Ep. 71: Surviving Seasons of Change with Tajan Renderos

Have you ever wondered how to manage seasons of chaos in your organization? In this episode I visit with Tajan Renderos to discuss how she facilitates change within organizations that ask for her help. 

During this episode we will discuss:

• 360 Reviews
• MCDC Process
• Surviving VUCA

Tajan B. Renderos, MPH, ACC, Tajan is a credentialed Leadership Development Coach, Trainer, and Founder of Tajan Renderos Coaching, LLC. She helps companies integrate a coaching approach to management for their leaders so they can easily navigate the most challenging parts of people management, such as conflict and tough conversations with ease, utilizing workshops, coaching, consulting, and innovative modalities such as learning collaboratives. She's managed national training centers, served as a former Director for the Center for Health Equity for JSI, and conducted trainings for companies including Twitter, Cooley, LLP, Intel and others. She's coached thousands of clients based on her proprietary MCDC framework, and has been featured in Thrive Global, Modern Health, Noomii, and TEDx BU.

Transcript

Kyla Cofer: 0:06

Welcome to the Leadership School podcast. I'm your host, leadership and self-care coach, Kyla Cofer. Here at the Leadership School, you'll hear leaders from around the world sharing their stories and expertise on how to lead with balance and integrity. Our goal teach you how to be an extraordinary leader. Welcome back leaders. Today I am here with Tajan Renderos. Tajan is an ICF credentialed coach. She works with companies and individuals to really grow their leadership skills through some special methods. So she's going to walk us through those methods today, her. M C D C method, which I'm excited for you to hear and learn about. But also she's gonna talk with us about VUCA seasons, the seasons in our careers, in our companies, in our lives, when things are just crazy and chaotic when things, some big changes have happened. How do we deal with those? What does that mean? What does VUCA stand for? How do we process through these seasons and come out ahead on the other side? So please join me. Welcome Tajan Renderos. Tajan thanks so much. I really appreciate you joining me and it's great to see you again and connect and I'm really excited about some of these topics that we're gonna talk about today because they're terms that I have not heard of. And so you're gonna tell us all about that. So maybe you can tell us about yourself and, and what brought you here and some of your expertise.

Tajan Renderos: 1:32

Sure. Happy to. Thank you so much, Kyla. So I'm a leadership development coach and my area of focus is I work with organizations who are having first time managers who are struggling with some of the toughest parts of people management and. That's navigating really difficult conversations. All these conversations that folks would rather eat rocks than do and navigating conflict. I help folks move through that with a sense of ease, and I do that through offering innovative modalities of learning, including learning collaboratives as well as one-on-one coaching. What brought me into, I have a background in public health and have a background as an evaluator and as a trainer, so, In that capacity, I have been a leader myself, right? Both moved through the ranks of individual contributor, first time manager, senior manager, et cetera, and at the same time had been pursuing my own journey as a leadership development coach, and so I've learned a lot. From being a manager and the coaching experience has helped me in that work, like in real time. And it's also exposed, the lack of training and the lack of coaching that's just available for most people. The need is so vast and I think even though coaching is exploding now, I'm still finding people that have never been coached before more often than not. So that is what has brought me to this point. I've been always a multi-passionate person. I've been pursuing both interests at the same time, but that in a nutshell as what has brought me here.

Kyla Cofer: 3:04

So where are you located?

Tajan Renderos: 3:06

Yeah, I, um, I live in a town called Lin, which most people won't recognize, so it's a little north of Boston. Okay. So I'm here in Massachusetts and I see most of my coaching clients remotely, virtually, often clients from all over the world. So I often see clients in the APAC time zone. So, you know, after hours for me on Eastern Time is their regular business day. So I'm seeing clients from all over the world.

Kyla Cofer: 3:34

Yeah. Wow. Okay. So you said you're meeting a lot of people who have not been coached before. Yes. What are their experiences when they actually get to go through this coaching with you?

Tajan Renderos: 3:43

I think what happens for most people when they're experiencing coaching for the first time is they're like, oh, this is, this is incredibly helpful, practical, and tactical. There's something to to be said about people feeling heard and seen, and so even if in a short coaching session you're not able to get anywhere, if you will. People are still gonna be feeling heard and seen, and just having an objective, neutral party bear witness to a particular issue or situation is in and of itself therapeutic, even though this is not therapy, but just that in and of itself can be really helpful for people. And then when you add in. The fact that, from my perspective, really what coaching is, is you're serving as a catalyst for some kind of transformation that already wants to happen in that person. And you're, you're, you as the coach is just really putting heat to it. You're really just, they're serving as that catalyst and so, Moving from the inertia that people might be feeling into a space of like possibility is always exciting for them. For you to see folks kind of come in at a certain energy level and at the end of 45 minutes feel completely different about the same situation is powerful.

Kyla Cofer: 4:52

Isn't it? And it's so fun when people are like, man, this is so helpful. I wish I would've known. And you're going, I've been telling you for so long, this is so good. This could change everything for you. You know? And it's funny how we think that, uh, well I can do this on my own. I'm doing fine. I've got this. It's too expensive to hire a coach. It's just too much investment and I don't have time for that or space for that, or money and, you know, all those things. But then once you do make that investment in yourself, then. Or in your company you have this complete change and you're going, man, I wish I would've done this years ago. So I'm glad that your clients are experiencing that. So from what I'm hearing you Absolutely, you had a lot of management experience and you were, yeah. You were working in that management experience and then moved into coaching. Was it just because you, uh, really enjoyed the coaching more than the management or were they working together? Like you were already doing coaching in the management and so you kind of moved into it more full-time?

Tajan Renderos: 5:44

I had always been informally coaching as a more of a life coach without knowing that that was what coaching was. And in the time that I was coming up, there's certain professions like coaching that were so obscure there's, there would've been nobody that could have advised me to say like, geez, Tajan, based on your unique design skills, talents and abilities, you should become a coach. It just wouldn't have been, I mean, it didn't fall into the buckets, the common buckets of lawyer, doctor, accountant, et cetera. Right. Sure. So, There would've been nobody who could have have advised me. I just followed the warm trail of my own passions and landed there, but I had been informally doing that, and then just in my own pursuit of self-education went from one thing to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing to formal coaching. Um, so a formal coaching credential, pro credentialing program.

Kyla Cofer: 6:35

Yes. You're ICF credentialed? Correct. Icf ICF is the International Coaching Federation. And then you have, it's quite a bit to get credentialed there. It's a lot of work. Yeah.

Tajan Renderos: 6:43

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's pretty rigorous and I'm glad that it is, especially as a field is exploding, I think that becomes even more important. And I think, whereas even a decade or two ago, it would've been fine to have an A acc. I think now there's gonna be even more demand for more senior credentials, even within the space. So I think it's, it's fantastic that the field is expanding and more people are aware and also more people are demanding credentialing, which is, which is excellent because they do a fantastic job of maintaining a high standard and integrity for the profession. So that's good.

Kyla Cofer: 7:17

Yeah, they really do. They really do. It's a lot, but it, it does create that standard. That's really helpful. I'd pursued it a little bit, but, um, then I got lost in, in it and, um, just never got my credentials. So I need to revisit that You're reminding me that how important it is and how, how helpful it is. So you're coaching like companies or are you working up with mostly with individuals?

Tajan Renderos: 7:39

So I work with organizations primarily, and what I'm offering is multi-level interventions. So in the leadership accelerator program that I lead, I'm offering an organizational wide assessment of people's experience with managers. I'm also. I'm also assessing the managers and themselves on their own leadership competencies. And so we move from that assessment into a learning collaborative, which is basically a more, more rigorous workshop or training, right? So there's an expectation in a learning collaborative that you are going to be. Running what's called P P D S A cycles plan, do Study Act cycles where you're running experiments, so you're not just kind of coming to a workshop where you're learning, you've taken notes and that's it. You're actually coming in and there's an expectation you've committed to doing something concretely different. So this assessment, in the assessment phase, we're figuring out what you need to work on, right? Based on your 360 review.

Kyla Cofer: 8:42

So are you, are you doing 360 reviews or are, are they already doing that and you're taking those reviews and helping them move forward?

Tajan Renderos: 8:49

Depends on organization and where they are. Okay. If they're on the heels of a 360 that they already did, then I'm gonna leverage that. If they haven't done one, then we're gonna do it. Okay.

Kyla Cofer: 8:58

So can you tell us, you know, we have not talked on the podcast yet, about 360 reviews. Um, sure. Can you tell us what is a 360 to review and what's the benefit in doing that versus other types of review processes?

Tajan Renderos: 9:10

Yeah. The performance review landscape is, it's a lot wide and varied. Yeah. From organizations not doing it at all to organizations, farming it out to organizations, handling it internally. But a 360 review in short, is a review where an individual is getting feedback from multiple layers of people who experience them. So, Let's say for example, one is an individual contributor. You're getting feedback from your peers on your team. You're getting feedback from folks who may be your subordinates, and you're getting feedback from your manager or people who are more senior to you. So the idea here is that we're getting a 360 view of you. Which is different from just getting feedback from your manager alone without necessarily getting feedback from your peers and people who are subordinate to you. So I have coached people with, and without 360 s and now at my stage in my career, I, I refuse to coach people without a 360. Um, not if we're doing leadership development, coaching or executive coaching. It's far less ideal to do it without it. Why? I mean, I think yes, you can come to coaching with what you wanna work on, but you will have so many blind spots. For example, I've coached, so for example, I've coached women more than one woman, where their self-perception of how they show up is far beneath how other people experience and perceive them. Interesting. I think I'm a B minus and everybody's like, you're an A plus. Or they're like, I think I'm like, so-so in this area. And they're like, you're the best people manager I've ever had in my entire career.

Kyla Cofer: 10:49

So people are really devaluing themselves. So it's not Oh, absolutely. So 360 is not. Actually selling, telling people you're not very good in these areas. It's how are you excelling and, and let's help you and s continue to support you, to continue to excel that way and give you an accurate perspective of who you actually are and how you're contributing here.

Tajan Renderos: 11:09

Totally. So with that assessment, A leader's gonna learn what they're doing well and what they should keep on doing well and sink deeper into, and they're gonna also learn where they could be, where they could be working more. Like what are some areas or opportunities for growth? They're gonna get both. And by processing that with a leadership development coach, somebody who's trained to manage to know how to work with the emotional. Kind of reactions that you're gonna get from people in that context can be really helpful because negativity bias is huge.

Kyla Cofer: 11:43

Well, I was just gonna say, anytime you hear performance review, you're automatically like, I'm gonna lose my job. I'm a terrible person. Yeah. Like nobody likes working with me and we don't wanna do those cuz we're gonna see all of these. Negative things about ourselves and we think, yeah, oh, our boss is gonna come in and tell us how we need to be way better than we actually are. And so it's hard to see that in a positive light. So how are you flipping that script so that we're not dreading getting reviewed and working with a coach? Cuz it, it does feel like, oh, they've hired a coach to work with me and must not be good enough. Like that's, that's not what it is.

Tajan Renderos: 12:14

That's absolutely not what it is. And so it takes a lot of consistent messaging from several different people to counter that narrative and that trope. So even when you're coming into an organization, you have to first kind of really explain what coaching is, what it isn't, that it's not remedial, like you have to kind of. Bust all of those myths and then that has to be affirmed by everybody else, especially in leadership, in organization, by who are, who are gonna model that. Like, oh, and I've signed up for my coaching session like, you should too. Or, you know what I mean? Like they're gonna have to really, I support and promote it. But yes, those myths are out there and not all 360 reviews are rosy. Some of them are tough and for the tough ones it's even more important to process them with a coach cuz you can debrief your 360 with a manager who's not trained to handle that level of inflammation that a person is gonna show up with or that level of like emotional reactivity. So being able to process and debrief that with a coach is, is a far better way to handle it. If an organization has the resources to do so, and, and most of them do, even if they don't realize it, because what can happen is, especially for the 360 reviews that aren't a hundred percent positive, nor should any of them be, because we all have something to work on. If you have perfectionistic tendencies, this kind of thing can upend you, and so you're gonna need a soft place to land. You're gonna need somebody who's gonna help you help bring you back to grounding when you start going down a rabbit hole of negativity bias. Because you will, especially if you have perfectionistic tendencies, and a lot of folks in leadership tend to have perfectionistic tendencies, so, which is part of the reason why they got there. So you as a coach, you already know what you're going into and you already have skills to help navigate that in a positive way that somebody who's a manager may have none of that. So it can actually be a disaster. If you have somebody who's our manager and just untrained, go and do that, that's when they've been trained to be a, you know, a scientific researcher, but they're also a manager and now you're asking them to do this.

Kyla Cofer: 14:19

Well, and I think you made a really good point too, and you said that if they have the resources to do it, which most of them do, and I think that we often forget this, that we are so focused on budgets and line items, and everything's got its place that we forget if we invest in employees and we do this and they actually grow and excel, which means the company and the organization grows and excels. So just a little bit of financial investment up front is right. You gotta, you gotta spend money to make money, right? So you just, that extra financial investment in people, uh, can really explode the work that you're doing and really like get a, an enormous financial gain from it. So if, if money drives you, then think about this as a really, really great investment.

Tajan Renderos: 15:05

Totally. And it also, it, it's also been proven to improve retention. And we, we all know how hard it is to replace someone. The cost of replacing and training somebody anew and all of those things is, can be far greater than making a relatively small investment in somebody's, uh, leadership development.

Kyla Cofer: 15:23

And that just requires like a review and bringing in somebody to manage. And then, and then now that you've taken that review, you've. Gone over it with the person, then it's creating those steps and like coaching someone, I'm moving forward. How are we actually going to do that? Like, what are our goals? So this is the difference, right? Between therapy and coaching. Therapy's gonna be like, let's process that together and, and let's work through that and kind of the past and, and come to terms with it. And coaching's gonna be like, now what are we gonna do with that information? How are we gonna go forward? What are, where's that goal? And how are we gonna get to it? So, How are you working with people? Like what's your particular and personal expertise method that you're walking people through to get to those goals and make those transformations?

Tajan Renderos: 16:03

Right. So the framework that I use when helping first time managers really excel in that role of being great people managers is what I call the MCDC Framework. And after that initial assessment, Of that performance Review 360, and we know where folks are and we've had at least one initial one-on-one coaching session. Then we move into the learning collaborative stage where you're with fellow first time managers, and then we're working through together on some of the pillars that tend to be. Most challenging for most first time managers. So the M stands for mindset, and there's a lot of work around leadership mindset around how do you address imposter syndrome, how do you address perfectionistic tendencies? How do you lead from your strengths? How do you ensure that you know what your strengths are? All of those things related to kind of leadership mindset. And then we move into the C, which is communication. Where folks are getting, yes, some didactic learning, but lots of role play and practice around how to actually have tough conversations where folks are actually practicing them for real. How to navigate through conflict and learning and practicing all of those things while also running through these PDSA cycles where they're, they're running experiments on their own. So not only is it, oh, I've learned a thing and they've given me a tool and a handout, and that's great, but it's like, okay, on your assignment is to go and have a tough conversation before you come back to our next learning collaborative session, and then we're gonna debrief on how that went and how that could be improved, et cetera. So you are also committing to taking action. By, by signing up in, into being a part of this group process.

Kyla Cofer: 17:42

There's no fluff here. This is not just happy feelings and good and butterflies. No. This is like we're getting in and we're gonna do the work. Even when it's hard and conflict and approaching that is, it can be really scary.

Tajan Renderos: 17:52

Yeah. Right. And because people are learning in real time, they may not necessarily have an actual current conflict to work on in practice, but there's a tough conversation that everyone is avoiding. Even if it's like a mini feedback conversation of like, actually, you know, your PowerPoints need to be more X, Y, Z, a, B, C. It's a mini feedback that you're withholding because, because you can, because you can work around it. Right?

Kyla Cofer: 18:15

Because we're always trying to decide what battle to fight, right? Like which one We just, we let those go. Cuz other things are more important, but sometimes those little things are important to talk about too. Yeah.

Tajan Renderos: 18:24

Totally. And so we're gonna use those as your homework assignments. Awesome. You're gonna have those, that's a mini tough conversations to really improve your muscle on that. And then a D stands for delegation. A lot of first time managers, especially folks who are moving into that role, are still feeling like they need to show and prove, like, I need to show and prove that I was worthy of this promotion and that they didn't make a mistake giving it to me. And so there's this sense of like, I need to do all of the things and be everything for everyone and, and they're not delegating enough. Sometimes I've seen lots of first time managers even become territorial with their work because it's like people need to attribute it to me. Mm-hmm. Because if they can't attribute it to me, then it'll be apparent that I'm not worthy. And so working through some of those issues as well as actually teaching people how to delegate effectively. Cuz we've all been in meetings where people make really soft requests of like, can somebody like, you know, can somebody send the notes out next week? And it's like, can somebody like, who do you mean? When do you want it by? And what do you like? What do you, right? There are all these soft requests that tend to happen in meetings, and so there is something to be learned in terms of how to actually delegate effectively and then working through any thinking traps that people may have around why they're not doing it enough. So if the show improve stuff is at work or any of those things, or this notion of like, if, if I don't do it, it will, it's gonna suck. So working through some of those common mindset traps is a part of that, that that component. And then the final component is really the C, which is culture. Most first time management programs focus on working on first time managers. I am of the thinking and based on my experience, lived experience and training that you can feed the fish, but you need to clean the fishbowl. And a lots of first time managers, even if they're learning and they're in these great programs, that's fantastic. But if you're sending them back into a culture that has unclear career pathways, that has kind of a chronic stress workload, many of these issues have little to do with them and their own ability. And much to do with the system that they're all swimming in. And so as part of my work with organizations when I'm doing these assessments, I'm unearthing some of the policy level, system level norms, level issues that are making it really hard for first time managers to lead well. And so if you're signing on to working with me, yes. Your first time managers are gonna get that core work, but you are also signing on as a C H R O or as a Chief people's Officer to work on some of those norms and policies and structures that are gonna support your first time managers. So it's a little bit of both.

Kyla Cofer: 21:06

So I started this podcast because I wanted to learn and grow in my leadership journey, and I have been so incredibly inspired by the guests and the conversations. So once the interview ends, I actually keep the conversation going because I have found that sometimes the richest part of the conversation is when we feel like the interview's over and we can just kind of have a relaxed, more casual conversation. Also, if you've noticed, if you've been following this podcast for some time, I used to ask every guest two questions. What does integrity mean to them? And what does balance look like to them? Well, I haven't stopped asking those questions. We're just putting those over on our Patreon page. So go check it out at patreon.com/leadership school, and for $6 and 50 cents a month, you can support this podcast. It takes a lot to produce every single episode and. Honestly, I could use a little bit of support. So anything that you're able to contribute would really mean a lot to me and would able to help me to continue to bring these high caliber guests in to have conversations on what does it look like to be an extraordinary leader, and how do we practically do that? So those conversations are continuing over at patreon.com/leadership school, where I'm asking guests some extra. Questions, some bonus questions and you'll get some bonus content over there, so be sure to go check it out. Thanks so much for your support and thanks for so much for subscribing, listening and sharing this podcast. It really does mean a lot, and I'm so honored to show up here in your podcast feed. I think that's so important that you brought that up. We talk a lot about all of these things in various ways here at the, on the podcast, but when you break it down and think about how each little part affects and, and we're trying to do all these things while we're also trying to get work done right? So we've got conflict to deal with a company culture that's just in shambles or like that, we don't even notice that all of these things and the problems that we create, because we're just so used to them. When we've got our personal development, we're growing in our leadership, we're starting to feel lonely because we are holding all of these things onto by ourselves. We need people to respect us. We need, like you said, to feel worthy. We need people to understand that we can handle this, that we deserve this job, and we can totally hack it. And we, we can, we deserve more jobs, and I don't want them to look at me and think I can't do it. And then, We're part of creating that culture and that system of, like you said, the, the fishbowl that hasn't been cleaned. Like it's just, it's the cycle that repeats. And until we kind of flush that out and clear out different elements, like break it down, understand what kind of culture do we actually have, you know, we, I've always like wondered about that question and job interviews because, When you're interviewing at a place, you want to understand the company culture that you're walking into. And so you're trying to get a feel for that. And I remember like wanting to ask that question when I was interviewing, what's the company culture here like? But people don't really know how to answer it. Sometimes they're like, oh, we like each other, we have fun. Or we get along and but you don't always really know until you're in a space of how it really is. And sometimes you don't see those things because you're blind and you're so focused on just getting the work done. So I think this is really helpful to, what we're doing is we're just taking a step back and we're bringing in a different perspective. Someone who can see some of those spots that we can't see, and we're just taking this step back and going, okay, how can I communicate better? How can I lead better? Where am I? What's my own development? How can I delegate better? What kind of community are we creating here? Where are our goals and where are we taking this? And is it possible to get there with the way that we're acting now?

Tajan Renderos: 24:42

Mm-hmm. I found it to be incredibly helpful to look at these issues from multiple levels, individual, peer to peer, and the system itself to sustain the change and just to create more profound change that's sustainable. It's been incredibly helpful to work in that way because, I mean, one-on-one coaching in and of itself is beneficial, layer in you working with your colleagues, more beneficial, layer in us trying to address systemic issues even more beneficial. So it just kind of, it compounds on itself in ways that can be, that are transformative.

Kyla Cofer: 25:18

I'm thinking about. I'm glad you said that because we tend to think, because I want to do something different than it's gonna happen automatically. It's like any habit, right? I want to eat better, so I'm gonna gonna just start eating better. And then two weeks later you have to go to a birthday party and then everything just goes and you know, you've forgotten everything that you've worked on for two weeks. And uh, it's just so easy. Cause we just, we're adults, right? We're not kids. I say this all the time in my talks, like we're just ingrained in the way that we do things and trying to change the thought pattern and like, so you know, you start with the mindset. So it's that first acknowledgement of if I want to change something about the way I'm doing something, I have to change this mindset that I have about how I'm going about it. And I have to be willing and open to doing that and, and doing that personal development work. Because it's not like you just walk into a room and flip the switch or you pop on a plane, you fly across the country and you get there and everything's different and better. Like, I have none of my problems cuz I'm in a different place. No, you, you carry them all with you. So did we go through all your steps? Did we, did we go through the

Tajan Renderos: 26:17

Yeah. The mc, that's, that's absolutely it. We begin with an assessment 360 review. We start with leadership mindset issues, getting to communication skills, delegation skills, and then I'm consulting with senior HR leaders around cultural issues, systems issues that are, that are really making it tough for first time managers. So we feed the fish and we clean the fishbowl too.

Kyla Cofer: 26:39

Oh gosh, I love this. Okay, so what do you do though when you're in a, you're working through these systems and processes, you guys have grown so much, and then something major happens, you know, you're, cuz you're also doing the work, right? When I say doing the work, I mean the work on yourself, but also the actual work that your company is set to do. Uh, so you're, you're doing both things, but then something comes up in your company. I mean, you go from summer to winter or a high income month to a low income month, you know, where there's different stressors or someone quits, someone resigns. How do you help people work through those big seasons of change?

Tajan Renderos: 27:14

Yeah, this is major and we've all had the common shared experience of Covid, which initially spun us all into a period and kind of a sustained season of VUCA change. And what I mean by VUCA is we're talking about a season where things are. The V is volatile. The U is uncertainty. The C is complexity, meaning there's a lot of moving parts. The A is ambiguous, meaning we don't even know like what's gonna happen, like things are shutting down. The mall is closed. Like what is happening here? School is closed. Zoom school, what in the world, right? So it's ambiguous. We don't even know when it's gonna end. And how in that season, it's almost hard to remember right now. But that was recently, right? It was very recent. Recent. That was very recently. And so all organizations were thrown into that period. And of course an immediate, you know, folks said in, in the recession several years ago, That companies survived if they had a good C F O and that companies survived covid if they had a really good C H R O. So really having people who knew how to shepherd people through that, through that season of VUCA change was critical. But other than Covid companies are going through VUCA change constantly. Some common examples are widespread layoffs that we're seeing in tech, for example. Huge, huge experience of of VUCA change for people there. When companies merge, when companies acquire new companies, when companies lose their founding, c e o, new leadership, all of those are examples where HR directors are gonna be coming to folks like me saying we're in trouble. Uh, really we're in vuca, right? And that's normal and natural for any company, for any system to go through seasons of vuca. So it behooves us to prepare our leaders to handle that season well. Cuz some of the impacts of VUCA are people feel destabilized, people feel anxious. People sometimes that can paralyze decision making processes. People are just like, I'm so overwhelmed, I'm just gonna, I don't even know what to do. I'm just gonna sit here and like, I don't know,

Kyla Cofer: 29:25

paralyzed just can't. I just can't. I just can't. Can't even.

Tajan Renderos: 29:29

Yeah, it's a, takes a toll on internal culture. It's stressful. And so one of the things that I help organizations understand is first let's get shared language around what's happening,

Kyla Cofer: 29:40

okay? So that we're using the same terms and the same phrases, and

Tajan Renderos: 29:43

there's nothing more freeing than a diagnosis. So maybe if we're like, oh my gosh, finally somebody diagnosed me. Yeah, okay, now I can do something. Now we have shared language. Now we understand. Now we have a common understanding, right? So there is action to be taken at each sphere of the organization. When it comes to VUCA change, one is once we have shared language about what's happening, there's, what do I do it myself in VUCA change. So if I'm an individual contributor, Then I can, there's several practices, right? Mindfulness practices, taking time to take care of myself, grounding exercises; these are all things that I can do for me, and that ideally leadership should be supporting and enforcing and reinforcing. Um, one thing I often tell clients who come to me like overwhelmed. Because they're in a company that's in a season of VUCA is to remember that we're not so good at predicting how bad things will really feel the concepts of effective forecasting. So Wilson and Gilbert did a lot of research around that and we're in fact really poor at predicting how bad things will really be. We're also really poor at, at predicting how great things will really be too. So that Disney trip that sounds amazing, really was like rainy. It was a slog to get there. It wasn't as amazing as we thought it would be. And same on the other side. This conversation that we thought that we would've like lost our spleen over, we survived it. We had a tough conversation and nobody died. Right? Like we're all still standing.

Kyla Cofer: 31:10

We all made it and we didn't hate each other. No one quit. Yeah.

Tajan Renderos: 31:13

So re reminding in a coaching context, reminding people of that, reminding people that we're more resilient to change and we think we are right for leaders, being able to ensure that your folks are interrupt common thinking traps. So as people will naturally catastrophize, oh my gosh, and this is gonna happen and that is gonna happen, and da da da, da, da. If you are leading, if you are in a position of facilitation of a group of people, you have to interrupt these common thinking traps. It's your job to acknowledge it, but also make people aware of like, okay, well here's what we know and all of this, we don't know, right? Mm-hmm. So it's your job to to help to serve as a grounding force for people, because what can happen with that kind of spiraling of thinking is there's just all of these emotions on top of emotions. So first you might have felt stressed, but now you feel anxious and worried, and like all these negative emotions are kind of compounding. The natural emotion of fear is fine, but when we keep on adding on, then there's layers of compounded manufactured emotions that just make the situation worse, right?

Kyla Cofer: 32:18

Because as leaders, people are looking to us and we set the tone for how people are gonna respond. So whether we realize it or not, if we are losing our mind and panicking and can't handle things, the people under us or the people surrounding us are gonna go. This really is bad. I don't know how we're gonna survive this. I just better get outta here. I can't be here. Like, what are we gonna do? My leader can't handle this and that. You know, you might have other people who do step up, who step up in that time when they're able, but it's really important to practice these skills when you're not in seasons of vuca. Yeah. Because then you have the strength behind them for when you are. Yeah. I love thinking about lifting weights, right? When we don't lift weights the day that we need to be strong. Yeah. You know, that's not gonna get us there. We go to the gym, we build those muscles up, and then when someone needs us to lift something heavy, our muscles are there and we can do it. So, not that I go to the gym. Yeah. Because I don't do that, but, you know. Fantastic. I think that it just helps with a really good visual that if we want to be strong in the day, we need to be strong. If we, if we want to be able to have the mindset on the day that it. Things don't go right if we wanna Yeah. Be ready for those days. And if we wanna lead with, uh, integrity, with wellbeing, with balance, and if we wanna lead our team through it and come out on the other side, not just stronger. I don't, I don't really like to say we'll be stronger after this, but having survived and grown through it, That we have to be prepared in advance. So,

Tajan Renderos: 33:51

yeah, and I would argue that if you know that VUCA seasons really upend you in ways that are like you, if you know you really fall apart when things are in vuca, then consider whether or not leadership is is right for you, because you will go through VUCA seasons. And so knowing what you can do and what is for you and not for you is critical too. How many people have we seen who are people managers who have no business doing that?

Kyla Cofer: 34:18

Right. I love, like when one's excellent at sales and so they become manager and they're like, I don't know how to be manager. I know how to do sales. Like sales is my thing. And so we might not be, just because we are successful in one position doesn't mean that we're going to be successful and qualified for another position. Um, yeah, especially without having that training and having worked through some of those, uh, processes of preparing yourself and coaching yourself through it, you know? Right. That doesn't mean you can't, cuz you certainly can do those things. Just be ready for it. You can.

Tajan Renderos: 34:47

Yeah, you can. And I mean, there are character strengths and skills, so some of these folks can skill up. There's some, there's some aspects of, of one's character. I think that, from my perspective, is hard to skill up on. Like you some things you either have or you don't to a degree. But many, many things, like 90% of it one can scale upon. But for folks who really get incredibly anxious with VUCA change and incredibly upended by it then,

Kyla Cofer: 35:14

but I do wanna say too that if that, yes, to say that this isn't for me, but also I think it's important to know what your skills are and to know when you need to walk away from something. That's a boundary and that's, um, a wellbeing tool. And it's really important and crucial to know that. Yeah. But I also think it's important to not be afraid of those things, um, just because you don't know what you're doing. Like to look ahead and see that mountain seems too big to climb. Mm-hmm. But you don't fly to from the bottom to the top. You, you grow slowly and Yeah. And you, and you walk up steps. And so I thi it's really easy to get so overwhelmed with the bigness of something to come in and say, man, this company culture, we need to make all these changes and we just can't do it. So we either can just give up and walk away. But if you take it in in small pieces and you understand that yes, this is a skill that I can learn. I might disagree with you Tajan. I might think that anybody really can grow and build these leadership schools, but you have to have that desire to do it. Yeah. And you have to have the willingness to and understanding to think, I have to put the work in here. This might be really, really hard. Yeah. And if I'm not willing to put the work in and the effort and to show up and do it, and even when it's hard and when I'm afraid, then maybe you do need to walk away. But if you know and you believe that I, I can put this effort in because I'm supposed to be here. I think this is when we didn't talk about purpose today and, and we've got a lot of episodes that talk about purpose, but when you know that that's your purpose, when you know you're in the right spot, it doesn't matter how big the mountain is because you know you're going to find a way to climb it.

Tajan Renderos: 36:47

I agree. I a hundred percent agree. What I sometimes see is for folks, folks who really want power and title for whom they actually hate people.

Kyla Cofer: 36:58

They, they, they just wanna be seen as as great.

Tajan Renderos: 37:01

Oh, they want power and title. Yeah. They're driven by power and title. That's different. Yeah. Those folks. Who are a minority, I think, for whom it's so outside of their purpose. They hate people. They really want to just sit with a computer and be on their own. That would make them so happy, and then that they are the people manager. They are the leader. Then it becomes tough, right? That becomes a problem. This is why I flip back to the culture. Why are we creating an organization where the only metric by which you ascend into leadership is based on your technical skill? So we create that problem by promoting such a person because they're, because they're a high performer, they're an amazing salesperson. We went and promoted them knowing fully well that they are the most toxic high performer.

Kyla Cofer: 37:49

So it's, it's really having to admit that sometimes you might have made a bad decision and what are you gonna do now? What, how are you gonna see the culprit in that? Yeah. Yeah. That's great

Tajan Renderos: 37:59

seeing the culture. Cause we can't solve that with one-on-one coaching. Yeah. Can't solve that, solve that even without learning collaborative. But CHROs need to now look at career pathways. How are we making promotion decisions and are we solely basing them on? Are we solely defining productivity as the only means by which one one gets ahead and gets promoted? That's a systems issue. That's not a one-on-one or a team issue, which is why, hence the C in the M C D C framework and working on culture because now I have to work with your CHROs and we need to look at your career pathways and what does that look like and how we can ensure that more adaptive skills and not just technical skills are embedded in your rubrics. So yeah.

Kyla Cofer: 38:44

Wow. Yeah. This is great. I feel like we could keep talking, so I'm curious if there's anything else you want people to know or anything else you, uh, wanna make sure that we have said before we head out here, cuz otherwise we'll just keep going for like another two hours.

Tajan Renderos: 38:58

And nothing really. I mean, I think if anybody is interested in knowing more about my work, I think all those details are in the show notes. But yeah, I agree. We definitely covered a lot of ground here. Yeah,

Kyla Cofer: 39:09

we really did. This was so great and I'm, I'm glad we talked about VUCA, cuz I've actually not used that specific term before. So it's helpful to see things in a. Like step by step, I like steps and to-do lists because they're clear, right? You know what to check off, you know where to focus and put your energy and then you can put it together and, and things fill in the gaps along the way you find, you find all the gaps to fill in as you go. But um, I think that was really valuable and peace. So ta Donna, thank you so much for coming and joining me. I've learned a lot from you and I really appreciate you sharing your expertise.

Tajan Renderos: 39:39

Likewise. Thank you so much, Kyla, for having me. It's been

Kyla Cofer: 39:41

great. Hey, thank you so much for listening. If you've liked what you heard and you want some more tools and resources to help you on your journey, go check out kyla cofer.com/free stuff.