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Welcome to the 'Lead Smarter. Not Harder' Podcast by David Kent, your window into the minds of visionary leaders, trailblazing innovators, and savvy business owners.
Get ready to immerse yourself in the captivating stories and invaluable lessons from the best and brightest minds in the business.
Hey Alita, thank you for joining us on the Lead Smarter podcast.
I've really enjoyed getting a chance to chat with you up to this point, learning about
your background in leadership, uh books that you've written, which is a best seller by the
way, very excited for you.
ah And actually the topics of the book you wrote uh really, really does a great job.
think of covering what I want to have a deeper conversation with you about.
So I know if you could, you know, maybe tell me a little bit and the listeners a little
bit about your experience as a leader.
I know you led a
teams of up to 700 people and maybe kind of give us some insights on to how that inspired
you to write your book that became a bestseller.
Very interested in hearing that journey and then we'd love to dive into some of those
leadership topics that you covered.
Sure thing.
Thank you so much for having me on today.
My previous experience prior to going into executive coaching, I was a chief human
resource officer of a restaurant group here in New York City called Dos Toros Taqueria.
I joined them when they had three locations.
Their entire goal was to grow to sell, but they were very, very clear as to they wanted to
grow with a very, very healthy culture.
They wanted to have an employee first mentality.
So that's what we did.
I spent eight years with them growing the company from three locations up to 22 locations.
We really focus on an entirely employee first culture and mentality.
Throughout that time, I was working with lot of leaders that for some reason were avoiding
conversations.
They were avoiding giving feedback.
They were avoiding having kind of root cause conversations where they could see something
was wrong with the employee.
They didn't know what it was.
Some of these managers would rush into the conversation to get it done.
Some of them would avoid the conversation completely.
And so a lot of my work with Dos Toros was kind of getting my feet wet into what makes a
great leader, why are leaders sometimes great at difficult conversations and what makes
them great at difficult conversations and really wetting my appetite on leadership.
In 2020, we sold the company, which was our goal at beginning of the year.
And that allowed me to pivot, that allowed me to write my book, that allowed me to develop
my online courses and dive into coaching.
The reason I wrote my book is actually because of my son.
At the time I had a sixth grader, had just gotten a report on a science or a grade on a
science report that he was not happy with.
So I coached him on how to have that conversation with his teacher and try to understand
what he could have done better.
He came back the next day from school and I was excited to ask him, did the conversation
go?
And he said, well, my teacher told me to email him.
And that's when it was kind of like a light bulb moment for me.
Oh, this is why I have a lot of managers or I've dealt with a lot of leaders that don't
know how to have difficult conversations because they might not have been given the
opportunity to practice and no shade on that teacher.
I am sure he was quite busy, but that was a great opportunity for my son.
to practice having a difficult conversation in person.
And so I really started writing the book with that mentality that I have been given tons
of opportunities to develop out these skills.
And I'm now understanding that not everybody has been given that opportunity.
So what might development as a leader look like for having some of these conversations?
What I consider normal conversations, but apparently are pretty difficult for some
individuals.
That's interesting.
uh I that you might be over.
I don't want to say overexposed, but you might have just exposure to where difficult
conversations to you can just feel normal.
And I've experienced that myself.
Like ah it's it doesn't like if you are naturally comfortable or not naturally, maybe
you've just developed the skill to be able to navigate difficult conversations.
The conversations don't feel difficult.
It sounds weird to say ah maybe it's maybe it's just obviously intuitive.
ah But as I did, I do love the topic uh of how navigating difficult conversations that
motivate inspire.
It's kind of, it almost feels like two sides of a coin.
Like you have to balance both, at least in my experience, like having difficult
conversations for me as a, as a leader has just felt like such a deep, almost like the
core responsibility of leadership.
I'm dealing with vendors and clients and strategic partners and team members.
And it's like,
A majority of where my time is spent is trying to get people to align.
And most of the time alignments not, I mean, if they aren't naturally already aligned,
then it's going to be a difficult conversation.
Um, so while I don't think about them always as difficult conversations, cause usually if
you pick a team and you're doing that based on your culture, it means that you've probably
thought through these things and they likely will have aligned in some way.
It doesn't mean you're not going to have difficult conversations.
ah So I love that that is the primary thing of your book because to me it just feels like
such a huge part of what leadership is and I'd say almost like the primary responsibility
is to get alignment through those difficult conversations, but still like preserving
motivation and inspiration because if I mean if you don't have that then all you're gonna
do is have a difficult conversation and then things will fall apart like you
Or you have a difficult conversation and you don't get to the root cause, it's just
surface, so we have to have that over and over and over again, which I find a lot of
leaders do.
When I'm hearing a client say, I've had this conversation with my employee a dozen times,
I'm not seeing any change, that's a red flag to me that, we're having surface level
conversations, which oftentimes looks like the leader talking to the employee and the
employee...
sitting there and then we're done.
And so there hasn't been any investigation as to the root cause.
And so we can't do what most of us are really great at, which is coming up with that
creative solution to solve the problem because we haven't gotten to what the problem is.
And so, yeah, I think that having difficult conversations or being comfortable with them
is just like any other muscle.
The more that we work it out, the stronger it gets, the less we are fatigued when we
utilize it.
I love that you've like that you identify that it feels like some leaders have the same
conversation over and over again.
have, I have colleagues that will say the same thing.
They, they enter the conversation believing they have extreme clarity and believing that
they've delivered extreme clarity.
Um, but I mean, to your point, what you're talking about is, intentionally thinking about
the person that is receiving the content and whether or not they received it.
That's different than inviting somebody to a Ted talk so that they can hear what you have
to say, which is how I.
experience and how I'm sure many leaders think that's how you're supposed to do it.
Well, even as you're saying that, right?
So you're utilizing words like delivering and stating.
And to me, that means that, again, the end result is going to mean that the person is
gonna walk away possibly with some more knowledge.
But a lot of these conversations could be looked at as root cause analysis conversations,
which means me as a leader, I have to go in with curiosity.
I have to be really, really clear with what I do know.
And a lot of leaders go in knowing a lot.
that is actually assumptions.
We usually don't know too much, right?
We usually only know a couple things where there's a lot that we can get curious about.
There's a lot of possibilities.
And so I find that when I can challenge leaders to go into some of these conversations,
being the detective, being super curious to try to uncover what's really at play, there's
a lot less pressure on them and they do a lot less talking to.
and more asking questions and talking with the employee.
And that's where I see that we can start seeing some actual changes from performance.
I remember also when our previous conversation you had mentioned, uh well, actually you
spotted it in me and said that my style was servant leadership and that you, that was your
style as well, which was, it was great.
And I, when I think about that, I feel like ah what you kind of described is it taking
that pressure off.
It really becomes more of a collaborative experience and you're looking for the best
results from the person that you're working with, not just to.
spoon feed them that your own set of tasks and expectations.
And I had mentioned to you part of, I have a couple of assumptions and maybe I'm wrong.
One of you had said that a lot of times people will assume that their way of doing things
is the right way.
I actually assume the opposite.
I assume that I'm wrong first and that I'll learn together with that person that I'm
collaborating with.
Either they already know because I hired them for their expertise or their skillset.
Like they'll know how to do it better than me or we'll come up with something because I
maybe have more context of what we're trying to do as an organization, but they have more
skill in where I need them to help us find the solution that's better for everyone.
So for me, it just seems easier if I have to assume anything, just assume I'm wrong first.
And then that just forces me to ask questions because I have to find now the right
solution, probably collaboratively.
Exactly.
Yeah, I think the human brain, you know, when we have missing puzzle pieces, our brain
automatically fills those puzzle pieces in.
And so to go into any kind of root cause conversation or uncomfortable conversation, we
have to get really, really clear as to what's the actual pieces of knowledge that we know
and what our brain has just kind of plugged into those empty spaces.
You had also mentioned uh the ah efficiency of having these conversations and I say maybe
even front loading some of this.
You'd mentioned that just a little bit ago, you'd mentioned how you have leaders who will
say, I feel like I'm having the same conversation over and over again.
And it from my experience, and I think maybe from your description is partly because they
didn't invest in the full conversation.
They just wanted to express their own thoughts and ideas and then they feel like they have
to do it again because they never actually got full alignment.
So like almost feels counterintuitive that I have to have this huge deep long conversation
upfront.
But I mean, to your point, it feels like that that's the investment you make in in the
alignment so that it has you have like infinitely fewer conversations going forward.
ah
lot less frustration, right?
Because if you're doing something that me as an employer does not like and wants you to
change, it behooves me as the employer to get to the root cause, even if it does take an
hour of conversation between us, because I want you walking away motivated and with a
clear action plan.
If we have just surface conversations five or six times, you as the employee will probably
at some point get frustrated.
demotivated and disengaged.
So it's not just about my time wasting having 18 conversations instead of just one full
one, but it's also the impact on you and your engagement.
At some point you're gonna disengage and now I'm wasting a lot more than just time on
conversations.
You had also mentioned the efficiency of this initial investment.
And when I talked to you before, I remember you'd mentioned that you like to also set
expectations even just about uh how to communicate.
what you like six, I think you had mentioned that you have like six questions that you
ask.
I didn't ask you at the time what those six questions were for setting expectations for
communication.
ah Is that something you'd be willing to share?
Is that kind of your secret sauce?
I'd love to know what those are.
not secret at all.
uh This is something I challenge all of my clients to have a conversation with everybody.
Obviously onboarding is the best time to do that, but we can do it at any point in time
and we can actually be vulnerable and utilize it to build trust, right?
So this can sound like, hey, I realize our communication probably isn't the best that it
could be.
I'd love to kind of fine tune it with you by going through what works for you and what
works for me.
So the first question I challenge individuals to utilize is going through feedback.
What are your thoughts on feedback?
This is my beliefs in feedback.
This is how I like to give feedback.
This is what I mean in terms of receiving feedback.
What about you?
What do you need for feedback?
We all are different, right?
I'm somebody who loves a ton of feedback.
I'm an athlete in my younger years.
And so I just believe that the more feedback I get, the better I'm going to perform.
I have definitely worked with individuals that had a different reaction to feedback.
So by starting the conversation off by how do you like feedback and where could we change
to make sure that my feedback style is working for you and vice versa is really important.
It also then asks the employee to give you as the employer feedback.
So many of us in leadership aren't great about asking for feedback from those that report
to us.
And setting that expectation that I want you to come to weekly meetings with me with
feedback for me could be really, really helpful.
So the first one surrounding feedback.
The second is surrounding how are we going to communicate regularly?
Is that a weekly meeting?
Is that a bi-weekly meeting?
What does that look like and why?
A lot of my less senior clients typically complain about meetings.
And again, it's perception, right?
So I had a client that's like, I'm new to this position, but I'm really frustrated because
my supervisor wants to meet with me twice a week.
And I just feel like that is a waste of time.
Why does she feel like it's a waste time?
Because it wasn't explained to her the why, right?
Twice a week for me for a new employee doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but that's
because I'm explaining to them, I want us to understand the way our minds work.
I want you to know exactly what I'm thinking.
I want to see how you're thinking.
But then the cadence of our meetings can wind down as we get to know each other.
But just expecting that everybody's going to know why we're going to need to meet as often
as we are.
is usually not going to go well for us.
So the time, the cadence of meetings, the next is the agenda.
What's your expectation that they show up with for the meeting?
Do you want agendas ahead of time?
Is that something that is going to be a fixed agenda?
Is something gonna rotate?
What does that look like?
I find to be helpful to speak about ahead of time.
Okay.
Do you, I know that you've, you've ran these, uh, this framework by probably multiple
clients.
Do you find that there's a trend of, um, how they put that together that tends to work
better than other ways, or is it really just dependent on the culture and the team?
And that's going to be what really determines those decisions in that process.
Yeah, it's different.
It depends on the seniority level too, right?
mean, C-suite might not have the same uh idea or framework that maybe more junior
employees would look at.
But I think it's having a set of intentional points that we're going to cover so we
understand how we're going to communicate.
The last three points are typically over
literally the modes, right?
So what modes are we gonna utilize to communicate?
There's Slack, there's Teams, there's eight billion modes.
How are we gonna utilize those?
When do we utilize those?
And then email hours, right?
I'm somebody who's very, very clear that I don't check my work emails after six.
If I'm working with somebody who has for some reason the expectation I'm gonna be on my
email till nine and I don't see their email, that could be very frustrating to them.
So again, it's just about making sure that we understand each other and we have clear
expectations that we all agree to.
As a leader, I'm not telling you what's happening.
I'm asking questions so we can come to an agreement that works for both of us.
That makes total sense.
And I was actually going to ask you, given that your style, I'd say is a servant
leadership style.
I remember when we were speaking last time, you had mentioned, we actually were both
talking about how we knew of people.
And I think you actually had an example where your organization used an org chart where
servant leadership style was actually developed in the org chart where it actually was,
let's just call it like an upside down pyramid.
Like the leaders were at the bottom serving the top.
To me, that's interesting.
I would love to know the thought process behind that.
don't know that people will typically think there's probably lots of people that are aware
of it, but I'd love to know your thoughts behind that kind of a structure and how that
works.
Yeah, so the thought process was the happier, the more engaged our team is, the more
successful we would be as a business.
so the oftentimes we had found, specifically the owners had found that a typical
organizational structure made it so everyone was kind of serving the leader, that
everybody was communicating a way that would make the leader happy.
Everybody was positioning themselves so that the leader saw them.
And that did not feel genuine or authentic to those owners.
They really
wanted to flip the chart because they wanted the focus to be on the frontline team.
The happier our team was, the more engaged they were, the more profitable we would be as a
business, the more that we'd all be happy with more raises and benefits was kind of the
philosophy.
And I saw that play out on a day-to-day basis.
There was nobody that was too good to be dishwashing.
There was nobody that was too good to be taking out the garbage because again, the thought
was if we're helping,
the frontline staff, if we're making sure they're taken care of, supported, feeling seen,
heard and appreciated, our business was gonna thrive.
And it was the first time I'd seen it in action to that extent.
And all I can say is it gave us nothing but great things.
It was truly amazing what happened when you have a team that size fully engaged and be
bought into the vision.
How big was the team that was operating under that kind of a model?
So when we started, I mean, it started when I joined.
was 76 employees when I joined that organization and when I left there was almost 800.
And it stayed, then you guys continued to use that model.
That's awesome.
So you've had clients, I'd say in lots of different industries, maybe different sized
businesses.
Does that seem like a model that would be generally applicable or do you feel like there's
some kinds of businesses or some sizes of businesses where that probably doesn't work?
Or again, do you just think that might be just purely related to the culture of the
company?
I feel like personally it would work.
Okay.
I think that you see it, and again, my world's just sports world, specifically basketball,
so that's a lot of my analogies.
But if you look at somebody like uh somebody who just stepped away from coaching, Greg
Popovich is a great example.
If you hear the stories about him and how he treated his team, the respect that was just
felt by everybody in that organization, to me, it was very much a servant leader
philosophy.
where they weren't there for themselves, they were there for each other.
They were serving a bigger purpose and making sure that people were engaged, happy and
safe was the focus.
And you see what happens when that is the focus.
Championships happens, longevity and sustainability at a really, really high level.
And so I do think that you can apply it to any industry.
What I think is important is that every leader is embodying it.
You can't have one leader embody it and then nine not.
and think you're gonna get there, it has to be truly lived and believed by every leader.
That's, uh, that makes a lot of sense.
Actually, I was thinking earlier, a question you had meant, uh, we talked about was the
idea of a Jekyll and Hyde kind of a leader.
And you kind of just talked about that now and kind of like the, uh, the full body of the
leadership, like, or in the organization.
Um, I was thinking about it terms of a single leader.
So I'm interested in, in, in obviously we're trying to figure out how to have difficult
conversations, but if we're having difficult.
conversations to motivate, you need to be, I'd say you're the people you're leading have
to be able to trust the kind of leader you're going to be and know, um, you know, you have
to set some kind of standard I'd say in terms of, can, um, try to think of the word I'm
trying to use here.
Um, yeah, I tend intentions, the right word.
So I need to be able to show up.
need them to be able to count on, um, and be a dependable source of leadership.
And what I think that people might confuse that with is it means that can never, um, I can
never show them.
can never have a moment where I'm vulnerable and therefore, because then it's not
reflecting leadership.
It's reflecting vulnerability.
I, and I think I'd love to know your perspective on, um, what, what are some signs that I
need to look out for, um, either with how my team reacts to me or just in myself, to avoid
being that Jekyll and Hyde leader.
Um, and, and what that could do to your team.
If you're not being a consistently, I'd say stable.
was the word I was looking for a stable leader.
Yeah, consistency and leadership is huge.
If our employees don't know what type of leader they're going to get on a daily basis,
that's going to cause a lot of anxiety and uh people are going to be very, very careful as
to what they say at any time.
So intention with leadership, find to be very, very important.
And to your point, that's not to say we're not going to have bad days.
There's not going to be times that we're unhealthy, but that intention and having
practices and routines that allow us to root in that intention is what's so important.
I find that vulnerability attached to intention is where some of the greatest things can
come up.
So for me, the quickest way to establish trust is in vulnerability.
Now, it's not a one size fits all, right?
If I'm gonna be vulnerable with an employee, that doesn't mean I'm gonna tell them
everything about my love life, but it might mean that I'm gonna tell them about some of my
failures.
I'm gonna tell them about some of my learnings and how I got that.
I'm gonna tell them about some of my missteps so that they can understand that I'm not.
perfect, I've made a load of mistakes, I will continue to make a load of mistakes, but
that doesn't mean that we can't learn from these and then overtake other challenges.
So I think a combination of intentional leadership combined with vulnerability could be a
recipe for an amazing culture.
But it does depend on that leader being focused as to how they are going to show up.
What I often see is that leaders
are reactive and so that typically means that it falls on their emotional uh state at that
moment.
So if a leader comes in and they're really calm, maybe they had a great morning, maybe
everything went right that day and those are typically the times when those leaders are
gonna ask for feedback and they want people to challenge them.
And then maybe they have a couple days of not so great days and maybe they're really,
really stressed and they're not keeping themselves healthy.
then they're gonna come in as a completely different leader and they might be very, very
upset with feedback or might not wanna hear anybody's opinions.
And you can see how having that kind of leader show up differently might make the team
wonder what in the world's going on and if they're living in the Twilight Zone and if
they, who's gonna show up next, right?
So I think it's that combination.
uh What I have found is that so many leaders don't give themselves.
the space to even reflect on what type of a leader do I want to be?
How do I want people to feel during or after a conversation with me?
And how would I want them to talk about my leadership in 10 years from now?
When leaders can start at least there and do a lot of reflecting, typically they come away
with an idea of how they want to lead.
And then it's about making that routine or putting those steps and practices.
So they're just constantly aligning with that ideal.
Well, that so that brings a couple of questions to mind.
One does I assume that framework of what kind of leader do I want to be?
What do I want to be seen as in 10 years?
Are those some of the questions that you try to get your own clients to answer as they're
trying to figure out who they want to be as leaders?
And is this something that they might be able to themselves kind of start to figure out or
navigate as they're having as they're reading your book, for example, is this something
that your book goes into as well?
Yeah, it definitely goes into that a little bit.
There's also a free workbook on my website that goes along with the book that could be
helpful.
But yeah, reflection around these main questions, I think is a great place to start.
This is where I start with every client, but understanding what type of a leader do they
want to be?
How do they want people to feel?
during or after a conversation, and that's for all conversations, whether I'm terminating
somebody, whether I'm hiring somebody, whether I'm giving feedback, I wanna make sure that
when I'm in conversation, people feel seen, heard, and appreciated.
So I align myself with those ideals, and I think that's a great question for a lot of
leaders to ask themselves and see what kind of comes up and maybe how far off that is from
how they're showing up on a daily basis right now.
Well, I really appreciate that perspective.
I often think about how do I want to be received when I'm having conversations with
people, when I think the message really, when I care about what I'm doing and I care about
who I'm doing it with, that's when I really actually am thinking about how am I being
received.
And I imagine that's pretty much the core of what a leader should be doing and how they
should be thinking.
They don't care about the people or what they're doing.
They probably shouldn't be a leader in that space.
That would be my guess.
I hope that whoever it hope that nobody's experiencing that as leaders themselves and that
they really are in spaces that they care about with people they care about.
Speaking of, I've really enjoyed this conversation.
I care about you.
I'm looking forward to reading your book.
Thank you for sharing that with us.
And on that topic, what do you have on your nightstand?
Now, what are you reading both professionally for development as you're obviously a avid
reader yourself, but also what do you read in your free time, your fun time?
uh
something that's just maybe a non-fiction.
Yeah, so for the professional side, one of the books that I have recommended a ton and I'm
reading again for I think the fourth time is The Culture Code.
I find that to be really, really helpful in getting my mindset really, really clear again
on what a healthy culture is and what that means for us as individuals and how we show up.
So I love that book.
um On the personal side, I love Murder Mystery.
I'm a huge Patricia Cornwell fan.
ah I've been reading her since I was way too young to be reading her and so I've gone back
and I've started to read her entire series again because I'm just a nerd like that.
So that's what's on my bookshelf right now.
Well, Alita, thank you so much for your time.
Thanks for joining us on the Lead Smarter podcast.
I'm looking forward to having more conversations with you.
And again, just thank you for this experience.
Thanks so much for having me.
Thank you.