Unpacked with Ron Harvey
People Always Matter. Join Ron as he unpacks leadership with his guests.
Unpacked with Ron Harvey
The CEO of You
Leadership coach Jaclyn Strominger shares how leaders can create meaningful change by focusing on their communication, vision, and team building skills. She draws from her personal journey from unfulfilling corporate jobs to founding her high-performance coaching business Leap to Your Success.
• Bad leadership dramatically impacts career trajectory, while great leadership nurtures potential
• The LEAP framework focuses on Leveraging Communication, Energy, Action and Performance
• Effective leaders get to know their people and understand their dreams and aspirations
• Great leadership requires having and clearly articulating your vision and mission
• Focus on building people's strengths rather than fixating on their weaknesses
• Trust is built by keeping your word and giving people opportunities to rise up
• Leaders must shift from individual achievement to team enablement
• Develop techniques to stay composed under pressure through breathing and grounding exercises
• Create opportunities for team members to take risks without fear of punishment
Visit leaptoyoursuccess.com to download the Unstoppable Leadership Journal and receive a complimentary coaching call to help you leap into 2025 with greater success.
Connect with Ron
Just Make A Difference: Leading Under Pressure by Ron Harvey
“If you don’t have something to measure your growth, you won’t be self-aware or intentional about your growth.”
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Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the information, products, services, or related graphics contained in this ...
Welcome to Turning Point Leadership Podcast with your host, ron Harvey of Global Core Strategies and Consulting. Ron's delighted you joined us and excited to discuss and help you navigate your journey towards becoming an effective leader. During this podcast, ron will share his core belief that effective leadership is one of the key drivers towards change. So together let's grow as leaders. Here's Ron Harvey.
Speaker 2:Good morning. This is Ron Harvey. I'm the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Global Core Strategies, which is a leadership firm. We're based in Columbia, south Carolina. So if you follow our podcast, you know that information. But you also know that this podcast is all about unpacking something and talking leadership and inviting guests from around the world to share their expertise.
Speaker 2:So I really love it that our guests come on without any questions in advance. So I'm not sure what I'm going to ask any of them, but I will tell you we'll talk leadership, we'll have fun, we'll hang around about 20 to 25 minutes with you, but we try to share something that's going to help make you more effective as a leader and what we all know, and all of our guests know that leadership is a challenge and it's hard and it's becoming more difficult and it's changed drastically from when I was 25. But we share that with you. So hang on for the ride. I have a phenomenal guest coming from the West Coast with us this morning, and so I'm going to pause and get out of her way and let her introduce herself.
Speaker 3:Jacqueline, thank you for saying yes. Let me hand it over to you and introduce yourself. Thank you so much for having me on as a guest. So I'm Jacqueline Straubinger. I'm a high performance coach. I focus on a few different things One is getting shit done and the other is really helping leaders leap to their greatest success, which is the name of my company Leap to your Success. And I started on this path and simply, a lot of us go down a path because it's either something that we've done or something we didn't have, and so I jumped into coaching and being a high performance coach because of my journey, which I'll share with you.
Speaker 3:When I got out of college and I went to a great university, I got my dream placement in my career of choice and I say career over job, because there's a huge difference, in my opinion, between career and job and so my first company that I worked at I'm super excited. I'm in magazine publishing. I'm like one of those seniors graduating college with a job in hand, heading to New York city and I had interviewed, I had done all this stuff, you know gone to New York and I have my first day, by the way, which, I kid, I kid you not, I was late for two hours. I was late two hours because I was taking the bus from New Jersey and I had never done that before, or I was taking, I should say, take the train, taking the bus, but the bus never showed up. So I had to take the train and it was like a convoluted. I was like my first day Anyway, I digress, but my first day I get to the office and the person who I thought I was working with and for was not that person and I was put under or working with this other woman and I won't name her name because I don't know if she'll be listening and she was horrific, like she was the worst leader.
Speaker 3:And so when you look at two people, and you look at two people who start at the exact same time, one has a great leader and one has a crappy leader. It's amazing the difference that can happen in the trajectory of somebody's life and business. And so, from that point on, I was always searching in the next company that I went to. Yes, it was money, but the thing that I was always looking for was the leader to lead me and to almost, like, take me under their wings.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And it was something that I actually never really found. So I knew that I had to become that person for myself. And I will say this it's very difficult to do. And so in my career I mean, I did great. I moved up, I got to the making, the great six figures. I'm doing all these amazing things, but something was always missing, like in what I was doing. And then I, you know, then you do the life things right. I meet my husband, we get married, we move out in New York city, we move back to Boston, have kids. I'm still in magazine publishing.
Speaker 3:And then it was one of those days when I wake up in the morning and I had this humungo aha moment, like well, there was like two twice Once when I told my boss that I was pregnant I was VP of sales for a company and I was pregnant with my second and his comment was oh, that's why the CEO hates hiring women. Probably could have sued. But you know, he said she said right, nothing recorded. So that was like a huh. And somebody said something to me that said, oh, that's not a great thing for your career. And I thought, huh, I haven't thought about my career in a while. This had become a job, and then fast forward a couple of years later.
Speaker 3:I'm driving my kids you know, they're at preschool and school and I'm driving my kids and I'm like, what the freaking hell am I doing? And I had this major moment where all kind of came together. I came back to my house and I just started writing about what I wanted not what I needed, but what did I want? Where did I see myself? Here I am, I've gone to this. I'm looking at my life, where I've been, what I've done, and I kept thinking there was something more for me. But what was that? So I just started writing out, you know, answering questions like where do you see yourself in, not just five years or 10 years, but at the end of the line?
Speaker 3:Like, how do you want to be able to look back and have, and what do you want people to say, and what do you want? Where do you want to go? Like, how do you want to be able to look back and have, and what do you want people to say, and what do you want? Where do you want to go? Like, where are places that you want to travel? What are the things that you know? What's the impact that you want to make on the world, like how do you want to lead a legacy, and what is that? And I, I'm writing, writing, writing. And it was from that moment on that we made major shifts, because I decided that right then and there I picked up the phone, called my boss, I told him I was done. I don't recommend everybody doing this.
Speaker 3:And then I called my husband talk to your partner first just saying but then I started crafting the vision for our family, saying but then I started crafting the vision for our family, and it was then that we had started to look for different opportunities. I could go anywhere, my husband's more, he has a more fixed position, he's got to be at a place to work, so we started looking and it was then that we just really came together. And I will tell you, I only wish I had done that sooner, because then I became a coach. I started working with people, I started helping them find their true north and that's where Leap to your Success came from. And we developed the LEAP framework, which is Leveraging Communication, energy, action and Performance, energy, action and performance. And that leveraging communication is not just the communication that you say outward, it's everything. It's a communication that you say to yourself, it's a communication that's your vision, your mission, your achievement code. It's all of that packed together, because that communication it's your framework for your life, it's the CEO of your life and I talk about being the CEO of you and then it's the energy.
Speaker 3:I do this great assessment. When I got my certification for coaching, they had this great assessment tool that we could use and it's called the Energy Leadership Index Assessment. It is attitudinal, so it helps kind of unpack, like where are you looking at things? Are you someone that's too compassionate? What are the things in your attitude attitudinally that might be either holding you back or stopping you from greatness, or where do you need to rise up a little bit more? And then we create action plans and then we look at performance, because everything is about performance. We always have to measure, monitor and adjust and it's something that, because of that moment in time and even though I did direct marketing and even though I know about looking at statistics and stats and results, when you do any type of marketing testing, we've got to always look and you always have to have your control and you have to do tests against that. I forgot to do that for my life and we have to.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, when you think about where you were and you had that first leader. That wasn't effective. What are the people actually looking for in a leader?
Speaker 3:Two things Well, a bunch of things. I shouldn't say not just two things. There's a few key things I think that we have to look for and if you're in the interview process or if you're looking internally within yourself, number one An effective or a great leader is going to, first and foremost, get to know the people under their leadership right. So I need to know about you. I need to know what does Ron want in life? Where does he want to go? What's his dream? I need to know that. That's kind of key Number one. I need to get to know that. Number two is as the leader, I need to have a clear vision and mission spelled out, not just for me but for my team. Where do I want my team to go? What is that team going to do and how do people within my charge, where do they fit? Are they in the right spot? So it's asking questions.
Speaker 3:Great leaders are going to get to know people in their charge. They're going to know their vision and their mission and they're going to share it often, like every week or every day, and they're going to help the people that they are leading. Pull out their strengths and ask the question if you are in an area of weakness, we have those constructive interview, informational reports and when we have the annual review. Constructive criticism is what people have called it. Well, you have a strength, let's build that up. If there's an area of weakness, do you want to build that up? Or is it something that would be saying you know what, you don't need to have that, because John over here is great at that, and you two, your strengths and his strengths, and you two, your strengths and his strengths, when we put them together, bubble up. So I believe leadership is about bringing people up, and a great leader is going to do that. It's not about them, it's about the team.
Speaker 2:I mean you work hard, you get to leadership by you know, building up your resume, showing up, delivering, but then you get there and it's not about you. How do you overcome that? Because you know you get there and you have an ego, or you have this personality that, hey, I'm the smartest in the room all the time. How do you help leaders realize that that's probably not the most effective thing, even though you worked hard, you bust your butt. You're proving yourself. When you get there, it's not about you. How do you help leaders?
Speaker 3:get over that? That's a great question. You smack them in the head. No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 3:One of the biggest things that I like to do is I like to ask great leaders or people that are in leadership, and if they want to become a great leader, I ask them who they think is a great leader. Who are the people that they think are great, great leaders? And I asked them to look at. A lot of times I will ask them to take a look at a sports team and if they've played sports because I personally was not a big team player but I've read a ton of things but I love sports. I love watching a game.
Speaker 3:I'm a big basketball fan. My son plays basketball and that's like a great way to see great teamwork and I love it at the college level when you see it and I taught them about great coaches there and what do they do. Take what you can get on the court and how would you bring that into your boardroom and your company, and we get them to look at that and really dig in, because when you look at that, you can easily see being a dictator and telling people and shouting doesn't make a great coach, and that's what a great leader is to their team. They're a coach, coach, they're bringing out their people, and so you really have to pull that out and really kind of figure out and ask the questions what type of leader do they want to be?
Speaker 2:because if they want to be the dictator, that's a style, but look where it's gotten people yes, pretty much done that style of command and control and dictating and being the smartest in the room. How do you help leaders that, when your back is against the wall, you're not getting the results that you want? People have kind of let you down or they haven't followed through. How do you help leaders keep their cool and take care of their team and still do well when everything doesn't look good? How do you help us still be effective for those moments when things are not getting done and you're held accountable for it?
Speaker 3:That is actually, I think, one of the biggest things. You know, one of the things that the ELI does is actually helps people figure out how they actually operate under stress and under pressure, and so one of the things that I like to do is reverse it right. So it's the reminder If something's going down the toilet, it didn't just happen that second. Usually it's something that's been building over time and something's been missing. So then we have to take that and say, okay, guess what? This very moment, maybe this is the line in your sand, right? What are you going to do differently? The line in your sand, right? What are you going to do differently if what it's been doing? And that's where that MMA comes in.
Speaker 3:When I talk to people about that, we always have to be measuring, monitoring and adjusting. So obviously we have to say, hey, guess what? This is a time for adjustment, and yelling and screaming is not effective and you can yell and scream all you want, but it's the reminder to say who is the person that is going to get help and served. Is it the guy that's standing at the counter screaming, or is it the person who is actually speaking? Nicely, right? So it is definitely one of those hard things. Who is actually speaking nicely, right? So it is definitely one of those hardest things. So then we have to teach people and give people tools to say, in that moment when you feel like screaming at the top of your lungs and yelling at everybody because, trust me, we've all had those moments I mean God is a parent, right, right, yes, I've been there and I've been like, and then I'm like jacqueline, what are you doing?
Speaker 3:take a breather. You know it's like okay, so what tool is going to be effective for you? Because everybody's going to have a different one. What can you do in that moment when you feel your blood boiling and you just want to scream, that you can take a minute and calm down and change from screaming to okay, let's work on this problem, let's work on this together, right? So sometimes it's a breathing technique.
Speaker 3:Sometimes I have people do the pressure points where they actually will hold their fingers and press and count. You know, even if it's counting to 10, to me that's like one of the best tools. You can even use it. You know, I've seen's counting to 10. To me, that's one of the best tools. You can even use it. I've seen people in meetings where they're like I just want to scream at everybody. I'm like, okay, put your hands together. You could even do it. You can put your hands on the table no one's going to know, and you could start pressing on the table to create that pressure and take a couple of deep breaths and bring it back. But having little tips and tools that you can do in the moment, it is a very hard thing to learn. But you can't and you know this. You can't change that in somebody unless they are ready to make that change in themselves.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, they have to be ready. Trust is at an all-time low. Leaders are struggling with earning it or maintaining it or keeping it, for a variety of reasons. Irregardless of the reasons, it's at an all-time low where people don't trust their leadership team or their executives. How do we close the gap on lack of trust across our industries, in the workplace, between leaders and their workforce?
Speaker 3:That is one of my biggest magic wands, if we can change that. So I think the best way that we can actually close the gap and how a leader can do that, how do you build trust? Trust is built by keeping your word. If you say you're going to do something, you need to follow through. Trust is built also by giving people the opportunity to rise up and do something good, and so, in order to do that, we have to know, in our charge as the leader, to take those steps. It might be something small, but we have to say okay, I want to build trust among my team. How do you build that trust? Well, it's coming together. It's giving people the ability to take risks and you, as the leader, not scream at them if they fail or don't do it the way you want to do it, or maybe they missed something. But that building of trust, leaders have to know that the people that are on their team, that they are their team and you have to. Maybe it's doing some exercise. Like you know, they talk about team building, right, and you know people have done those things. I got to trust the person back behind me and I'm going to trust them by falling back. So what are some of those things that you can do to build that trust and make sure that you don't take it away, because you can be doing all this work and then in a nanosecond it goes away because you don't follow through on your word? And I think the biggest thing within companies I see is that people promise so much, there's a lot of over-promising and under-delivering. A lot of companies aren't taking care of the people underneath them and I hate the word underneath but you've got chiefs and you've got Indians, and some of those Indians can rise to become chiefs, you know, or however you want, like the rookie player on a team can rise up to become the captain. But it's building people up and remembering that we are in this together. So take everybody together, you know, and get them out there working together, get them out there playing, get them to know each other and build those relationships.
Speaker 3:If you think about and I just, I'm just thinking about Top Gun, maverick, right In the movie, tom Cruise said you need to build a team. So what are you doing? What did they do? They spent a day playing football and there was I think it was like double defense, whatever it was football on the beach. You build a team and you get people who are not normally working together working together. You know, every company has clicks. Every company is going to have like I'm super comfortable, you know, talking with you, but I'm not comfortable talking with the person over here. So what am I going to do? I'm going to sit down and I'm not comfortable talking with the person over here. So what am I going to do? I'm going to sit down and I'm going to sit next to you at all of our meetings. Well, you got to shake it up. You got to get people to know each other. So what are you doing? To build the team, to build the trust among everybody else. So know that everybody has each other's back. Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:Phen, I'm going to love it and thank you for sharing. Is there anything that you leave the audience with? You know from your experiences in years of being in this space and industry and being successful. Is there anything that you leave as just golden nuggets that you would like for the audience to walk away with?
Speaker 3:God, I have a ton, but leap really leap. Leverage your communication really. Sit down. If you haven't sat down and written your vision, your mission statement, go to my website. Leap to your success. There's going to be an annoying pop-up that's going to come up and it's going to have the unstoppable leadership journal and it is all about helping you craft your vision and your mission statement. Get it. It's the perfect time. Grab it right now. Look at that and then spend the time crafting what you want. 2025 is around the corner. Quitter's Day is usually around January 22nd, because people create goals and they just don't stick to them. No, no, look at your vision and your mission statement. Craft that and you will never miss a goal yes, love it.
Speaker 2:How do people reach out to you, jacqueline? I mean, I know you're you're on LinkedIn and I have your email address, but what's the best way for people to reach out to you, contact you? You know, just you know they need your services or want to invite you for a guest on the show. How do people reach you?
Speaker 3:So, best thing, go to my website, grab that journal. When you do it, you get a complimentary call with me, and I would love to have 10 calls with listeners between now and the end of the year to get you to leap into 2025 with the greatest success. That is my thing, that's what I want. So go to my website, grab the journal, get on my calendar between now and the end of the year. You know the biggest thing that I do, I do one-on-one coaching. I love it. I love helping people soar and I love helping people leap to their greatest success and become amazing leaders of themselves and of their teams.
Speaker 2:Yes, Thank you, and for everyone that's listening, go to the website, grab the journal and you're getting a complimentary call with Jacqueline as you get ready for 2025, which all of us will be doing that and so it's great to have a coach in your corner to help you navigate those spaces and places that you're trying to go. Again, this is Ron Harvey coming to you with Unpacked Well. We always have phenomenal guests. We release a different episode every Monday. Stay tuned, share with your friends and your family, just so you can continue to grow as you continue on the journey of leadership. Easier to find me on LinkedIn or you can go to our website, find all the information that you want from either one of us. We'd love to hear from you and thank you all for joining us as Jacqueline and I walk through several things that help you as a leader. So until next time, Jacqueline and I will sign off and we wish you all a wonderful holiday season.
Speaker 1:We hope you enjoyed this edition of Turning Point Leadership with your host, Ron Harvey. We're so glad you joined us. Remember to join us every first and third Mondays and expect to receive real answers for real leadership challenges. Until next time, make a difference where you are and with what you have. There are those who are counting on you for effective leadership.
