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
Stop Assuming & Start Understanding for Better Communication
In this episode of 'Thanks for Coming Back,' we meet Jeremy Doran, a leadership coach who combines mechanical engineering and psychology to teach leaders how to more effectively communicate. Jeremy shows us how to stop making assumptions and use curiosity to spark deeper conversations with our teams. He shares stories from his career, including his work at Pratt & Whitney and Schneider Electric, and how these experiences have shaped his approach to leadership.
Curiosity is crucial for leaders. It helps open up better communication. Jeremy talks about why it's important to keep asking questions and how forgetting to do so can make team interactions dull. We look at simple ways to keep leaders curious, like using personality tests like Myers-Briggs and HBDI to better understand and communicate with different team members.
Leadership is more than just making decisions; it's about creating a space where mistakes are okay because they help us learn and grow. Jeremy discusses how to avoid the trap of knowing too much, the dangers of micromanaging, and the importance of trust and setting clear goals. By sharing his own experiences and the lessons he's learned from personality assessments, Jeremy shows us how knowing each team member's unique traits can prevent conflicts and improve teamwork.
Welcome to another episode of Thanks for Coming Back, where we explore the various dimensions of leadership beyond titles and conventional roles. Today we have a very special guest, mr Jeremy Doran, whose unique journey through mechanical engineering and psychology offers a fresh perspective on leadership and communication within technical fields. Jeremy's career spans significant roles from process reengineering at Pratt Whitney to global strategy for APC, now known as Schneider Electric. He's not just a speaker and coach. He's a storyteller who engages and enlightens, bridging the gap between complex technical challenges and the human elements of psychology. Today, he joins us to discuss the synergy between his technical background and psychological expertise and how this combination enhances his approach to coaching and leadership development. So, whether you're an engineer looking to enhance your leadership skills or a professional striving to communicate better in diverse environments, jeremy's insights are bound to resonate with you. So let's dive right in and learn how we can all become better leaders, no matter where we stand or which tools we use. And, jeremy, I love it if you just started off by telling us about yourself. Tell us about your career.
Speaker 2:I will start all the way from the beginning. I am the youngest of 10 kids and when I was in high school, I got very interested in the Myers-Briggs because I took a three-day class on it. So when I went to college for mechanical engineering, I also minored in psychology and studied both. After that, I worked at an IT company and I ended up doing partnerships with large companies around the world and then got to live in Italy where I was the strategy manager for one of our divisions throughout Europe. I got to travel the world for work. It was fantastic and about 15 years ago I started doing leadership coaching and found that this is exactly where I belong and I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1:I am glad to know that I am not the only person on the planet who had an inordinate number of siblings. Thanks Mom, thanks Dad, but I'm not 10. I'm one of six, six is plenty. Yeah, but 10 is more yes.
Speaker 2:I've decided to only have one.
Speaker 1:I totally get that. I have two daughters and, of course, my fur baby, who is my favorite. I know you're not supposed to have favorites, but he eats the same thing every day. He never complains. He loves on me, whether I want to be loved on or not. He really can't beat that. But my kids probably won't hear this episode, so I think we're good. Won't hear this episode, so I think we're good. Now, I think you have an absolutely fascinating background with the combination of degrees in mechanical engineering and psychology. I am sure that you've been able to blend those two disciplines to influence your approach in leadership development. So I'd love it if you would share with the audience what that looks like.
Speaker 2:and leadership development. So I'd love it if you would share with the audience what that looks like. Well, one part of it is just that it really engages both parts of my brain. So one part of my brain really enjoys the process and developing systems and just working on that aspect of it, but then another part of my brain is very engaged with what does this mean to that person, and kind of engaging on that side. And I think for me the ability to interact with people, kind of wherever they are on that spectrum, is really helpful because I can help them sort of see the other side of it. And sometimes a lot of leadership is about communicating well with people, so sometimes I can just help them figure out how to bridge the gap between you know their style and maybe someone else's style.
Speaker 1:Now, I love that because it reminds me of another assessment that I think falls into the same space with Myers-Briggs is the HBDI, the whole brain approach to thinking. Are you familiar with that one?
Speaker 2:A little bit, but not as much.
Speaker 1:I love it because it really focuses on not just being strong in one quadrant. You might be a big picture thinker, you might be a problem solver, you might be the planner in the group or you might be the people. Person is what I think the normal approach is with assessments, but in this particular assessment is you can train yourself to strengthen and leverage each of those avenues so you don't just have to show up as one or the other. You can show up holistically and to your point, add value by helping other people connect those dots as well.
Speaker 2:So I think what's interesting for me is, having taken an assessment similar to that, what the person who gave it to me said was I said I was always a math and science person. He's like you weren't. You were always this psychology person. You made yourself be that math and science person, so you adapted in that direction, and then it's taken my adult life to balance them back out.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, don't you think that's interesting? That means that you have a choice to really focus on or leverage any of those spaces at any given time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, some just take a little more work than others.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's right. Now you mentioned that you've been able to help people kind of bridge that gap between where they are and maybe how they like to explain where they're going right. Can you provide an example I'm sure you've got tons of them of a time where that psychological insight that you carry significantly influenced a team dynamic? You know a project influenced a team dynamic.
Speaker 2:You know a project, yeah, you know. I had one client and she was an engineering manager in a very large company and she was going through one of my programs and she complained about one of her employees who she said this person has the most potential but she's just not engaged and she was having a really hard time with her. And I said what are her goals? She said, well, I assume they are. I'm like, oh, you can't assume. Not everyone wants to move up the corporate ladder like you do, or whatever it is. I said have a conversation with her, not in the office, and just ask her what her goals are and don't stop at asking. One time, ask a follow-up question and find out the real answer. And she came back and she said it's basically a miracle.
Speaker 2:I asked her what her goals were and why she wasn't being as productive as I knew that she could be. And after a little bit of back and forth where she tried to dodge the question, she said well, I don't really want to be here. She said okay, where do you want to be? She said I'm really good at golf. I think I can be a professional golfer and within two years that's what I want to be doing, so I'm kind of just holding this down until then.
Speaker 2:And the manager said we can work with that. What can I do to help you reach your goal? And once the person realized that the manager was going to help her get there, she was then able to re-engage and the agreement was if you elevate your level of work, I can get you raises and a promotion so that when you leave in two years you'll have the runway to try to become a professional golfer. She said. From then on that person was hands down her best employee because all of a sudden she was motivated and the motivation took dropping the assumption that everyone wants the same things you want, and understand them and help them reach their goals.
Speaker 1:I love that example because I know some people who, on both sides of that equation, who have been a little afraid to share what their true desires, what their true passions are, and so the fact that her team member ultimately opened up says a lot about the dynamic between the two of them, but also the fact that her leader was willing to say I will help you get what you need. Can we partner on this? Can you help us get what we need and I will help you? Can we partner on this? Can you help us get what we need and I will help you? That's I love that. I wish that was more of the norm. When it comes to the stories that are shared with people, I don't know if you have any stats on how often or how common that is in the workplace, but it doesn't seem to be the story that's usually told.
Speaker 2:This doesn't exactly address that, but I've looked at studies of when people leave a company, what their biggest complaints are, and one of the largest complaints is not feeling seen and heard. And part of that comes down to the managers don't want to get involved and they don't want to deal with it. A lot of times the complaint is that they won't talk to me in person, they'll only email me, and what kind of relationship can you build that way? So having people feel seen and heard, it's not just a wishy-washy thing that is nice to have. There are studies that show how much more engaged they are which everyone wants engaged employees how much more productive they are and how much more profit those companies and divisions make. So it's not just nice to have people feel seen and heard, it's profitable to do it.
Speaker 1:Love it. Now you have a book coming up. Am I correct on that?
Speaker 2:I am working on one. I have published one, so I wrote one about being the youngest of 10 kids and the life lessons that we learned from that. That one's called the Little Kids, and I'm working on another one that's more along the lines of my podcast. So it's all about communicating with people who are either neurodivergent or just neuro different than you are.
Speaker 1:So I would love for you to break that down for our audience. Talk a little bit more about how you communicate with people who differ significantly from ourselves, and what are some of those common barriers that prevent us from communicating effectively in diverse teams.
Speaker 2:I mentioned one of them and it's an assumption in diverse teams. I mentioned one of them and it's an assumption. So we assume that people process and think about things the same way we do. And if you take a step back and just ask questions and not just the question of what is the person thinking, sometimes you need to go deeper, to why the person thinks that you may understand what their goal is and that's good, but if you understand why they have that goal, then you are a whole level deeper and all of a sudden you stop making the assumptions that you've been making and you can connect better with that person.
Speaker 1:The power of curiosity. That seems to be the common thread.
Speaker 2:I think so and I think most adults lose it. Unfortunately, they kind of get set in their ways. Kids are always asking questions and they're always curious and most adults get boring.
Speaker 1:That was a tough one too, because asking questions isn't always necessarily welcomed. Either right, someone may receive it as being disrespectful. Are you questioning my authority? Are you questioning my knowledge? Sometimes people may just not want to take the time to answer the questions, and that one's always been very interesting to me, because the everyday question of hey, how's it going? Is often met with do you really want to know? Because you might get like a ton of responses that you weren't expecting and it was like, hey, I was just being nice, or you don't get a response, you get the most generic response, right, because I don't know if you really are invested enough to care how I'm really feeling.
Speaker 2:So two things on that is one I have a friend who's a psychologist and she would tell people during the pandemic. She said stop asking people how they are because you don't want the answer. Start asking different questions, like what was a good thing that happened in your day yesterday? Or just make it specific enough that you're not going to get that dump of, or just the vague oh good, how are you? I like to answer. When people ask me how I'm doing, I say super duper, how are you? And it just takes them back enough that they'll follow up and say why are you doing so well, and then I'll talk to them. But there's an art to asking questions and I've seen a lot of people who in their mind they're just being inquisitive, but From an outside perspective it looks like they're interrogating someone.
Speaker 1:They just keep rifling questions rather than asking a question and following up and showing that you're genuinely interested, not trying to find something to use against them which the interrogation will seem like you created a distinction between the curiosity and the firestorm of questions that may inadvertently come across as disinterest, because you haven't paused long enough to allow me to respond or to follow up on said response. Now you mentioned assumptions as one of the biggest barriers that folks need to overcome in order to communicate effectively. What other barriers exist, and how do you coach leaders to overcome them?
Speaker 2:Well, sticking with assumptions. If you just look at the Myers-Briggs, some people are very detail-oriented and some people are very big picture and some people are very emotional and some are logical. And when you start a conversation as the leader, you need to frame what that conversation is going to be about. If the conversation is I am passing information to you, that's one thing. Or if the information is I'm giving you this information because I need help, or whatever it is, frame the conversation ahead of time so that the other person knows what they're expecting. If the manager is expecting you to ask them for help with something concrete and you spend 25 minutes telling a story about what happened and never ask for the concrete thing, nobody gets what they want out of that conversation. The manager's frustrated that they wasted 25 minutes and you don't actually need anything. And the other person is not satisfied that. The manager's like why'd you tell me that?
Speaker 1:I love that you were able to illustrate that for the audience and what you can do differently to make that communication more effective. And sometimes it means that we might have to will ourselves to not tell that story. I think we want to tell. We're communicators. I think by nature we want to tell you everything that happened under the sun, and in L&D we call it the curse of the expert, because you will partner with someone to say, okay, I need to teach these specific things, and sometimes you're so much the expert that you leave out the key components that help you get from point A to point B. But you're also so much the expert that you will share things that are nice to know, but I don't need to know them.
Speaker 2:And that's why it's great to have a teacher who was recently where you are. So it's if you have a like I'm a leadership coach and I'm good at it, in part because I've had the struggles. I've, you know, had the engineering brain where communication is hard for me, and I've been through a lot, and so I can relate to it. Recently I'm not so far down the road that I forget those little things that you stumble on. So if you are so much of an expert that you forget how to teach a thing, have someone else teach it. Have someone on your team who's learned it more recently, teach the even newer person.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And now we've touched on personality assessments some. But given your studies in psychology alongside engineering, how do you use psychological tools like personality assessments to influence communication and leadership styles in the workplace?
Speaker 2:The reason why I got so interested in it is when I was in high school, I took the Myers-Briggs and they gave us a three-day class on it and in the three-day class she would do these experiments Not to her, she knew exactly what was going to happen. She would have us do these exercises and she would group me with people who are just like me which I'm on the ends of the spectrum and then see the results that we gave and see the results that people who are on the total opposite end would give, and you would never have believed it. And there was some experiments where she told us what the other group was going to say and do and we're like that is idiotic. No one would ever behave that way and, sure enough, that is exactly how they behaved.
Speaker 2:Assessments is it helps you get a full understanding of just how different other people are. It helps you understand yourself. It helps you understand just how different other people can be and once that recognition of the difference is there, it helps you to stop making an assumption that they're going to process exactly the way you do.
Speaker 1:How do you get to that recognition? Exactly the way you do? How do you get to that recognition? Because it sounds like there's some prerequisite work to get to the point where you're aware enough of the differences that exist and accepting enough that they exist to be able to move forward. What does that look like?
Speaker 2:Well, what I do is everyone takes the assessment and everyone gets their results, and then I will sit down for about an hour and a half and I'll just walk through line by line and I'll say you know, on this dimension of whatever it is introversion and extroversion here's what you can see, your score and I will say here's what a person who is a one, two and three looks like. Here's a person who's a seven, eight and nine, what they look like. And generally people start chuckling because they will look around the room and they're like oh yeah, that's you, oh, that's me. And then I will give examples of why those two people have difficulty communicating and all of a sudden you can see them looking back like oh, that's why Bobby makes no sense to me. And then you just go through.
Speaker 2:The one I like best is the Achiever by LMI, because it breaks down into 10 different dimensions. So it kind of narrows down what the issue is a little bit more clearly. And it's great being in a room because every once in a while someone who is super competitive their result says that they're super competitive no, I'm not. And everyone else will be like oh yeah, you are. I've never had a person who thinks they aren't something. Not get overruled by everyone else who knows them very well.
Speaker 1:No, with this assessment that drills it down, it sounds like it lands at somewhat of a common language. So, no matter what the differences are between the two individuals, there is a common language that might help you communicate more effectively. Is that fair? Yeah, can you expound on that some more?
Speaker 2:Well, it helps you understand what the other person means and it helps you understand what their goals are. On the one competitiveness I said if you know someone who is hyper-competitive I grew up in the youngest of 10 kids, so I grew up hyper-competitive and you get someone else who isn't competitive and their goal is really just to help everyone get along. I had an experience with one of my sister-in-laws where we were playing a game. I was stuck and the next move she made helped me to get out of being stuck. I'm like what are you doing? She's like well, I knew you needed that help, so I gave it to you.
Speaker 2:I'm like the goal of the game is to win. Like this game makes no sense anymore. You needed that help, so I gave it to you. I'm like the goal of the game is to win. Like we this game makes no sense anymore. If you're going to do that, then let's just give up and go do something else. She's like why do you need to win so bad? I'm like it's a game, the goal is to win. She's like I thought we were here to have fun. I if you recognize what the other person, the position they're coming from, it makes those sorts of confrontations easier, because all of a sudden you stop and say, right, your goal is this thing, my goal is this thing, let's find a way to come in the middle.
Speaker 1:Do you guys still play games?
Speaker 2:We do. We just, you know, some people engage more than others and I'm okay if I know that the goal of the game is to just have fun and spend time together. As long as I preset myself for that expectation, I'm fine with it. But if I went in thinking it was a, you know, a game to win and another person doesn't play that way, it doesn't go as well. So again, framing the conversation or the game helps a lot.
Speaker 1:I hope that helps a lot of families who get stuck in Monopoly or there's just certain games that can cause division. I banned them from our house because of what you just shared. Now, I love that you've touched on your family. I'd like to go back there and dig a little bit deeper, Going all the way back to the beginning. What family dynamics have really influenced your views on leadership and team management?
Speaker 2:One thing that my parents did out of necessity and, I think, partially brilliance, is they absolutely controlled the things that needed to be controlled, but only those things, and they kind of let everything else go. So when I say they controlled the things absolutely that had to be controlled, a favorite family story is that it was before I was born. My parents went to someone else's house. Every family had, you know, other families had three kids. My mom and dad had seven kids running around the house and the person whose house it was said it's time for dinner and my mother just said my kids sit down. And they were all running around the house. They stopped where they were and they sat down and looked at her to wait to see what happened next.
Speaker 2:And the other parents are like what was that she's like? When there's that many of them, you can't have chaos. You have to control the things you have to control. But everything else might have looked like chaos because she knew it was safe and it was okay for us to make decisions on everything else. So we knew the things that we had to follow and let everything else go. And when you see that in corporations a lot of managers either abdicate and they just let things go, or they over control and they control every little step, rather than saying here are the boundaries, here are the goals, here's what we need to do. If you have a different way of doing it than the way I would do it, I trust you and go do it, and as long as it works, we'll be good.
Speaker 1:I love that because it aligns with a book that I'm currently reading about the eight paradoxes of leadership. And I love that book because it emphasizes the need for duality when it comes to the things that we don't think come together, and one of them is being present or visible as needed and being invisible when needed, because you have to be able to be visible enough to demonstrate and model what the leadership components look like so that people understand what the stakes are and how they can effectively lead. That's our role as leaders, but you have to be invisible enough to give them an opportunity to make those types of decisions and to implement the things that they're learning by watching. So it sounds like your parents latched onto that pretty early.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so. I don't know that they read any books about it. It just maybe it was out of necessity. But the other thing it lets you do is it allows you to make mistakes. A lot of people at work are too afraid to make mistakes and that just holds them back. If you are in an environment where mistakes need to be corrected, but it's okay that you made them, then people can grow and explore a lot more things.
Speaker 1:Then people can grow and explore a lot more things. I think what you just shared is one of those things that I think about often the modeling component and how that might be influencing leaders and their ability to allow folks to make mistakes. So I think back generationally, you know there was the. I accept the responsibilities that you've shared with me. I will not ask questions. I will move forward with this role within the dynamics and the parameters you've provided, and that will be that. That is my job is to not ask questions but to do the job that has been assigned.
Speaker 1:And then there's another generation that comes along and they go well. I think there's better ways to do it, but I'm going to play it safe in areas I need to play it safe and if I need to move around, I'll move around before I put myself out there, right To be okay with me making a mistake that could be detrimental to my career's health. And now we've got a newer generation who questions everything. It doesn't matter what it is. Why do we do it that way? And well, if so-and-so is better at it than this person overheard that's assigned to do it, then why wouldn't I just have so-and-so do it and why are you asking me to do it if you know you've got a person who's better at it than I am, which I love as well. What are your thoughts on how leaders can maybe break free of the leadership that they've seen modeled for them to be more welcoming of? It's okay to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them, and maybe I can even help you prepare to fail fast and rebound.
Speaker 2:One thing that I think people resist but is incredibly powerful is delegating. When I'm coaching, I will bring up delegation. Half the people roll their eyes and normally one person in the room says ah, I tried it once, it doesn't work. Like why didn't it work? They're like well, it's faster if I do it and I do it better than them. Like did you when you started doing it, were you better than the person who had done it before you? They're like well, no, but I am now. I'm like well, how did you learn by doing so?
Speaker 2:Then we will step back and we will talk about the process of delegation, because people either micromanage it and tell you this is exactly how you have to do it, or they set up a framework where I'm not going to micromanage you, but we are going to check in often and we're going to make sure we understand the goals and we're going to check in early enough that if a mistake happened or it's going off the rails, we can fix it, not wait till it's gone off the rails. Can't fix it. And then you say see, delegation doesn't work. So if it's done, well, it's the best teaching method, but it has to be done correctly.
Speaker 1:What about those folks who, in their minds, this is the only way to do it, and so if you deviate from that at all, you have done it wrong? What advice would you give to them?
Speaker 2:Well, you have to. There has to be a balance. I think, there. If you are willing to let people experiment on or try it their way on things that you know it's okay, then when it gets to something that you are a hundred percent sure needs to be done a certain way, then they have to learn that. They also have to accept that I work with a lot of engineers. There are certain engineering principles that are not going to fluctuate. This is the way it is to know the difference, and the employee needs to know that when the boss says this thing needs to be exactly this way, then you accept it, as long as you get freedom when freedom is deserved Partnership.
Speaker 1:I love it. Now, as we wrap up today, what final thoughts or key takeaways would you like to leave with our listeners, especially people who are either aspiring leaders or just looking to have a bigger impact in their workplaces when it comes to more effective communication, being more willing to accept differences, maybe ways that they can go about accepting more differences? What would you say if you didn't hear anything else today? Focus on this.
Speaker 2:So we kind of touched on curiosity and active listening, and I was just telling the story earlier. I do improv and in improv if you think that you are one character but then another person says, oh, you're an alien, then you have to be an alien, and that's just how improv works. Once someone says something, it's the absolute truth. So I don't recommend that. But one thing that helps is understanding that when someone has a point of view, it is their truth. And if you can accept that it's their truth and not try to fight against that but then be interested in why that is, so it goes back to the curiosity Say, oh, that is your truth, it's not what I think, but how did you get there and why? And be actually curious and not just trying to trip them up, because if you ask questions in order to argue against them, that gets sour pretty quick.
Speaker 1:No, I hate to say it, but you're right on that one. Tell the audience, please, how we stay connected with you. Please tell us more about your upcoming book and please tell us more about your podcast.
Speaker 2:So the podcast is called Neuroconversant Leadership. An easy way to find me is on neuroconversantleadershipcom. From there you can listen to the podcast, you can reach out to me and you can learn more about the coaching and training and speaking that I do. And the book is going to be Neuroconversant. I don't know what the rest of it's going to be yet. Book is going to be neuroconversant colon. I don't know what the rest of it's going to be yet.
Speaker 1:And it'll be coming out in early 2025. Please keep me on your notification list, because I really enjoy grabbing new books, gaining the insights and then figuring out okay, so how does this apply in these spaces? I find that absolutely the most fun thing to do.
Speaker 2:Perfect.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, Jeremy. This has been a great pleasure to have you on the show. I feel like there's so much more to dig into and I'm wondering if you and I can partner on maybe some use cases we can bring back to the audience and some exercises they can do.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. That would be great.
Speaker 1:Awesome.
