The Art of Training, Teaching & Presenting

Tom Nixon (00:02.19)
Welcome back everyone to the Double Dutch podcast. I’m teasing, of course, because we were doing a little bit of ideation, Curtis, before we went live. The word double Dutch came out. And of course, I took that as a natural idea for a new podcast that I’m creating.

Curtis Hays (00:17.01)
Which would be number 13. Is that right?

Tom Nixon (00:18.734)
Yeah. Or 14. Yeah, it’s counting. So I’m looking for two Dutch co -hosts. So if you’re out there and you want to start a new podcast, let me know. We’ve already got the branding halfway done. as we do for this podcast bull horns in bulls eyes, Curtis, we’re most often talking about marketing channels and strategies from the bull horns angle, which is one too many. That’s we’ve talked about broadcast, advertise PR, marketing in general, and then what you excel at, which is the.

Denise Roberts (00:19.077)
Ha ha!

Tom Nixon (00:45.838)
bull’s eyes and that specific targeting of personas, individuals, re targeting, remarketing, and all that stuff. But today we’re not talking about that.

Curtis Hays (00:52.69)
This is true. Yeah, I mean, we’re gosh, 30 ish episodes in, I think, and talking about those topics, it’s, I think we’ve covered them pretty in depth and a few of them a couple of times over. So we’ve had some great guests and some good storytelling and hopefully our audience has learned a lot.

Tom Nixon (01:10.318)
Yep. And we have another great guest today, but we’re going to take a little bit of a left turn content wise, but it all comes back together and we’ll have relevance. But why don’t we introduce her so we can start the conversation forth with and somebody I met recently and was particularly taken with her approach to presentations. You might think of them as webinars, but online trainings and the first thing or the lasting thing might not have been the first thing. The lasting thing I heard her say is.

It’s not just a PowerPoint. In fact, we don’t even use PowerPoint because people have been PowerPointed to death. So let’s hear why. Let’s bring on Denise Roberts. She is a leadership training professional who is the creator of playing to win Denise. Welcome to the podcast.

Denise Roberts (01:57.061)
Well thank you Tom and thank you Curtis, I’m happy to be here.

Tom Nixon (02:01.806)
Good, good, good. Well, this is a live unscripted conversation. We have a loose conversation map, but we are not bound by the rigors of scripts, talking points, PowerPoints. So tell me why you tell the rest of the listeners why you issue PowerPoint as a training methodology and what in what effect do you think that has?

Denise Roberts (02:26.021)
Well, okay, so there’s death by PowerPoint. You guys have probably been in those kinds of webinars in the past. And to me the problem is it’s information overload. It’s too much information, not enough application. So how we learn are three ways. And the most people settle for the first two. First there’s an awareness. I didn’t know that. Now I know that.

Okay, that makes sense. The second part of that is to map it into yourself like, I understand. I understand how that principle would work or not work. The third part of it though is, and you can take a test on those first two. Did you get the principles? Yes. I answered and I got a hundred percent on the test. Yay, you’re trained. The problem, especially in leadership, is that the third leg of that three -legged stool is proficiency.

And we don’t get proficiency by sitting in a webinar or an online training and PowerPoints. We get information, but we don’t get application. So that’s why all of our trainings are about you learn and we only teach one or two points in each session. And then you go back and you apply, and then we come back and we talk about it.

because the key to me in training is that the answers are usually in the room and it’s from the experience of other people. Someone might have had a very great experience from applying that principle. Someone else might have had a very bad experience. And it’s when the person has the bad experience, usually the other people in the group can start to help them with had you tried this or could you do that.

versus just the facilitator, the trainer, whatever is saying, no, no, no, you didn’t do it right, or you gotta do this. So the answers are usually in the room. That’s the difference.

Tom Nixon (04:36.206)
Interesting. Yeah, Curtis, it dawns on me just as Denise was speaking that I you and I have collaborated on projects for which a number of times we’ve needed like a PowerPoint and I ask you, well, do you have a kaleidoscope branded PowerPoint? And he was like, no, I don’t. So is it for the same reasons? I can’t. I know it’s not because you just haven’t gotten around to it. Or is it?

Curtis Hays (04:51.282)
No.

Curtis Hays (04:57.426)
Well, it’s funny because this week we actually did have Dan create a PowerPoint for a presentation that we’re doing. No, that’s not a training. That’s where, you know, we’re presenting informational material, but we want to present it in a professional way. but oftentimes when I’m talking to clients, I think, showing them is oftentimes better. So if I’m say pitching.

a prospect and I’m talking about services we provide and those types of things. I’ll bring up a live dashboard. I’ll bring up the backend of a website to show them something. I’m a visual person. I learn and retain by people showing me things, especially when it comes to technology. If I see somebody do it, I can repeat it and it helps me understand it. I don’t retain by reading. that’s just how my mind works. So, that’s why I prefer YouTube.

to see how to do things versus reading a manual. and I know there’s a lot of other people that are that way. So that’s just been my preference then, because that’s how I learn and retain. I think that’s just been my preference of how I try to explain things to, you know, prospects or train existing clients, which we choose to usually record. Like if we’re training an existing client, then we record that training.

where we’re in the back end of a website or we’re showing them a system of some sort and how to do something, we record that and then they have that to go back to visually and look at.

Tom Nixon (06:24.334)
Yeah, I think the point stands though.

Denise Roberts (06:25.092)
And I want to chime in here too. Because the world went digital, in the past as a trainer, you’d be in a room with a flip chart or a whiteboard. And you would be drawing out or showing the visual. So you’re learning on all three levels. It’s I’m hearing it, I’m seeing it, and then what we add to it is you go and apply it. And then we discuss it. And so it gets layered in. But

So I’m not opposed to PowerPoints. What I’m opposed to is there’s too much information in PowerPoints, not enough application.

Tom Nixon (07:07.182)
Yeah. And what I was going to add is I think the point stands Curtis, because what you want to show is something that’s dynamic and live as opposed to static and flat. And so I think that’s much more immersive because you can see things move around and you can do what ifs and things that you can’t do just on a static slide. So is that where Denise where you think most trainings fail to deliver because of the failure of that third piece or what else do you think is lacking in traditional?

leadership trainings that people might be picturing in their minds as a boring PowerPoint and then an exam, a Quizlet at the end.

Denise Roberts (07:41.989)
Great question, Tom. If I go back to those three points, awareness, understanding, and proficiency, is that if someone sends someone to training and they spend money and they spend time and they’re away from the office and they’re trained and then they’re not immediately transformed, there is sometimes a disconnect or a disappointment.

but if you set it up with this is meant to be we have to learn we have to learn by doing and we’re doing it with real people it’s no different than when you learn to drive you sat in class right you were told the laws you were but if you didn’t get in the car and drive it no one’s gonna say okay now go out on the expressway you you passed the test

You had to learn, you had to practice, you had to make mistakes. And I also believe that one of the biggest downfalls is that most people perceive it didn’t work immediately as it failed versus it needed to be tweaked. Or we could see what, and we debrief those. That’s why when we come back, we talk about what worked, what didn’t, what did you learn?

Tom Nixon (08:41.07)
Right.

Denise Roberts (09:10.053)
And of those three, the most important is what did you learn? And by the way, success is not a very good teacher. Usually we learn by trial and error. You guys are in marketing, right? It’s called trial and error. What’s an error? Right? It just, we didn’t hit the mark. We didn’t hit the bullseye. Right? So.

Tom Nixon (09:17.134)
Thank you.

Curtis Hays (09:17.426)
Hehehehe.

Tom Nixon (09:22.446)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (09:27.086)
There you go. There you go. Give this woman a cowboy hat. She’s on brand.

Denise Roberts (09:30.713)
Hahaha!

Tom Nixon (09:34.35)
Yeah. And I’m wondering, I guess this is my branding brain, Curtis, is I, I often tell clients, depending on what industry they’re in and who their audience is, I tell if they’re having trouble getting enrollment for their trainings or their webinars, I said, I often suggest, how about not calling them webinars as a start? Because that sounds like a drag and I’m not going to any webinars, but I might go to a workshop or a facilitated conversation or something like that. So.

Curtis Hays (09:53.202)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Nixon (10:01.902)
What are your thoughts on webinars just as a sort of nomenclature?

Curtis Hays (10:07.442)
Well, from a marketing perspective, they’ve been used too much, right? There’s so many in the B2B space, especially, you know, SaaS or technology companies, you go to their website and, you know, here’s a list of recorded webinars you could watch or sign up for a webinar, a future webinar. I think we’re tired of those. and we, we see it in the data from a marketing perspective. We don’t get as many conversions from webinars. I think it’s still useful if they’re timely and the topic.

is relevant. And, you know, I think for sure you can get people to sign up for a webinar. Do I like the idea of making it more immersive? Do I think people want to have a Q &A at the end and to make it, you know, have parts of it be part of a discussion? Totally. And I think people are going to learn a little bit more. They’re going to have specific questions to ask.

I actually funny enough, I actually have a training coming up with a young leaders group talking about AI and they asked me specifically for PowerPoint. I didn’t really want to do one, but there’s, it’s a company of about 800 employees. They have a hundred young leaders and they want me to talk to the young leaders on AI. And, the presentation is going to be prompt for success.

so I’m, I’m taking a little branding from Utah and trying to brand my stuff, but, it’s all about prompting and how important prompting is with the chat systems, but they wanted a PowerPoint. So they had something to review. They needed something physical to review the HR director to approve my talk. So it’s like forced into putting something together, but the majority of what I’m going to, I’m going to show.

I’m going to pull up chat GPT. I’m going to pull up these other tools and actually show them what they should be doing and actually teach them. And I’ve got seven steps to making a good prompt. And we’re going to do the exercise of actually doing those seven steps. Right. So I agree a hundred percent.

Tom Nixon (12:13.806)
Well, I have a suggestion. You could have AI build your PowerPoint about AI. That’s very meta. Well, you mentioned young leaders. I wanted to ask Denise because the way I got to introduce you to you, Denise, was through a mutual friend of ours, an organization here locally in Michigan called Mish Business, and they present some leadership training programs to there’s two tracks. One is for veteran leaders, right? And that’s a different skill set and curriculum.

Curtis Hays (12:18.374)
it helped. It helped.

Tom Nixon (12:42.894)
But the one that you do is called jumpstart. And that is for what we call emerging leaders and people who are still young leaders, I guess is one way to put it. So what’s unique about this group? It makes total sense to me that you wouldn’t want those people in the same group as the other group. But what’s unique about those style of learners that you cater to?

Denise Roberts (13:04.709)
They’re usually hungry to learn, which is good, right? And they want to do a good job. And so they’re attentive. And they’ll go back. And here’s something we do from the very beginning of the course, is we make some agreements together. And one of the agreements, because we’re training online, is that we are in what we’re calling a supportive applied

learning community. And we talk a lot about, we drive that point home, what that is. And that means it’s not just you taking in the information, it’s you sharing your results and your actions. And it’s, it’s, go ahead.

Tom Nixon (13:51.438)
I had to –

I’m sorry. I had to hit pause. There’s somebody at the door. Horrible timing. Sorry.

Curtis Hays (13:58.162)
Okay, we’ll fix this Denise. Yeah, well, what we may do is have Tom start the question over and that way we can cut and edit.

Denise Roberts (14:01.189)
No problem, no problem. I’ll take a sip of coffee.

Curtis Hays (14:11.89)
So I’ll mark down, we were at like 1330.

Denise Roberts (14:21.861)
You know, it’s funny, Curtis, with online trainings and webinars, it’s usually them pouring information into you. And what I do, because this is the world went to online, right? But we still put people in breakout rooms. They discuss. They get comfortable with each other. Then they come back. And then I…

Curtis Hays (14:33.393)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (14:40.338)
Mm -hmm.

Denise Roberts (14:50.116)
often have their partner tell what they… right? So if someone is uncomfortable sharing, they’re sharing someone else’s story. They’re not sharing their own story. So…

Curtis Hays (14:59.09)
Yeah. I have a friend that’s in the MBA program right now with Michigan State. Yeah. He’s in his forties and decided to get his MBA. And it’s, the program sounds very similar. Like he was, he was walking me through some of the stuff that professors put together. The presentations are really short and you actually have to watch those or go through them prior to actually being in the class. When you get to the class on Fridays and Saturdays for the weekend, you’re, you’re, you know, you’re having discussions as whole group.

You’re split into cohorts that you have these cohorts through the whole two years that you’re in the program. So you have the individual, you know, connectivity, I guess, to those, those people, and you kind of create your own little community and, you know, use and learn off of each other as you’re working on projects together. And everybody sort of brings a different skillset to the table because they’re all in different disciplines. You know, their backgrounds are all in different areas. it’s pretty cool. So it sounds.

You know, very, very similar to at least, you know, what he was showing me is what the MBA programs look like. And I just couldn’t believe the amount that he was learning and retaining. Like, I know they don’t go too deep into stuff, but they go super wide across how an organization can be run. And, you know, to cover that wide of content, but to still understand the grasp, understand and grasp the concepts inside of each one, I thought was pretty amazing.

Denise Roberts (16:12.805)
Yes, yes, yes.

Tom Nixon (16:28.014)
So remember I had the total HVAC redo? I forgot today was the city inspection. So that’s who’s here. Yeah, so he’ll be gone in like a minute. So I apologize.

Curtis Hays (16:31.826)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (16:36.434)
So the inspector’s there.

Curtis Hays (16:41.266)
Yeah, do you want to hold off or?

Denise Roberts (16:41.605)
Nuffin’

Tom Nixon (16:43.63)
No, let’s he’ll be gone in a second that we can pick up where we left off. I made a note of the time. 1330 is what I had to.

Curtis Hays (16:48.306)
Yeah, it was about 1330. Yeah. Yep.

Tom Nixon (16:54.19)
Cool.

He said he just needed to put a sticker on the machine and he’s out of here. So.

Tom Nixon (17:04.974)
Could you guys hear my dogs when they were barking?

Curtis Hays (17:06.354)
Yeah. Well, what I would do is you just start that question all over again. Yeah.

Tom Nixon (17:08.814)
I’ll mute that. That’s another thing we might.

Okay.

Curtis Hays (17:17.362)
Kind of like when I stopped talking, you were like, I can’t remember what you said, but.

Tom Nixon (17:23.342)
It’s a segue about younger leaders, right? Okay, let me just make sure that he’s gone and then I’ll pick it up there.

Curtis Hays (17:25.362)
Yeah. Yeah.

Denise Roberts (17:29.733)
Okay, no problem.

Curtis Hays (17:29.778)
Okay.

Curtis Hays (17:38.578)
Are you, Denise, are you familiar with Vistage then as well? Yeah. So I was in Vistage for a couple of years too. And I think we tried to do some semblance of this. We have, you know, when the speakers come in, it was like all morning was with that speaker. And then there was some discussion afterwards, but it usually wasn’t too in depth. the afternoon session was more for whoever was hosting kind of.

Denise Roberts (17:42.309)
I guess.

Curtis Hays (18:06.514)
dive deep into a problem that they were having, which was always nice. But I do feel like there was, well, I learned a lot from the speakers. I feel like, you know, that whole collaboration and discussion around what that topic was afterwards. We almost needed another four hours just to dive into that.

Denise Roberts (18:27.909)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (18:30.894)
All right. So do the dogs start barking over my question? I got to restate the whole thing.

Curtis Hays (18:34.834)
Yeah, I think you should pretend I just stopped talking and you’re like, yeah, Curtis, or whatever you said and get into the young leaders thing.

Tom Nixon (18:37.966)
Okay.

Yep. So, it’s about a three -minute break. We can make a note of. Okay. So, Curtis, you mentioned young leaders and I wanted to segue back to Denise. Denise, the way you and I met was through a mutual friend and organization here in Michigan called Mish Business and they do a couple of different leadership training courses for their members and one is for veteran leaders who have been in leadership for a while.

Curtis Hays (18:46.866)
Yep.

Tom Nixon (19:09.646)
And the other is called Jumpstart. That’s the one that you facilitate and that’s for younger leaders. So what is unique about younger leaders? Totally makes sense that you wouldn’t want them in the same room as the veterans, but what either their learning style, I’m sure the curriculum is different, but what do you find unique? And then I’m guessing fulfilling about working with the younger emerging leaders.

Denise Roberts (19:29.645)
Well, it’s a great question. The younger leaders, first of all, are pretty eager to learn. Many of them have either just been promoted or they’re in the process of being promoted. Some of them don’t even have people reporting to them yet. But they know that they’re going to have difficult conversations at some point. They know they’re going to have to hire people. There’s so much, so they’re kind of a sponge. But one of the things we make very clear with the group is that,

This is a supportive applied learning community. And we go deep with what that means. And as we’ve talked before, it’s not just information, but it’s about sharing your experiences. So good, bad, and ugly. And when you are willing to do that and share your experience, someone else can

also has some feedback, right? And we encourage them to talk among the group. We put them in breakout rooms sometimes so it’s a little safer. I’ll have a conversation with my partner. And then they come back and when they talk, if Tom, if you and I were in the room together, you would be asked to say, well, what did Denise say? And then,

I would be asked, what did Tom say? So it’s easier usually to talk about someone else’s situation. But now we opened up for the group and we make a point with them. If you don’t share or comment, you could be ripping someone else off. I mean, we had, if I can tell a quick story here, we just started a new cohort. And one of the questions, and we put them in a breakout room with this, one of the questions was,

Tom Nixon (21:16.878)
Yeah, please.

Denise Roberts (21:25.317)
a leader you have had that inspired you and tell us a story. Tell us a story what inspired you about that. Well, the one person came back and talked about some this leader, somebody in the company who reported to him made a horrendous mistake that cost the company a lot of money. Right. But what this leader did and that why it was so inspirational is instead of

berating them or firing them or whatever or blaming them this leader said it’s an our problem you know our process failed or something happened here not a you problem and that they work through this the employee learned so much from the mistake and the fact that and it has an even happier ending

because I actually asked the group, how many of you thought that this person would be fired? And if you were the manager, you’d probably want to fire him, right? And they all were in agreement. But what came out of this is that this employee became one of their most stellar employees. So if they had just, you know, off with his head, you know, you’re out of here. And that, as he told the story, you could see the other people going,

I hope I become a leader like that. So that’s the… Remember I said it starts with awareness. So the awareness that someone else even told you about, now you can learn from versus my own personal awareness. So that’s the part of supportive, applied learning community. So that’s how it all ties in.

Tom Nixon (23:14.478)
Nice. Yeah. Curtis, you and I in prior lives have been in larger organizations than we’re in now because we’re sort of this team Lance model. We’re all independent collaborators, but can you do you remind you don’t have to name names or anything, but can you look back at situations where things were maybe dysfunctional at this organization or another and pinpoint it to leadership issues? I know I can.

Curtis Hays (23:39.314)
All the, yeah, there isn’t a single example. I think that, you know, no, no, no company is perfect. So I think that’s, that’s the need for training and continuous training because we’re not perfect. we’ve mentioned on previous podcasts here, we need, you need a mentor at different stages in your career, but you should have, you know, coaching and mentorship for where you’re at. As you develop always somebody who’s there.

And if it’s not somebody who’s been through what you’re going through, at least a peer who can hold you accountable and, you know, be a support system for you and those types of things. But yeah, dysfunction is going to exist anywhere you go, I believe. And I think you need to, you know, just need to understand that and manage it. Even in this TeamLance model, you’re not going to escape it to some degree. You’re still working with people who inherently have faults. So you could reduce it by.

Tom Nixon (24:34.894)
Right.

Curtis Hays (24:38.674)
jumping ship and going to another company or doing something like that. But yeah, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. How about you?

Tom Nixon (24:44.342)
Yeah. Well, yeah, you know, the old, the old saying that the fish rots from the head, right? And as the company grows, it tends to sprout heads. So my longest tenure at any one company started when there were three people. And so I looked to the two above me as my leaders. And as we grew, they looked to me then as the next generation of leaders. So I had a whole bunch of skills that I needed to learn. And then I had to split my time between doing the work and leading the team. And that became a huge challenge.

Curtis Hays (24:54.962)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (25:05.298)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (25:14.158)
So I wanted to empower some of these people to become leaders. So I don’t have to lead everybody. Right? So now I’ve got five leaders reporting to me. I’m supposed to be the leader and I’m reporting to two leaders. So there’s leadership everywhere. It’s like the Girl Scouts would love this organization. We need leaders. Right? So is this what part of the dynamic with emerging leaders? They’re finding themselves somewhere in this hierarchy, either at the bottom, the middle, or eventually at the top, right?

Denise Roberts (25:41.541)
Well said, yes.

Tom Nixon (25:43.022)
Yep. So can you give us another example? I love storytelling. You said, can I tell a story? And we’re both like, yes, yes, yes. Another aha moment that you think. So if somebody’s out there listening in there, OK, well, if you think of somebody out there who is maybe a senior leader who has somebody emerging and say this person, we need to groom him or her because that’s the next generation there. Give us an idea of an aha moment that might make them want to pick up the phone and call you and enroll in the next class.

Denise Roberts (25:48.621)
sure, sure sure sure.

I got a bunch of those.

Denise Roberts (26:10.565)
Well, all right. This particular situation, it was right after COVID. And it was a, you know how everything was shut down. It was a service department in a dealership organization. And all of a sudden, everybody could get their oil changed. And there was this floodgate of people. Now, the point we had just learned,

in the previous session was when people want to be seen, heard, and valued and they want to be asked. So as you’re leading people, they want to have input. And so here’s this leader just inundated with, my gosh, it’s my job, I’m the leader, I’m supposed to figure this out. How do I manage all these people without making them mad, without losing the revenue and all, you know, it’s like, But he remembered hearing.

in the training, go ask the people who are on the front line. They might have a better suggestion, right, versus tell them what to do. So he said, he comes back and he said, thank you for that, because I did go ask them. Not only did they have a better suggestion, they felt seen, heard, and valued. They felt empowered. They felt excited that they were asked.

Tom Nixon (27:14.638)
Hmm?

Tom Nixon (27:18.318)
Sounds familiar.

Denise Roberts (27:37.925)
Right? And he said, they handled it better than I did. Right? Because he was in reaction mode. They were in response mode. Right? One is I got, right? And so it just became, this is when you see it’s working so well. And in the past, he would have done, OK, command and control. We’re out of control.

You go here, you go there, you do this, you do that, you do this, you do that. And people might have felt resentful or I have a better way to do it, but he won’t listen to me. And he went to them real quick and said, OK, guys, we’ve got this big long line up. What are your suggestions? And then boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. They just took over. And he was like, my God.

Tom Nixon (28:24.046)
So, this makes, god, this seems like this makes, if you’re that sort of either middle leadership or senior leadership and you send your junior leaders to this, isn’t it making everyone’s lives so much easier? Like, you’re kind of like your program, your program does some of the training, not some of the training, but some of the leading for you because it’s teaching them how to lead.

Denise Roberts (28:44.389)
Yes, and it’s the trust. Okay, so we’ve got to trust. And one of the things we say in the training is you don’t have to take the advice. As a matter of fact, I started, I think I said before something, we have some commitments and agreements that we make. And one of them is people can give you a contribution, you know, they can make a suggestion. You don’t have to accept it, but there is no what we call, yeah, budding.

And when I say, yeah, butting, I mean, yeah, but that won’t work here. Or, yeah, but we tried that before. And so when they see it among themselves, that if Curtis gives me a suggestion, I go, that’s not going to work here. We tried that before. Then all of a sudden, Curtis feels dissed. He doesn’t feel that his contribution was worth anything. Or he’s going to go the reverse if he’s like other people I’ve seen.

and go, wait, wait, let me explain this. You didn’t get it. This is what you need to do, Denise. Listen to me. I’ve been here. I bought that t -shirt. I built that factory, right? And so when they can see it among themselves, then they can also see how it applies to the other people, right? Because in Jumpstart, one of the key themes, and we start this day one, Jumpstart is about know you and then know them.

So I need to know how I think and operate and I need to know how they think and operate. And so if I try to assume that because I’m gregarious and outgoing that they want to be gregarious and outgoing or they want information the way I want information, there is a disconnect. And that’s the biggest problem in any organization.

is, as you guys know, miscommunication because somebody did something and somebody else made it mean something else. And now they act like what they made it mean is the real thing versus no, there’s just a misunderstanding. Right? So these are all the things that keep getting woven in and they see it unfold week after week after week as they go apply it, as they come back and discuss it, and then they start to…

Tom Nixon (31:03.758)
Yeah.

Denise Roberts (31:08.421)
applied in their own lives and they start to get more and more proficient. Right? And one last thing about that tell versus or ask versus tell. When they have to do a have a difficult conversation with someone, right? One of the pieces in there is to ask the person. First of all, their their their take on it, but then also ask for, you know, here’s the impact it’s had for the organization and.

What do you think we should do?

versus I think we need to write you up. What do you think we should do? And often the answer, and one of the people that were in a previous cohort said, I was ready to fire this guy. And when he came back with, well, this is what I need to do. And you need to check me that I do it. Anyway, cool. It just made everything much easier for everyone. So yeah.

Tom Nixon (31:44.822)
You

Tom Nixon (32:08.59)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (32:10.738)
I have a two -part question for Denise, if I may, Tom. The lead into this made me think about something. So the first part is, is there a clear distinction between leadership and managing people? And the second part of that question is, do you have people who come into the leadership program and then determine through that when they learn more about themselves you talk about? Like,

Tom Nixon (32:13.678)
Yeah, please jump in.

Curtis Hays (32:39.762)
Do they then come to the conclusion that managing people isn’t right for them? They still might be a leader, but can they be taught how to manage people or are some people just not good at managing other people? Because I would say from my own personal experience, I was definitely a leader. I had a similar experience to Tom’s experience that he shared.

I was not good at managing people and I read every single book there was on managing people. I was in leadership organizations, trying to get trained, trying to get better at it. But at the end of the day, like my strengths were in other areas. I’m a really good sidekick. I like to come alongside a manager or another leader and like just make the team perform better through my inputs into it. But I don’t want to manage the people who are part of it. So,

All right, your thoughts on that distinction between managing people and leadership.

Denise Roberts (33:37.125)
All right. And we blur them. There really is a difference. And leaders often are managing. Right? It was funny because this just came up in, I’m in a book study and we’re reading, rereading, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And there was a part in there that said, they use the analogy of managers are the ones with the machete going through the jungle. Right?

cutting the way of the jungle. And they’re leading, or they’re managing the people cutting the jungle. The leader is the one that goes, wrong jungle. So, and even every cohort I’ve had basically already knew this, because we talk about people leaving, we talk about how do you…

Tom Nixon (34:17.39)
I’m sorry.

Denise Roberts (34:30.341)
not have them exit because how hard it is to hire people we might as well let’s let’s grow the people we have let’s work with the people we have and their comment was people don’t leave their company they leave their manager now so to answer that first part of the question is management often gets blurred with control I need to control the situation

Tom Nixon (34:50.03)
Mm -hmm.

Denise Roberts (35:00.869)
right? And I need to and they think there I need to control it and then lead it, right? And what none of us want to be controlled.

So it’s how do I learn about you and what’s important to Curtis and what he wants and what he aspires to do in this organization and how do I use his strengths best in this organization. Because if I’ve got you in the wrong fit, you’re going to be upset. So if I can find that way and we talk about how do my skills work with your skills.

Because if I think fast and I operate fast, but I’ve got someone on my team who is methodical and detailed oriented, I want to go, hurry up. And they’re going to go, you don’t get me. So it’s when we understand those about each other, then we can work inside of that. So I hope I answered the first part of that, what’s the difference.

Curtis Hays (35:58.514)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (36:10.578)
No, yeah, you did. You know, it makes me think about then, you know, that your top selling sales rep, right? Who’s outperforming everybody else. And so your, your first inclination as an organization to say, well, he should be the sales manager or she. And, but you just took your top performing sales person who’s generating the most revenue for you and put them into a position where they’re not managing sales anymore. They’re now managing people, but they might not be very good at managing people. But.

You could turn them into a leader. Well, now they’re coaching their skills to other salespeople. They’re not managing those people. They’re not worrying about hiring and firing and performance reports and all of those things that go along with it, but they’re coaching and they’re spending time and sharing what they’re doing. That’s working. Right. And now that’s, that’s using that person in a leadership role, but not necessarily managing people. Right.

Denise Roberts (36:45.861)
Right, right.

Denise Roberts (37:02.949)
Perfect. Perfect. Yeah.

Tom Nixon (37:06.478)
I love it. Great. Curtis, today I come up with that because that’s brilliant. Yeah, yeah. You’ve got augmented intelligence, not artificial. All right, Denise. Last question for me is I don’t know that your program covers this and maybe it does, but I’m thinking about the typical workforce. Now, if it’s of any size has what four generations in it, all of which are different.

Curtis Hays (37:11.666)
Well, like I said, I read a lot of books, so I understand this all conceptually.

Denise Roberts (37:13.413)
He is a guy.

Tom Nixon (37:35.182)
Style of learners, communicators, collaborators, from baby boomers on down to whatever the Gen Z is. So how does, how has that changed in, have you molded your, any part of your program to adapt to it, to address those sort of generational conflicts and differences?

Denise Roberts (37:42.341)
I know.

Denise Roberts (37:54.085)
Well, it comes up in conversation. So it’s not like we even put it in the program, but it’s there. It’s always there. If it’s there, we’re going to talk about it. So if there’s a sense of my manager doesn’t get me, or because they’re old, or whatever. So it goes both ways. Both sides have to see that there’s value here. And if the.

Tom Nixon (38:08.654)
Mm -hmm.

Denise Roberts (38:22.373)
If the older generation sees the younger as a threat, then there’s a problem. But if they can look at each other as there are strengths here, I would give all technology issues to the younger ones. I wouldn’t try to do a YouTube video to figure out how to download and upload and edit the video. Right? This person would thrive. Technology doesn’t scare them. They thrive on it.

But I don’t have to see that as a threat. And the younger person needs to, or how they look at, again, it’s all about the meaning we add to it. Because there’s always, our brain goes in, because we talk about conflict and we talk about how quickly, it’s literally a nanosecond. Somebody says something. I have an emotional response to it. I then have a thought about it.

motion came before the thought. I have an emotional response, then I have a thought, and then I take an action. But it goes BOOM! Like that. Right? And so when they can see it and they know they’ve done it, because I often say if you don’t get this in a work level, map it into your life from a personal level. Think about a family member or a spouse or something that you are engaged or involved with that just

Tom Nixon (39:25.006)
Epic, yeah.

Denise Roberts (39:52.261)
triggered you, right? Because it goes, like that. So when they can see it, and I say it’s never over, you can always go back and clean it up and apologize. But it’s, we get hijacked. So the same thing’s true inside of a business with all these generations. The cool thing is it could be a wonderful stew, right? Or it can be a mess.

It’s how you choose to look at it and take it. Because I believe in the world of how can we versus we can’t because of. So if we’ve got four generations instead of because you know one’s going to badmouth the other that’s going to badmouth the other because we make all these assumptions it’s back to that right. You know I read somewhere that Millennials are are all into themselves because they’re always taking selfies right or whatever.

Tom Nixon (40:33.614)
Love it.

Denise Roberts (40:51.141)
it’s just again it’s you added the meaning so if we can separate that and and that’s why even though this we’re giving content it starts with awareness I have to see what I am assuming or making this mean or not making it mean so I have to see it first then I have to understand the impact of that.

and then I have to practice it. So that’s how this leadership training is different than any other leadership trainings that I have been part of. It’s because it is very heavy on the application, not just the information.

Tom Nixon (41:33.326)
Great.

Tom Nixon (41:40.302)
Great. Good. Well, thank you so much for coming on today to these Roberts, the creator of playing to win will link to your website play to win together .com as well as your LinkedIn. People can get to know you but for the next cohort of your jumpstart training program for business, people can learn about that at miss business .com and when is the next one? It’s coming up in September.

Denise Roberts (42:04.229)
believe it’s October. Could be end of September, early October, but yeah.

Tom Nixon (42:06.574)
October. Okay.

Go to mishbusiness .com look for ignite leadership training and both the jumpstart program and the other program are. Yep. Thank you so much. All right, Curtis. Well, good luck with that PowerPoint. If only you could find a way for AI deliver the training for you. Wouldn’t even need to be there. We’re getting there. Yeah. Well, until our robot overlords take us over, we will be back again next week with another episode of.

Denise Roberts (42:17.285)
Influence, influence, yeah.

Curtis Hays (42:29.426)
We’re getting there, we’re getting there. It’s gonna phase me out.

Tom Nixon (42:39.022)
Bull horns and bullseyes.