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💥 Ignite your company culture with the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast!
We bring together incredible leaders, trailblazing entrepreneurs, and expert visionaries to share the secrets to their success, explore real-world challenges, and reveal what it truly takes to lead with energy, passion, and purpose as a 🌟VIBRANT🌟 Leader.
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[00:00:00] Announcer: This is the Build A Vibrant Culture Podcast, your source for the strategies, systems, and insights you need to turn your dreams into your destiny. Every week we dive into dynamic conversations as our host, Nicole Greer, interviews leadership and business experts. They're here to shed light on practical solutions to the challenges of personal and professional development. Now, here's your host, a professional speaker, coach, and consultant, Nicole Greer.
[00:00:29] Nicole: Welcome everybody to the Build A Vibrant Culture podcast. My name is Nicole Greer and they call me The Vibrant Coach, and I'm so happy to have you here on the Build A Vibrant Culture podcast. I've got another amazing, vibrant guest today, and her name is Genevieve Retzlaff. Let me tell you a little bit about her. She's a certified transformational coach, team performance expert, and an ex Cirque de Soleil employee. How many Cirque de Soleil events have you been to? I think I counted them up before the show. I've been to six and I'm ready to go to another one. I love them so much, but she's got her own deal now. She's got her own deal now. She is now in charge of this thing called Grow Better Together. And so she helps leaders, teams, and organizations keep top talent engaged by cultivating -don't miss this- a human-centric organizational culture, and fostering a sense of vision. She has a love for the sports and entertainment industry along with a 15 plus year background in human resources, and she's living her dream life. Today she offers transformative executive coaching, and she helps people elevate their organizational performance, fosters leadership excellence and drives sustainable growth, which is what we all need in our organizations. So I am so glad to have you here, Genevieve. Thank you for coming.
[00:01:49] Genevieve Retzlaff: Thank you for having me.
[00:01:51] Nicole: Yeah, so good. And she's up in Vancouver, everybody, over on the West coast. So I'm grateful to have her here today. And so, you have this really cool assessment that leaders can take right on their website. And in my work at Build a Vibrant Culture, I have a little coaching methodology. And the first thing I always talk about is you need to self-assess. You gotta turn the mirror inward, like what's up with you and your leadership? What's it like to experience you? So will you talk a little bit about the assessment that you have, and we'll make sure it's in the show notes that people can take this.
[00:02:22] Genevieve Retzlaff: Yeah, absolutely. So the self-assessment is for leaders who are curious, like, stop and think, what am I, how am I doing? What does my team think of me? What if I ask them, what if I don't wanna hear what they have to say or what, what if something I'm not willing to change or anything. So this self-assessment is kind of a first step towards self-awareness, but it's really understanding and you've done it, Nicole, right? There's nothing like groundbreaking, but it's just simple questions that allows you to reflect, take a step back going like, how am I doing? Am I actually being intentional about the way I lead? And that's the main question we wanna be answering with that self assessment.
[00:03:00] Nicole: Yeah. Fantastic. So the title right on the top says, how human-centric is your leadership? Before we talk about all of that, what exactly do you mean by human-centric? What do you mean?
[00:03:14] Genevieve Retzlaff: I mean that the way we've been working for the last 200 years is coming to an end, right? Like it has ended. But some companies have not caught up with the change yet. But it's coming more and more to people's awareness that things need to change and be more human-centric 'cause that's what the generations want. And I think covid definitely accelerated all of that, the pandemic, the fact that people, going back to what actually matters to me, and there was a lot of change, and now the biggest competitors to companies is self-employment. And so a lot of people are just leaving the corporate world because they need to find more flexibility. There's a different way to work and they want different things. And those different things are more human-centric and it's more connected and that connection is often lacking. And that's what I mean by human-centric, like how much of your day-to-day goes into understanding yourself, understanding your team, really elevating to the next level and not being stuck in the grind and in the day-to-day operational work, but be able to take that step back and make changes accordingly.
[00:04:21] Nicole: Yeah. And before we got started you kind of connected some dots for me. You're like I do two things. I do leadership development and I do organizational development, and you can't do one without the other. So, I'm an OD gal. That's, yeah. But still, I think people are like, what? What's that? Yeah. Yeah. So will you kind of tease out those two things? You know, this is leadership development and you can't have organizational development without this thing. So will you kind of put that together for us? Put our puzzle together.
[00:04:53] Genevieve Retzlaff: Yeah. No, no, thank you. I, so we speak the same language. I'm glad to know that, Nicole. So there's HR and OD, organizational development, is sometimes more of a subset of HR, because it lives under that umbrella, but it is how is your organization structured and set up to achieve your business goals? And if it's not, or if that part is not intentional. How do you build some strategies on the organizational level and then how do you break it down into teams? And so if the company is going into a certain direction, like if you have company goals -and a lot of my clients, Nicole, have not discussed company goals in years, and they're not really clear on that. And that really is a north star for the work I do in organizational development. And once you go through that, so we do surveys, interviews, and really try and understand and tinker under the hood, being able to understand what's going on in the organization, why you not hitting your goals, or why is it difficult? Why do people feel like they're stuck in the grind and lose track of the goals, the objectives. And where leadership comes in is when you start tinkering around under the hood and you find out that there's a lot of human dynamics problems. And so that's when leadership development comes in.
[00:06:09] So I think one doesn't go without the other because of that component. You can't achieve goals if leadership is not on board. You know, so you cannot, how do you say, like captain the same ship, you kind of not on the same ship at all. So, that's why these two things come together. And it really started because I was in HR, like corporate HR for 15 years. It was an entertainment world. Like it's not that corporate, it is very colorful, but it's still
[00:06:36] Nicole: Right, right, right. So it said position aerialist. You're like, Hmm, that's the first time I've had that job description. Which is really super cool!
[00:06:47] Genevieve Retzlaff: Yeah. So the structural work. I got a little bit tired of the HR world because it's like you don't really have the authority when you're there because you wanna create change and you see what's going on. You're kind of at the mercy of senior leadership being on board with that vision.
[00:07:03] So I found that a lot of those HR vision and the leadership visions sometimes don't come together. And like, it wasn't aligned with my personality and my values, what I believed in. So I left HR thinking I was never gonna look back. And then I went to get certified into coaching and that really was my jam. But then after like seven, eight years of coaching, I was like, I'm not using this 15 years of experience that I've gathered in that OD and HR world, and so how can I combine that? And that's kind of how it landed. And so the consulting we do is more on the coaching side, which comes from powerful questioning and has a different twist to it. So that's kind of the merge from Grow Better Together.
[00:07:48] Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. I love what you're saying about, you know, they have to go together. One thing I have a slide in many PowerPoint decks -you probably have many PowerPoint decks too. But in this PowerPoint deck I have this one box and it says, organization needs, and it says, results, change, growth. And then I have a box over here and it says employee needs. And it's like, okay, these two go like this. You know? And you've gotta understand, if all the employees got raptured outta here, the aliens came and took everybody away, nothing's getting done today.
[00:08:20] Genevieve Retzlaff: That's right.
[00:08:21] Nicole: You've gotta lead the people to lead the business. You can't just lead the business.
[00:08:25] Genevieve Retzlaff: That's right.
[00:08:26] Nicole: It's leading the people. And I think people hear that and they're like, well, duh. And I'm like, I know, but that's not what we're doing. We're not developing the people. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:08:35] Genevieve Retzlaff: Yeah. That's my experience too. It's like, yeah, of course everybody knows that, but how is that actually implemented into your organization is what matters.
[00:08:45] Nicole: Right, right. So I think the first step is people to take this human-centric assessment that you have, right? And in there you talk about how self aware are you? And one of the things is doing regular reflection on the quality of your leadership. And so, stopping to step back and go, well, how did I lead today? Right. So, will you talk a little bit about how leaders can be more self-aware?
[00:09:09] Genevieve Retzlaff: Right. It's building that muscle, building that habit of being curious enough about how you lead and changes are happening at such a rapid rate. That, you know, we've never seen this amount of changes in such a short amount of time ever. And so you need to be adaptable. And to be adaptable, you need to self-reflect on how are you actually doing. So yeah, so that's definitely the first step to that reflection is to want to have that reflection. And sometimes it's really hard to get that desire out of people. And what I've seen is like either people are just used to having that muscle, right, that they just question themselves sometimes too much too. Right? They're like, how
[00:09:50] Nicole: Right there is a sweet spot in the middle.
[00:09:52] Genevieve Retzlaff: Right, exactly right. So you don't wanna be at both end of the spectrum. But what I found is, and maybe you experienced that too, Nicole, in your coaching practice, is sometimes it comes out of a crisis. So a leader that has not done any self-reflection before will come into a place where either they're being made redundant, or there's a big thing happening either at work or in their personal lives that they experience grief or a loss. Or something, something big, you know, that is happening and shaking up their internal world, then they start wondering like, what actually matters to me? And all these questions that a lot of people went through during the pandemic, for example, that can be triggering, but hopefully you don't need a crisis to start being self-reflective. And that's where we try to encourage by just bringing this out there, right? So.
[00:10:42] Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. And that old thing about being proactive versus reactive, don't wait for something to go crazy or south or squirrelly to turn the mirror inward. And Genevieve, one of my favorite questions to ask leaders is what is it like to experience you? And I'll ask them that. And they're just like, oh.
[00:11:01] Genevieve Retzlaff: Hmm.
[00:11:01] Nicole: I've never really thought about that before. And I'm like, well, that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna figure that out. And then how can you give that more intention and attention, right? So I think that's important. One of the questions on your human-centric assessment is getting feedback from your team. So how do you propose leaders go about getting feedback from their team? I think that's essential.
[00:11:24] Genevieve Retzlaff: Mm-hmm. I think so too. And if, as I said, sometimes you could be like, you have the fear of what's gonna come out of that, right? So you don't do it, but see this as more as a gift and try to change the mindset, you know? And if you're curious enough, then you've already made a big step as in like, how can I do better? And not only that, Nicole, but when you do that as a leader, it creates a connection. So it's under like a, a ripple effect of just asking the question, Hey guys, how am I doing? How do you, what do you think of me as a leader? How can I do better? And sometimes you'll find, I mean most of the time, right, everybody's unique, they have different needs, and you have just all of a sudden an ear for that that they haven't seen from you. Well, then you just created connection. And through connection you build trust and all of this good stuff that comes in and all of a sudden you become - just by doing that- more human-centric already. So feedback is definitely critical.
[00:12:23] Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. You said we get underneath the hood and we tinker around and that kind of thing, and a lot of times people put out employee engagement assessments and things like that. And I'm like, well be careful before you do that. You know, let's teach our leaders how to engage with their people first, and then maybe we can -but don't put the cart before the horse. Because I think really, if I think back in my career when I was younger, if any senior leader, even my direct leader, gave me significant time and chatted with me. I was like so grateful.
[00:13:00] Genevieve Retzlaff: Yeah. And if you create that space to have that one-on-one, and on top of that, you ask for feedback, you put yourself more of a vulnerable pair of shoes than you're used to, then so much good can come out of that. Not only you know what you need to work on, but you build that trust and that relationship and that person will do all of a sudden a lot more, they'll be more productive. Like it's just like ripples on so many levels.
[00:13:27] Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. And I love what you're saying, that ripple. You know, I'll teach leaders sometimes about this thing called discretionary effort. It's like, people are working, they're doing stuff, but you bond with them and they'll give you extra. They'll give you discretionary effort. 'Cause I always did. Like if one leader that I loved asked me to do something, I know that I put a little extra oomph in the process. You know, I mean, I did. But I think that's human nature, absolutely. Okay. So the other thing you talk about in the assessment is emotional intelligence. And this is one of my favorite subjects of all time. So what are your thoughts on emotional intelligence and how can a leader build that in the leader and then in the organization? How can we do that?
[00:14:09] Genevieve Retzlaff: Yeah, that's a good question because it's like, for me, it's the ability to read the room. So for example, you walk into a meeting and you need to sense what is going on and pick up on that and address that with intention. So you can go on about your meeting. But if the energy is really low and you're not addressing that the energy is low 'cause you haven't noticed, well then you're probably not gonna get where you want to be going. So this needs to be addressed first, and it's building the ability to do that. And it's hard for some people, right? It's not a given. And then how they go about that is first recognizing that that's not their strength, and then asking again, either in the one-on-ones or in the teams, how can I become better at this?
[00:14:54] Or just putting yourself in this position when you say like, I'm not very good at reading the room. I need you guys' help for me to get there. Right? Because it's so important as a leader to be able to do that. And especially if you want to become more human-centric, to follow the trend of where, the industrial world is going. This will be an important skill for you to develop. And it is developable. It's not a word.
[00:15:19] Nicole: Developable. Yes it is. We just made it a word, you and I. I like it. Developable. Absolutely. Well we're talking about this thing, organization development, everybody Google organization development just to make me and Genevieve happy. But you know, when I got my master's degree over at Queens University, we did all these weird things that I thought were wonderful. Like we would sit in circles. And we would pose a question and practice the art of dialogue and we would do all of the Oh, I know. It was so fun. And here's the thing, bringing that kind of stuff into your everyday can teach you how to read the room. Oftentimes, I'll tell people when you're doing a meeting, don't just jump right into the meeting, do a check-in, and people are like, you really want me to do that every time? And I'm like, yeah.
[00:16:09] Genevieve Retzlaff: See how you go, right. Just test it out. You'll see the results, right? Yeah. Yeah.
[00:16:13] Nicole: That's right. That's right. Because it'll allow you to kinda see what needs to be on the, maybe your agenda's no good anymore by the time you posted it. And now the meeting, and checking in with your people I think is huge. And then raises the trust. Right. Raises the trust through the roof. Yeah. And you learn to start to have this thing called empathy, which I think is super huge.
[00:16:34] Genevieve Retzlaff: You know like this strength assessment, Nicole, from Gallup, the Clifton strengths. So empathy is an actual strength. And I've worked with a leader that had this 34 strengths, and then she had empathy number 34. So it was like not a thing for her. Because she was more the leader that said, okay, well can we just get things done right? Like, why can she not just provide me with the work? But then she was a director. She was working with a team leader, and that team leader has very strong relationship building skills. So the good morning, how was your weekend? This kind of chitchat matters so much to her. And then if you're able to just do these simple things. So for her, that came more from a focus approach, right? Like how, gimme a step 1, 2, 3. So step one, good morning. You know? And so just integrating that into a routine that spoke to her without having that empathy piece was a better result in the end. Right? So that's what I mean is everything is developable the word we just made up, Nicole and I.
[00:17:37] Nicole: I love it.
[00:17:38] Genevieve Retzlaff: But you know, empathy is even developable. It's something that you cannot necessarily have, but you can work around to, to just be able to connect with your team on a different level.
[00:17:48] Nicole: Yeah, I love what you're saying. Yeah. So, the thing that we wanna really emphasize, too, is that all of the emotional intelligence, like if you go all the way back to Goleman's book, you know, since then he's been saying this is something that you can work on. And I think that there's definitely a couple personality styles that are just like, let's just get stuff done. But then when they gain these strengths, they're gonna get exactly what they want.
[00:18:12] Genevieve Retzlaff: Mm-hmm. That's it. Yeah.
[00:18:15] Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. So good. So good.
[00:18:17] Announcer: Are you ready to build your vibrant culture? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with their strategies, systems, and smarts. To increase clarity, accountability, energy, and results your organization will get lit from within. Email her at nicole@vibrantcole.com and be sure to check out Nicole's TEDx talk@vibrantculture.com.
[00:18:43] Nicole: All right. So speaking of getting things done, another part of your assessment is about being strategic and people centered, and you talk about not micromanaging folks. And so I do a lot of interviewing, I do some boutique recruiting in vibrant culture, and I love that recruiting that I do. But I'll ask this question in the interview. I'll say what kind of leader or manager would be ideal? And the first thing out of every person's mouth is, I don't wanna be micromanaged. And I'm like, okay. But almost every time that's what they say. So talk a little bit about how micromanaging can work against you and it's not human-centric.
[00:19:21] Genevieve Retzlaff: Yeah, it's kind of the death of engagement, to be honest. And it's just so common. And often it's funny 'cause those people who say I cannot be micromanaged have a hard time identifying that they themselves could be a micromanager. Like it's just some sort of a spread disease because it gives some sort of a sense of control that a lot of people feel like they're losing. And right now, I don't know your experience, but it feels like everybody's operating on such a high level of stress. There's just so much to be done with less and less resources that it's hard for you to provide your best work 'cause you're not in that environment. So you're kind of always on that fire fighting mode. And then it's hard to take that step back to be able to reflect like, okay, so how am I managing? And most of the time when you're in that really like high level, high stress situation, you just want to have that control back and do things either yourself, 'cause it's, you know, you, it's done better. It's, yeah, it's done better, quote unquote, or it's done the way you expect it to. So we have amazing stories about micromanagers turned around into like, oh, I don't have to do that. And then they gain all that time back, and it's not just time management, it's more energy management. Like where do you wanna put your time and energy in a day? And if you do that, you use that time and energy to micromanage. First of all, you're using up your time and energy. You're using up your team's time and energy 'cause then they get frustrated. So energy is always a bit lower, you know, vibrational, frustration energy is really low, right? And so you get disengaged team members and then they start thinking, well, why would I bother? And so productivity goes down and then they start looking for another job, and then that costs money to the organization. And that costs a lot of frustration to the other team members who are probably thinking this is so avoidable. You know? So it's just like creating this massive cycle of frustration and disengagement that is really unhealthy.
[00:21:28] Nicole: Yeah. And I love what you said at the beginning when we started talking, you said, many of the companies they have not discussed their goals or looked at their goals in a long time. And that just dovetails with micromanaging. If you set the goals and you lay out what the results need to be, and you hire smart people, typically they're gonna come up with-- I don't know about you, but I've had people come up with better ideas than what I had. You know, it's outta their way. You know, they're like, this is what we could do. And I'm like, oh my God, that's genius. We should totally do that.
[00:22:03] Genevieve Retzlaff: Yeah. Yeah. And there's a portion of psychological safety too. If your ideas are being turned down all the time because they don't come from the boss or from the manager, because they always think their ideas are better and should be implemented the way they want it, well then that's a waste of opportunity, right? That's just throwing opportunities to have better ideas out the window. So, yeah.
[00:22:27] Nicole: Yeah. And another thing that's just running through my head is instead of micromanaging, you could put in place what I would call employee performance management.
[00:22:37] Genevieve Retzlaff: Mm. Right.
[00:22:38] Nicole: Where it's like, this is what you do today, but I'd like you to do all these things and grow and be promoted and have a bigger, better future. And I think most of your quote unquote good employees would love that. Yeah. Yeah, what are your thoughts on employee performance management?
[00:22:57] Genevieve Retzlaff: Yeah, I have mitigated thoughts as in I see the value in the way you describe it, but at the same time I feel like it's fostering more performance for an individual contributor. And I would like to see more team performance indicators rather than individual contribution indicators. So in that case, I feel like it's taking away the team and collaborative effort. Using the togetherness of the team, you'll go so much farther, faster than if you promote individual contribution. But that's my thought. But what you're referring to is more having that conversation like
[00:23:33] Nicole: Yeah, the one-on-ones.
[00:23:35] Genevieve Retzlaff: Going, Knowing where's my part in it? What's my future? What am I working towards? And these are all very healthy conversations to have with your team members. And if you haven't had those, I would encourage you to have those even on a quarterly basis, 'cause even annually it's like a little too little and you know, things shift so quickly. You wanna make sure that everybody's on board with where the company is at today, not nine months ago.
[00:24:00] Nicole: Right. Right. And we all have heard some sad story of somebody who got their annual review and were told you're not doing well. And they were they were totally like, what? Nobody said anything. Yeah. yeah. So I love that. Okay. Talk about the team part that you were saying, you know, instead of promoting individual performance, team performance, how can a leader do that? I'm curious about what you just said.
[00:24:26] Genevieve Retzlaff: I think it starts with self-awareness. So developing yourself as a leader, understanding your own triggers, what gets in your way, what's holding you back, like just gaining that full picture as you said. Like how can one experience you? Understanding that and coming from the place of an external, like just being able to see the forest for the trees and you being the forest in that case, you know?
[00:24:50] And then, once you're able to do that, then you can support your team. And then by supporting your team, just doing the same process as you've done yourself, just elevating their perspective on their own performance, on their own contribution to the team, then all of a sudden you have a team that is completely elevated along with the leaders, and then you can co-create. And by co-creating, you can come up with much better ideas to bring the organization forward. So that's kind of a three pillar approach that we also use in our leadership programs, which is leading yourself, leading others, and leading at scale. So that's the way, and that's based on our multiple years experience leading and also coaching. Just there's some repetitive patterns, right? And so we build these three pillars, 'cause I think the sequence is the most important to get out of that.
[00:25:41] Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And weaving that coaching into every one of those parts, right, where people are self-reflecting. I love it. Okay. And so, you have been talking about how things change. Things are changing on a dime, we've completely come out of covid and things have changed. So wake up, smell the coffee. So people are under pressure and one of the questions that you ask in the assessment is about how calm and adaptable you can be. So what are your thoughts on how leaders can, begin to be more agile? I guess that's one of the hot words out there.
[00:26:17] Genevieve Retzlaff: Yeah, agile, leadership agility. Yeah, I think, yeah, there's a portion of the self-assessment and you might just reflect and say oh, I'm totally adaptable and not really understanding what's behind that. But ask yourself what have you been adapting to in the last 12 months? And just reflect on that and it, you don't need to go, you know, much farther, but just thinking back on what are the things and just list during that reflection. And maybe it's hard for you, so just leave it, come back to it, but just keep that reflection going and understanding how was your level of adaptability, because that will tell you a lot about how you can adapt in the next 12 months. And I can assure you there's gonna be a ton of changes between now and the next 12 months in your organization. Nobody escapes it right now. Right? So how are you gonna be adaptable to those changes? And then I would urge you to think about how you wanna be intentional about your adaptability to those changes. What is it that I need to work on as a leader? Doing the strengths assessment, adaptability is one of those trends, right? And so if you find that doing that self-assessment shows that your adaptability is pretty low, like from 14 to 34 would say it's not in your top strength, and you really need that as a leader nowadays.
[00:27:37] Well look for someone on your team or someone above you, your own manager, like somebody around you that can keep yourself accountable for trying to be more adaptable. And if it is really pulling too much energy out of you, leave the responsibilities that need more adaptability to somebody who has that their strength. And use the complementarity of the strengths within the team.
[00:28:01] Nicole: Okay, so you know what Genevieve is talking about? Let's slow down here a minute and talk about the strengths finders. So, you must be certified in strengths finders as a-- you're not? You just love it.
[00:28:13] Genevieve Retzlaff: I just love it.
[00:28:14] Nicole: Okay. All right. Well, I've got that in my toolbox, so I am certified in the StrengthsFinder. And so what I wanna say about that is that you all need to go out there, those of you who are listening and get yourself a Clifton 34 StrengthsFinder and take a look at what your results are. You must have done this in your own life and it had a big impact. Is that true?
[00:28:34] Genevieve Retzlaff: Yeah, it had a big impact on how I was recruiting for my team and how I delegated tasks and just for my own leadership and my own business it's been game changing. And I only did that after I saw the results with my client. Like, this is amazing. And now clients just integrate that as part of their recruiting process, 'cause they're like, well, we wanna make sure strengths are complementary with the rest of the team. So you don't wanna have only the same profile. Diversity is really important. And so I implemented that for my own business and the way I separate tasks between team members and things. Yeah, definitely a game changer. Love the tool. Absolutely.
[00:29:16] Nicole: What's your number one strength?
[00:29:19] Genevieve Retzlaff: Achiever.
[00:29:20] Nicole: Okay. I've got that in my top five, but my top is futuristic. So you wanna talk vision, talk to me. I wanna talk about the future. I wanna talk about what's possible. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's so funny that you love it so much because I work with companies that love it too. I have this one gal I work with and discipline was number 34. And so while we talk about strengths, you've also got this bottom five, right? It's not like we want you to make those super strong strengths, but we want you to be aware that this is not natural or easy.
[00:29:51] Genevieve Retzlaff: That's right. Mm-hmm.
[00:29:52] Nicole: And so she was so heartbroken when it came back. She's like, I'm disciplined. And so we're like, let's look at the definition. You know, and actually a lot of times we get through life not using discipline, but a different strength. So we come at it from a different way. So that's what Genevieve's talking about, understanding how people come to their work, right. With their strengths out front. Yeah.
[00:30:14] Genevieve Retzlaff: Yeah. Yeah, it's whatever is natural to you, right? We don't wanna change you and we don't want you to necessarily work on that bottom five 'cause it's just energy draining and you don't wanna do that. It's not helpful to you or your team. So might as well delegate or find a system that works for you to not have to be drained by tasks that suck your energy.
[00:30:37] Nicole: That's exactly right. We don't want any energy sucking going on. That's for darn sure. All right. Yeah. And so the other thing I think is so important that you highlight in your assessment is you talk about making thoughtful decisions, even in a fast paced environment. And I find that people are very reactive and they need to find a space to cool their jets, slow down, figure out what's going on. What are your thoughts about that?
[00:31:03] Genevieve Retzlaff: Oh yeah I put it in the assessment and that's really because I work a lot with the event industry, so that's really fast paced, that like short delivery kind of cycle. And there's multiple events at the same time. And one of my clients was welcoming the FIFA World Cup. That's kind of a big deal, right?
[00:31:22] Nicole: It's a big deal!
[00:31:23] Genevieve Retzlaff: Big deal! So she was like, there's just so much happening that I have to sit and I have to strategize off the side of my desk to be able to think about how we're gonna do things differently for FIFA, which is not something she wanted as a sustainable practice. So that's how we started to work on her structure. How can we build delegation system? How can we add maybe a management layer? 'Cause everything was going to her and she was like, I'm the bottleneck, I'm the decision bottleneck and I don't want to be. And strategizing off the side of her desk was something she really didn't wanna do anymore. And then once I worked with her, then I was like, how does that resonate with other clients?
[00:32:03] And I think it really comes down to how much space you give to strategic thinking. And maybe if you do the strengths finder again, you'll realize that is maybe it's not your strength and you're more of an execution type of person, well then maybe leave it to somebody who's more strategic. Maybe that's your problem. Or maybe it's mostly what people are experiencing right now. It's firefighting mode. And as you just said really nicely, Nicole, the art of slowing down and we just learn to slow down and take these moments in the week. And if you work well with your calendar, block off some time. Like you can even call it slowing down time or strategy time or whatever resonates with you, but just block it and make sure it happens, 'cause otherwise you get sucked in, and then you're in the operational grind and you can't elevate your practice and your craft.
[00:32:53] Nicole: Hmm. So good, so good. I love that. Yeah. And one of the final things that you have on here is this whole idea of coaching your people. And you said that you got into coaching and you fell in love with it. I have the same story. I just think coaching is magical. So talk about the value of a leader being able to coach and then of course this thing of mentoring and maybe we can tease out the difference between the two for people.
[00:33:18] Genevieve Retzlaff: Oh yes. They're very different and they're often mixed up, right? Coaching to me is coming from a place of active listening and powerful questioning. You do not provide solutions. You do not provide advice or insights. You just sit there and you make the person think through, and then you're just kind of a thinking partner. You know, you're kind of on a jamming session, and to them finding their own solution based on what makes sense to them.
[00:33:47] And mentoring is different as in, based on your experience, you wanna pass on some knowledge, you wanna pass on your experience. So advice is welcome, is really almost the opposite in terms of the approach. So mentorship is, this is what worked for me. Tell me more about your goals. Based on my experience, this is what I suggest you could do. So it's very different, but both are very valuable in different contexts for sure. But developing your team and this coaching leadership style, which is on the rise and it's proven to be very efficient.
[00:34:23] And if you look at the data from the International C oaching Federation, it's really incredible how much power and productivity you can get out of your people by being a leader coach. But they, it's really coming from that space of not providing answers and just listening and ask the right questions for them. So you're guiding, you're more of a guide than a mentor at that stage, if that makes sense. Yeah.
[00:34:52] Nicole: Oh, it makes total sense. And one time I heard it shared like this, Genevieve and I've used it ever since. They said, when you're mentoring, you're giving people dots and when you're coaching, you're helping them connect their own dots.
[00:35:06] Genevieve Retzlaff: Yes, that is.
[00:35:08] Nicole: I'm gonna use that for forever. Because if you're new to the business, you could be 50 years old, new to the business and you just don't understand how things work. So you, you need somebody to mentor you and tell you and give you dots, right? And so here's little data points, here's little nuggets, little things. And then eventually, at some point in the process, it's like you want to just challenge their thinking so they connect their own dots up here. And then they can be self-managing and you don't have to micromanage them. See, we came full circle right there.
[00:35:38] Genevieve Retzlaff: There we go.
[00:35:41] Nicole: Yeah. So good. So good. Well, Genevieve, it's been so good to have you on the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. And so I know that your website is Grow Better Together. Do I have that right?
[00:35:53] Genevieve Retzlaff: Yeah, there's dashes between grow and Better, and then between Better and Together. So Grow-Better-Together.com.
[00:36:01] Nicole: Okay, very good. And they can find you on the LinkedIn as well. Is that true?
[00:36:05] Genevieve Retzlaff: Yeah, that's my spot. I hang out there.
[00:36:08] Nicole: Okay, very good. And we'll put the link in the show notes if you'll go down to the show notes, everybody, and take the assessment. Genevieve will turn around and send you your results and she can set up a time maybe to debrief with you and see what she can do to help you grow your leadership so you can become a more human-centric leader. I know what people always think at the end of these podcasts. They're like, wait, wait, I bet you Genevieve has one more little nugget for me. One little thing to leave me with, a quote, a thought, a challenge. Is there something that you'd like to leave with our listeners to kind of seal the deal for us?
[00:36:43] Genevieve Retzlaff: I guess I'll start from the premise that people who listen to your podcast think like you and me, as in they're already self-aware enough and want to deepen that reflection. Right. And I would say if you're stuck in that firefighting mode and just reactive, like most businesses are right now, just take a pause and if it's hard for you, like just schedule it in your agenda to be able to come up with a plan to be more intentional. And I think you'll go a long way if you move from reactionary to intentional. You can achieve so much more than you think. It's simple, but it's, it's hard. It's simple, but it's not easy. But if you're able to do that, you'll get pretty far.
[00:37:30] Nicole: So good. Thank you Genevieve, so much for being on the Build A Vibrant Culture podcast. Hey everybody, go down right now. Just take a hot second and click the like button. Tell everybody that you love this, wherever you're watching. And then of course, would you leave a little note if you've got a question or a comment, we would love to hear what you think of this episode and show us a little bit of love. Thank you so much, Genevieve.
[00:37:53] Genevieve Retzlaff: Thank you for having me. It was wonderful.
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