J: Welcome to Slingshot25 Shotcast, a series of bite-sized podcasts That will feel like an espresso shot straight to your brain. I’m Jackie.
C: And I’m Courtney.
J: Something we’ve been thinking about is, well, actually we promised a follow-up episode about the future of work And we left you with a giant Cliffhanger last time.
C: We said that leadership is the most important thing that you need to do and we’ll tell you about it later. We’re good like that.
J: The saying that comes up for me right away in this space, Courtney, is…the more things change, the more, they stay the same, right. You know, everything we talked about in the last episode, we talked about technology and mobility in the generations in the workforce and at the end of the day it just keeps coming back to the fact that we are working with human beings. It doesn’t matter where they are and what kind of tools are using to connect to them and what generation they come out of in all of that. The complexities you know when you twist all those things together, the world just gets more and more and more complex every single day and that’s the world you’re leading in. If you are a leader listening to us right now, that’s the world you’re leading in.
And so we thought it would be helpful to take you back to what we call the truth beneath everything. I’ve gotten to say through the years that there’s only so much truth in the world. It’s the stuff that’s at the bottom of everything. And when things seem really complex, and you’re trying to figure stuff out, trying to figure out what to do when these things happen. Sometimes it’s really helpful, just to go right back to those essential truths of those foundational things. And so we’d like to share those with you on this episode, to take them one by one. We have four sort of essential skills that we’ll talk about. You can think about them in many ways we’re going to share those essential skills with you in the first one.
It’s all right. If I started with humility. Now, I wonder if any of you out there are thinking oh dang, I was hoping she was going to say that. Because I really like thinking about myself.
C: I thought everyone was out there was singing. “Oh, Lord it’s hard to be humble,” but OK But okay, maybe they are.
J: But if there are gen Z or Millennial, I’ve never even heard of that song, Courtney. Humility and my favorite definition of humility and I think it it’s just it it really speaks for itself is humility is not thinking less of yourself. It’s not about you thinking you’re not good enough or you’re not worthy. That is not the definition of humility. I think people do kind of get it conflated with that sort of thinking. The aww shucks kind of thinking it’s not. It’s actually thinking of yourself, less. It’s about frequency. It’s about how often in every situation that you’re in. Are you thinking about yourself? Are you thinking about how you’re feeling and what’s going on with you and what’s going to happen to you next what does this mean to you? And how often are your thoughts actually self-focused? And so humility, that essential skill that’s going to help you out in every single situation that you’re in is rule number one, stop thinking about yourself. So that’s that. That’s my first essential skill.
What have you got, Courtney?
C: Once you have that the next place you go, do is start to think about others, which is the second skill is curiosity, can you get yourself to a place where without judging without reacting without answering the problem for someone else? Like genuinely be curious. And curiosity people can say… oh, I’m super curious. But the truth is for human beings, curiosity’s hard. Our brains like the things we like, we know the things we know, our egos like, having the answer and so to genuinely be curious to generally hold space for, I don’t know… something else is possible. I wonder why that happened without filling in the blank and rushing to answers. That’s actually a tough thing to do. And it’s a skill that can be taught. We teaching our classes and it’s critical. If you’re going to lead. like you have to understand people – you have to understand where they work. You have to understand their perspectives and understand their motives. And we just want to fill in the blanks. And there’s nothing curious about that.
J: Filling in the blanks is sort of a natural human thing to do. Absolutely. So, yah, absolutely… curiosity and a very specific type of curiosity, and I’m not sure if people think of this next skill as a type of curiosity, but it is. and it is the skill of empathy.
Empathy is essentially, a very specific kind of curiosity about. What is the other person that is involved in the interaction with you… What is the other person thinking and feeling? It is just simply allowing that curiosity question to just tickle across your brain. I like to describe it. You don’t have to ponder it deeply. It’s just allowing yourself just a moment’s time to think about what might the other person be thinking and feeling? That is essentially what puts you in an empathetic space and empathetic position. I have a lot of people say to me how could I possibly know? Well, it’s this actually, it’s a valid question, you can’t really know. But I encourage people to guess. And I have a lot of people say…Oh, I have no idea. I’m not good at reading other people’s emotions. I still encourage people to guess. You’ve heard that the definition of empathy is putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. which is not a bad definition but I think it’s relatively incomplete. It’s about really allowing yourself to wonder what might be going on with them and then doing something with that information, allowing that information to come into the interaction. Cuz remember as we described in the last episode about work of the future, it is complex and people are all over the place and I can’t give you enough rules and techniques to deal with every single situation but one of the surest things that will help you out in any encounter that you have with another human being is to just to think about what they’re thinking and feeling in that situation.
C: And that’s something that we can also learn. The last skill is belief in others. Believe in others, helping other people succeed, knowing that they can. And this skill, is it boils down? First choice, choosing to believe that that person has within them, the skills abilities, to be successful. And then second recognize, that it’s your job to help them, achieve, whatever that thing is. The fourth skill epitomizes what leaders are paid to do, right?
Use the resources in front of you, help them achieve their potential. In the very first thing, you have the skill, you have to have to do that, is to believe in them. That’s it.
J: I love it. So there they all are the four – We call essential truths of leading others. Humility. Curiosity, empathy and belief in others. Try those things out, and you’re going to find yourself ever ready to deal with the complexities that are coming at you. In this, in this constantly changing work of the future.
So that’s all for this episode of our Shotcast. But we always have a lot more to say. So if you want more drop us a line at Slingshot25.com.
Until next time…