The Fabulous Learning Nerds

Scott (00:01.967)
Hey everybody, welcome back to another scintillating episode of your Fabulous Learning Nerds. I'm your host, Scott Schuette, and with me, my co -host with the most Dan Coonrod.

Scott (00:16.292)
Dan.

Daniel (00:17.71)
Did you just use the word scintillating?

Scott (00:20.045)
I did, I used it in a sentence, I did.

Daniel (00:23.748)
I don't know how to feel about that. I love it, but also...

Scott (00:26.649)
Do you know what it means? Do you know what it means? You don't know what it means, do Yes.

Daniel (00:30.436)
scintillating man, I Feel like I think I could try to infer but I don't hear it a lot. I've heard the word I've seen it used

Scott (00:39.449)
Yeah, basically energizing, engaging, light -hearted, fun kind of thing. Sintillating.

Daniel (00:47.436)
I don't think I would ever associate the word scintillating with light -hearted.

Scott (00:53.931)
or with our podcast is that we're trying to say that it's not simply

Daniel (00:57.73)
I mean, now that you've explained it, I totally would. But, you know, I'm just calling you out for your big fancy words.

Scott (01:03.075)
Well, I'm trying to use more words because, you know, I was using fantastic a lot and fabulous fabulous a lot. Yeah, no, it is. We're going to have a scintillating discussion today. We are going to have a scintillating discussion today after we find out how you're doing, sir.

Daniel (01:11.822)
Fantastic is great. Scintillating is good. Scintillating is good. But I figured.

Daniel (01:22.946)
Well, I think we know. Fair to admit. Man, man. So, my, how are you?

Scott (01:30.957)
Had to get that in.

I know, it's good.

Scott (01:38.349)
I'm groovy. We're good. You have a question. Ask your question.

Daniel (01:40.056)
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was it. was just like, how are you?

Scott (01:45.547)
OK. Were you looking for a drop? Because I can give you a drop if you want. Ask that question again.

Daniel (01:52.26)
Scott, how are you?

Daniel (02:00.333)
You

Scott (02:04.503)
Yeah, I'm going to be that's great. Also. Excellent, excellent speaking of excellent. We have our Duchess of design with us today. Zeta is in the house.

Daniel (02:06.901)
Excellent, excellent.

Scott (02:24.707)
ZEDA!

Zeta (02:25.867)
Hello, I don't know if I'm as qualis -syllabic as you guys, but definitely, definitely having a good day. Syntilating, quadri -syllabic.

Daniel (02:33.764)
I'm sorry, what did you just say?

Scott (02:33.839)
Whoa!

Scott (02:38.383)
Squadra syllabic we are we are getting edumacated here folks. We are getting edumacated for sure

Zeta (02:40.639)
means four syllables.

Daniel (02:41.57)
I'm gonna leave.

Daniel (02:47.148)
I went down...

Scott (02:49.121)
Alright, great cool. Yes.

Zeta (02:51.371)
Sorry, had to throw that out there. was like, we're using the big words. Yes.

Scott (02:57.091)
We are using big words, yeah. I feel like we should quit while we're ahead.

Daniel (02:59.076)
For our audience who are listening, we literally just watched Zeta rub her hands together, like wickedly, like big words.

Zeta (02:59.477)
feels like a Monday.

Scott (03:10.595)
Like Dr. Evil. Yeah, absolutely. I don't have a Dr. Evil drop. No, that's fine. Hey, folks, let's get into some scintillating quadri -syllabic conversation, because we have a really awesome special guest with us today. And I'm super excited to learn all about him. And we're going to do just that in the little segment that we call What's Your Deal?

Zeta (03:10.728)
My favorites.

Daniel (03:13.101)
I've been caught out.

Zeta (03:14.861)
I've been called out.

Scott (03:40.163)
Jeff!

Jeff Sigel (03:42.759)
Yep.

Scott (03:43.833)
Ha ha ha ha!

Daniel (03:45.38)
That's awesome!

Jeff Sigel (03:46.213)
What's my deal? Do I just go ahead? My deal. So here's the thing. I would say my deal is I am a recovering corporate guy. And I don't know if you have come across this idea that a friend shared with me a couple years ago called corporate PTSD, but I am trying to get over that. is crazy out there, is it not?

Scott (03:47.961)
What's your deal, my friend?

Daniel (04:11.15)
Deep, deep.

Jeff Sigel (04:13.543)
Yeah.

Scott (04:14.061)
Yes. No, I totally get corporate PTSD, especially, you know what made it worse? Honestly, COVID made it worse to be honest with you. Actually COVID made everything worse. And it's going to be that way for a little bit, but yeah, that's cool. So talk to us about how you became a recovering corporate guy, where you started from and now you're in this place of Zen that will make us all feel better.

Jeff Sigel (04:40.827)
Yes. So I started out my corporate career as a marketing consultant, had the worst boss I ever had, and then decided I really needed to learn how to do marketing and went off back to school, learned to be a marketer and ended up at Nabisco. So I worked on Oreo cookies and Ritz crackers. then from there, I ended up working at the Hershey company.

where I always say my kid's favorite title that I've ever had was when I was the director of Twizzlers and Jolly Ranchers. So that's, you know, that was literally on my business card. That was pretty cool.

Daniel (05:17.378)
That's my new favorite title. That's amazing.

Zeta (05:20.105)
That is.

Scott (05:21.267)
Okay, I have to ask a question one quick question does Does Nestle and Hershey actually really need a marketing department? got you know, that's just me like I I don't need Reminders that they have tasty stuff and they should go buy some that's just me

Jeff Sigel (05:39.163)
Yeah, but how do you, yeah, but you still need somebody to be like, why, why should I eat the Jolly Ranchers instead of the Skittles? Right. I mean, you can still lose the market share, right? You gotta, you know.

Daniel (05:48.014)
That's true, that's true. And they often put them side by side. I myself, I go through that very weighty decision at least once a week, because there's the Skittles and then there's Jolly Ranchers. Jolly Rancher gummies. Man, that's tough. Tough every time.

Jeff Sigel (05:56.285)
All right.

gummies. Yep. It's got to be that pushes you over the top. And that's, that's the marketing, right? It gets you.

Scott (06:02.745)
my gosh.

Zeta (06:03.68)
Yeah.

Scott (06:09.133)
Yeah, no, I get it. I'm just saying that you don't have to try too hard to get me to buy some candy. It's where I'm at, right?

Daniel (06:09.636)
yeah, 100%.

Jeff Sigel (06:12.477)
There's always, I mean, we're using large words, so let's talk about expandable consumption. You know, like candy is expandable, right? You can eat a lot of it, as I could attest to.

Daniel (06:13.956)
Hahaha!

Daniel (06:29.422)
Candy has made me expand, that is true.

Zeta (06:33.211)
I do have a candy stomach.

Jeff Sigel (06:35.325)
Likewise.

Daniel (06:35.458)
Hahaha!

Scott (06:35.499)
my goodness. getting a little back on track. So you work with the candy companies. You had a great title, which I'm totally envious of. how do you move from that into, again, this zen place of past corporate guy?

Daniel (06:39.364)
Ha

Jeff Sigel (06:49.073)
Yeah, and so.

Jeff Sigel (06:53.829)
Yeah. And so from the Hershey Company of working in a grocery store company up here in New England, all the stereotypes that you have about working in a grocery store company are probably all true, you know, except for the smoke -filled rooms, because that's not allowed anymore. then from there, I actually ended up moving to Tennessee and worked for Cracker Barrel, the restaurant company. I always clarify the restaurant company, not the cheese company, because up here in the North, nobody

Nobody knows what Cracker Barrel is. all think it's a cheese. Anyway, so I worked for Cracker Barrel, the restaurant company for a number of years, leading up their marketing department and did like some consumer insights and data analytics and so forth. that's, you know, but all that, all that stress and anxiety of the day to day, that's, that's what I'm recovering from, guess.

Scott (07:48.653)
That's fantastic. I live in the South. We love Cracker Barrel. Absolutely love Cracker Barrel. I love Cracker Barrel this time of year in the spooky season because you get the best decorations ever and they sell out in July. So that's just awesome, which is great. Hey, listen, I'm super excited to go ahead and talk about what you've come to talk about today. And we're to get into that in our little topic of the week.

Jeff Sigel (07:53.765)
Yes, it's great.

Scott (08:26.871)
All right, so why does the middle matter is our topic of the week. And Jeff, I just have a quick question for you.

Scott (08:40.685)
Yeah, so what? So why is this important? Why are we getting together today and talking about the middle and why it matters?

Jeff Sigel (08:45.509)
Yeah. So, so while, you know, all that time when I was doing all those things with candy and grocery stores and restaurants and whatever, all that time, I was a middle manager. And I really think about a middle manager is the people that are somewhere sandwiched between, they have direct reports that do stuff and they have to report to the people that tell them what to do. And, that is probably the hardest position to be in, in any company because you are getting pulled and pushed in all kinds of directions.

And so for me, that's what I've become really passionate about. Just wrote a book about it actually called The Middle Matters, which is really all about creating a toolkit for middle managers to help them sort of navigate the challenges and difficulties of being in the middle.

Scott (09:38.051)
I'm gonna pause you there for just a second and you're garbling. It's not a big deal, because it'll upload perfectly fine, but maybe if we just drop our video, then we won't have that as an opportunity. I think that'd be great. let's just go ahead and, Jeff, if you could, there you go, great. Hopefully that solves it. Okay, see it is going off. I'll go off too, what the hell?

Zeta (09:56.863)
I thought we all.

Scott (09:58.627)
No, we can all go off. I think that's fine.

Jeff Sigel (10:01.574)
It's a...

Daniel (10:02.436)
I'm going!

Zeta (10:04.308)
Yeah.

Sam (10:04.622)
Bravo 6, going dark.

Scott (10:06.841)
There you go. Yeah. the benefits of an audio podcast and that we can go ahead and do a pickup. Okay. So we're to go ahead and pick up in three, two, one. Jeff, that's great. That's fantastic. And I think we're speaking to a lot of people in our audience that kind of find themselves in those middle manager roles, right? I had the opportunity to, you know, read some of your book. It's a great book. And then you kick off talking about

Daniel (10:07.588)
You

Scott (10:35.139)
the middle leader role as three distinct roles. Could you go into that and explain that to our audience? Because I it's really important from a framework perspective.

Jeff Sigel (10:45.201)
Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that I kind of realized as I was not just as being a middle manager myself, but I was, somehow became at Cracker Barrel at some point, like one of the go -to non HR people to come and talk to middle managers. They'd ask me to talk about things like building trust with your team or whatever. What I came to realize from doing all that was that what most people in the middle seem to not understand is they've

they've moved up because they were really good at doing something. They were good at being a accountant or a marketer or a finance person or whatever, but they've moved up now into this role. And what they try to do is do through others, which is not actually the most effective way to get the most out of your team. And so this very simple framework sort of came out of all of these discussions and presentations I was doing of

Hey, your job isn't just to do anymore. It is to be a doer, yes, but you are also leading your team and influencing. And those three things are actually different roles, each of which has their own unique sets of skills. And really, you can really become great at your middle role by learning the skills that go with each of those roles.

Daniel (12:05.236)
Man, I just want to say I love that when I stepped into my first leadership role, I was a doer. I was always been a doer. And even as I stepped into that leadership role, I often found myself still being a doer because I would get antsy if I wasn't doing. And I didn't excel until I began to lead, until I began to say like, hey,

You know, maybe my, the, my best use of time isn't building this third PowerPoint. Maybe my best use of time is making sure that my team can build it and that it, and that it's good and then helping guide them. And then the last step, like you talk about like, like being like that, that third step, that influencer, like that's so, so important. And it wasn't until later in my leadership journey that I really figured out that like, like that, that brings home. love these three steps. Like this is amazing. These three.

categories. Sorry.

Jeff Sigel (13:04.361)
And you know where it really came to life for me was actually in my last role at Cragger Barrel, I was leading a data analytics team, a strategy team, and a consumer insights team, all of which I know something about, but I don't know a ton about. And I really couldn't do the doing, especially in the data analytics side. I don't know anything about how to do it. And so it actually forced me out of that doer role.

And so I think it's this thing that you learn across the course of your whole career, right? Where you have to sort of become more and more comfortable with, hey, I can't do this stuff. That's what my team, know, my job is to help my team get, you know, get the work done, but not to necessarily do it myself.

Daniel (13:51.256)
Hmm. No, I totally agree.

Scott (13:53.165)
Yeah, at one point in time, I was a doer as well, right? Leading a team, like this is really great. And what I found out, the term Lisa that I was introduced to is this idea of, Hey, if you're just going to help your team get the job done, this is my part. That's their, their part. It's really functional leadership. Like it's just functional. Like, Hey, how do we get the work done? But as you're pointing out, like the finesse really comes when you can go ahead and transition.

from functional leadership and to actual leadership, which is growing and developing your team to do more. And in my experience, that frees me up to do the things that you hired me to do as a leader, like vision and think beyond the walls of what we're doing to really innovate and drive things home.

Jeff Sigel (14:41.545)
Absolutely. I think it's interesting, I think getting people to sort of understand that their team can do more and also that they can do more if they elevate their team is a really, it's a surprising hurdle, right? Because I think the reaction that people, a lot of people have is, if I'm not doing this stuff that I was doing all throughout my career, then I'm not doing anything.

In fact, my brother tells this story about this woman who worked for him a long time ago. They don't work together anymore, but they had coffee recently and she just started a new job. And one of things she said to him about her new job is, love my new job. I just don't like the people stuff. And he looked at her and he said, the people stuff is your job. And I think that's that mindset that's sort of missing. You have to get in your head that that stuff really is the job now.

Daniel (15:33.91)
It is. It really is.

Jeff Sigel (15:36.953)
Absolutely.

Scott (15:41.347)
One of the things that I found a quote in your book that really resonated with me, because it's one of those things that I'm thinking about a lot, which is this whole idea of like managing up. Right. So as you pointed out, a lot of people get promoted into leadership because they were really, really good at something. And now they're leading and they haven't kind of put that three role framework into place and they struggle. so leadership nerds like myself, it's an exercise in patients, right? So that managing up and one of the

Jeff Sigel (15:51.303)
Mm -hmm.

Scott (16:10.959)
quotes that you had was like, don't get to choose your boss, you only get to choose how you will work for them. Talk a little bit about that and the challenge of leading up and some of the things that can help us do a better job.

Jeff Sigel (16:23.707)
Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, I love that question. I would say the challenge that I run into the most where people are asking me, Jeff, how do I deal with this problem is I think is going to be a shocker to all of you is my boss is a micromanager is the one that comes up the most. And I always say to people when they ask me this, said, do you have a doer problem, a leader problem or an influencer problem?

And they almost always say, I have a leader problem because my leader is a problem. And I say to them, no, your leader may have a leader problem, but you have a doer problem. And so that the comments about how, you know, I don't get to control who my boss is. I can only control how I work for them is really about this recognition that you have to take ownership of your role in the situation. And so when you're managing up, you're the doer.

You're the one that has to get stuff done for your boss. And so your job is really to create credibility with your boss that you are going to get things done so that they trust you more. And what I often say to people in that micromanaging situation is just because your boss doesn't trust you does not mean that you are not trustworthy. So get over feeling annoyed by the situation and recognize that this may be an issue that you need to solve with your boss, right? They don't trust you're going to get stuff done. So you need to

I always tell people feed them a lot of details. Ask them for feedback. Ask them to, you know, ask them what you need to do in order to become more, you know, or to be allowed to be more independent. Ask all those questions because in the end of the day, you have to take charge of your situation. You are the doer in this particular situation. So managing up to me is all about this recognition of you're not just the victim of your boss's, you know, bad

you leadership, you actually are, you have some ability to change the situation with your behaviors by, you know, again, asking questions, asking for feedback or getting, you know, how much detail you give them or how you involve them in the projects.

Zeta (18:33.331)
I love that being a middle manager is one of the most integral things. I mean, you're in between your bosses and your team, right? If we're going to take that snack equivalent, you're basically like the cream of the Oreo, right? But it's a very important place to be, but it's also a strange situation because, you you have to make all these rules, but you don't have that authority because you're middle management. You have to kind of be the translation layer between your bosses to your team.

Daniel (18:33.905)
I love that.

Jeff Sigel (18:48.404)
No.

Zeta (19:03.091)
So like when someone's new in that situation, say like they just start off, like what's some of the good ways they can grow to get these three roles framework?

Jeff Sigel (19:12.283)
Yeah, I mean, I the first thing is that to have them realize that they have these three roles. think the toughest thing a lot of times that people have when they're new is just recognizing that they have to lead. And, you know, I've had a number of conversations with people where, you know, I've said to them, you need to give your team feedback so that they can grow, not only at the end of the year.

but all the time and not just negative feedback. You need to give them positive feedback. And the only way to give them that feedback is to actually have one -on -ones with your people. And I can't tell you how many people are like, you know, not doing that. it's like, I'm on a mission to get people to have one -on -ones with their folks. But that's one of the first things that I tell people is, you know, do you have one -on -ones? Are you giving feedback to your people all the time? And, and, and

Actually, this one woman I told this to, we were doing a course on this and about a week later, she comes back and she's like, I just had this epiphany after we talked. She's like, giving feedback is my job now. And that's exactly right. It's like, how do you get people into this mindset of the things that a leader does, the things that you need to do to create trust with your team to...

you know, improve the situation that your team has to help remove obstacles. All those kinds of things that you're doing to help your team are your job now, not the doing part, but all this other stuff. And by the way, some of that means going out and convincing your boss, your peers, et cetera, to commit to doing things that, you know, that will support you and your team.

Zeta (20:57.451)
Awesome.

Scott (20:59.661)
I'm glad you brought up feedback because I feel like we all say we want feedback, but we're all allergic to it. That's my humble opinion is, hey, I want feedback, but no, it's coming. And so how do you as a leader then create this mindset with your team that feedback's a good thing? Like you don't have to be worried about the feedback that I'm going to give you because it really is that opportunity for you to learn and grow. And more importantly, that

Jeff Sigel (21:07.079)
You

Jeff Sigel (21:12.529)
Yeah.

Scott (21:29.345)
I've got your back after I give this feedback to you. So help us understand that element of feedback and creating that mindset.

Jeff Sigel (21:37.949)
Sure, so I think there's two sides to this. One is the leader side giving the feedback. And one of the things that I am a huge proponent of, I don't remember what the actual number is, but I remember being in some training course, like, you know, probably 20 years ago where they said, need to, if you want somebody to hear your feedback, you need to give them nine pieces of positive feedback to every one piece of constructive criticism. And I've seen five to one, seven to one, but the point is,

I think the point that the person who said that was trying to make is you have to give more positive feedback because that's actually how people learn, right? If you want somebody to not do something, telling them don't do that is really complicated because what am I supposed to do instead? But if you tell them, hey, that was great, you did that, or do more of this or whatever, now they know what to do. so finding ways to give lots of positive feedback.

And I think the other thing that comes with that is when you start to think about giving feedback of not just a minute criticize people, but I'm going to help them, you know, by, by reinforcing the behaviors various, by the way, the other thing I tell people is that positive feedback has to be as specific as the negative feedback. You can't sort of be like, you're doing great, but here's this terrible thing you're doing, you know, you have to be really, really specific about both. But when you do that over time, as opposed to only in, you know,

end of year review meeting, but every day you're giving feedback is it takes some of the sting out of that constructive criticism because people are like, well, I know that tomorrow I'll probably get a positive. So this negative isn't that big of a deal. So give it sort of normalizing this idea that I'm giving feedback, not just when there's some huge problem, but all the time really reinforcing, I think, is is is the first part of the equation. The second part of the equation is what I call

the learner mindset is how do you get your people into this mindset, like you said, that views feedback as an opportunity to learn and grow. And so I have these three questions. I have not gotten a chance to try this, but I'm convinced it would change a whole culture, is the three questions that I tell people you should be asking your folks in your one -on -one meetings with them all the time are these three. Number one, what did you learn?

Jeff Sigel (24:01.051)
Number two, how did you grow the team? And number three, who did you help? And if you ask those questions all the time, by the way, they sort of align to doer, what did you learn for yourself, leader, how did you help grow your team, and influencer, who did you help, how did you collaborate in your organization? If you were to ask those questions all the time, I think you would get the organization into this mindset of we're here to learn and grow together, not to just...

you know, tick off tasks on a board or whatever. So that's, those are the two things that I really like to focus on those, you know, so those two sides of

Daniel (24:40.716)
I love that. am so often like, first off, feedback is so vital. I weekly one on ones is one of those things that I took for granted until I entered spaces where it wasn't happening. And like, I would look at leaders and I'd be like, yeah, we got to, we got to do feedback. And they're like, I give my guy feedback. Like they get it at six months, like for the mid -year and then they get it again at the end of year.

And I'm like, no, And, but just those three questions, just a way of like rooting them down so that even the questions are helping them think just almost like in rings, like you, your team, the org, like what did we do? What did you do for you? What did you do for the team? And what did you do for the organization? love that a hundred percent.

Jeff Sigel (25:30.794)
Exactly.

Scott (25:32.983)
One of the questions that I used to always ask and still do ask in my one -on -ones, I always finish with one additional question if I might add, which is, what do you need from me? Really powerful question. I remember the first time I asked that question, people looked at me like I was crazy. Like, what, what are you asking? Yeah. What do you need from me? Cause it sets that dynamic up really, really well of, Hey, I'm not just here to, you know,

Jeff Sigel (25:54.631)
What?

Scott (26:00.665)
provide feedback and growth, but I'm here to support your feedback, your growth as well. And I really think that's an incredibly powerful question to be asking your people.

Jeff Sigel (26:10.243)
I totally agree with that. And maybe I should add it to my, my list, but it absolutely, think creating this expectation that you are in service of the team as opposed to the team is in service of you is really, I agree with you really, really powerful and really, really important. And I think it's probably a good thing to do, not just for the team to know that there it's okay to ask for help, but also.

for you to remind you as the leader, hey, I'm here to help these folks, right? I think that's that sort of, it's the opposite of that. The doer mentality when you are supposed to be leading is I'm just, I'm responsible for getting all this work done, right? That's the doer mentality. I'm responsible for getting work done. The doer leader influencer mentality is I am responsible for me, my people, and my organization, just like Dan said.

Scott (27:10.639)
Yep, 100%. So let's chat a little bit about the influencer part, which is really hard. I'm just going to raise my hand and say it's like one of the hardest things for me. One of the things that I continue to work on is, know, how do we influence, especially in learning and development? Like we have to influence without authority a lot, right? So having that skill around influence is really important. Could you talk a little bit about, you know, what are some ways to

Get people to support your idea.

Jeff Sigel (27:43.559)
Yeah, I mean, think to me, the foundation of the influencer role, the place where you have to start is to understand and recognize that everyone else is also the hero of their story. And so everything you do when you are dealing with other people, if you sort of step back and think about the world that way, everything you do is going to, you know, sort of be through this lens of

If they're trying to be the hero, what are you? Are you a supporting character or are you the villain? Are you trying to help them get where they want to go and what they need to accomplish or are you getting in their way? So if you come to somebody, you ask them to do something that is going to create a lot of work for them or their team, they're going to view you as the villain unless you can explain to them how what you're doing is going to help either the greater good or actually helps their team or whatever. But you have to start from that understanding of

What do they want? What are they trying to accomplish? And once you do that, you sort of can take a step back and go, how can I take this situation where I need something and turn it into a win -win where they're going to either get something from it or at least they're going to know that by doing something for me, they know that I'm gonna help them with something else in the future. I think a lot of that all comes from this idea of like, if you make a mistake, admit it.

don't point fingers because then you are creating this, you know, everybody's a villain situation, right? Or there's this great sort of idea that I can't remember where I learned it, but it's in the book. I did not invent this, this idea of contribution versus blame. When something goes wrong, instead of focusing on blaming everyone else, focus on what was your contribution for this?

for the situation and asking them, what was your contribution to the situation? And with the focus on how do we make this better? How do we make sure this doesn't happen again in the future? So to me, those are the things that are sort of foundational to being an influencer.

Zeta (29:53.611)
I love that. When it comes to anything that goes wrong in a situation, lot of times, mean, many times it's much easier to point out, hey, this is bad. It's much harder than to go, hey, this is the path forward. So I think asking those questions and like, hey, what's your contribution? I love that. I love that.

Jeff Sigel (30:12.485)
Yeah, I think I think you're right. I mean, too often we look at things that have gone awry. And it's like, who did this? And by the way, that I'm not going to pretend like I know we know that that sometimes comes straight from the top, right? Who did this? Right. But that's a very sort of, you know, kind of self preserving, self centered view of the world, like who who is responsible for this, as opposed to having this sort of kind of broad learning and growth centered

view of the world where everybody, we're all trying to get better here. We're all trying to do our best. mean, I would say most people do not show up for work in the morning thinking, how can I sabotage this? They're all thinking, I really want to just do a good job. They want to have the tools to do a good job. They want to have the support. They want to have the training, all that stuff, but they want to do a good job. And if we sort of start from, everybody wants to do a good job here. Things didn't go right. How can we avoid this in the future? What can we learn?

How can we grow the team and how can we help each other?

Scott (31:16.663)
As I think about influence, I have to be thinking or be aware of ego, not just my ego, which is so important. Like folks, you have an ego. So when you bring your idea into a room, that ego is usually attached to that, right? But I also have a room full of egos with different ideas and whatnot. you talk a little bit about how we can manage

Jeff Sigel (31:23.29)
Absolutely.

Scott (31:44.149)
ego in a room and ensure that everybody has a voice, because I found that that's really important when it comes to influence.

Jeff Sigel (31:51.387)
Yeah, I think that's I mean, it, you know, it sort of speaks to the thing that I was talking about before. I mean, this idea of being a hero of your own story, like that's that's the ego piece, right? That people feel like, you know, they naturally feel like they're right. They we don't sit in our heads going on and say a lot. I'm going to think a lot of wrong stuff, right? They naturally think that they're right. And that's really what the ego is all about is that. And also, everybody's under in the corporate world is under this incredible amount of

pressure to achieve, right? To get results, to deliver whatever it is. And they're so focused on what do I need to do to achieve my thing and how are all these other people getting in my way and so forth. And I think some of it is trying to convince, sort of change the culture of an organization to sort of get everybody thinking in this broader view of, hey, we're all here to help each other learn and grow. But I think

The reality is that's not always going to happen. so, you know, sometimes it's, you know, if you have somebody who's very ego driven and, you know, there's an example I give in the book of, of a leader that where I was, you know, I, my job was to come into this executive team meeting literally every week and, and tell, you know, sort of give the numbers of how our guest satisfaction scores were going.

And you can imagine that the people who were responsible for that guest satisfaction were not terribly happy with me coming in and basically from their perspective, making them look bad every week. That is not what I was trying to do. I was just trying to give the fact. And so what I learned to do was I need to actually have a meeting before this meeting with, you know, with the executive team where I would go through the numbers with the, you know, with the people that were in charge of this, you know, of delivering a great

experience for our customers, I would spend some time with them beforehand. Here's what I'm seeing. Here are the problems so that they could, know, well, okay, can we test this or can we check this or can we these numbers sure these numbers are right? And I'll have all those conversations before we get in the meeting because I can now take that the ego part of the ego in that situation is that the other person is feeling like they have been made to look bad in front of a whole group. Whereas if we are now on the same page of, Hey, this is what

Jeff Sigel (34:11.441)
we are seeing, not this is what Jeff is seeing. It becomes less of an adversarial thing and more of, hey, we're trying to fix this together. I can go in and say, hey, I've shared this information with the people in charge. We are aligned. This is how we should go about moving forward. So I think it's really that, how do I understand what is the situation where I'm presenting or where I'm in this room? What is it that the other people are?

experiencing and how are they feeling and how do I make that that that issue of hey I'm going to look bad or I'm going to be made you know ridiculed or whatever how do I take that off the table?

Scott (34:54.339)
Really good stuff. Really getting here sharing some of these tips and practices and ideas. Really, really awesome. As we begin to wind things down, I'm going to give you an opportunity to share some proven practices with our middle managers out there. What should they be thinking about as they...

you know, start their journey in middle management or grow their journey in middle management into upper management. What should they be thinking about?

Jeff Sigel (35:31.079)
Sure, would say, I mean, I'll sort of hit on each of the three buckets and I'll just say, first thing is as a doer, you really need to be focused on, focused on again, having that learning mindset and constantly asking for feedback. If your boss isn't giving you feedback, ask them. I don't think most bosses are not gonna be like, I'm not gonna give you feedback. What could I have done differently? How could I have done this better? Really again, normalize that. How do I get my boss sort of co -opt my boss into helping me grow?

When you're a leader, it's really about, you know, really get into this view of my job is to train my team to function even if I'm not there and really focus on making sure therefore that they understand the purpose of why they're doing what they're doing, that they have the tools to do the things that they need to do, that they have the training to do the things that they need to do, and that the obstacles that are getting in the way of them doing

the things they need to do are moved out of the way. Again, all about how do I empower that team to function so that if I were off on vacation for whatever, on leave for three months or whatever, they could still function without me. Then from the influencer perspective, it's really about this idea of, again, I mentioned before, of really viewing everyone else as the hero of their own story and understanding what that means.

recognizing that the moment you get into I'm right, you're wrong, or you're to blame, I'm not, whatever, the moment you're in that, you've become adversarial. And if you get into this adversarial perspective, that you're not going to become more productive, you will only become less productive, because everyone will start trying to protect themselves. And what I will say is it's hard. I'm not going to say it's easy, especially on that influencer one, if you want to, you know, if you're going to

sort of take on being an influencer is hard at first because if you're the one person being like, okay, I'm not going to blame everyone and everyone else is blaming you can for a while become a target. But I think over time, what'll happen is people start to go, Hey, wait a second. know, Jeff doesn't throw me under the bus. Maybe I'll stop throwing him under the bus. And, and, so, I think, you know, those are, those are kind of the most important practical things that I would leave folks with.

Scott (38:06.169)
Folks, the book is called The Middle Matters. Jeff, thank you so much for your time today. Great conversation, really great tips for those people who are leading and developing others. Could you do me a favor? Could you let our audience know how they could connect with you?

Jeff Sigel (38:22.151)
Sure, you can find me on my author site is jeffsegal .com and you can connect with me there. You can get all sorts of great information about the book and other things that I'm doing. So that's probably the best place to connect with me or on LinkedIn.

Scott (38:43.331)
Fantastic folks, go check out the book, really good stuff. Jeff, thank you for your time. Daniel San.

Daniel (38:50.944)
Yes, Scott?

Scott (38:52.441)
Could you do me a solid? Could you let our audience know how they could connect with us, please?

Daniel (38:57.184)
Absolutely. All right party people, you guys know what's up. Email us at nerds at thelearningnerds .com. I think this week, what I'd really like to know is out of the three pillars we discussed today, where do you find your leadership strengths falling? And maybe where would you like to maybe get a little bit better? We'd love to know. If you're on Facebook, you can find us at Learning Nerds for all of our Instagram peeps, Fab Learning Nerds. And lastly, for more information about us, what we do and updates.

www .thelearningnerds .com.