Dr. Wilson Washington JR - Enhancing Leadership through Soft Skills and Human Connections
Jun 21, 2024
Alimond Studio
What if mastering soft skills could be the game-changer for your leadership journey? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Dr. Wilson Washington JR, founder of Blue Eagle Solutions and Training LLC, as he shares his unique perspective on the critical role of soft skills in leadership and organizational success. With a team boasting over 150 years of collective management experience and Dr. Washington's own impressive background as a retired Navy commander and former director of health and human services, you’ll gain valuable insights on making emotional deposits to foster effective people management. Discover how face-to-face, facilitator-led training can make a significant impact, particularly in our increasingly digital world.
Explore how Blue Eagle Solutions is bridging the gap between good and excellent performance across diverse sectors, from federal government to healthcare. Learn about their commitment to enhancing soft skills through various training modalities, including online and machine-based options. Dr. Washington sheds light on the importance of respect and dignity in customer service and shares his personal rewards of helping others improve. As we discuss the balance between embracing technological advancements and maintaining human connections, you’ll leave with actionable advice for aspiring leaders and a deeper appreciation for the human element in today’s tech-driven environment.
What if mastering soft skills could be the game-changer for your leadership journey? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Dr. Wilson Washington JR, founder of Blue Eagle Solutions and Training LLC, as he shares his unique perspective on the critical role of soft skills in leadership and organizational success. With a team boasting over 150 years of collective management experience and Dr. Washington's own impressive background as a retired Navy commander and former director of health and human services, you’ll gain valuable insights on making emotional deposits to foster effective people management. Discover how face-to-face, facilitator-led training can make a significant impact, particularly in our increasingly digital world.
Explore how Blue Eagle Solutions is bridging the gap between good and excellent performance across diverse sectors, from federal government to healthcare. Learn about their commitment to enhancing soft skills through various training modalities, including online and machine-based options. Dr. Washington sheds light on the importance of respect and dignity in customer service and shares his personal rewards of helping others improve. As we discuss the balance between embracing technological advancements and maintaining human connections, you’ll leave with actionable advice for aspiring leaders and a deeper appreciation for the human element in today’s tech-driven environment.
Speaker 1:
First of all, thank you so much for inviting me today. Of course, my name is Dr Wilson Washington. My business is the title is. The name of my business is Blue Eagle Solutions and Training LLC. Okay, we have two office locations, one in Charles County, maryland, and the other in Talbert County, maryland.
Speaker 2:
Okay, and what is it that you guys do? How do you guys serve your clients?
Speaker 1:
Okay, we are a professional organization with experts that has over 150 years of management experience. So we teach what we refer to as soft skills training and we feel that organizations they hire experts, they hire young students from college. They do a great job on the technical side, but on the soft skills side we've learned over the years that it's a void. So we feel that our value proposition and what we bring that's unique to this industry is soft skills and it's also the approach we take in teaching soft skills Things like leadership development, teamwork, emotional intelligence, etc.
Speaker 2:
Describe soft skills for me, for those people that don't know.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Speaker 1:
Well let me do it this way Building soft skills are essential for any organization, especially in today's market, where technology drives everything, yes, and the world is interconnected, and because of that we live in a fast-paced society. Absolutely A lot of times people fail in being able to communicate very effectively. They may have difficulty understanding what emotional intelligence is all about. It's not just about looking at someone else and evaluating what's happening with that person. It's a look inside yourself first, to understand you and how you respond to different pressures. Outside pressures, we also focus on problem solving. Problem solving is a big thing, I like to say. The art of critical thinking is lost.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 1:
We have learned that technology drives society, but there's still a need for critical thinking and problem solving, also in managing people. Managing people is a unique skill set. It's not just about barking orders and requiring people to do this or that. It's about understanding people. It's about making an emotional deposit into an individual. So that's what we teach in soft skills. All of those are soft skills.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I like the way you said that emotional deposit. I feel like we are lacking that so much these days. Just that you know everyone's sitting behind their computer getting their work done and not getting that face-to-face and learning how to actually work with each other and communicate with each other. How did you get into this industry? Tell me a little bit about your backstory.
Speaker 1:
Okay, Well, first I'm a retired commander from the Navy.
Speaker 2:
Thank you for your service.
Speaker 1:
Thank you. I learned a lot being in leadership positions. As a commander, I wake up and go to bed thinking about the troops, the soldiers, sailors and Marines that are under my care. Since I worked in the medical side, I like to tell people. I may not know a lot of things, but I know how to take care of people. So, knowing that about people, I started to look at what is missing. What is missing. I see a lot of smart people coming young and old alike, and I've been a CEO in industry as well. I've been a director. I was the director of health and human services for the city of Atlantic City, New Jersey. I led the city through the worst pandemic in American history.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, tell me how you and I learned a lot about people.
Speaker 1:
So I leaned into the area, started to kind of do some research and through my journey I run across other experts that's kind of doing the same thing and those people actually working with me. So we started teaching soft skills. Even while I was a CEO or director or public health advisor I taught soft skills to my staff. My teams generally would outperform most teams and most of them were sad to see me leave.
Speaker 2:
Primarily, because you had such great leadership.
Speaker 1:
Making that emotional deposit into the people.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
And that's showing a genuine concern about the health and well-being of the people that support you. I don't like to say work for me, I like to say work with me, right? So I love our setting here, where we're kind of sitting around the table, because I see leadership that way, as around the table, rather than a vertical chain of command. I like to say the people that work with me, work around the table with me.
Speaker 2:
And there's not just a head at the table, it's not just the head of the table.
Speaker 1:
I don't like to sit at the head of the table.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:
So that's how we got into soft skills just experience understanding people. Working a lot with customers In healthcare. You're in customer service business. You have an opportunity to impact a person when they come to you for care. At every point of entry, you can either leave a positive experience or negative experience, and they'll talk about both of them. So I spent a lot of time teaching my front end staff how to engage people and how to leave with a positive, having a positive impact on people. And many times we learn that managers we have good and bad managers. Many times we learn that managers we have good and bad managers, but many of them don't know what they're failing at.
Speaker 2:
That's a good point, and this is what we teach.
Speaker 1:
Many of them are failing in the soft skills area, like communications, conflict management, understanding team building, what's required, understanding the benefits of diversity. So our approach is a face-to-face approach, facilitator-led type of training. That's kind of our uniqueness. Certainly, you can do soft skills training online or machine-based, but you lose a lot in that process and this is what we're learning. As a CEO, I learned that we had a lot of online training at a learning management university and people could take the training, but they lost the ability to interact with other people. And coming through the pandemic the worst pandemic in American history we learned a lot about isolation.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 1:
Being isolated. There's a there's a concept we teach called social connectedness. Social connectedness is all about building relationships and networking People don't want to live their life by themselves in a vacuum. You can do great by yourself. You can do exceptional with a team, so that's what we teach.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I like that you can be successful on your own, but even more successful when you surround yourself with successful people.
Speaker 1:
I always tell my kids.
Speaker 2:
You're really only a product of the people you surround yourself with.
Speaker 1:
Exactly.
Speaker 2:
And if you surround yourself with people that are going to bring you down, it's going to bring you down right. Exactly, Surround yourself with people that are going to bring you down, it's going to bring you down right.
Speaker 1:
Exactly.
Speaker 2:
Surround yourself with people that can build you up and take you to the next level and teach you. That's always to the benefit, right.
Speaker 1:
Exactly yes.
Speaker 2:
What type of medicine did you practice?
Speaker 1:
Actually public health. I'm public health, so I work on the science side of medicine with the epidemiologist all the people that looks at causation and look at the education behind why something happened. Like the doctor would treat the sickness, I would find out why people are getting sick.
Speaker 2:
Okay, that's the difference, big difference. Yeah, but they go hand in hand. It goes hand in hand, yes.
Speaker 1:
We like to think we're the oldest science of medicine. Yeah, but they go hand in hand. It goes hand in hand. Yes, we like to think we're the oldest science of medicine.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
We're the oldest science of health care. It all started with public health and it evolved into other aspects of health.
Speaker 2:
So how was that for you navigating that during the pandemic and being a liaison for, did you say the city of Atlanta?
Speaker 1:
City of Atlantic City.
Speaker 2:
Oh, Atlantic City. Thank you yeah.
Speaker 1:
Well, it was very challenging. When I went to Atlantic City it was shut down. All the casinos were shut down. We put in protocols, we brought the city back up, we educated. Atlantic City has a little over 43,000, 44,000 residents, but we get over close to a few million visits a year.
Speaker 2:
Right, I mean it's a huge tourist Everywhere.
Speaker 1:
Yes, so we had to not only be focused on the citizens, especially the elders. We had to focus on the millions of people that were coming into the city, so we had to establish safe protocols for them. So I basically went around and I spoke with organizations, schools, the universities. I partnered with Atlantic Healthcare System. We had a team of infectious disease and public health experts and we taught people how to lean into the storm and survive.
Speaker 2:
Right, and you guys were probably working around the clock.
Speaker 1:
Around the clock. We set one of the six mega centers up in Atlantic City. The mega center is a place where hundreds of thousands of people come to get their vaccinations. So we set that up for Atlantic City and we just managed through the storm. We leaned into it and got through it. But I learned a lot in that process as well, because it's all about creating teams. We created a team of 38 organizations and they all thought they were working for me, but they weren't working for me. We were simply working together, but they would all look for the bigger cause right.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely For the bigger cause. We were all working together in harmony together. So I learned a lot in that process. We taught a lot. I worked with Rutgers University Atlantic Healthcare System and a lot of the community-based clinics, the school systems, to basically bring everybody together. In AACP we did a weekly talk show on health and wellness. We talked about all the challenges people face when they're isolated in a home, nobody to talk to.
Speaker 1:
Right, it wasn't good for any of us it was not good for any of us, but we engaged as much as we could, and that's another thing. We teach client engagement, customer engagement. We teach people how to engage clients, especially customers, and customers come in very, very different colors and flavors. There are customers in healthcare, there are customers in banking, there are customers in manufacturing, there are customers in retailing. There are customers everywhere. Nonetheless, it's the same approach.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, same approach. Someone told me yesterday and I hadn't thought about it like this that you know you can do all your research and have all these plans in place as a business, but the consumer always wins. Exactly it's really what the customer wants at the end of the day, what the consumers are buying and what the customer wants at the end of the day and catering to them.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely, we try to keep it simple. It's really exciting working with my team of experts. We try to keep things simple, for example, our customer service training. I have a formula it's ECS equal P plus E. Okay, and ECS is exceptional customer service equal perception plus expectation. Every encounter you have an opportunity to influence a person's perception of what you're doing to service them or influence their expectation or and influence their expectations. So we teach how to keep a positive equation, because if you don't meet their perceptions, if you don't meet their expectations, you get a negative equation. People talk about negative things. They may tell three people about a positive experience. They may tell 30 people about a negative experience.
Speaker 2:
That's true. True, People often don't have anything to say unless it's negative.
Speaker 1:
Exactly so. We teach people to try to build a positive equation, and how to. I like to say this about customers I may not buy into the concept that the customer is always right, but I do buy into the concept that the customer is always the customer Correct. So we have to approach that with that concept in mind, yes, and always work to get a positive equation. Yes.
Speaker 2:
And you said something to me earlier about that positive equation about how you teach people. Was it your? It was an EPO, no technology people yes. That's how, as a CEO.
Speaker 1:
I used to, when I do the interviews, personal interviews with, especially, my senior staff, I would ask them to rank three words in order of priority for themselves, and the three words are information, technology and people. Okay, I always look for the pit, people and people. I always look for the pit people and the people. That would rank people first, information second and technology third, because I strongly believe, and everyone on my team believe, that people are most important resources, yes, and it's important to share information and to be an effective communicator.
Speaker 1:
And technology should enhance or expand what we do as a living. What, regardless of what it is it should make it more efficient, more effective.
Speaker 2:
right, but you've got to keep the people first, because if you lose the people, you lose your business right, yeah, and if we're depending too much on all of these amazing programs that are making waves in so many businesses and AI and everything getting the systems better, we are losing that human contact and touch Exactly.
Speaker 1:
And this is what we bring to the table. We like to think and our motto is we help people accelerate or increase or improve upon their soft skills. Excellence, because all of us have soft skills. Our approach is to help you improve that soft skill so that you're better at it when you come into our organization, you become a partner with our organization, you become better at what you already do pretty good. I always say the difference between good and excellence is that little bit extra.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, a little bit. A little bit of icing on the cake, A little bit of extra. Yeah, a little bit of extra. So what specifically? What companies are you helping and what is your kind of target market that you guys are looking for?
Speaker 1:
Okay, we are very diverse. We are conditioned to help the individuals, the small businesses, which is what I want to be our sweet spot eventually in small business development medium, small to medium-sized businesses. We can certainly help large organizations. We like to train in five to ten people groups. We can certainly do larger groups and, like I said, we do the face-to-face and facilitator-led training. But we can also do the online and machine-based training. We like to complement that with the face-to-face and the facilitated. Even if we're doing online, we kick it off with a person. We don't use an avatar, although they're available. Yes, I'm sure they are.
Speaker 1:
So we've trained the federal government, we've trained the banking industry, we've trained in retail and manufacturing and I'm focusing on now the health care and the mental health, especially in substance abuse and the behavioral health. I say it and all of the social organizations associated with health care, because the pandemic taught us this People suffer a lot, so they engage the system a lot. Nonetheless, whether they're coming in as a free client or a paying client, they deserve the right to be treated with respect and dignity, absolutely. So we are focusing, shifting our focus in that direction to try to make sure that, from every point of entry, customer service becomes a priority for these organizations, because we're losing that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
You know they're looking at people as numbers. Many of them are People that know we do the training. I've walked into emergency rooms and almost got a text saying, hey, can y'all do this training here? Because look at that, Look at how they're treating people. Yeah, and I just look at it. Even from the restaurant to the clinic, the medical clinic to the entertainment. If you're going to a show, to the booth where they're selling tickets, you're evaluating people all the time to see if they are approaching you with decency and respect.
Speaker 2:
Sure.
Speaker 1:
And you'll be amazed when you start looking at it and start evaluating. There are people making mistakes. Sometimes, many times, they don't even know they're making the mistakes. They're, they're bringing their frustrations to the job and it's, it's, uh, it's showing up, yeah, and you, as a customer, you don't know why. Somebody screamed at you or treated you bad or threw something down or even just barely acknowledging you, barely acknowledging you Having another conversation while you're trying to get something answered.
Speaker 1:
They don't really know because they have not been trained. It's not that they're bad people, they just have not been trained. They need the best Blue Eagle Solutions and training to come in and help them. They need us to help them.
Speaker 2:
What do you find most rewarding about what you do?
Speaker 1:
I believe the most rewarding thing is to know that I helped somebody improve what they already do. I get my energy from that, from helping other people. That's where I get my energy and satisfaction. It's not really all about the money for me. I've made a little money in my lifetime, but it's about helping people.
Speaker 2:
It's about seeing the smile, saying thank you and thank you for helping us and leaving your impact and leaving the impact, yes.
Speaker 1:
Making a social impact and helping other people. That's what's important to me.
Speaker 2:
Where do you see Blue Eagles going from here?
Speaker 1:
Do you guys see growth We'd like to be the premier organization for soft training, the first and only and the best.
Speaker 2:
We're going to manifest that right now.
Speaker 1:
I want to manifest it right now. We want to be the go-to organization when you need someone to help your supervisors, your managers and your employees become better employees, get better productivity out of them, get more commitment to the mission of the organization, help them just refocus, help them manage conflict conflict, help them increase performance overall. That's us, we can help you. We've been there. All of us have lived experience. We have what I call a trilogy of lived experience work experience in academia yeah all of us are certified.
Speaker 1:
I'm a certified public manager. I can run any city in the United States. I'm certified to do that.
Speaker 2:
That's awesome.
Speaker 1:
And I'm also a doctor and all the folks that are working with me are certified. If we're teaching project management, our project managers, our trainers are certified. So I didn't list all the soft skills. We do teach a whole menu of soft skills.
Speaker 2:
It sounds like you have an amazing resource of people with you. We do.
Speaker 1:
We have an amazing resource of people. I'm getting applications and resumes every day. People are retiring. They are still in the business of trying to help people, but they don't want the nine to five.
Speaker 2:
Right and don't want to be retired yet either.
Speaker 1:
Don't want to be retired yet they're not ready to throw in the towel and get on the back porch and rock with coffee. They're not ready for that. But they're ready to put 100%, and then some, to giving back and helping others, and so I'm open arms with them and I welcome them on our team and we're very available. People can go to our website, which is. I have different presentations on the website itself, wwwbestllc22.com. It's a work in progress. We use UR codes on all of our business cards on the website. You can go right to the website by looking at a UR code and you can either just look at what we do or you can also request us to come out and talk to you. We take a different approach and I want to say this than a lot of organizations, Since we do have a repository of resources. That's why it's blue eagles solutions in training we have a repository of solutions.
Speaker 1:
Yes, we always like to go in and listen first and talk to the leadership or the clients. We we don't go in and we're not. We're kind of a more of an a la carte than a buffet. We go in and we listen to what the needs are. We talk to people, we get a feel, because a lot of us have been around a long time. It only takes me a few seconds in an organization to figure out where their greatest challenges are. So then we put together a tailor-made training program for them and their managers, or their individuals, their teams, and then we come back and we propose that. So we basically start with listening first.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, Well, that's probably where your health care experience comes in as well. Is that you need to assess the situation, figure out what's happening? And come out with a plan as we kind of wrap up here. Are there any words of advice you'd like to leave us with, Maybe a life mantra that you live by?
Speaker 1:
Sure Well, first of all, I love looking around the area and seeing all the motivational themes.
Speaker 2:
I see, oh yeah, here in the studio, yes, In the studio.
Speaker 1:
These are things that just resonate with me because I have them all over my house, by the way.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yes, I love a good word, sign A good word sign.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely Every day I wake up and there's something new to think about to motivate me. But what I would leave you with is this the art of critical thinking is challenged right now, so we have to protect our young generation. Technology is amazing. It's moving very fast. I know a whole lot about that part because I do technology for the federal government.
Speaker 1:
By the way, right so I've put technology projects in almost every state in this United States new technology projects in health care. So I I believe in technology. That's why I have everything is on a smart device with me.
Speaker 2:
No paper, no paper.
Speaker 1:
But the technology is not your most important resource.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 1:
It's the people.
Speaker 2:
And I think people need to hear that these days.
Speaker 1:
It's the people, exactly, and we have to not be afraid of technology. We have to embrace technology, of course, but we have to, I believe, focus on the people. Never forget about the people first. And find that balance and find that balance between people, information and technology.
Speaker 2:
Yeah Well, thank you, dr Washington, for being here today. It was a pleasure hearing your story and I loved hearing this advice. Thank you for sharing it with us and thank you for being here today.