Shandel Sutherland 00:05
Welcome to Lead For Clarity where we help you, your team and your organization, get to your next level and focus on what matters. My name is Shandel Sutherland, and I am here with my ever so amazing partner, Melanie Montgomery, how are you today?
Melanie Montgomery 00:24
I'm fantastic. I'm so happy to be here with you. It's always my favorite time of the week is getting to sit down and chat with you about leadership things.
Shandel Sutherland 00:32
Oh, and I love it, I love that we just kind of ping off of each other and always come up with something great, I just appreciate our Shandel Group team. And when we are using this process, even for ourselves on ourselves on our organization, we just get to our next level too. So I always want our listeners to know that it is all about you. But it also helps us keep fine tuning what we're doing and so grateful for it. Today, we're going to be on the third what we call stage of the process. And Melanie, I thought maybe you could introduce it and get us started on it.
Melanie Montgomery 01:07
I'd love to Shandel, I love this process, I wish that I would have had this framework to just understand what was happening when it was happening when I went through a lot of my growth. And of course, I'll never stop growing. So I'm happy to have it now. But it definitely would have made things make a lot more sense back then. But you know, that's part of that trailblazing the way is that we go through this clunky time so that we can help others along, we can really enhance and speed up that growth process and make it more meaningful and more effective and make lasting change. The stage we're going to talk about today is the plant stage. And this is where a lot of the hard work happens. This is where we really have to push ourselves in the purposely connect phase, we're connecting to our values, we're connecting to other people, we're learning new tools to start that connection. And during the plant stage, we're doing the hard work to not make it just be one training session that we got excited about. And all that we learned is gone. This is where we really do the work day in and day out and stay true to what we want to accomplish.
Shandel Sutherland 02:15
It is hard like that is one of the hallmarks at the plant stage. It's the hard one, this planting one is the hardest one for me as an entrepreneur is because I have to wait and I hate waiting. You know, I don't I don't appreciate it at all. And that's what waiting is waiting is about planting when we really formed this analogy. Every other stage is difficult, and every other one is a little easier. You know, pain gets your attention. It's super hard. But it's pretty quick, like, you know you're in pain, and you need to know you get out of it. Because usually if you stay in pain for any length of time, you're over in the cycle of misery. So pain doesn't last very long in our stage. Purposely connected does. And it's a really fun time, like you said, we're doing workshops, we're having fun team events, we're all feeling like, oh, there's hope. Okay, well, that's all fun and games, until we go into the plant phase. And when we're in the plant, it's just like a farmer, like a farmer goes out there and he tills the soil, gets rid of the weeds, gets the trenches, puts the seeds in, puts the fertilizer run with the soil, and this is the hard work, and then wait and wait, and wait. And you hope that those seeds are working out for you. Now the more seasoned a farmer is, the more patient they'll be because they know and having this process be over 20 years old, we're really able to help people have the confidence to stick with it. But this is the place Melanie where people say, Okay, I've got this, I don't need coaching anymore. And this is the place where then they start, you know, digging up all these seeds, and they call us back and say, well, it's still a mess.
Melanie Montgomery 04:01
This really resonates with me, because there are things that I tried to do consistently and have tried to do consistently, like scheduling, I am not inherently good at planning my life. I don't like to write everything out. Like I'm just not inherently an organized person. But I recognize that I need to be in order to be successful. And so I don't know how many times throughout my life, I've been like, Okay, I'm gonna get my stuff together, I'm gonna get a planner, I'm gonna plan everything out. I'm going to do all the things and when I first buy the new planner, or I first make my planning spreadsheet, which of course gave me excitement. You're excited, you're like, This is great. It's going to be such a great thing. I'm gonna do such amazing things with this new thing that I'm doing. And then a week goes by and two weeks go by and it becomes this monotonous thing that I'm forcing myself to do. And do I really want to do this. Do I really want to plan out my life? Do I really want to circle back every day to see if I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish? So many times in my life I have haven't pushed through that plan stage. And so then two months later, I'm like, Okay, I'm on organized. And now I need to get back on track. And the times that I have pushed myself through and have used that planner for years at a time, I have so much success, I'm still good at what I'm doing. I know what's happening. I know what I need to do next weekend, this weekend tomorrow. But it stops becoming fun and exciting, and something that I want to do, and it becomes something that I have to do. And before it becomes a habit, we have that timeframe. And it's a struggle. And we really have to push ourselves to say, Okay, I know you don't want to do this today, but a month from now, you're going to be thanking yourself for making you do it and understanding how important it is, oh,
Shandel Sutherland 05:46
it's fantastic. Such a great description of what's going on here. You have to act on these stages, you know, this isn't something that happens to you, you do it.
Melanie Montgomery 05:58
So in this plan stage are action items, as I like to call them which is in our act acronym, is A for accountability, a C for confront, and T for train, and develop. And we'll dive into each of these individually, but want to make sure that you have that framework. So the accountability piece is so big, because we have to hold ourselves accountable for what we're doing. Just like in my planner example, if I don't hold myself accountable to doing it every day, I'm going to stop, I really have to know like, what do I need to set up that accountability. And if it's a team development, then it's within the team as well, we're holding each other accountable. With any new change, we're saying this is our new behavior. And if we don't quite hit the mark, we're gonna have a conversation about it. And not to be mean or to point anything out. But to say, this is what we agreed upon, like, how can I support you meeting that standard, or this behavior that you exhibited didn't quite seem to fit this new idea that we're doing? How can I help you get back on track, or with myself, you know, the end of the week? If I didn't plan out my week, I might say, Melanie, you you really just didn't quite make the mark this time, what can you do differently next week to make sure that you stay on track, and really holding ourselves accountable. And we have to have that trust in our relationships, be able to hold each other accountable, because if I tell you shall know, hey, that behavior didn't quite seem to match what our values are. If we don't have that trust, you might hear me criticizing you or being mean, we want to make sure that we give our team the benefit of the doubt that they're trying to help us even if their delivery isn't on, or even if we get defensive, we have to have that trust. And so that's why that trust piece we talked through so important here, I need to make sure that you trust me enough to share that feedback with you.
Shandel Sutherland 07:45
That is so good. Thank you for sharing that it was beautiful. And the confronting is a big part of that. You can't hold people accountable if you're not gonna confront them. And the training and develop is where Shandel Group comes in, in big time, because we've got some big tools to teach here. And one of my favorite one is you kind of described a little bit of a but your 12 steps to accountability, empowering action. I love that this portion of the 12 week coaching class that you teach. And I think you do workshops on this too, right?
Melanie Montgomery 08:17
Yeah, and I love this tool. And it really goes into a few different components of number one, our mindset, when we look at the steps to accountability, we really start to think through why isn't someone doing what they're supposed to be doing? Or why am I not doing what I'm supposed to be doing. And there are quite a few steps. So I'll kind of give you a broad overview. A lot of times, if you have a team member or an employee, or even sometimes yourself, and they don't meet the mark, they don't meet the goal, they don't do what you ask them to do. Oftentimes, we jumped to the conclusion of well, they just didn't care or they just didn't want to. And so we make this assessment that they didn't want to do it that they didn't care about it. But when we start to dig into the steps to accountability, sometimes it's maybe they didn't understand what they were supposed to be doing. Maybe they didn't have the confidence to do it well, and that got in the way, maybe they don't agree that this is the right thing to do. Or maybe they don't have the tools to be able to do it. We dig into the steps to accountability and start to figure out where are we? Is it that I just didn't want to do it? Or is it that I need training, I need coaching. I need someone to help me understand why this is the right thing to do. Maybe I need someone to help build my confidence so that when it comes to that moment, I can do it. Well, instead of getting scared and letting my emotions take over and not accomplish what I'm doing to really work through that piece of accountability to make sure that we are hitting all of them. We have this process that we use to empower others. The first step in the process is I do you watch, we talk and this scenario, maybe I'm the supervisor and I'm teaching you a new skill. So I'm going to do it and you're going to observe me and ask triggers, we're going to talk about what happened, what questions do you have in all those different components? The second stage is I do you help we talk. And that stage, you're helping me. And we always want to circle back and talk about what we thought what the questions were what happened. And then the third step is you do I help we talk. So now you're the primary person doing it, but I'm there to support you maybe jumping in as needed. And we are still doing it together. And then we talk about what happened, then we move into you do I watch, we talk? So I'm still there as a safety net. But really, you're doing it and I'm just observing. And then at the end, we talk through what questions do you have? And then we reach that final stage, which is you do we talk. So now I'm not in the picture at the moment you circle back with me. So I get a lot of pushback from teams on this and just want to be informed about that. Because they say that takes so much time to do all of those steps. But when we think about it, if we don't invest the time to really train and empower people, now, we're going to spend so much more time later on trying to correct behavior, fix mistakes, if we go through this process, and depending on the skill that we're teaching, it could be really quick. Or it could take a long time, maybe if I'm teaching someone how to help an upset customer, that might take a little bit time versus maybe I'm showing someone how to do something simple, like fill out an Excel spreadsheet, and so simple to me. And so we can really start to figure out where is that gap and address it, versus having them think that they're learning something and they've got the hang of it, and then going, Oh, you're doing it completely wrong. Even this process seems tedious. It saves so much time in the long run, because we're really creating someone that can do everything on their own, they can think on their own. And they can just run with it versus something that we constantly have to oversee or correct or change this process is so helpful if we follow those steps.
Shandel Sutherland 12:00
Oh, so good. And I when you said it saves so much time I was like and energy. Because when people aren't performing well, and they're not doing their job, like it just sucks the life out of leaders because we have to go correct it, we got to find the right ties way and it's negative. This is all positive work upfront, I love it. Let's just give people an idea. Because this is I think, where Shandel Group, when we get really deep into an organization, we're able to bring a lot of value. And so I just kind of want to go over to some of the tools that use so that people can go Oh, yeah. Am I doing that? Am I not? Am I doing that? Am I not? And a lot of that is meeting structures. Do people love to come to your meetings? And I think that's one of the funnest things that we do, Melanie, isn't it where we go into organizations, we help them communicate, and we get them on a really good meeting structure. And I think that's one of my greatest joys because people end up loving their meetings from the one on ones to the annual off site, by the way, for all you who have not scheduled your annual offsites time, isn't it? Melanie? We're getting booked, aren't we?
Melanie Montgomery 13:00
Yes, it is. Yeah, and we have a podcast that goes through all of these. So if you're interested in meeting structure, go take a look, because it really talks through why each part is important why we do it. Because a lot of times we don't realize what meetings mean for our business, we're just frustrated with them, because we have too many, but we can actually harness them to do so much good. And we really talked a lot about that. And I think that that podcast was was an awesome opportunity to learn those.
Shandel Sutherland 13:28
Yeah, this is what's happened in the planter. You gotta get all these systems in, like we've talked about that this is the time that you really learn listening, that you really learn what's the difference between dialogue and discussion, you know, that there's effective delegation that you're, you're no longer managing people, you're really being a coach and leading people. And we talk about this as a time to double down on our Shandel Group serve model. There's strategic planning going on, there are sales training, there's customer service training, I mean, we're busy in the plant stage, but most people just kind of want to go, Okay, I got it, I've got this, it's expensive and move on. And then that doesn't stick. And it's frustrating. And if you don't have KPIs, and you don't have key accountabilities and customer service training, you're probably not going to get to where you need to go, right, Melanie?
Melanie Montgomery 14:20
I think any person who has worked in any kind of organization, no matter the sector, has had the thought processes heard the thought process that we go do this training, and it's great. And we're excited about it. And then it lasts a month or it lasts a week and it doesn't actually transition into being part of the culture. I know. I've gone to a lot of trainings and I've been excited and I've gotten back and everyone's like, okay, cool, Melanie, like we're not going to really do that. When we look at this plant stage. That's where this transition between we got really excited about this training and it actually becomes part of our culture. This is where we're investing the time the hard work because it does take hardwork and we have to keep doing it and keep reinforcing and bring in more training and keep doing it. We can't just do it once and think, Okay, we're great.
Shandel Sutherland 15:07
Ah, so good. That's great Melanie. And I just love how you, you really get this date really well and lead our clients really well through the stage from the succession planning, benchmarking, like there's just a lot of stuff here, where you're really equipping your team at training and development is no joke, I would say in most of my employee surveys that we take to kind of see how is the company culture before we, we work with someone or if they call us in to do that, I would say communication is always at the top. And the second one is people don't feel like they're really trained. And I constantly get that, like, we need more training, I get that all the time in every one of the areas. And so this is a time that we really invest in that the development of people like people want to be developed they want to be invested in. And when we are able to do that with, Hey, why don't you take this science itself? Or why don't you join this leadership lab, making people feel that you're investing in their career that you're investing in them? That is where this train and development piece is really powerful? Do you have any insight to add to that, Melanie? Yeah,
Melanie Montgomery 16:24
when people feel like you value them, and you're investing in them, they want to work harder, they're more engaged, and they will do a better job, when we feel like oh, my employer doesn't care about me, my organization doesn't want to give me the tools to be successful, we start then taking steps back, and we're not engaged. And so it's so important to invest. I also want to share a little story from when I was training the Navy, guys, at the very beginning, we talked about emotional intelligence, and how it's a physiological response. And what happens in your body when you get frustrated. And we started talking through the idea and concept which was new to a lot of people every single week, I would kind of check in with them and say, Well, what was it that you felt? And when did you feel it? And how were you able to mitigate that a tool that was super helpful at the very beginning of training, and would have made a big difference? When we continuously talked through it and said, How is this showing up? How are we using it? How are we adjusting our behavior, it really just helped reinforce that. So that by the end of the training, they were doing really well at recognizing their emotions and recognizing how it impact their behavior, and just not getting frustrated. That's the power of just over time, we're continuously talking about it, we're continuously learning. And a lot of times when we just have one training, that doesn't happen. And so those leadership labs are so great, because we just get to consistently check in and you know, something didn't quite resonate, how can we fix it? Or you hit a situation that didn't make sense? How can we use these tools to fix that situation? It gives us that space to have the dialogue to figure out how do we really implement these tools? Because they're not black and white? It's something that takes discussion, figuring out how do we go about this in the best way?
Shandel Sutherland 18:08
That's great. That's so good. Okay, well, I think that we have done a good overview of plant and it's gonna be fun that when we get through all of these to bring some people in that have gone through each of these stages, and what they've learned at each one. But for now, let's go ahead and land this plane. What is it, Melanie, that you would want the listener to really tune in and walk out with,
Melanie Montgomery 18:30
I would say Shandel That it's so important to continue doing the hard work after the excitement has worn off. If you're like me, you get excited about a new idea. And then after a few weeks, it becomes monotonous, but keep going. Because if we don't push through, then that change doesn't last. And when we do do the hard work, then we actually create the habits that now it's part of who we are and what we're doing.
Shandel Sutherland 18:56
Yeah, and I would add to that the cool part about having every other one be hard, and every other one good is that if you get through this, there is progress, like you will see the little tiny green sprouts coming up. And if you're patient enough to wait and make sure that the sunlight is coming through and you've given enough water to your organization here and not too much. Then you are going to really see the results and then progress becomes a lot of fun, which we'll talk about next time. I'm super excited about it. All right, everybody, be sure and subscribe to our podcast and our newsletter at Shandel group.com or shandel.com and we look forward to seeing you next time. As always be the best you can be today.
