I did that. But it was like I thought about it later, and I thought, there is so much packed in that one example of riding loose, which is this idea of letting go of the need to control, loosening your grip a little bit, being more present, relaxing, sort of setting your shoulders back, right? And preparing to see your way through what is a pretty rocky road. And sort of riding through the bumps, if you will, riding through the bumps, going with it. And it was, you know, I thought, I don't think I lead that way. I think I'm a, you know, when things get rocky, what do I do? I want to control more. I want to grip tighter, I tighten up. And of course, you know, your prefrontal cortex, that thinking part of your brain, sits down and takes a nap because your limbic system takes over, because it's fear, fear, fear. Threat, threat, threat, right? You're you're in the away mindset protecting yourself. You're not thinking clearly. And I thought this is so true when it comes to people issues, because these are often the thorniest, stickiest, rockiest issues we deal with, the rockiest roads we're going to find ourselves on, are dealing with people issues as we navigate through change. And so I thought to myself, there's a lot of ways to think about how we get better at navigating the challenges of people. A couple of strategies to try. A few things, maybe practical things for listeners here. First is you've got to hone your people reading skills. You actually know more about people than you think to do. The trick is, are you slowing down and really leaning in and listening? Are you watching for the signs that people are giving you? Are you, for example, listening to not only what is said, but what isn't said? Are you learning to read body language? Are you being curious? Are you asking good questions? Are you are you figuring out what seems to trigger people and what are their preferences? What are their tendencies? There's so much we could get into all this, but just leave it there enough for for leaders to say, huh, you know, am I doing a good job of reading my people? Am I doing a good job of taking the time to slow down and get the signals that are happening in the moment and leaning in with curiosity to find out more of what's going on in somebody's head? Another good principle on navigating people issues is to deal with conflict as it arises, right? Don't let it, don't let it fester. Uh, but don't ruminate over it because rumination costs you time, energy, mental um agility because all you do is think about it. And so you've got to really give yourself that confidence, like give yourself the courage to say, I need to deal with this conflict. Usually conflicts are not as bad as we think they are, and sometimes our mistake is we wait too long to deal with the conflict. So people often say, What's the biggest mistake you see your clients make in dealing with conflict? I said the biggest mistake is they don't deal with it. And so you've got to tell yourself, this is the toughen up idea, right? Is I've got to, I've got to go into this and I've got to deal with this and try to help myself and this other person move past it. Another great skill to develop in yourself, if it gets back to this idea of, you know, managing stress and pressure with the people is to practice mindfulness. Sort of whatever, you know, a couple of minutes a day where you can sort of slow down, take a few deep breaths, think about positive things, think about setting your intentions of how you want to show up that day, whether it's, you know, today I want to show up as calm, or today I want to show up as present. Today I want to show up as curious. Today I want to show up as um determined, or whatever it is, but it's sort of this setting your intentions, being more mindful about how you are showing up is really, really key here. Um another idea, I guess I'll just sort of close with on this concept is to remind yourself that you can take more than you think you can. I remember there were so many times, Andy, I thought to myself, I just don't think I could keep can keep going here. This is just so hard, right? I I sort of like to give up. And, you know, then say, wait a minute, Elise, you've never given up before. You've always been able to be tenacious and stick it out, right? Resilience. You can take more than you think you can. You can tolerate an elevated level of anxiety, the anxiety and tension for a period of time and remind yourself it won't last forever because nothing does, right? And sometimes we blow this out of proportion in our mind, and it's not nearly as bad as we think it is. So that's that sort of gives maybe a night concept around how we toughen up and deal with our people issues a little bit better.
SPEAKER_01:Those are great strategies, Elise. So great. It it reminds me, I was in Chicago, and I'd recently taken over the uh human resource or people division for Walmart CHRO, and and um is you know, it's a large company at that time, a million and a half people and organization. And I I was always visiting stores to your point, listening to our associates, listening to our customers. Um, but I was I had an opportunity to visit um the uh my counterpart at Sears. And um so I was at the Sears Tower and had a meeting, and I went up to Sears Tower and I rode up to his floor, and I sat down in his office, and we had a nice chat, and then I asked him a question. I said, What is wrong with Sears? Why are you struggling? And he stopped for a moment. I think he was like, Can I really trust this guy? He's my competitor sitting across the uh my desk with me. But I could tell he was he was really worried complex. And um he said, We have lost our way. And I just listened, I you know, there was a lot of silence there after that, and then I asked, Why have you lost your way? He said because we don't stay close to our people. He said, Look, I'm in this tower. You know, I stay in this tower most days. And he said, I know you're traveling stores, that's only in Chicago. You're in stores, you're listening to the people, you're listening to you know, your customers, your associates, and the stores. And and you know, I uh we finished our conversation, but when I the thing I took away was if you don't stay close to your people to what you talked about in your strategies, and you and you said you can learn to read others, you know, you talked about as situations arise, you deal with it, um, you keep your eyes focused, you know, uh where you want to end up, especially when it comes to your people. That that reminded me of the importance of my job and of my role in the company. And because we know all know that that company no longer exists. I think if that company had done and talked about the strategies you just shared, just those one strategies that you just talked about, that company may still be here today, you know, or or it may have been a success much longer. So the point that is that you've got to check in. You got to check in the frontline team members, you have to listen, you you have to show empathy, uh, you you've got to appreciate them. And um, so those things you pointed out are so critical for our next point that you're we're gonna talk, our next principle that you're gonna share.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. Andy, that's such a great story. Yeah, it reminds me, it's principle six is just what you said, this idea of how do we stay close to our people. And um, even though what we just talked about is navigating people issues, you know, it's again, it's a bit of that balancing act, which is yes, I've got challenges to deal with with my team and help them get where we want to go, but I've got to stay close enough while we go through this change to be able to know what's going on and be there with them. This is a little bit the idea of being an in-the-trenches leader, right? There are times that you need to be on the front lines. There's a a concept I I like. I when I sold my company, I actually sold to a Japanese parent company. They were based in Japan, but they had bought agencies all over the world. Um, but I remembered I actually lived in Japan between my freshman and sophomore year college in that crazy. I made just enough money to get a plane ticket over there, and I worked in a language school and then came back in time for my sophomore year in college, but learned so much about Japan. I never thought I would actually sell it to a Japanese peer company. But there were some core concepts from Japanese companies that I think are really relevant here. One of them is the concept, the phrase called genji gimbutsu. I don't know if you've heard that or other people have heard of that, but it was this, it came from Toyota back in the day when they were becoming renowned worldwide for their production philosophies. But the phrase ginchi ginbutsu means go and see for yourself. Go and see. And the idea is they would send engineers down to the factory floor. They would say, stand and watch the production line and figure out what's not working. Because you can't figure it out in the ivory tower. Just like you said, your Sears counterpart who's sitting up in the ivory tower here, you were going to stores, right? And I'll sometimes I work with my clients and they'll say, Oh, you know, this key leader on my team left. And now I've got to get back in the weeds and deal with da-da-da-da-da-part of the company. I say, Oh, this is such a great opportunity for you to go and see what's really going on in the front lines of your business. And they're like, Oh, I didn't think about it that way. And I'm like, Well, you know, it'll be interesting to see what you learn, right? You're on the front lines, you're talking with clients or customers, you're you're right there rubbing elbows with your team and you're beginning to understand what are the challenges they're facing, what's their morale like? What are the processes, systems that are maybe not working very well? How do I help my team become better equipped? And I can't really know it if I am sitting in my office. I've got to quote unquote walk halls, although I know sometimes we have remote-based team members, but you've got to stay in touch. As you said, you've got to listen, you've got to show empathy for your team, understand their challenges, lean in with questions, you know, try to figure things out, maybe get them to help you figure things out. So the couple of strategies here that I think help us with this principle of how we can stay close, right? Is a couple of them. One is I love this idea of growth mindset, you know, which is you can learn and grow, you can get better, right? Not a fixed mindset, which is, oh, you know, your skills and abilities are fixed and you can't really can't change. But the growth mindset concept, I love that concept for leaders because it's yes, I believe in my team's ability to grow and learn. We can figure it out as we go. Another part of growth mindset that's really important here is as leaders to remind ourselves to praise the effort, not just the results. Praise the effort, not just the results. Sure, you're gonna praise results. Oh, we achieved this big win. But it's people are gonna let go of the rope along the way if you never praise the effort they're putting in to try to get to the win. I made this mistake's leader, you know, celebrate the win, but I wasn't really being mindful and intentional to go to the team to say, I see how hard you're working. I just want to acknowledge this and thank you because this is challenging right now, and you are crucial in us finding our way forward. So praise the effort, not just the results from growth mindset. Another lesson I've learned was it's okay to say you don't know, but you must do whatever it takes to find out. And this is this idea of role bonding learning leadership. Because a lot of times I remember people used to run in my office, Elise, Elise, we have this problem. What are we gonna do? Like I had all the answers, you know, the wizard of oz. I would sit there and go, I have no idea what we're gonna. Why? Because we'd never faced this problem before. I'd never been here before it came to growth. And sort of this recognition of it's okay to say you don't know, but you can't end the sentence there. You must do whatever it takes to find out. So when you run into these challenges, your team says, What are we gonna do? You say, I don't really know. This is a really good and interesting challenge. Oh my goodness, we're gonna learn so much. We're gonna figure this out. And I need your help to find the right and best solution for us. So you sort of invite the team into helping you solve the problems. This is role modeling, learning, leadership thing is really key. Another thing I think was really helpful was I I look back now, I sort of think I called it a uh in creating a culture of try, a culture of try. And the idea behind that is make it okay for people to try things, right? This is you know, battling the need for perfectionism or not making mistakes, but to say, hey guys, you know, think of it like a greenhouse. We're gonna plant some things, some of these, some things are gonna die on the vine, but some of our other ideas, oh my gosh, they're gonna take off and and bloom and and become very productive for us. They might be, they might be the thing that really saves us here. We've got to try some things. So part of that is like, don't, you know, the no shame, no blame rule, which is no shame if something didn't quite work out, no blame if something didn't go wrong. It's what are we learning? How do we get better as we go? Keep people moving forward and not sort of giving up because they found something to be particularly challenging. And then this idea too of not rescuing people when the going gets tough. That's a whole nother conversation we could have another time. But I see this a lot in my my clients, which is their um this idea of jumping back into the business, but they do it for the wrong reason. They do it because they're trying to rescue their people and rescue the company. And and you can do that occasionally, but it's really not the best strategy. What you really want to do is teach people to rescue themselves, right? Help them learn to think for themselves. And one of the ways we do that as leaders, instead of being so directive with answers and solutions, stop and ask a good question and say, huh, gosh, that's a really interesting challenge. What do you think we should do? What do you think might be the first step? What do you think is the real dilemma here? What perspectives are we missing? What are the options that we might consider? What would you do if you could do anything? How do you go forward from here, right? You're asking good questions to sort of push the ball back into the court of the other person as opposed to say, well, this is exactly what we need to do, and this is how we do it. Because what you do when you rescue people in that way is you rob them of the ability to think for themselves. And we're never gonna get through change, really hard change. If we're the one who was always putting our team and our company on our back and trying to carry it across the finish line, we are generally not going to make it. Either we're gonna give up through burnout or our team is just never gonna be strong enough to help us get there where we want to go. Success is a team, it's a team sport, and we've got to bring our teams along with us. So that's principle number number six.
SPEAKER_01:That's so good. I love it. Stay close. I think that's powerful. And what what great, again, great strategies you've given us on staying close. And um, I love, I love, I just gotta underline uh don't rescue your people. That's powerful. You know, when people know that that and when they work you, uh work with the leaders and know you're not gonna rescue them, they're going to try harder, they're going to work harder, they're going to to try to find those solutions without you. And because they know it's safe to do that. That's so powerful. Thank you. Now we're about to go to seven, and I don't even want this to end. It's so awesome, but we have to go to principle seven. But here's here's the thing that I feel as a leader. There are days when I just feel sort of beat up, beat down. I've had every issue coming at me, and I've been handling issues all day. You I guess what I'm talking about. You may be having that day now, and I thank goodness you you're listening and viewing us now. So, how do you coach leaders to keep the momentum, to keep the drive, you know, to take a breath, to say, okay, I've got this. How do we do that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, and that's that's a good way for us to sort of wrap the principles. The principle number seven is always give your best. Don't give up. Always give your best. And um all these other principles we've been talking about, all of them, generally speaking, have been about how we lead others. This one is how you lead yourself. And guess what? The inner battle is the hardest one, right? I'd much rather tell you all the things you need to do, right, than to fix myself. And so self-management, self-awareness, self-management. This is this is one of the greatest superpowers we can have as leaders is getting good at leading ourselves and managing ourselves, especially in times of change, especially when we feel stress and pressure and anxiety, especially when the world is more uncertain than it's ever been before. This is where you find that grit not to quit. Like, how do you have the tenacity and the resilience, the determination, the awareness, the drive to keep going when everybody else gives up? And I sort of look back now and I think all the years that I had my firm, 18 years before I sold it, and then then 23 after it was all said and done. And I think at the end, Andy, I certainly wasn't the smartest person around or the best talent there was. There's lots and lots of people that are great at all those things. I think I was so determined to never give up, right? I was just determined and I was so driven. And I think this is really important because this comes from within. And any of us can have this. You don't have to be the most driven person in the world to have this. This is this inner strength that I'm talking about here. And I want to share a couple of very practical strategies I learned about how to manage yourself more effectively so that you can show up at your very best in times of change when things are particularly, particularly tough. So a couple of things I learned. So, as I mentioned in session one, I when I pivoted what I do now, I got my executive coaching training through the Neuroleadership Institute. And David Rock was the founder of the institute, and he wrote a number of great books. So people are interested in books on neuroleadership and how the brain works and the how that intersects with daily practical leadership. There's a great book called How Your Brain Works. There's another great book called Quiet Leadership that are written by David Rock, all really good stuff. But he basically teaches some of these core strategies. They're called cognitive strategies. So that means they're there are ways that you change your thinking about a situation. I'm gonna give you a couple. Number one is a cognitive strategy called reprioritizing, which is determining how a specific situation ranks in the order of importance to the big picture of your life. So, you know, something happens, you have a bad day, you know, and you start talking to somebody about it. The first question you really should be asking yourself is, you know, on a scale of one to 10, how big of a deal is this really? Now, if it was particularly bad day, I might say, oh my gosh, Andy, is 14. You're like, well, you know, scale only goes to 10 here. Really at least. And I'd say, well, okay, it's probably a seven or an eight, right? When you begin to talk about it. And reprioritization allows you to step back a bit and see things in the bigger scheme of life, or maybe in the bigger scheme of your career or of the certain project. It doesn't matter what time frame, but it's allowing you to sort of see it a little bit more for what it is. This is a little bit of sort of like accept reality. But I love this skill. On a scale of one to 10, how big of a deal is this really? Number two principle is distancing. So this is stepping back enough to see how you're thinking and feeling. So this is a little bit of self-observation, which is if in the moment you said to me, Elise, hey, that that that conversation you're having with your team, did you kind of see how you were showing up in the moment? Um, that sounds really easy to do. It's very actually kind of difficult, but it's the skill of self-observation, which is sort of floating outside yourself and turning around and looking at yourself and going, huh, like how's that conversation going? How are you showing up? How is it working? Is it is it flowing well? But you're you're putting some distance between yourself and the situation. And it's also very similar to that is thinking into the future and imagining how you will feel about the situation when you look back. So, one of the questions I ask my clients a lot of times is, oh, well, that's interesting, Andy. I see your point there. That was challenging. When you and I are talking about this a year from now, what do you want to be able to look back and say about how you showed up in this situation? And almost always my clients sit there and go, hmm, that's a really interesting question. What it's doing is causing them to reflect on who they think they are and who they want to be and what they want to be known for, right? Who, in other words, what is the most aspirational version of myself? What does the ideal me look like? When the chips are down, I choose to show up as my ideal self, which again sounds really easy, can be quite hard. But having clarity about what is most important to you about how you show up is really key here. You know, write it down on a sticky note. Uh, my ideal self is strong, wise, discerning, has high integrity, you know, role model stewardship, is kind, you know, whatever those words are that resonate with you, and you say, this is my ideal version of me. And when the chips are down, I got to remind myself, at least, this is how you need to show up. This is actually a strategy called identity-based motivation, which is if I identify with these qualities and characteristics, then I'm more motivated to actually demonstrate those qualities and make them come to life instead of sort of defaulting to maybe my emotions and some bad patterns. Um, the last strategy I'm going to share with you is probably the most powerful of all called reframing. And this is considering what benefits could arise from the situation, no matter how bad it is, what good could come from this? What new meaning can I find from this? And that is the most powerful of all, because even if you go through the other strategies, and there's more we didn't go through right now, there's other strategies. But this one is when you step back, you say, This is the worst thing that could happen to me. He, right? I scale on a scale one to 10, it's 14, whatever. Um, I'm trying really hard. It's still bad. And then you say, okay, you know what? Um, something good's gonna come from this. I don't know what it is. You know, maybe it's what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Maybe it's look at all I'm learning. Maybe it's I'm changing as a person, as a leader, but something good is going to come from this. And I need to trust that process. And that is a mindset shift. That's that reframing, right? Which says, change is challenge is hard, but I'm gonna look for the positive and I know it's going to be there. I've got to find it. And I just love that because this is where you see inner strength rise in a leader where they show up so courageously in these challenging times, which often has this incredible um benefit of making people want to follow you. And that is some of the magic of leading through change. Starting with yourself, showing up with courage and being the leader you want to be, no matter how hard it is, and finding probably people who are much more willing to walk through the fire with you if they see the kind of leader that you are. So that's that's principle number seven.
SPEAKER_01:Well you know, Elise, you have given us, is your word, courage. You've given us um, you you've given us confidence, you've given us motivation to get up when we're down. You're you have you have helped us so much. And I just review quickly uh these your seven principles. Um number one, accept reality. I mean that starts there. Break glass, pull the handle. Let's do something. That's to do that's to do something and move forward. Connect the dots. Um number four, remove the roadblocks. Wow, that was that that was a great one. They're all great for me, but I have a lot of thoughts about that. Toughen up, right. You know, there's times when uh, you know, when when the pressure is on and there's chaos and disruption all around you, um toughen up is hard. Because you're because you have you have to do that though. And that's when you toughen up to deal with the people issues that we talked about. Um stay close, because that was uh that that's the one I I I shared, but that's the one I I learned some really challenging times in my career. Um I learned that one the hard way, but I learned it. And um, I don't think I went to Sears Tower if I hadn't learned it. Uh number seven, always give your best. Well, at least I can't thank you enough for our time together. Is this I don't want this the end. I just want to tell you that in front of all our cats. You have you have inspired us, you have motivated us, uh, but you have given us leadership lessons. Lessons and strategies that we need. I can't thank you enough.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for having me. And it's always a pleasure to be in your orbit and especially to actually sit down and have a real conversation about things that are are so important for leaders to learn. It's been my my honor to be with you. Thank you for inviting me.
SPEAKER_01:I hope you come back. There's so much more. I've been making notes about you coming back already. So anyway. I just got to convince you to. Okay, to all of our viewers and listeners, thank you. I I at the very beginning of our part one, I told you it was gonna be phenomenal and it has been. Elise, uh, best to you and your family. Uh thank you, thank you again. It's just been wonderful. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you.