Thanks for Coming Back
Welcome to "Thanks for Coming Back," where every episode feels like a heart-to-heart in your favorite coffee spot. Hosted by Dr. Latasha Nelson, this podcast strips back the layers of leadership to reveal the real, relatable side of guiding and growing, whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out.
Settle in with your brew of choice as Latasha shares her world of insights and experiences, blending wisdom with warmth in conversations that matter. It’s not just her stories, though; guests from all walks of life join in to share their own tales of triumph and challenge, adding flavors of diversity and depth to the mix.
"Thanks for Coming Back" is more than just a podcast—it's a community where we all learn and grow together. It's about tackling our challenges, getting better at what we do, and embracing the leader within. So come join the conversation, and let’s make leadership a part of our daily lives.
Thanks for Coming Back
Impactful Leadership: Creating Order and Inspiring Teams
Ready to turn chaos into your ladder to leadership success? Check out this episode where Rebecca Vickers and I discuss creating order and inspiring teams. Rebecca, an inspiring leader in her own right, transitioned from the dynamic worlds of theater and nonprofits to thrive as a VP of Operations in digital marketing. We'll explore how important maintaining a personal touch in our tech-driven world is, especially with our teams, and how embracing an entrepreneurial mindset and crafting impactful experiences can foster a thriving company culture.
Curious about making small, consistent improvements that could totally change your professional life? We're breaking down simple steps for creating order and inspiring teams that lead to substantial gains. Discover why strategic planning is essential not just for the long run but for nailing your daily objectives too.
We'll also share some clever strategies to keep your teams engaged, inspired and growing, from regular training sessions to innovative hackathons that ignite creativity. Learn how to streamline your workplace chaos with effective strategies and tech tools that empower your team like never before.
And finally, with clear communication and regular emphasis on your mission, vision, and values, we'll guide you on how to create an environment where innovation thrives. Tune in for actionable insights that will elevate your leadership skills and revolutionize the spaces where you lead. Join us and elevate your leadership game!
Hey everybody and welcome back to. Thanks for Coming Back. I'm your host, dr LaTosha Nelson, and I'm super excited about today's show. We've got Rebecca Dickers with us, who's truly a force to be reckoned with. Rebecca shares her start in theater and nonprofit arts and how she's making waves in digital marketing as a sensational leader, and one of the things I truly admire about Rebecca is her unique talent for bringing order to chaos and the really smart ways that she's come up with to set goals, coach and build systems that have not only lifted her career but are also massively boosting the teams that she worked with. As we're chatting, I can really see how adaptability and mentorship have shaped her journey and how well thought out her systems are, but then she says something that really hit home and the conversation gets even better. I'm excited to have you join us there.
Speaker 2:And then to sort of summarize all that, I then started to find, well, where can I improve, where can I help? Because we're still small, we're still growing. I have all this experience and we've got a really great team. Where can I take on more, do more to offer more value? And so that's brought me to the position where I'm at now, as VP of operations. How can I continue to serve the team and make sure that we're growing, we're still innovating and we're collaborating in a way that's healthy and creating that really healthy, strong culture, which is important?
Speaker 1:in a way that's healthy and creating that really healthy, strong culture, which is important. I think I want to go back a little bit and touch on the entrepreneur reference that you made. I have always been a firm believer that if folks operated as though they were like LaTosha Inc. Here, right Well, how would that influence how we show up? I'm big on accountability. I'm big on ownership. I'm big on customer service and customer experience I share with my team all the time.
Speaker 1:What experience do you want to leave our clients and partners with? An individual contributor or you've got a leadership title, you know, I believe, that you're a leader within the capacity that you're serving in. How do you leave people wanting to come back and do business with you, Trusting the product, whatever your product or service happens to be right? So I love the reference to being entrepreneurial in your space and adding value. So let's touch on this some. What strategies do you use to help people really try to overcome any roadblocks they may have as they operate as themselves Inc. And achieve their goals, especially when you've got, I'm sure, what are personal aspirations and goals and organizational goals?
Speaker 2:Well, first, I think everything you just said is one of the reasons why we were so excited to talk together today, because that really aligns with my beliefs too, and it's that idea of leaving a room better than you found it something my parents instilled in me, right? And so how can you help a company grow better than how you found it? Not to say that it was really broken, I think that could imply a negative, but there's always room for improvement, right, and with any kind of growth, there's going to be growing pains, so how can you help navigate through that? And your company is your people. That's what I believe. Your best resource is your human resource. We have wonderful amount of AI. I just read on LinkedIn I think it was something like 1000 different AI tools came out this week alone. So chat, gpt, grammarly they're not the only AI tools that we can use, and I think we're going to fall into AI overload, but that may be another topic. Another question.
Speaker 1:I love that you're mentioning that, because it still ties back to what we're talking about, which is that human touch and the value that you, personally, we, can be out in the world, and there's a ton of people who are operating in the space that we operate in, right, but they're not us, and so what we bring is unique to our spaces and that's so important for people, especially aspiring leaders, to remember. It's not about whether or not you've got a title, and it's not about whether or not there's somebody else on the team who could do it too right. It's really about what you will bring to that to add value, because there's a purpose for you being here. And so my apologies, but when I think of AI, I think about how many people still think that it will replace us as humans, and I'm like it can't, possibly because Rebecca's super duper dope and there's no AI out there that's going to pull off what Rebecca pulls off.
Speaker 2:As are you, and yes, that's exactly it. So I think you're right, there is a great alignment and segue there and experience. So you mentioned experience too, and I that's something that I've promoted in the theater and in arts marketing, but it's everywhere, right? I'm long history of customer service, so I think we both know that you're really providing an experience for everyone. And if it's theater, then it's the moment that someone hears about the show. It's not the moment that they enter the theater, but it's the moment they hear about your show. If it's a product, it's the moment they're aware of your product. It's not the moment that they see your salesy advertisement right, it's their experience all the way through using the program or the product or going to see the show and then beyond, and how they express the experience to their friends and family. So there's a lot more we could unpack with experience. But translating that into a company, right, what's the experience that you're offering for your company as well? What kind of culture are you creating and when you're talking about your company as well, what kind of culture are you creating and when you're talking about your team or your company and overcoming a challenge?
Speaker 2:First, I think it depends on the challenge and not assuming that you know what the problem is. I think one of the pitfalls that a leader can sort of have to navigate when you go higher up the ladder, so to speak, is being further and further away from the actual problem. So you need to gather insight, you need to ask questions and you need to seek to understand what your team is going through first, rather than applying what you think might be happening. You might create a bandaid situation where you're just patching and piecemealing solutions that might not actually be effective and so you know. Keeping that in mind, I think it's important to build relationships with your team on an individual level, on a team level, because then you can have those conversations and you can get that insight.
Speaker 2:And that goes back to the AI point. Right, you can't have that if it's all transactional style leadership or some sort of dictatorship where you're pointing and saying do this, do that and do the other. So it really does come down to being human. And you're right, we cannot rely on AI to make our decisions for us. We can't rely on AI to be creative and to come up with all the solutions and have that personalization of the experience, because I would hope.
Speaker 2:This might not be the case for everyone, but I would hope that every leader, every boss, every manager wants that good experience and that's the ideal situation. I know that that's not realistic, but if we're aware of it, we can create it. So, bringing it back to more practical application and tips, some of the things that I like to do is just have those conversations one-on-ones every week with my team, and it's very simple. The agenda is what's top of mind for you, not what's top of mind for me, not my priorities, because you are my priority, and that gets back to my style of being a servant leader. I think my default will always be a servant leader. I actually had a boss tell me once they didn't believe in servant leadership, and that's always stuck with me. We could unpack that at a later point.
Speaker 2:At least they were honest, at least they were, yeah, but that has always stuck with me as how am I serving my team right? So how are you showing up for your team in a way that allows for that experience for them to come to you and feel safe coming to you? Right, because not everybody is going to feel like they can share and I'm not saying that you have to share all the personal details of your life, there's boundaries there but they might not come to you and feel safe saying, hey, I'm struggling with this. This is a challenge for me. I'm not sure how to move forward. I'm stuck. So being able to create that environment is key. I think the other part of it, too, is establishing some standards and structure to your company and whoever's either in charge of operations or maybe it's your HR department. Maybe you do have a department that does trainings and runs leadership programs. Whatever that is having them start from the onboarding process with new team members, and if you can't do that, then I would say we'll take it into your annual process. Are you setting up professional development coaching? Are you setting up trainings for them consistently? Because that's one of the things that's important for me is how are we being consistent with our growth rather than trying to cram it all into one. Believe me, I've done that. It's really hard to retain it, really hard to retain it. But how are we practicing that understanding of improvement, growth and challenging each other at the same time too? So I'd say, you know, it really does start with that culture overall and then, once you identify where your team or your individual is struggling, then help them map it out for themselves.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, when team members are struggling, sometimes I'll have them do what I call a data dump, where I'll say just write it all out on paper, take your old school pen and paper and just list everything out that is bothering you, that is feeling overwhelming, that you feel like you have to do, and let's write it all down. And that kind of gets over the hump of figuring out. What are we looking at? What's the scope here of the problem? That's usually if they're overwhelmed by tasks and projects. That's usually if they're overwhelmed by tasks and projects, if they're feeling overwhelmed by communication or, specifically, time management. Then we'll look at the projects, but we'll also look at their calendar. How are you time blocking your time? Are you spending it? What are your priorities? How are you prioritizing whatever plan you're putting together I love 30, 60, 90 days, because then you can make milestones happen, but you can also keep the growth both focused and allow for the time that an individual might need to go through those challenges and navigate those waters and then work backwards from that main goal.
Speaker 2:What are you really trying to achieve? That bigger objective, make those smaller goals along the way, and then how are you going to measure it together? Because there's an element of accountability there, right, and I think leaders are. Maybe they shy away from holding people accountable or maybe they don't know how to and that I'm saying leaders, but managers you know anybody in a leadership position. Maybe we don't know how to hold people accountable, but I think it can be.
Speaker 2:Simply, how can I support you, how can I help you on this journey? What resources do you need? What do you need from me? What can I do for you? And then you got to listen. It goes back to the listening again, because you got to get the insight. But then you got to hear what do they think? Because we can't change people, right, they have to want to change themselves. So if they're coming to you with a problem, I think one of the best things you can do is to help show them a path and give them that structure, but get their buy-in on the solution. Otherwise they might not be as inclined to move through the growth themselves, you know.
Speaker 1:That's right. That partnering and solutioning part is key, and it goes back to what you were sharing about relationship building. Does my team feel comfortable and safe sharing the root of things that maybe? I mean maybe they have this type of relationships with others where the roots are being shared with them and it can being shared with them and it can't stop with them. They've got to feel like they've got a safe space to not just share the things that we might want to hear, but also the things that are a little hard, a little difficult to hear. And then leading into their area of expertise, what do you recommend? What observations have you had and what solutions do you recommend for us?
Speaker 1:Right, so, as leaders, not taking that onus on that we have to have all the answers, but actually multiplying and amplifying the strengths of our team members to say, hey, you're a rock star, you've got this, tell me what you think, what could we be doing differently? And really being open to listening and allowing them enough space to safely execute. Right, it doesn't always have to fall on us as leaders to do the execution. You know, you went biblical on us because in the Bible you tell us to write down our goal, and I love what you said about reflecting, like how are we measuring success throughout this process?
Speaker 1:So, if you've got a 30, 60, 90, or one of the ones I'm super interested in trying is the 12-week year, where you break everything out and you operate within 12 weeks, what do I mean to achieve in order to be able to tell my success story at the end of the year? It fosters continuous improvement, and so I want to ask how important is the concept of continuous improvement when it comes to leadership development, and can you give some examples of what this looks like? Successfully done in leadership? Dr Anneke Vandenbroek.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I love the idea of breaking it down. 12 weeks is quarters, right, by doing the math right in my head. So we do that in our professional development program and I love to look every quarter at the trainings that we've got set up for the team and involve the team in that too, because I think it is important, like you're saying, to break it up, otherwise you're going to have a harder time thinking ahead. A full year versus manageable, bite-sized chunks of the year. I've also read and I wish I could remember where I read this but we can accomplish more in a year than we think we can and we can accomplish less in three years than we plan to, and that stuck with me for a long time now. And that sort of ties into the idea of constant, steady improvement. Right, because we might have these three-year, five-year, 10-year plans, but if you don't break it down and if you don't work on yourself every day, then that improvement is not going to compound in the way that you want it to. And the idea stems from me scrolling, probably, through Instagram one day and reading a post about the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen, which I think my translation from maybe that Instagram post is constant, steady improvement, and I think that's talking not just about daily habits but also the pace that you set for yourself as well. And then the ultimate goal is improvement.
Speaker 2:Recognizing that we're not done, I like to say God's not finished with me yet, but that's just as a person, as a whole person. I like to think of it that way. But when it comes to business and the team, I know that the team can always improve. We're not perfect. Systems can improve, right. So how do you set that up for the individual with that understanding in mind, and for us at FMO especially, it comes down to those quarterly trainings. What are we doing quarterly for the team? What are we focusing on? But then I like to break it down even further by team. So we have a weekly team training meeting, and those meetings can be workshop related. I don't like to be the only one that leaves them either. I like to encourage other people to share their skills and their expertise and share what they're learning. They don't have to have that 10,000 hours down to be knowledgeable on a subject. Right, it's not about age, it's not about title, it's about how are you showing up to share and to add that value, like we were talking about before, so we like to plan those out. I have a really great leadership team that's been growing over the last year and they've started planning out those trainings too.
Speaker 2:And we focused it on our priorities what are the priorities for the company, how can we help move the company forward towards its goals? And then what does that do for us as individuals too? And then, in the same vein, how are we helping the individuals reach their goals, their quarterly goals, their annual goals, according to their professional development plan? And that's where I like to recommend you know, hey, have you taken? We're a digital marketing agency, so have you taken that HubSpot course? Or hey, I think it would be really great for you to take the meta advertising course. That's free, go, take that. Here's a great resource for you. Or you know what? This person over here is working on this project. Why don't you work on it together? Because I think that cross-functional collaboration is going to help the both of you improve. So there are small ways that you can help continue to improve as a group and then help individuals. There are larger ways, too.
Speaker 2:My husband works for a tech company and they run simulations for leadership training and one of the things that the company does is a hackathon. I think they do one every year. But I love that idea and I latched onto it and I was like, all right, how can I take this sort of the understanding of like steal like an artist, steal like a leader? Maybe I don't know, but how can I take this idea and apply it to the team? So we try to do quarterly hackathons and we then take that hackathon and focus it on the team's priorities, the company priorities, and use that as a way to innovate, to be more creative in our space and as a really good time to learn and grow from each other too.
Speaker 1:I love that you have these quarterly reviews.
Speaker 1:This is what we're targeting, so these are the learning opportunities we might need to support for our teams, and these are the opportunities for them to apply, because application is so important in learning and development.
Speaker 1:I usually encourage my team to, before they go into their training, think about what it is that they want to take away from it and then come up with an action plan, even if it's just one thing that they're going to do after the training, to apply what they've learned so that it sticks. There's this concept called Ebbinghaus learning curve and unfortunately, we forget most of what we learned within like a few days. If we're not being intentional about how we might apply it, both going into it and coming out of it, it's a pretty good chance that it'll be remembered as a great experience maybe, but not remembered for applications and everything you're describing to me is screaming systems. You've got to have some effective systems in place to help implement these things. So can you speak to what type of systems you've implemented in order to free up your leaders and your team so they can focus on some of the more strategic goals?
Speaker 2:Yes. So one of the phrases that I took from my mom and I don't know exactly why. I'll have to ask her, but I don't know why she started saying this. I think it was to get us to clean our rooms as kids. That might have been the real reason, but she would say you can't create in chaos, and I grew up hearing that, so I've taken that for my own as an understanding that you really have to have organization and structure to be free to create. Because what are we doing when we create? We're actually organizing chaos anyway. Right?
Speaker 2:Creation is an order, and so you have to have order. You see, order everywhere. There's order in nature, no matter if I have to weed my garden later. There's order in the structure of a leaf. There's order in the process of an artist, and a business needs order and structure too. Process of an artist and a business needs order and structure too. That's communication, that's your systems, that's your way of doing a task, your workflow, everything, from beginning to end, needs a structure and an order. Otherwise, you're going to have chaos, there's going to be a breakdown in communication, nobody's going to take responsibility, nobody's going to take that ownership, and you're not going to be able to move forward to your goals.
Speaker 2:Now, I'm sure there's an exception in everything my grandmother. I think about my grandmother because she's an artist and she doesn't paint anymore, but when she would paint she's a very maybe hyper organized and maybe she came up with that you can't create in chaos, I don't know. But she would have a little bit of mess. She would have her pens and her paints in a drawer and it'd be kind of messy, but every drawer was labeled and it was for a certain kind of mess. So it was all of her pastels laid out, it was all of her pens in a cup, it was all of her canvas lined up on a shelf. And when she would create she would allow for a little bit of mess, but then she would have to put it back together to free the mind, to clear the space, so that you can create again. And so I love to take that. I love that because of my own artistic background and seeing something come from nothing ultimately right.
Speaker 2:But when you're working in a company, when you're working with a team, it's many, many people working together. In the theater, when we would put on shows if we didn't have the structure of a well-organized stage manager, then rehearsals would just fall apart. Directors wouldn't know what they needed to accomplish. And so, taking from that experience and applying it to a business setting a for-profit business setting especially there are a couple of things that I've then sort of formulated and internalized to then express to others. And it's not novel, it's not new, these things exist in business.
Speaker 2:But identifying what type of structure you have do you have a centralized organizational structure or do you have a decentralized structure? Centralized structure means that has to go through one, maybe a few people, and it can be really hard to accomplish tasks quickly and to motivate a team when they have to keep going through the bottleneck to get something done right. There's a time and a place for that. But as you're growing, I think it's important to decentralize so that you can empower your team to make decisions, come up with the solutions themselves, because that's how they're going to grow too right. They have to be able to practice, fail, get back up again, practice some more, succeed, achieve, fail again. And if you're not giving them that opportunity in a safe and structured environment, then you're going to have a harder time growing as a company. So that's number one, and that also aligns with empowering your people too, and empowering is not just saying you're empowered, go for it. You have to give them the resources that they need, whether it's training or tools technology. Back to AI. We can be so much more efficient with AI if we use it in the way that it's meant to be used to support humans and the tedious, time-consuming tasks or the research tasks, and give us that extra boost of admin-related support that maybe will help us work a little bit faster or a little bit smarter, but doesn't detract from the creativity and that personalization that we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 2:And then repetition right, you have to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat your mission, your vision, your values across the whole team. It's got to be ingrained. When I was working in theater, we had our fellowship program. I started as a fellow and eventually worked out of the fellowship program to be a staff member, and so I was there for several years. Most people were only there for a summer, for a year, so I would hear the same things over and over again. And one day one of our leaders got so frustrated and they were like I don't understand why I have to keep repeating the same thing over and over again. Why doesn't anyone listen to me, and in that moment it dawned on me well, they're all different people. That's why you have to repeat it. One, because we have different people coming through every time, and so it might feel to you like you're a broken record, but it's the first time someone's seeing and hearing you say that and experiencing that with you. So you need to keep that in mind.
Speaker 2:And the other part of that, too, is that I think to your earlier point as well. We need to implement what we're learning right away and it needs to apply to the job that we have. So you need to give people that opportunity to practice what you're preaching and teaching. And then you also need to make sure that they hear it multiple times, because they need to know that it's important. They need to know why it's important. First, they need to hear you say it because they need to be reminded of the priority and the importance. If I tell you to go clean your room once, you might think, oh, okay, cool. If I tell you to go clean your room twice, it didn't happen the first time. Or if I need to remind you three times because you need to practice that, then you'll start to realize well, that's kind of important.
Speaker 1:I need to go clean my room you know, so repetition might even come in the form of how you're modeling it Right. So sometimes actions Well, I shouldn't say sometimes, because I'm a firm believer that actions speak louder than words. So if I'm repeating things, I am prayerful that I'm also executing and actually demonstrating those things. You know that there's redundancy in there, because now you're not only hearing me say it, but you're also seeing it in action. You're seeing your peers, everyone you know. Culturally that's ingrained, and it's not just that now I've said it, but I've enabled you to do it because I've also given you the tools to not only do it but to see what proper execution looks like.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Good stuff so far, right so far. We've talked about the real power of having meaningful one-on-ones with our teams and what it really means to lead by serving others really means to lead by serving others. We've also talked about how you can turn chaos into something productive and why it's crucial to let your team try and fail sometimes. It's all part of that growing process, and there's more good stuff on the way. Next time, rebecca and I are going to dig deeper into what separates a great leader from a boss and we'll talk about how true leaders do more than just hold a title. They build their teams up and they push for real change. For now, take a moment to think about how you can use these ideas in your own lives. How can you support your team better? How can you make your workplace a little less chaotic? And remember to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on our next episode, where we're going to dig even deeper into these topics. Thanks for tuning in and remember being a leader starts right from where you are See.
