Why Soft Skills Are Now Hard Core: The Five C’s for Team Thriving

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want working on Purpose. Now here's your host, Doctor Relise Cortez.

1:06 Welcome back to the Working in a Purpose program, which has been brought to you with passionate pride since February of twenty fifteen. Thanks for j nating again this week. Great to have you. I'm your host, doctor Elis Cortes. If we've not met before and you don't know me, I'm a workforce advisor, organizational psychologist, management consultant, local therapist, speaker and author. I am constantly researching helping my clients elevate their leadership and culture. And my team and I at Gusto Now help companies enliven and fortify their operations by building a dynamic, high performance culture, inspirational leadership, and nurturing managers activated by meaning and purpose. And did you know that inspired employees and purpose led companies outperform their satisfied peers by a factor of two point twenty five two one. In other words, inspiration and purpose are good for the bottom line. You learn more about us and how we can work together at gusto dashnow dot com or my personal site at least Coortes dot com. Which on today's program we have with us today Yadiracato. She's an organizational psychology practitioner who has been working with teams that developers and engineers with military operations for over fifteen years.

2:03 She's the author of Hardcore Soft Skills, A Guide to Work with Humans. We'll be talking about how and why learning what have been called soft skills makes such a difference and motivating and engaging teams, and dive into several of the core soft skills that she teaches. She does to day from Tampa, Florida. Yadira YADDI, welcome to Working on Purpose. Thank you so much, Alie. I'm very happy to be here on the show. We just have to also say also been Venida, are working on purpose a being being no working on purpose? Because you and I both speak Spanish and Portuguese, I know you spraky de Deutsche. I don't speak German, but I do speak a little French a little time. With enough wine, yes exactly, we could all become more fluent that way. Yes, it's amazing how much better I sound at least I think so. Yeah. Okay, So I want to just start by sharing just the humble and beautiful way that you opened your book. You know, we oftentimes talk about the importance of teaching and learning what we need most to learn, and I just think that's just so beautiful.

3:01 So let's let me just read this for our listeners and viewers, because it is the very opening of your book. You're right, and I quote you were talking with your Oh so your soft skills are like sandpaper. My husband said to me one day as I was giving him feedback on a project he was working on. I was trying to tell him how he was focusing on the wrong priorities and that he needed to reassess. I think the exact words I used were quote, your being lazy. It was well intended. I knew he could do more. But the tone of my voice than the words I chose, reflected my frustration his response to reject entirely what I had said. You may have encountered similar challenges at work, which is of course why you wrote the book. But I just thought, gosh, can't we all relate to this?

3:42 You know, this is so. Relatable and it helps us understand you and connect with you right out of the gate. So beautiful. Yeahdie, thank you appreciate that. So let's talk before we get into the book, and really you know what's in it, why you wrote it. Let's just talk a little bit about your background and what drew you to research soft skills in the workplace and help companies to incorporate them. Why this, why not I don't know, strategy or something like that. Yeah, So it's the fact that I have been working for now about over a decade and eighteen years that I've been working specifically with military organizations with teams of engineers, developers and all the people with the brilliant skills, and also in kind of rough environments in the military as well.

4:30 So having working a lot in the areas of focus on developing products and helping the teams become more productive, and realizing that you could have a team of very talented people, like all good at what they do, and there's still this gap of a lot of a lot of times basically the projects don't workout or initiatives die on the vine. And I thought a lot about that and thinking that we we tend to focus a lot on the aspect of how to cultivate our technical skills, like if we just become better at this program or get the certification. And around the time of twenty twenty when COVID hit and we were I was living in Germany at the time and working with the team on site, meaning in an office, so we had to quickly transition into working from our respective homes, but also we still had a deathline to commit to deliver a particular product.

5:32 So realizing that aside from the skills that the brilliant team of engineers had, we also needed to be able to find the ability to work together effectively, to collaborate, to really communicate when we're not in an office, and I started exploring and kind of delve more into the term of soft skills soft quote unquote because it just sounds I would think before that soft skills were along the lines of etiquette or about things that were like how do you behave on a you know, and a dinner setting, and realizing that the what we call soospects are all about critical skills being that be for working with people, social skills or managing effectively, or communicating or negotiating, so all these skills that are not very considered technical yet that we really need to develop in order to really succeed in teams. So that's how I started with the podcast and hardcore of skills in back in twenty twenty, and it evolved into learning from others more about skills, doing my studies in organizational psychology to learn more about that and now kind of developing that framework based on the lessons that I have learned along the way.

6:44 Beautiful, and I appreciate that you're reminding me. As you were talking about the specific kinds of people that you've been helping, you're reminding me that a big chunk of the people that I've worked with over the years too have been engineers, IT people and scientists, people that you know, love and you need to use their minds. And I think part of the reason I've been drawn to them is I do like working with people like that and to help round out that this capacity to as you say, to better collaborate, to better relate to their team members, to better understand them, which of course allows them to better motivate them and increases their performance, all these things that are so important. And you say so also in your book. That I laugh about this too, is I think that soft skills is probably an outdated phrase.

7:27 Now. It's still being used, but it's outdated more and more increasingly. You and I both know that these kinds of skills are now called essential. In fact, you know, in the work that we're doing at Gusto now or our tagline is doubling down on humanity in the age of AI. Right, So it's really such a way to one distinguish our contribution as work as humans, but also to do it more effectively with and through technology. Yeah, and that's absolutely right because even now, because we are in a very evolving, technologically evolving environment, if we look at reports, for example, for the Work Economic Forum, they recently had a report that specified that the skills for the future, we don't know what the jobs are going to look like ten years from now. Possibly a lot of the roles that we have right now are going to be extinct or new roles will come in.

8:17 But when it came to specific skill building, AI of course was one of them, but it wasn't necessarily like on the top five the top five were a area or the top ten where empathy, critical thinking, communication, working with others. So those are the skills that in the age of AI or the visually changing environment, those are the skills that are humans. We need to become better at working on those critical skills. One hundred percent agree, my dear. It's amazing. You know, both of us are working in a similar space, So of course I agree with us, and that's a lot of the work that I do. Okay, So for those listeners and viewers that are listening to this maybe by accident based on this and they didn't intend to learn about self skills, I think it would be useful to compare in contrast here. So just for if you could describe a manager's results and effectiveness without these kinds of skills, So what does that look like? How would we know that's who we're dealing with alongside somebody else who really does have those skills. So if you could kind of paint the picture of those two different managers without and with soft skills.

9:22 Absolutely, and it's a great way to frame it like the either or side because for example, with managers that may not be necessarily focusing too much on the soft skills side, they could be very process driven. They could be just going into a team and telling them like, this is the process, this is what you follow, without necessarily taking into consideration what are the specific skills for those team members that they want to they need to develop, or what are those things that the teams really want to work with the team members. So managers with that doesn't focus on that is very process driven, well, you will have on the other hand, if a manager really focuses on those on the aspect of the people, meaning that understanding that they as a manager, you have the people to do the work and that you need to give them the support in order to be able to execute better, to provide a better product. That it is very important to do that first part of connecting, which is one part of the framework that I discussed in the book, very important as a manager to connect first with the team, understand what are the strengths, what are their weaknesses as well, and or to have that self awareness as a manager to know what are the areas that we as managers need help to improve. That's a very important factor. Another one will be that if a manager that doesn't focus on the soft skill side may consider themselves that they may have a lot of knowledge on a specific area or that they have the solution for a particular problem, we don't necessarily understanding how to

10:57 use the collective knowledge of the team to solve the problem. To help them, give them a framework to be able to collaborate effectively, to have good meetings that actually are good meetings that people want to attend, that are meetings that people come up with creative solutions. So you could have. If a manager doesn't necessarily focus on those specific areas of how can I reimprove my meetings, how can I really get the best out of my team, then they will probably not have the same results. And also a manager that may not necessarily be focusing on seft skills is also a person that may not be willing to learn from mistakes or cultivate a culture of continuous learning of mentorship. A manager that does have that awareness and have cultivate those skills, they are able to create an environment that is a that is healthy to have conflict within the team, that the team stops and reflects on what they're doing, and that also it's not just embracing failure necessarily, but that we can learn from it. That's the main difference is in between a manager that's process driven, skill set, the focus on on the job, but not taking into consideration how do we enrich that cultivating the skills of the team and creating the space for the team to thrive, and they don't realize that they will have better results. That way.

12:22 Very well articulated, and I think it helps services and viewers start to recognize just how much room there is for all of us to grow absolutely not necessarily become well rounded per se because I think that's a little bit an outdated phrase, but to be able to have access and have cultivated the critical skills both technically as well as you know, the people side of the house. And so I think that was a wonderful way to help people understand that there's such a huge spectrum there to grow into. To do that, I really admire, you know, anything that's got a tight model to it. So your five c's approach to developing soft skills just really really accessible. And I want to also applaud you, Yadi, because as your book is shocked full of like really really practical, practical, actionable ways to develop these skills. So I really want to applaud you for creating like a really meaty book here.

13:13 So let's do this. Let's let's let our listeners and viewers get just kind of a high level sort of tour, if you will, of these five seas, because we're going to, you know, in the next two segments, will dive more deeply into some of the more specific areas that skills that you want people to develop. So the five seeds are so. The five seeds are connect, then communicate, then collaborate and create, which are kind of group together, and then correct And each one of these sees focuses on what are the skills within each see that we need to develop as a team or as a manager, but as a team as well. So it provides a growth map because for example, we cannot go in either as a manager or even as a new member of a team to go ahead and let's let's just start creating new things, creating products without really connecting first. So we need to have build that trust with the team, understand their pain points or the pain points from the from the team, or the pain points from a customer perspective. So we need to connect first. Then we need to work a lot in the communication. Communication of course applies throughout, but I really plays emphasis here because communication is about listening, which is a critical aspect of working in the team, and we all are suck at it, as I said in the book that we are we're not great listeners. But setting also aside from listening, establishing, communicating the vision what are

14:43 we working towards. So that's an aspect that once you connect, you communicate effectively, and once you have those elements you start working in deep, in depth with them with the collaboration and creation skills, which could include everything from how to manage our productivity, how do we prioritize effectively. There's so many skills within that area. But as a team or in an organization, we need to be in a constant state of collaboration at creation. But we also need to have the mindset that insan just coming in and producing things that we also need to cultivate the skills of the how do we collaborate and create? And then the last c being correct, which is a constant as well.

15:24 But it's just like once we collaborated and created things, we need to take the time to step back and look at what is going well, what needs improvement, and also how do we create a culture of learning in the organization, how do we handle conflict even within a team like conflict could be a great thing for teams. So that's kind of like a roadmap that I've established based on my experience working with teams and realizing that all these elements need to be into place. And of course it's a constant cycle because then we go back to continue that connection, communication, laboration, creation, correction. So it's kind of like a cycle, but it helped to serve as a framework to select which are the skills that we need to select to cultivate first as we enter into a team. Nice.

16:12 Yeah, very nice, beautiful way to let let our listening viewers go into our first brick as they consider those five seas. I'm your host, Doctor Lei's Cortets. We've been on the air with Yadir Racado. She's an organizational psychology practitioner who has been working with teams of developers and engineers with military organizations for over fifteen years. We've been talking about the importance of soft skills and how they make a difference for managerial effectiveness. And also she's now just introduced her five seas approach to developing soft skills. After the break, we're going to go into a tour and help serve up several different skill areas that you can learn to develop along the way. We'll be right back.

17:05 Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise alisee at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

17:57 Thanks for stating with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose, your host, doctor Elie Cortes. As I am dedicated to help them create a world where organizations thrive because they are people thrive and they're led by inspirational leaders that help them find and to contribute their greatness, and we do business that better is the world. I keep researching and writing my own books. So one of my latest came out. It's called The Great Revitalization. How activating meaning and purpose can radically in liven your business. And I wrote it to help leaders understand what today's workforce really wants and needs to give their best and stick around, and I provide you twenty two best practices to equip you to provide that for them perior leadership in your culture. You can find my books on Amazon or my personal site at Leiscortes dot com if you are just now joining us. My guest as yodar Ocado.

18:38 She's the author of Hardcore Soft Skills, A Guide to Work with Humans. So I really appreciated that you open pretty pretty handily after you know, just kind of introducing your concepts with the chapter on self awareness. And one of the things, of course that I know in my work and you do too, is just how critical that is and the huge gap that usually exists and what we think we are aware of in ourselves and really what's so so I really align with you know, the whole list of self skills that you offer in the book as a basis to self evaluate, but then you also go on to add a bit of a three six ticket put it there where you have them compare their self assessment with to other people to help illuminate their level of self awareness, which that you know they might be stronger in some areas or vice versa than what there are the people think. So I just if you could comment and expand a bit on you know that approach to self evaluation that you work with.

19:33 Yeah, So when it came to that particular chapter, so's it's the beginning in terms of the first thing that we need to do in order to understand how do we improve or what it focus in a lot of on our strengths. So I created a list of different skills and in terms of assessing of what would good look like in terms of that particular skill, and then kind of like allowing us to take a kind of a check in to see, oh it's be or not be. Then the next part will be that we take that same assessment and we give it to another person and they without seeing their responses. The other person either a trusted colleagues, our spouses, or our friends, so they are able to fill it out as well. Because I wanted to do that so we could compare and contrast and see for examples that perhaps we may think that we are terrible at either a delegation or at a time management, and perhaps others think that, oh no, you are great at this, or communication or explaining complex concepts. So a lot of the times we think that we have either weaknesses or strengths, and others see that as things of great value for for us, so for them as well.

20:48 So it is important as a team to identity to help the open it up to the team to help identify what are their strengths from the others, because they could recognize things that we don't see in ourselves. And also I want to to ensure that this was a very accessible self assessment, because there are of course very sophisticated tools to be able to assess, but at least I wanted to keep the people kind of like head started, like, hey, self assessment is not entirely scientific, but at least it helps us get a good understanding of what our strengths are. I think it's excellent and the list is really quite robust. Listeners and viewers, when you read her book, you're going to be surprised at the list of soft skills that she has in that assessment, and you start to realize there's a lot more to this area than you probably ever imagined. And to that end, one of the things that you talk about. You have a whole chapter entitled how to Navigate Office Politics, which of course is networking skills.

21:43 And of course you and I both know that a lot of people that are really more technical. They loathe anything that has to do with politics and sometimes even networking. So could you talk a little bit about the importance of building good relationships with your colleagues, up down and all around, and just maybe ways that listeners and viewers can can start to build their networking skills and progress. You have a whole bunch of ways that you listen in the book, but we'll just maybe give them a couple of different ideas. Yeah, so building relationships, because I know office politics sounds so it may not have a necessary good connotation and people could say, like, no, I'm not that type of person who I woant to want engage in office politics in one way or another. We really all have to be engaged in those quote unquote politics because we need to be able to collaborate with others in order to get things done. So it's not just about meeting the people in your team. It's realizing that the thing I am working with in my team also depends on others.

22:38 Others depend on my success, and it depends on others for my success. So even in working in organizations that you could sit next to a cubicle to another person and I find a lot of the times that you see that person every day, you don't even know what they do or what their interests are, and then realize like, oh, this was the person that I need to do all along. So I think it's very important to find ways to meet other people in the office, either it being like, for example, just creating spaces, just like offering to share your knowledge in in launch and Learned sessions or attending launch and Learned sessions for others. Also just do like I kind of to deliberate the effort or ready for working remote of like the follow up Fridays, which is to go ahead and reaching out to new people that perhaps maybe in your same area, but you haven't reachalite.

23:32 I feel like, hey, I work on this projective team, and I see that you're also working with this project. When I get to know a little bit about your practices, and you will be surprised at how people react to that because people really, people really do want to connect. So those are some easy ways to understand that it's not about just going, you know, spending your day socializing the perception that we have. It's all about making sure that we really have to build connection with someone would start a projecting like a kickoff between that all the team members that were really getting each other intail ways that we all need to be able to move beyond and break those silos that are in organizations that a lot of the times depends on us.

24:17 Yea, I will add to that, Yeahdie, And that was such a beautiful rendition and I see it too it all over the years that I work with organizations, and of course you know oftentimes that's going to entail working with individual coaching, et cetera as well for the team members. Is so the team members that really build strong careers have those strong relationships. These are people that are speaking on their behalf when they're not in the room because they've developed those relationships they are they have access to them to ask them critical questions on how to be able to elevate their career and work through problems because they made those relationships and it's just a much smoother way to go. It's it's work, and it takes talent to do it, but boy is it worth it to develop, you know, these networking social relational skills.

24:59 Yeah, and it is, and particularly now because we know for people that are looking for work and or people that have fun work. A lot of the testimonials that we hear is that it wasn't through just normally applying resume or being picked for a job or people you don't know. It's based on those relationships that you build throughout your career, and those are very could be very healthy, satisfying relationships work because you get to learn from them exchange information. So it is very important to just take the time, like one day a week like I suggest, or other times maybe using LinkedIn as well. It's a great way to get to know others on your field and really take the time to develop relationships, meaning that you collaborate knowledge, you exchange ideas, and it's such a fun way to do that because it's not about you know, giving a card or you know, giving your elevator speech.

25:55 It's about really sharing knowledge. That are some of the great ways to build a relationships. Absolutely love that. I'm going to move this on to the idea of you know, your chapter on how to Get Along, which is really about building a team contract. And I think this is such a powerful concept that so many teams are not implementing. And I learned it really Yati the first time when I was teaching at the University of Phoenix and then later at the Southern Methods University as an adjunct, they had us do team contracts. So, and this is so important, especially when you have a team that you know has virtual people on it, hybrid people on it. It's critical. So if you could speak a little bit to this idea of team contract.

26:37 Yes, and team contract, even though it may sound so official, it's not referring to like a human resources standard procedures, just basically that like an agreement between the team members to define how are we going to communicate, which meetings are we going to have, or how are we going to prioritize what are the roles? That's one of the things that it's a lot of the teams that have been working for years you see that a lot of the conflict is it stems from non clarity on the roles or no clarity on the outcomes, like what is it? What are we're working towards? What is it? When do we know that we are done with something like setting those expectations since the beginning and having just a kind of a living document of you get together. You get some person can started a manager who start it. But it's very important that it's developed with the input from the team. So they at the end they all agree and they realize like, hey, we're going to look at it together and in the near future assess, reassess. But at least you said those expectations to the beginning. Since the beginning, like prioritizing. Another factor is if conflict occurs, how are going to manage that? So for example, making sure that if there's conflict, we're going to dedicate a space to it. So there could be many things added to that team contract. But I guarantee that it's even if you've been working with a team for a lot time.

28:00 Is a practice that I suggest everybody to do it because it will save so much headache later on. I really agree with that. And that's where you know, being able to indicate, you know, what are you really you know, prioritizing or evaluating their performance on. Is it that they're present that you can you know, contact them at any any moment during the day they're findable, or is it what they actually put out at the end of the day or the end of the week that you're really focused on that kind of stuff. Delineating that can save a whole lot of headache. You know, you feeling frustrated as the manager, you getting fired as the as the team member for not meeting expectations. So I think this team charter thing is gold. Yes, I think it doesn't have to be perfect. So if we remove the expectation that we have to have the perfect contract and we spend so much time drafting it, we shouldn't do that. We should just say like, Okay, this is an actual version and it's based on the lessons that we learn. We will modify along the way and brings in it. That way will take away a lot of the pressure because it just it's having it will say time and effort, and also it's part of the continuous improvement of the team. As a team evolves, then new challenges will come in and new things will need to be added to that team contract.

29:10 Exactly beautiful. So we have to talk about your chapter that you have. It's called how to keep yourself and others engaged. This is motivation skills that you're addressing here and now. This at a time. Listeners and viewers, if you don't understand these numbers are really they're really, you know, kind of overwhelming. The global employee engagement rate is twenty one percent. So that what that means listeners and viewers. If you have ten people on your team, that means that two of them are charging forward to produce results for you and eight of them are either holding steady or pulling you back. I don't know how you produce results with that. In the United States it's thirty one percent, so you know a little better here. So learning how to become a more effective manager that knows how to motivate your team is pretty darn critical today. So sure with us a little bit about some ways that they can work on elevating engagement.

29:59 Yeah, even motivation. Of course, having a good paycheck motivates teams, or having perks, those are key motivating factors, of course, but really try teams that intrinsic motivation. Are some key factors that I've got from the book of and the work of Daniel pink In regards of the elements of autonomy, mastery, and purpose. So autonomy meaning that the team want to be able to work or individuals want to be able to work on the things they want to work on. So being conscious as a manager that we want to provide to the teams, not the exact pathway, but just at least give them the ability to be autonomous with either specific projects or specific initiatives or steps. Keeping that in mind the purpose is it's key because even particularly the example of military organizations that they go, they're deployed, they are working really you know, tough jobs, but when they have in mind that this is to meet a particular mission and need to meet the mission, they have that very clear. And the same principle can be applied to any team, which as long as you know that there's a purpose that is just aside from get the thing complete, it's more about how it's going to benefit the end user, how is is going to benefit the organization.

31:19 Having that and communicating that to the team regularly is very It's critical to build that motivation, so purpose, autonomy, and then mastery. And that's the part where we initially when we talked about the access in our strengths. When we focus on our strengths and not necessary not our weaknesses, but just focusing on the things that we're good at, that really motivates us because we are able to demonstrate our knowledge. So by us understanding what are the strengths of the team, then we can place them in different roles that are specific and aligned to their specific strength. So those three key factors are to be considered in all to be able to motivate our teams to the work and get them more engaged and improve those metrics that that we're referring.

32:07 To, staggering metrics that I referred to. Yes, awesome, Okay, Well let's with that. Now that we've talked a little bit about the aspect of engagement and motivation, let's motivate our listeners and viewers with a break. That's our last one. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. We've been on the air with your Deracado. She's an organizational psychology practitioner who's been working with teams of developers and engineers with military organizations for over fifteen years. We've been getting into some of the specific skills that she teaches and talks about in her book. After the break, we will continue on and talk about the importance of stopping micromanaging. We'll be right back.

32:58 Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is Working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise alisee at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

33:51 Thanks for saying with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, Doc Jovis Cortes. As you know by now, this program is dedicated to empowering and inspiring you along your jurney to realize more of your potential. If you want to learn more about how we can work together and learn about the Gusto Now Academy for leaders and individuals who on various journeys alike, make your way to Gusto dash now dot com and then head and navigate to the training tab. You'll find the academy there. Love to have you join us. If you are just coming into the program. My guest is Yadi Rocado. She's the author of Hardcore Soft Skills A Guy to Work with Humans. So this next bit here on micromanagement, it's just so important to talk about because I know this from my own experience training and developing supervisors, managers and leaders, how hard it can be sometimes to let go and you, especially when you're earlier in your career, it's very hard to let go and let other people do work in their own way. And so but this notion of learning how to stop micromanaging and develop good strong dedication skills is really really important. And I know you mentioned that this was hard for you too, as soon as all of us as we go through this process.

35:00 Yes, it was because I have a person who had trouble delegating, and it was particularly for example, certain impositions that it was just me. And then kind of growing a team, that becomes very difficult to be able to kind of let go and trust the team to do the way things with the better even better outcomes, but in different processes as well. So it's something that I've struggled with. And this is the part that one of the things that I really wanted to focus in the book because I've also been working alongside of people that can be macro managers and seeing the impact that it can have in a workplace culture. It creates a really toxic work environment because people just kind of like throw their hands off and just say, like, you know what, I'm just just tell me exactly what to do and I'll just I'll do the thing without and they feel demralized to kind of be able to work successfully.

35:54 And resentful too, you know as well. And now we go back and tie back to what we were talking about just before the break. One of the ways to motivate the team is through autonomy. So autonomy also can be used when we give our team members, we say, this is the end result that I need you to produce by this time, and here's what good looks like, by the way, and then you give them the autonomy to do it their way, discover new ways to do it. Sometimes sometimes you need you need you need to check in to make sure they're okay and they don't need more support or more materials or whatever. But oftentimes you just might be delighted with what they produce that you never could have come up with that, and they came up with something much better, and that's what it's delightful to be able to learn how to delegate.

36:34 Yes, indeed, and going back to the this is why in the five seis framework, so connecting first you get to know your team and there's strengths. Then communicating, meaning that part of where you really communicated as a manager, what is the outcome? What is a big picture that you want to achieve with the with the work of the team. And then that's when the part of handing to the team, Okay, collaboration and creation, so giving them the growth map of hey, here's what we need to develop and really trusting the team based on their strengths of how they're going to how they're going to do the thing. But also we don't need to be inserted along the way in every step of the way, like things actions that we may be committing right now, which are like I need to be included in every email, or I need to be participating in every single meeting, or hey, if I'm on vacation, hold everything, don't work on anything because I'm going on vacation, and then once when I return, we'll work on the thing again. Those are basically things that we set the team for failure because we're limiting their ability and as you say that, they could create so better, so much better results. So we need to be conscious of those things that we do and give the team the power to be able to produce something great. And we all can learn it on the way.

37:49 I love that one hundred percent. And then you have a chapter or an area on how to criticize without making or taking it personal. So it's just about feedback skills, and boy, this is such a power orful skill to learn. You do how to do this well? You know that you can literally help get corrective or constructive feedback to somebody in a way that they so appreciate it instead of you know, feeling demoralized by or small by or you need to feel a take a posture of defense. So talk to us a bit. You've got this, you know the five season providing feedback, but can you talk to us first about you know, the criticality of the feedback. How can we not take it personally and how can we give it? Well? Yeah, so feedback is very hard skill to master giving and we giving feedback too because a lot of times that when people give us feedback, even we may not recognize it or just say hey, thank you and really recognize that we need something good, or we get very defensive and kind of want to feel that we're taking it personal. So I think part of the things we recognize is that when giving feedback, for example, as a manager, is very tough because we need to focus on this specific process or activity and not eat the feedback directly, like you as a person, here's how you are, or here is you're a pad communicator, or you are a you are terrible time management, or things that really could be personal. So it's not our place or in anybody's place in a work environment to provide feedback in

39:22 that way. We need to focus on this specifically, very specific about things that didn't work out, Like, for example, if you consider that that person needs to be able to provide better demonstrations to say, hey, I noticed this on the demonstration. Here's a suggestion. You ask if you can provide a suggestion, and once a person is seeking to that, you say like, here's what it didn't achieve or here's what I thought could be improved on that particular conslution, but always really focusing on the process or this specific activity, and it's very important to be direct because a lot of the times we think that the sandwich approach of like compliment, then bad thing, and then closely with a compliment. Sometimes we can see you through the surface and you say like, hey, just be the requidly and it's more affected that way. As long as we focus on the on the process part, and also if we're seeing feedback, we also need to recognize that there are instances that people could be wearing insulting so we need to make sure that if it gets personal, that the attack are our character, then we need to put it s up to those situations. So again focusing a lot on the process part and being very specific about what we're giving feedback on.

40:32 I liked you know, your five c's anytime you have the ability to create something like that, and the great vitalization. I organized the whole book around the acronym of Gusto now, which of course is my company name, but it's from It's more memorable. So I really like though that you offer when we're we're giving you know, good feedback that we you know, we consider the context, the actual content of the message, what do we actually want to see changed. We do it with compassion, and then we have a close that somehow you communicates that we care about this person, that are invested in them or something. And I think that's that that helps people because this is hard. It's hard to learn how to give constructive, caring feedback.

41:13 Yes, and having those elements in mind. And also one key advice for managers too is that as we consider giving feedback, we also need to be willing to receive feedback as well, and ask from people at above our level or or others in it that are peers. It's important to say like, hey, I'm giving you feedback, being open to say like hey, if you have specific feedback for me, or what things do you think I could help you better at where I can improve that. It's also very important to have that humility to be able to accept feedback from our team. Members to hundred percent yeah, in fact, you know, I've had people On my podcast, Jeff Wetsler talks a lot about the importance of creating a relationship in which you make it safe for people to give you feedback and so how much that accelerates your own development When you can create a relationship in a space for people willing to be able to say Hey, boss, I think you messed up back there.

42:07 Here's what I saw. Without you know, most of the time, you were never going to hear that feedback. And by the way, the more you grow in your career, the less you're going to hear that feedback from your team membersh because you get really scary the higher you go up. So you know, you're kind off really valuable input when you when you don't receive that feedback. Yeah, And one key to that that I've tried is when it comes to working with teams and either as a facilitator, would be to request feedback from the team members. Don't necessarily like to winning a meeting, but say if you were a manager, what would you do differently? So that's a way to kind of not attack the manager personally.

42:47 It's a way to say, like, oh, this are some key things that hey, if there were managers that will do And that's kind of indirect direct feedback for the manager, but it's it's a way that the team feels a little bit more safe to provide the things that they wish they could see change without necessarily feeling that they have to get one on one with you to give advice. Excellent Okay, So I can't let you get off the podcast without talking about this. You have a chapter it says how to deal with constant change, which of course adaptability skills in today's environment in twenty twenty six and after last year and all the crazy you know, AI intro introductions, automation, tariffs, wars, you know everything else, craziness.

43:30 So you know, being able to deal with constant change, you learn this skill, boy, you know you're going to start. You know, your health increases incredibly and so do your results. So let's talk about a few ways to help our listeners and viewers handle constant change. Yes, and it's so hard because dealing with change. Change sucks a lot of times, and particularly if our organizations are downsizing, if we see peers that are even the organization on willingly or roles changing. So it's very difficult. So it is it sounds very kind of to positive optimism here, but I think it's very important to keep a mindset of like, Okay, well, let's focus on the things I can control. There's all the things we have like a kind of like a circle to identify those things that change is happening. I cannot stop, you know, layoffs.

44:24 I cannot stop role shifting. So here's the things that I can control, and really make a list of those things, meaning like the skills that you have, you can develop new skills. You can identify people that are happening in the roles or that have like the change that you're about to set into. Like let's say they change your role, you can identify another person who's in that same role that they just love what they do, and talk to that person and see what it's so good about that particular role. So it's keeping that mindset of Hey, in this new role, perhaps I could develop new skills. I will have a learning curve, but it allows me to have better skills for the that I want to get on later on in the near future. So taking every just focusing on the things that we can control, it's a very powerful action because we just have to realize that change is going to happen. Our roles are not going to be the same in five years, and let's just be willing to grow and identify opportunities where the change could be good.

45:20 I love that. I love also how crisp you are in your answers. We get we're getting so much out of you. Let's kind of get close to the show here with just if you can share just briefly, like you know, something of a case study of the organization that you worked with that to help them develop these hardcore soft skills. So help us understand what were they dealing with, what was the problem by would they want to bring you in and how did your intervention help them? Yeah, so I'll provide an example which was specifically not targeted to, hey, we want to teach these people how to learn soft skills, but it was when I was fasked to work with the leadership to create a transformation efforts in the organizations like become more agile and help a whole it organization improve the way they were working become more agile adapted change. So it wasn't specifically on, hey, let's make sure that everybody is better at self skills.

46:12 What I did was kind of this help environment helped me test test my framework because it was in a military organization which was realizing that the first thing that we needed to do that I needed to do was connect with all the folks that were dozens of folks in the organization and help them connect with each other. Because they were working together quote unquote, but a lot of the times it was just very team based. So I took a deliberate effort to make sure that everybody get to really meet each other, or even they work together, but they were in different buildings, but they never met face to face. So just that many action of getting people to know, like, hey, let me take you to the office of this person, let's feet each other. That kind of helped put the walls down of hey, we can really collaborate and have those conversations around the things that we need to resolve. So connecting first, then going into the communication factor of like, let's really understand the mission.

47:09 Let's make sure the mission is clear, working with the managers to make sure like, hey, we need to ensure that we're giving clarity on what the mission is, what we need to do, and really work together. The collaboration and creation factor came along with working with these multiple teams and first setting the team contract, the team agreement that with each team that I was working with in this transformation effort, making sure that hey, let's set a team agreement or how we're going to collaborate, what is the definition I've done with that particular team, and they said it was a lot of based on adul practices. So how we're going to work together, what is good look like, and here's how we're going to reflect the work, make the work transparent to others. Here's how we're going to get and receive feedback from others as we demonstrate our products. So establishing the cadence of how each team was going to work was critical because a lot of the times it depended on the priority of the day.

48:01 So giving the teams, helping them set up their structure was critical. And then the last part of correcting, so setting a culture where they could stop what they were doing, reflect back on what's going well and what needs improvement, and making sure that that was a process that was established that they will kind of reflect back on the things that they were doing. That just that action to identify, Hey, we need to do I work better with this other sector. So let's establish a plan that by the next week we really need to connect with these other people in order to be able to get things, or we need to document this process. So keeping that cycle it was very effective to help create a spirit of transformation in the organization. And it was basically teaching them those those critical skills, helping them working with these critical skills. We don't necessarily saying, hey, we're going to work on these soft skills right now. The outcome was the transformation of the organization, and that was a very successful example of the use of the five sees.

49:01 What a powerful way to finish the show and help our listeners and viewers really understand your work a little bit better. Thank you so much, Ydra for coming on to Working on Purpose. I loved reading your book. It's chalk chalk full full of really amazing, practical, useful information. And now you're stuck with me. We're staying connected. Okay, you can run, but you can hide. Listeners and viewers. If you want to learn more about ya Dear Chairocato and the work she does with software developers, engineers and managers in the defense sector, creating solutions to optimize how to work, how work is done, and how knowledge is shared, or if you want to learn more about her book, Hardcore Soft Skills, one place you can go to is her website, Hardcore sooft Skills podcast dot com. You can also find her on LinkedIn. Last week, if you missed the live show, you can always getch it be recorded podcast.

49:46 We were on here with doctor Paul White talking about the book he co wrote with Gary Chapman, The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace, Empowering organizations by encouraging people. We talked about the ROI of appreciation in the workplace, how it differs from recognition, and examples of the five Languages of appreciation. Next week will be on air with Doug Brackman talking about the I Am Driven assessment he developed from a fascination with the research in the components of powerful thought and action, which he sees in the very successful practice of highly driven leaders. See you, then, Let's continue to lean in discovering how to elevate your operating system as a leader, become inspirational, and create destination workplaces where legendary business takes place. Let's work on Purpose.

50:30 We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes each week on W four CY. Together we'll create a world where business operates conscientiously, Leadership inspires and passion performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose. They crave see you there. Let's work on purpose.