Good afternoon, everyone or nighttime or morning or wherever it might be in the world. I would like to challenge you. What if all of the preconceived notions that we have about what makes a great leader might not be relevant anymore.So what I'd like you to do as I'd like you to think of the leader that you most want to emulate. Who is that person above all other people you would want to follow to the ends of the earth? OK. Do you have that person in your mind? I want you to think of the three traits that really embody that leader. What are the three traits that have set that person apart from every other leader that you've ever known? So if you need a little help, there's a few words that we might use to describe a great leader. OK. Do you have those three traits in your head? Now, this is going to be an interactive session. And so if you will use your phone or word, whatever you might have to go and scan the QR code that you see down at the bottom, you can also go to slido.com and you can put in women tech as far as the passcode and what I would like to know from you all are, what are those three traits that really embodied that leader?

Usually it takes a couple seconds for some of the tech to go through. But I'd like to hear from you. What are the traits of that leader that you had followed to the ends of the earth? So, we've got a couple of people typing, which is good to see. And so you could put in one answer and then hit, enter, you could put another answer. You can hit, enter. If you have more than three traits, I'd love to see that as well. Passionate, a good listener. I will just tell you that whenever I think of my person that I really want to emulate, I get things like charismatic are compassionate, just like you good listeners and they're compassionate mentorship. Now, I've been doing this for the last three years and I've been asking people this question, oh, got a whole bunch. Now of what are those three traits? And what I found is actually astounding you see, whenever I started this process, I started to ask people to think of a great leader in history and tell me what those three traits were and the answers that I got were very different from the ones that we're seeing right here.

The answers that I was getting to that question were that they were powerful and they were bold and they were fearless. But I want you to look at the ones that we have right here. We are bold, powerful and fearless on this list. The biggest one that we're seeing right now is empathetic. And that's what I found was so shocking in this. And so as I've gone through and I've started to collect all of these different answers. It looks like this. So this is looking at probably about 400 people and the different traits that they like. And you can see here just like you empathetic is rising to the top. Now, look at this graph, we are bold, we are fearless and we are powerful. They're really, really tiny. This tells me two things. Number one, people don't wanna follow people who are bold and fearless, they wanna follow somebody who's empathetic and inspiring that they're charismatic or leads by example. And they're honest. Number two, what this really tells me is that, you know, a lot of times those traits that we see in the leader that we want to emulate are the traits that we have ourselves. So you might be thinking, well, I can't really be a great leader. You know, I, you know, I'm not bold and fearless, but maybe some of these other words start to resonate with you. Maybe you're focused, maybe you're creative or courageous or a visionary. Those are traits that other people are looking for in leaders.

So you probably already have the traits that you need to be a great leader. You just have to hone in on those. You might ask, why is this important? Well, right now, 80% of employers think that their people leave because they want more money from another company. But in actuality is quite different. It's actually the opposite. Only 20% of people are actually leaving because they want more money. So the question is, what are the 80% leaving for? These are the quit rates. This is by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. And so over the last, you know, going back to 2016, I started to track the trends of how many people quit per month. This is across the entire United States and it's also normalized for seasons and things like that. And you can see on average, we're looking at about between two and maybe 2.4% of the entire United States turning over every single month. Now we know that in 2020 it was a very different year. You could see that the quit rate plunges to the lowest that has been in probably almost 40 years. People were scared. We were going into COVID-19, we didn't know what was going on. We had an economic crisis, we had political upheaval, we had all kinds of things going on and people were scared to leave their jobs. But we know that we started to come up again as people started to change.

And you can see here this was the beginning of the great resignation. You can see that by the end of 2020 the quit rates are on average or even higher than they've been in the last several years. And I know you've all heard it in the news, but I'm a graphical kind of person. Look at the quit rates. So the blue line was last year in 2021 we are hitting 3% of the entire United States changing over in a month. Look at this year. So we have all the way up through March right now. We're already starting higher than we have in the past. It's the great resignation. Other people are calling it the great redistribution or the great reshuffle, whatever you would like to call it. But what this means is very important when you have somebody on your team, quit. That's time and that's money. I want you to think about if somebody quits on your team, what happens all of a sudden you have this huge hole in your team, whatever they were working on. Now, all of a sudden the rest of the team has got to come in and do that job. You're gonna have to contact the hr person, you're gonna have to go out and say, you know what I need to hire somebody for that position, they're gonna have to go out, they're gonna have to go to a master's distribution to try to find somebody to find and fill that hole.

But then they get 100 different people that are going in to try to get that position, but really only two of them call them back. That's all that wasted effort. Your team, your team is now taking over those additional duties that that person had, they're doing their own and those, and now they're starting to get stressed, you're starting to get burnout. It takes on average 6 to 8 months to try to hire somebody back for a new position and to get them on boarded. We're talking a half a year to almost a year to get that person up to speed. Think about your team. What are you doing to that team at this time? So, here's another poll. Do you know anybody who has quit in the last 24 months? Yes. No, maybe you did. Yes. You know what, my best friend quit. She quit in December of 2020 and you know why she was in this toxic work environment and she just, at the end of December decided, you know what? This is not worth it. I am not happy. Her boss, basically, there was a screamer in the office and she would scream at people during meetings and her boss let that perpetuate. She decided, you know what I've had enough and she quit.

So we know of a couple of people who either quit themselves or they know somebody who did. I think everybody at this point knows somebody who's quit their job in the last 24 months. So I'll just ask you, why do you think they quit, or why did you quit? And you can give me as many answers as you. Like, like I said, my best friend, she quit because of a toxic work environment. She was a single mother. Do you know how scary that is to be a single mother and decide? You know what? I'm so unhappy. I have to quit my job burnout. No support, poor leadership. Exactly. Lack of career growth. You bet if you're hitting that ceiling and you have nowhere else to go, why would you say difficult working environment? Absolutely. We have a couple more people that are typing in. So we'll, we'll see what they have to say. Lack of diversity and extra duties with no pay increase. Absolutely. You were part of one of those teams probably where somebody quit micromanager. Absolutely. Now, I want you to look at this list. What do all of these items have in common leadership? The leaders didn't trust their employees.

The leader micromanaged. The leader did not recognize people and give them an increase in pay. They made it difficult to work, they limited growth, they did not support people and you got burnt out. It all comes down to leadership. That's why people are leaving right now. But it all starts here. Does anyone know what this means. I know it's all Greek to me, it actually means to know thyself. Now, this was written on the temple of Apollo in 1400 BC. This is the first time we've actually seen it written out. Now, what it tells me is that if it was good enough for those old guys back then it's still relevant today, it all starts with us and you might say, you know what I want to be a leader, but I'm just not sure how to get there. Well, for the last 27 years, I've been a member of the United States military. I just was able to retire as a navy captain and Commodore. I run my own business and I know that there's a bunch of different ways that we can be better leaders and through all of my trials and tribulations, I've actually developed a bunch of checkpoints on the road to try to get to be a better leader. And it all starts with knowing yourself, knowing your team and then building trust in that team. So let's start with the first one on our road, really knowing yourself. And I call this the three Bs number one. You have to be self aware.

Now, I will tell you that I was one of the biggest skeptics out there as far as the personality tests. I thought there is no way that this online, you know, filling the bubbles is ever gonna tell me anything about who I am. I'm an individual. Well, I was absolutely shocked at how well it predicted my personality traits. I'll tell you I pretty much knew what my strengths were. I felt pretty self aware of that and I was good about highlighting, highlighting my weaknesses and where I need to actually start to work on developing myself. But one of the more interesting things that it did is it helped point out where my blind spots were. Now, I will tell you, I'm one of those people who is super focused. I mean, I am laser focused on something. If I have a project that I need to do, I'm going to get it done no matter what it costs what the time is, what time of night is gonna get done. But because I am so super focused, what I do is I have blinders on to everything around me. My husband can be downstairs cooking dinner and saying it's time for dinner and I won't even hear him because I'm so super focused now as a leader.

What does that mean for my team? It means that I'm probably ignoring them and what they need as well because I'm so super focused on what I'm doing. So that brought it to my conscience of this is something that I need to work on and taking the personality test are a great way to get through. That Clifton strengths Myers Briggs disc assessments take a personality test, find out what your weaknesses are and also your blind spots. It will help you become a better leader. Next, be proficient as a leader. We don't have to know everything but we have to know what we don't know. And if you don't know, go ask questions, it's absolutely ok. I would encourage each and every one of you once a week read an article or an online book or whatever. It might be either a professional book to help with your technical acumen or maybe for your own personal growth so that you can be a better well rounded person. So take that on as a challenge next, you need to be yourself. Now, I'll tell you a story of whenever I was a young junior officer and I was so excited, I went to my battalion and I was put in charge of 14 people. I'm like 23 years old and I'm in charge of 14 people.

I was so excited and I had no idea what I was doing. And so I thought, ok, leadership, I got this. And so what I did is I thought, well, I don't know what I'm doing. And so I'll just look to my superior officers and they were all yellers. Is that ok? Well, I was in charge of the administrative portions of the battalion. So all the correspondence to go in and out of the battalion, I was in charge of now part of this were evaluations, excuse me, the evaluations. And so I had to take the evaluations into my boss and have them go through it all. And what he did is he picked up his red pen and he just went to town. I mean, it's red everywhere. There's ink dripping off the sides of this thing. It is horrible. And what he does is he gives it back to me and he yells at me and he degrades me and say, how can you be an officer in the United States Navy and give me this type of crap? Like wow. Ok. That was a real, ok. Ok. Got it. Got it. So I take this back and I go back to my team of 14 people and say, wow, wow, we got to make this better. And so we worked all night to make these evaluations better. And so the next morning I'm all ready.

I've got my stack and I go in and I give it to my boss and he takes out that red pen again and just goes to town red everywhere. I mean, it's like a massacre. It's like we have to call in C SI it's horrible. And again he yells at me and he degrades me. Get out of my office. I'm like, huh? Ok. Got it, got it. Ah Yeah, you had to try that leadership thing. Yeah. Ok. Yeah. All my, all my bosses are yellers. So maybe that's what you do. Is you yell at people to make them do what you want. Ok. Ok. I got this. So I take that stack in and I go into my team and I slam it down on the desk and I yell at them and I degrade them and like, how dare you be in the United States Navy? Give me this kind of crap. Just like my boss had done to me. I went out and I slammed the door wasn't my best hour and I knew when I was doing it didn't feel right like in my chest. How did I yell at people like that? That's not me. That's, that's not how I wanna lead people. I'm, I wanna be compassionate and empathetic. And I had to go home that night. I really cut out to be a United States naval officer and I wish I could go back and say, I'm sorry.

And you know what my team they saw right through me. They knew that wasn't me, but I was trying to be somebody else. I had destroyed all trust that I had with that team. And it took me a long time to try to get it back. So you have to be yourself. Don't be like me. You had to be yourself. So we've talked about knowing ourselves. Now, let's talk about getting to know your team. I want to introduce you to Rudy. Now, after I left military service, I worked for a couple of different companies and then wound up working for a mid size company and Rudy was the president and CEO. Now I'm a particular type of engineer and for anybody who's a geotechnical earthquake engineer, they all know that Rudy is like one of the original rock stars. He's like, really famous in our community and he's like our CEO and he's like, so nice. And I'm like, wow, this is so awesome to work for Rudy. Well, Rudy worked in Atlanta and I worked in the San Francisco Bay area. Well, Rudy had to come out for a meeting one time and I just joined the company and he comes into my office and he sits down and says, hey, Jen, it's really nice to meet you. Ok.

So first off, I'm completely shocked that the president of an 800 person company knows who I am. I'm like, wow. And we start to talk and had this wonderful conversation and he says, hey, you know what, Jen? It's been really great to talk to you. Uh Great work you're doing here. I gotta go talk to somebody down the hall and so he left and I'm thinking, wow, man, I, I feel really special inside. Well, about six months go by and Rudy has to come back out to the Bay area for a meeting and he comes back in my office and says, sounds like, hey, Jen, how are you doing? I'm like, I'm great, Rudy and he says, hey, how's that project that you're working on in Alaska? And I was like, wow, you remember the project that I was working on? He says, you know, and, um, did you ever go on that vacation with your husband, Sean? Ok. Well, first off, I'm trying to remember what vacation I went on. But then I'm thinking, wait, he remembered my husband's name and he remembered that I was going on vacation. And I'm like, I'm just shocked. And then he starts to talk about like, hey, you know what? You're doing really great research, you need to publish that. I'm gonna go talk to your boss Chris because you really need to get this work into a journal paper. Wow.

He believes in me like, wow, like I'm like all kinds of warm and fuzzy on the inside, you know, Rudy leaves and, and he goes to talk to somebody else down the hall. And so I go into the break room and I'm talking to one of my colleagues. I'm like, you will not believe what just happened. Rudy came into my office. He remembered my name. He remembered that I had a husband named Sean, that I was going on vacation. I remembered like my projects, you know, and I started naming off all these things. And my colleague says, well, he has a, a way to do that. And I was like, what do you mean? He says he has note cards and what he does at the end of each day is he writes down conversations that he's had with people and he has a stack. And so that was the Oakland stack. And so he has a rubber band around it. So whenever he flies from Atlanta, back out to Oakland on the plane, he sits there and reads through all of the different note cards. Now, a couple of years ago, I, I called Rudy and I said, Rudy, I think this is, this is phenomenal what you're doing that, you know, that, that you did this, it really made me feel special and he said it was never a gimmick.

He said, I was afraid that I would forget, he's like that my mind would start to go and I would forget some of these important conversations that I've had with people. And this is what he ended with. And I want you to read this family commitment. Wouldn't you want to work for Rudy? We were a family to him. That's what I'm talking about with getting to know your team. And so we always talk about, we have to know the strengths of our team. Ok? I'm sure everybody's heard that. So we're just going to keep moving on. But I want you to think about their weaknesses also. Now there's two different ways that you can approach this. When we talk about weaknesses, we can say, you know what that person is not good at that and we're never going to have them employed in that type of direction again. Or maybe you take a different stance. I will tell you that there are some people who are really good at analytics and math and there's also people who are horrible at writing reports. That's also me. Now I wrote a report once and my boss looked at and he was like, wow, this, this is actually pretty bad. Um He could have basically said, hey, you know what, Jen, you are never writing another report for our company again.

But he came to me and said, ok, this is pretty bad. Do you wanna be better? And it was that point where he sat down and he mentored me so that I could be a better report writer. And what they did is help strengthen the entire team. Now, I'll tell you, I'm still not the best, every writing reports, but you know what, I'm a lot better because he took the time. He tried to turn my weakness more towards his strength and more of a positive. So think about that with your team, but here's the most important one. Do you know their goals? Do you know their aspirations? Do they want to be the president of the company someday or are they just sort of happy with where they are? Is there something that they need tools time, maybe some different software in order to be better? What do they need as leaders, it's our job to develop our people. And without knowing their goals and aspirations, basically, we're just managing them. And you might say that's a whole lot to take in. Well, this was the motto of the United States Navy CBS. This is what I lived my entire time when I was in the military. The difficult, we do immediately, impossible. Just takes a little bit longer. You can do it. So last we're gonna talk about building trust within our teams.

Everybody says the trust is a two way street, but I would challenge you and tell you that, you know what as leaders, we have to get to the on ramp first, we have to show trust in order to earn the trust in return because 100 and 43% you're probably asking, what is that? That's the retention rate of companies with open and effective management. I want you to think back several slides ago when I showed you the 80 the 20 right? We said that 80% of people leave? Why? Because they weren't being effectively managed. Look at the answers that we had, they lack trust, they micromanaged. But with open and effective management, you are going to grow, your team is going to grow. I mean, you're gonna be basically beating people off with sticks so that they don't join your company. I'm just saying open and effective management, that's where we need to get to. So how do we get there. So we're gonna do another interactive exercise. I want you to think of a situation in business or you have not been trusted. Do you have that time in your mind? No. How did that really make you feel? And so if you've ever been in a situation in business where you have not been trusted, I'd like to hear about it. And I'm really hoping that nobody answers this question because that means that everybody has been trusted. We'll just give it a minute just in case. Uh we got somebody typing. So, have you ever not been trusted? What did that feel like? Disheartened? Absolutely irrelevant.

It's like, why did I even show up for work? Right. Again, I've been asking this at conferences and keynotes sort of all over the country and this is what we've come up with frustrated, undervalued. There's one that's like wanted to leave or hit by a truck invisible as leaders. Do we want our people to feel like this when they come to work? This is the value of trust. So I'll ask you again. Have you been in a trusting business relationship? And so how did that make you feel? And hopefully we have more people who have actually been in a trusting relationship. Capable. Oh, that's a good one. I don't think I've seen that one before. So, thank you. Whoever wrote. Capable. Thank you. Got a couple of people still typing. Oh, wow. Lots of ones responsible, willing to learn more. Proud, dependable. Yes, that's how we want our personnel to feel. We don't want them to feel like they're undervalued, that we don't trust them that they wanna leave. Dependable. Absolutely.

We've got a couple more people typing who Proud Pro is rising to the top. This isn't a competition, by the way. So here's the aggregation of like the other 400 people that I have talked to about this. Look at the words, look at how they make you feel they're empowered, they're safe, they're connected and comfortable. We all want our personnel to feel like this when they come to work as leaders. That's our job. We wanna make sure that we are trusting others. And so you're probably asking, well, what's probably the best way to do that? How do we build trust? But we start off by asking questions. Now earlier, I talked about proficiency and that it's OK as leaders that we don't know everything, but we know what we don't know, start by asking questions of your teammates. Think about it. Number one, do you know their name? I know that sounds silly. But I actually went to a board once and sat on the board for three days. Now, I was in the military so my hair was up. So I look like this. And then on the last day we all went to dinner and so I had my hair down like this and the board president turns and looks at me and says, hey, are you? So, and so's wife? All right.

I just spent four days and he didn't even know who I was. Ok. There's only six people on the board. I mean, really? Are you telling me that this, like, so much different than this? Ok. Know your people's names. Do you know their spouse's names? Do they have kids or pets? What are their goals and what are their aspirations? A lot of times I find whenever I'm going into a new position, I start to ask, I don't really understand what they're doing as part of the project. Maybe they've been there for a long time and they are subject matter, experts, sit down with them, go to their desk or if you're wanna go on zoom whatever it might be and ask some questions, get a better understanding of what it is. They do. What are the pitfalls that you need to look out for? Because a lot of times when you're asking those questions, you'll find that, you know what? They're pretty easy to open up, they wanna brag to the boss a little bit. So think about asking questions. Number two, communicate often and with transparency. If you're holding things back from your team that is not building trust and there's another part to communication as well. When you communicate, just realize that everybody communicates in different ways. You know, maybe you were talking to somebody who's in the boomer generation. Now, my boomer boss, he would write these really long emails. I mean, do you guys know what I'm talking about? Right. Those really long emails with every bit of detail. That's how he communicated.

But I also had some millennials and Gen Z that were on my team as well and they were on the chat the entire time. That's how they communicated. Now, if my boss sent that email to them, I'm pretty sure they probably would have read the paragraph and skipped to the bottom. Realize that as leaders, we need to make sure that what we are communicating is being communicated in the right way and that not one size fits all. And lastly, we need to listen. And what I mean by this is actively listen. OK? This is one of my really big hard points is because when somebody is talking to me, I'm already thinking about how I wanna answer. That's not active listening. We need to take in all of the information and then respond actively listen to people. A lot of times they have a lot of information. You just have to ask the right questions and make sure that you're listening because they might have more information on the subject than you do. So I'll just ask you real quickly, what was the greatest takeaway that you had from today? It can either be from this session or maybe you've been going to other sessions But what is your greatest takeaway? What is something that you can start to implement immediately?

Maybe it's tomorrow morning. Maybe it's when you go back to work, we have a couple of people typing, people don't leave jobs, they leave leadership. Absolutely. And like I said, this doesn't have to necessarily be from this session. Maybe you found something in another session that really helped.

Oh, know your peers, goals and aspirations. Absolutely. And think to yourself, how can I help them? How can I help them get to their goal? You really get to know your team as they appreciate your efforts. Communication. Absolutely. Communication is so important. Personal branding.

Oh, that's a good one. So I think you all have thought about like what you can do tomorrow morning and here as we talk about our road of leadership, think about the way that we were leading 5, 10 or even two years ago. You know, when you stand up and you demand things of people and you expect to have that done. I'm sorry, that's the leadership of the past, using empathy and being compassionate. Those are really the traits that we're looking for in the leaders of tomorrow. And with that, I'd really like to say thank you. Now, on the right here is a QR code, it's a different QR code than what we previously had. And with it, if you fill it out, I have a prize. Um So at the end, once I've gathered all of the different ones. I'm gonna pick one of the quizzes and you're gonna get a free prize. Whoever wins, I will put that into the session chat and also into the event chat. I will also notify you by email. And with that, I would really like to say thank you all. I know that we have three minutes left. So I'm going, I could see you all because I'm on powerpoint. Um So I'm going to come off of powerpoint, but hopefully you got the QR code, like I said, if you could please fill that out because that would really help me. And then at the same time, you could win a free prize.

And I'll go here and I'll go to the chat and see if there's any other questions that people might have. Ok, got a couple here so high, discouraged, but growth minded help like that, really appreciate your time. Thank you very much. Thank you Mercedes. Is there anybody who might have any questions? Uh Like I said, we still have two minutes to go. I see about the I am remarkable workshop. That looks great. Thank you, Barlow. I appreciate that. I hope that this has all been very delightful and I hope you all have a really great rest of your conference. Uh We have one minute to go. Um If you will, please find some of the people who have been helping put this together. It takes so much effort in order to get all of this coordinate. So drop a note and say thank you. Uh I'm sure that they would all appreciate it. Thank you.