Diana Alt [00:00:04]:
Hey, Diana Alt here. And this is Work Should Feel Good, the podcast where your career growth meets your real life. Each week I share stories, strategies and mindset shifts to help you build a work life that works for you on your terms. Morning everyone and welcome to Work Should Feel Good, the show where your career growth meets your real life. I'm your host, Diana Alt and today my guest Eric Girard and I are going to talk about, I don't know, a lot of stuff. We spent 10 minutes talking before we even hit record, so God only knows where this is going to go. But Eric is a guy with 30 years of experience helping improve performance of managers and employees. So we're definitely, definitely going to talk about leadership and management development.

Diana Alt [00:00:54]:
He special actually specializes in the development of new managers. He wrote a book called Lead Like a Pro that's somewhere. Oh, here in my office. This one, I have it. He has it. It's a great book. I've bought it for a few people recently. But the whole idea behind it is to help take individual contributors that just got their first promotion and turn them into excellent people managers.

Diana Alt [00:01:21]:
He's got a high energy and engaging facilitation style that I got to witness whenever I saw him speak at a conference last fall. And he's a passionate lifelong learner and he does scuba and hangs out with his family, including his twin 16 year old daughters. So welcome to the show, Eric. I'm glad to have you here.

Eric Girard [00:01:40]:
Oh my goodness, I can't wait to see what happens.

Diana Alt [00:01:45]:
I felt like that's the first time I met you. The day that I met you. Eric's a client of mine too. So we've worked on like some professional development and job search stuff for him. And the very first time I met him, he said, I don't want you to ask me how I feel inside my body. And I'm going to start there because a lot of times people go really woo. Like you can have very practical, almost like bro hustle kind of leadership development and you can have very crystals and incense and woo and Reiki kind of professional development. So how do you, how do you view that? Because a lot of people think that that how you feel in your body and sort of what's the energy around you as a person matter and leadership development.

Diana Alt [00:02:31]:
What's your take?

Eric Girard [00:02:33]:
That, that stuff gives me the willies, to be honest. I think the, the woo. I had some bad experiences with personal improvement workshops.

Diana Alt [00:02:40]:
Ooh, tell me.

Eric Girard [00:02:41]:
Oh my gosh. Have you ever heard of the Landmark Forum?

Diana Alt [00:02:45]:
Huh?

Eric Girard [00:02:45]:
Yeah, I went Through a lot of it. I did like three of their programs.

Diana Alt [00:02:50]:
Oh, wow. And it was people that I know will, I'm almost certain will listen to this, that were big landmark people too.

Eric Girard [00:02:58]:
Yeah, no, you know, it was. It was fun for a while and then it got weird and then it got super weird and I'm like, okay, I'm out. I'm out. But yeah, yeah, it just. It was way too woo and way too. What's the word? I. Pop psychology. I don't know.

Eric Girard [00:03:15]:
They were making stuff up. I swear they were making stuff up. And it just.

Diana Alt [00:03:18]:
I have never been to any of it. I know several people that were very into it that have varying degrees of woo in their life anyway. But for me, whenever I would hear them talk about it or like, I watched some stuff, one of my. A friend of a friend got really into it and he's like, watch these things. And I'm like, sure, I'll watch anything. Fine. And it felt to me like the worst of. The worst of Tony Robbins, who I cannot stand whenever I saw what that person sent to me.

Diana Alt [00:03:56]:
I have no other knowledge beyond, like, some videos he sent to me. So. Never been to a workshop or anything.

Eric Girard [00:04:02]:
Well, I'm. I'm recovering from all of that. And it left me. It left me scarred and battered. But I will say that even though it was way too woo woo for me, and I'll just speak from my own experience, in my opinion, it's way too woo woo. It's way too weird for me. But it did propel me into graduate school to try to go do something good for the world. So there was that.

Eric Girard [00:04:28]:
That positive outcome where I wound up in graduate school getting a degree in intercultural communication training with an emphasis on intercultural conflict, trying to focus on reducing international.

Diana Alt [00:04:41]:
What was your bachelor's then?

Eric Girard [00:04:42]:
I forgot Organizational communication.

Diana Alt [00:04:45]:
Okay, cool.

Eric Girard [00:04:47]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:04:47]:
So you threw the intercultural layer on there and the conflict management layer.

Eric Girard [00:04:53]:
Yeah, I studied a lot of United Nations. I did a lot of work on United nations peacekeeping and peacemaking as part of my. As part of my work with my thesis advisor. But.

Diana Alt [00:05:07]:
Yeah, what is something you learned when studying UN peacemaking and peacekeeping that you wish average everyday people understood or would implement in their lives?

Eric Girard [00:05:21]:
Oh, my goodness. You're asking me to dig into, like, seriously deep stuff here because I haven't even thought of that since 1996.

Diana Alt [00:05:33]:
We got time.

Eric Girard [00:05:35]:
Okay?

Diana Alt [00:05:36]:
The show in the meantime, you know.

Eric Girard [00:05:39]:
The whole idea, the stuff that I was reading was all about, you know, what it takes to form and execute a peacemaking peacekeeping or peacemaking mission. And the UN worked really hard on that, to try to find a way to balance the needs and concerns of all the different parties and keep them from shooting at each other. And so.

Diana Alt [00:06:06]:
Many facets of life, whether it's actual bombs from actual nations or verbal bombs from colleagues, could we not.

Eric Girard [00:06:15]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was. It was a lot of, you know, they did a lot of listening and a lot of consensus building and a lot of coalition building to try to get people to talk rather than shoot at each other. And so that's what attracted me to that line of study. It's like, how do you keep people from bombing the crap out of each other? You know, when maybe they could. They could hash things out over a conference table.

Diana Alt [00:06:37]:
Okay, I'm gonna go into something that you said. Two different things that I think a lot of people think are the same. Consensus building and coalition building sound like they should be the same, not the same. What's the difference?

Eric Girard [00:06:53]:
Well, consensus is where most people agree. Okay, so let's say we've got a room full of 30 people, and we. We want to build consensus on where to go to go for lunch. And we talk and we talk and we talk. And most of us say, we want Chinese.

Diana Alt [00:07:12]:
No tacos. Anyway. I'm the girl in the order that.

Eric Girard [00:07:17]:
Okay, so you're the girl in the corner that says, no, I want tacos. So let's say that 27 people in the room finally come to the. To the agreement that we want Chinese for lunch. And there are a few people who want tacos, barbecue, McDonald's, something different. Right, but with consensus, most agree, but everybody commits. Okay, okay, and says, okay, I don't want Chinese, but I'm going to go along because I can hang. Yeah, I can hang, because that's what the majority wants.

Diana Alt [00:07:50]:
Cool.

Eric Girard [00:07:50]:
Okay, coalition building. I actually. I've got a really rusty definition of this, so you may have to help me on this one. But coalition building is trying to get groups of people to agree to move toward a cause of action.

Diana Alt [00:08:06]:
That's how I view it. And like, when I think of it in a corporate sense, the main thing I think of is the meetings before the meetings, like when, you know, week and a half, two weeks from now, you have some sort of meeting where you've got to get a desperate group of people to agree on a product roadmap because those are the people that hold the purse, drinks, and are going to fund it. So that is where the right set of people, which can. I mean, it Depends on scenarios are going and saying, okay, who's going to be in that room? All right, Eric, you have the best relationship with Judy and Mary. Can you make sure that you talk to them? Because if we sell this, if we sell our idea to them and we also know the backup plan with them before we have the meeting in two weeks, everything's going to go smoother. Oh, I have better relationship with Mike and Sarah. Diana is going to go do that. And then you get a significant amount of people that are on the same page.

Diana Alt [00:09:05]:
And you've also done like objection handling and things like that before you even walk in the room. It's not that the decision's all made, but it's just that you did prepare pre work to get people understanding what you're about. Hopefully, you know, supporting something that makes sense. But it's that. That's how I look at it.

Eric Girard [00:09:27]:
Yeah, I agree with that. And, and I think that it's a shame that more coalition building doesn't happen more frequently.

Diana Alt [00:09:36]:
I think so many people use. There's a lot of meetings before the meetings, before the meetings, the that happen. But too many of them are focused on PowerPoint decks instead of what's the mission and what people are going to be concerned about.

Eric Girard [00:09:53]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:09:53]:
So that we can shape the mission, shape how we're going to solve the mission. The mission being whatever your goal is. So.

Eric Girard [00:10:00]:
Well, I'll give you an example of what I did yesterday with a potential client.

Diana Alt [00:10:06]:
Oh, right on. I want to hear it.

Eric Girard [00:10:08]:
I think speaks to your point about PowerPoint decks. So this construction company called me over to Seattle and asked if I would walk them through my program, lead like a pro and explain it and answer the questions and so on. I'm like, yeah, sure, absolutely. I get into the room, the president of the company is there, a couple of VPs are in the room, and the person in charge of HR is there and she's sort of brokering this meeting. And she does a little bit of intro and just explains who's who and why we're there and introduces me. And then she turns it over to me and says something along the lines of, okay, would you like to walk us through your program? And I'm like, no, let me ask some questions. So I spent a lot of time asking what's going on? What are we doing here? What are you trying to achieve? How is leadership and management happening now? What keeps you up at night regarding leadership and management development? So I spent a lot of time understanding what people were looking for first and Then I only showed one slide. I only showed the agenda slide and just kind of walked through and explained how each point on my agenda addressed something that they talked about as I was asking questions.

Diana Alt [00:11:28]:
I love it.

Eric Girard [00:11:29]:
And so, you know, rather than boring them with a 300 slide deck, it's like, tell me, tell me what you need. What are you looking for? Because if I just dive in with my deck, I may go galloping off east and really, you want to head north.

Diana Alt [00:11:46]:
There are so many things that are wonderful about that. Let. Let us count the ways. So number one, no one in the history of the entire world has ever wanted to look at a PowerPoint deck. They want to look at concise, well presented information sometimes. But no one ever wants more than 10 slides of anything, especially not when they don't actually know what their problem is. And you walked in not even sure how much people knew what their problem was. Was.

Diana Alt [00:12:24]:
The other thing is, it's kind of like there's usually poor engagement when you walk in with those decks because either the person is too canned whenever they're talking about it, or people are checked out, they're on their phone instead of in the thing. So when you turn it into a conversation is much better. My favorite place to be is in front of somebody with a whiteboard.

Eric Girard [00:12:52]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:12:53]:
Or a flip chart. I've done a couple of those recently. And I'm like, man, I'm good at this and man, I enjoy it.

Eric Girard [00:12:58]:
So, yeah, this, this went really well. There were no phones. Cool. Nobody had their phone up. And folks were taking notes. They all had notebooks out and they were all taking notes by hand. And I'm like, okay, this is good stuff. And the outcome was positive.

Eric Girard [00:13:15]:
It looks like we're gonna. They want me to revise the initial proposal. I then include a couple of things and then move ahead. So that's really good.

Diana Alt [00:13:24]:
So having conversation, potentially more money. Like, is the deal changing? Potentially.

Eric Girard [00:13:31]:
Potentially. Because they want some customization and I don't customize for free.

Diana Alt [00:13:36]:
So no one should customize for free. Anybody that's a trainer out there don't customize for free. So this is great. It's a good jumping off point because I have been working, I work with a lot of people at different levels of leadership. And one of the most exciting things that I've gotten to do this summer is I did a short, like 30 day engagement with a woman who worked at her company forever and got her very first people management promotion. So I did in fact get her a copy of the book. Like Immediately.

Eric Girard [00:14:09]:
Thank you.

Diana Alt [00:14:10]:
But we have talked through a lot of different things that I've given her my take on. She's had the book like we've talked a little Eric Girard, but from the horse's mouth. I think it's great for us to chat about some of these things that other people that are in new management roles because we're also in an era where a lot of people are cutting training. So there's plenty of people being promoted right now into very lean orgs without a lot of guidance because the company doesn't have a lot of time and money to invest on training. So my first question on this lane is in first, it's about just choosing who to promote. What are the top couple of things you think organizations get wrong and get right about promotion, who they choose to promote.

Eric Girard [00:15:00]:
This is classic in my view. What tends to happen is the best financial analyst out of all the financial analysts gets promoted. This person may or may not have any people skills. This person may or may not have any empathy skills, but this person is technically excellent at their role. So they get tapped on the shoulder and sent to the management office or they get the bigger cube or whatever it is. And I think that that's the first mistake that a lot of companies make is they're not assessing people skills when they promote, they're assessing technical skills. These days more than ever. I think that the folks who ought to be considered for management may not be technically the best.

Eric Girard [00:15:44]:
They may not get 100 on that test, they might get 90, 95.

Diana Alt [00:15:49]:
Yeah.

Eric Girard [00:15:50]:
But they need to have extraordinary people skills. They need to be empathetic human beings. They need to have extraordinary listening skills. And then just like we talked about earlier kind of in the warmup, they need to have consensus building skills, coalition building skills. The ability to get a group of people rallied behind a concept or rallied behind a goal and all moving toward that goal. That I think is more important than whether or not they're the best bean counter of the bunch.

Diana Alt [00:16:21]:
Yeah, I agree with that. And it's really hard because like, I think there's an overcorrection occasionally. Like sometimes if you are the best bean counter in the bunch of, you end up getting stuck because they don't want to let you go as a bean counter, which is different from you staying in that role because you're not ready. You haven't demonstrated the people skills to be promoted. Like those are two different situations. What are people getting right though the order the organizations doing a good job at when choosing who to promote Well.

Eric Girard [00:16:57]:
I think that there are some organizations that get it. I think that there are some organizations that understand that just because somebody is the best individual contributor of a group doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be a good, a good manager.

Diana Alt [00:17:13]:
Yeah.

Eric Girard [00:17:14]:
So, you know, I think that there are some organizations to get it. I will say that I don't, I don't know a lot of them that do that. I think a lot of folks tend to tap the best, the technically excellent folks, but there are a few that are like, well, wait a minute, hang on. You know, this, this may not be the thing I have to say though. I mean, especially in my line of work, given, given the area I specialize in, I hear the horror stories.

Diana Alt [00:17:36]:
Yeah, you do, you know what I mean?

Eric Girard [00:17:38]:
So like for example, with scuba, if once I tell somebody I'm a scuba instructor, they go, oh, I could never scuba dive. I had a friend who, you know, who got eaten by an octopus once. So, you know, they come out with the horror stories. And so when I tell people that I focus on new managers, they're like, oh, geez, I knew this guy got promoted was just terrible.

Diana Alt [00:17:55]:
Yeah.

Eric Girard [00:17:56]:
So my experience is a little skewed.

Diana Alt [00:17:58]:
It's really interesting to listen to people talk about what the terrible is though, because I have heard both sides, both the, we promoted the technically brilliant person that doesn't have two people skills to rub together. And I've also heard the flip side where people, this usually comes from people on the team, often that were peers of the person that got promoted and they get promoted. It's like, well, they don't know, actually know how to do our job very well, but they actually do have better people skills. So it's always really interesting to hear what people think is a problem. I, I've always worked in the era of knowledge work, so there's plenty of jobs where you really would want the supervisor to actually have deep, deep competence. But in tech, like if you've been in management in tech for three to five years, you haven't touched the technology you're doing very much anyway during that period. So you're not going to by you age out of being the most technically competent because you've been a leader.

Eric Girard [00:19:02]:
So yeah, I think the best organizations provide excellent coaching training to their leaders and prospective leaders. I think that everybody deserves great coaching and I think that every manager should be a great coach. So I don't think as a manager you need to be that, that person who gets 100% on the technical exam. I think you need to get a hundred on the coaching exam.

Diana Alt [00:19:30]:
I think you need to get. When you're going into your first job management job, though, I think you need to get like a 81% on coaching because, like, most of. The. Most of the benefit of learning coaching happens from doing it. So you can definitely get trained. And I also get really wary when people talk about coaching for managers because too often it's used as a club or only for corrective action. And that is. That is a bit like, we could probably do an entire hour on why that's problematic.

Diana Alt [00:20:08]:
So in your book. Let's go personal for a minute on new management. In your book, you talk a little bit about having a rocky start as a manager. I believe, like, the quote is something. The quote that I was reading was something like you went from being, like, really happy to miserable within a year after you got promoted or something like that.

Eric Girard [00:20:30]:
Looking for an exit.

Diana Alt [00:20:31]:
Yeah, yeah, looking for an exit. That's what it was. So talk to us about why that happened. Like, what was so drastic in your transition that it made you go from loving your life to looking for an exit? And what happened after you hit that point of, oh, my gosh, what have I done?

Eric Girard [00:20:51]:
There were a couple of things going on. The first was, yeah, this all kind of happened. Boom, boom, boom. So I got promoted. What were you doing?

Diana Alt [00:21:05]:
What were you doing? And then what do you get promoted?

Eric Girard [00:21:07]:
So I was a senior program manager in a. In a tech company, in a semiconductor company. So senior program managing, you know, leadership and management development programs, innovation programs, things like that. And I had let my boss know when I started that I wanted a management position.

Diana Alt [00:21:23]:
Okay.

Eric Girard [00:21:24]:
So he filed that and then came to me a few months later and says, you still want to be a manager? And I said, yeah. He says, great, you'll manage your team. So I'm going to promote you above these other two people that you've been working alongside. And I'm like, okay. I'm not sure how that's going to go, because they're.

Diana Alt [00:21:43]:
The way that really feels is the other two people feel demoted.

Eric Girard [00:21:47]:
Yeah. So it's going to be rough. But I said, okay. He says, okay, so you'll take the job? I said, yeah. He says, great. So and so has been a. A problem. Has been a.

Eric Girard [00:21:57]:
A problem child, a thorn on my side, and I want him gone.

Diana Alt [00:22:02]:
Would you believe that? I have on my. You know, I write some questions down before I start a podcast, and, like, usually hardly any of them get asked because we off on some rabbit trail But I literally wrote down a question about this, about what do you do if you go into a role and you find out that you've got a new management role and then you get that bomb dropped on you?

Eric Girard [00:22:24]:
Yeah, that was. Can I swear?

Diana Alt [00:22:27]:
Oh, yeah, we're PG13.

Eric Girard [00:22:28]:
Oh, it was totally shitty. I was pissed. My. I was pissed off at my boss because I'm like, dude, you just sandbagged me. That, that, you know, like, not.

Diana Alt [00:22:36]:
Okay.

Eric Girard [00:22:37]:
No, that totally sucked. So. Okay, so now I'm in a position where I have to performance manage somebody right off the bat.

Diana Alt [00:22:46]:
That was your peer 10 minutes ago.

Eric Girard [00:22:48]:
Yeah, exactly. Now I've got to start a. Now I've got to start documenting everything he says and does and all of that. And so we finally wound up. My. My boss and I wound up spending hours in corporate counsel's office writing up a PIP for this person, a performance improvement plan. And council was not happy about it for the same reasons I wasn't happy about it. But they're like, okay, we'll write a pip.

Eric Girard [00:23:11]:
And they wrote a really soft pip. They wrote something that was actually achievable. Oh, so. So this person follows the steps and does exactly what's required. No more, no less. He does exactly what's required so he survives the pip.

Diana Alt [00:23:29]:
Right.

Eric Girard [00:23:29]:
So now I've got a disgruntled employee who was a former peer who thinks that he should have had my job.

Diana Alt [00:23:39]:
And you had a coward for your own boss who outsourced dealing with a performance problem to you because he didn't have a spine to handle it.

Eric Girard [00:23:49]:
Yeah, yeah, it was lovely. So that happened. And at the same time, this particular organization I was part of had a reputation for not being very kind to new hires. So I'm still relatively new. And I was working with an HRBP human resources business partner on some things, and I mentioned that the cult, the culture was pretty harsh. And she says, this place eats its young.

Diana Alt [00:24:20]:
Yeah.

Eric Girard [00:24:21]:
Quote, this place eats its young. And you're going to have a hard time for a long time here until you prove yourself. And it just, you know, so. So getting sandbagged by my boss and then being attacked by everybody I was trying to work with, to build consensus with and coalition building and all of that, it was just. It was like, I'm never gonna succeed.

Diana Alt [00:24:42]:
Yeah.

Eric Girard [00:24:42]:
The only. It turned out the only thing that was good about the place, the only thing, like, even the food was bad. Like, we called the cafeteria. We called the cafeteria the Tomain Palace. Yeah. I literally got food poisoning eating at the. At the cafeteria. So the only thing that was good about it was there was a lot of money, you know, because of the role I was in.

Eric Girard [00:25:03]:
I got a nice salary and a fat bonus once a year, but that didn't matter. Like, I took a demo, I took a demotion and I took less money to move on to my next role just to get the heck out.

Diana Alt [00:25:16]:
So you didn't end up redeemed you. Your out was to actually leave. There was not. And that's what I find really interesting is how many people beat their head against a wall trying to redeem a situation that has that many negatives. It's so discouraging.

Eric Girard [00:25:34]:
This was irredeemable. It was, yeah, yeah, I missed. I still missed the money because the bonus checks were fat. But, yeah, it was just not worth it.

Diana Alt [00:25:44]:
It's soul crushing when you deal with that. I had a different situation. So my very first management role I took was in an IT was in a healthcare IT organization. And I'd been there for a couple years, I think three years. I'd been there for a couple of years. I was. I started as a software engineer, eventually worked my way into being a senior ba and then I actually became manager of the software testing team that I had worked. I'd worked as peers, but not under the same manager, if that makes sense.

Diana Alt [00:26:19]:
So like the analysts that I worked with, we were all about the same level, but I did not report up to the QA manager. We had to go to the CIO to have a common boss, which was part of the design. But anyway, I got recruited in to manage that team because I had some testing experience. But in the words of the cio, who had been a mentor to me, this team doesn't need to be managed. They've been managed to death. I need someone to lead them. And my boss at the time was like, you know, the director of QA and customer support. And I found out after I got in there that there was somebody that needed to go on a pip.

Diana Alt [00:27:03]:
And the person I. It was the person I knew the least on the team. But basically one of the reasons the prior manager, they weren't like, exactly sad to see her go is because she should have dealt with this situation before. So I had the good fortune that my director let me have some time. He's like, first off, let's see if this person does better. Under the new management, I need you to document X and Y. But there is a chance that this resource may be fine. It could have been that they didn't perform quite right because there was a problem with the prior manager and that turned out not to be the case.

Diana Alt [00:27:43]:
So we did end up having to put her on a pit. But my boss supported me all the way through it and we had it well thought out and she ended up redeeming herself on the pit. I was only on the team for about a year before I got recruited to work in sales operations as basically a solution architect. But she was there for several more years. So, you know, but it still didn't feel good. I was like, I have to do what you want me to do.

Eric Girard [00:28:14]:
What?

Diana Alt [00:28:14]:
But I was not as close to that team either. So talk to me about there's a scenario that comes up. I work with a lot of people that are in product management in particular. I see this with some other roles too where it's a highly influential domain like product. I've seen this with program managers too. And the first people management job literally is a director. And it's not just like an over titled team lead. It actually has response, you know, some pretty significant responsibilities, contributing to strategy, working up.

Diana Alt [00:28:55]:
It's a little different than the person that gets promoted to be, you know, the software engineering team lead over four people when they're 27 years, 26, 27 years old. Is there anything different when you are a person that your first people management job actually is at that director level that people should think about than someone that's in a more traditional frontline supervisor type job?

Eric Girard [00:29:21]:
Wow. Huh? My specialty is more on the lower end of that, you know, the brand new manager. Okay, so if you're coming in, go ahead.

Diana Alt [00:29:34]:
Yeah, go ahead, continue.

Eric Girard [00:29:36]:
So you're coming in and managing people for the first time as a director?

Diana Alt [00:29:40]:
Yes.

Eric Girard [00:29:41]:
Okay, so you're responsible for strategy. You're responsible for a broad book of business potentially.

Diana Alt [00:29:47]:
Like in the world of product management, first off, it's one of the thinnest. Like that's one of the leanest organizations in many companies. Even though product management has had immense growth in the tech world, still you'll go into organizations and there will be 20 or 30 developers for every product manager sometimes. So the same amount of product that needs like 50 engineers to build might need one or two product product managers. So you end. What you end up with is like in peer organizations you'll have an engineering organization that's like director, couple of managers and like 20 freaking engineers underneath them.

Eric Girard [00:30:30]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:30:30]:
And then you would have a director and two product managers and they're working on the same scope of work. Just because the Types of tasks that they do are different. So I've seen it multiple times where people go. And it's, it's a different thing. Like when you're in that you're not managing as many people, usually two to four maybe. And it's not in giant orgs. But I just wondered if you had any thoughts on that because that's something that comes up.

Eric Girard [00:31:00]:
Yeah, that's, that's. Honestly, I don't have experience with that.

Diana Alt [00:31:03]:
Okay, well, we're done now.

Eric Girard [00:31:09]:
Fine.

Diana Alt [00:31:11]:
No, I have another gal that I know works with a lot of product leaders and I've thought about talking to her about it too. Having her on the show and talking about it too. But I know like product management is so unusual because people there are starting to be more and you can come straight out of school and be like a baby product manager called associate product manager. In most companies you can do that for a while. Like they have a little bit more career pathing now than they did 10 years ago. But you're rarely finding yourself in the same kind of situation as someone that got their computer science degree and is going into a tech org. And the engineering orgs are much bigger.

Eric Girard [00:31:50]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:31:51]:
So I was just curious.

Eric Girard [00:31:54]:
I have much more. Excuse me. I have much more experience with folks who like engineer engineering managers who are managing. Huge, huge span of control.

Diana Alt [00:32:05]:
Yeah.

Eric Girard [00:32:05]:
Like one manager, one director has 30, 40, 50 direct reports, you know, 100.

Diana Alt [00:32:11]:
For a while because he was the VP of engineering or director of engineering or something. And the founders of the company, the very fast growing company that it was at, had this weird idea that levels were like layers were bad. So he's like, I don't know what to do. He had to make informal leadership because they wouldn't let him have actual managers underneath him. It was really unfortunate.

Eric Girard [00:32:36]:
Yeah, that's crazy because to me, one of the cornerstones of management is the one on one being able to have a weekly or bi weekly one on one where you check in, check progress, build rapport, all of that. That's gotta happen. And it's impossible with a team that large. Like, how would you do that?

Diana Alt [00:32:57]:
It was difficult. He put informal structures in place and so he had regular one on ones with the people that were kind of the informally dubbed leaders. And then he did, he had a rotation where he talked to everybody, but it took like two months to do it. Yeah, it was pretty rough.

Eric Girard [00:33:15]:
Yeah, you'd need an admin dedicated just to managing that.

Diana Alt [00:33:19]:
Yes. Okay, let's talk though about the one on one. This is a Great topic. Most people suck at them. They're terrible. What's the anatomy of a great one on one?

Eric Girard [00:33:33]:
I, you know, my best one on ones happened early in my career. So for example, Brent, Jeff and Sandy, all these were my first three managers in tech. And just one right after another. They were amazing at getting to know not just me, but everybody on the team. Really, really well.

Diana Alt [00:33:53]:
Yeah.

Eric Girard [00:33:55]:
And so to me, the anatomy of a great one on one is first off, just like what you and I did before you clicked record. We just, we shoot the shit. How's it going? What's going on with you? What's it, yeah, you went on vacation. Tell me about your vacation. Yeah, so just kind of breaking the ice and making sure that the person is okay, taking care of any fires, you know, right away, you know, rather than trying to force them through an agenda where they may, they may, they may not be doing well for whatever reason. Like, how's it going? What's going on? You know? Yeah, like I've had a lot of managers who just dove into the agenda and didn't care how I was doing and didn't ask. And it's like, well. And then they were surprised when stuff was come.

Eric Girard [00:34:38]:
Stuff would come up. And it's like, well, I find that.

Diana Alt [00:34:41]:
The people that do that are also the most likely to turn it into a status meeting. And I can send you status on an email. I want to discuss exceptions and I want to discuss growth and I want to discuss where we're all going. So I get, I mean, there's nothing that's a bigger waste of time to me than a one on one. That is purely a status readout. When I was a manager and I had junior employees, I would spend time on status, but I also would usually meet with them more often than maybe my senior people because I did not have a set cadence for every single person. My minimum was like once every two weeks. If someone needed more because that's how they interacted, then I would do my best to try to make that happen.

Diana Alt [00:35:32]:
And so if I had junior people where it was really beneficial to kind of swim through the status and what are the landmines you're running across? At a detailed level, I would try to do another meeting that was more focused on them. So that was my trick.

Eric Girard [00:35:53]:
Yeah, so the, the sort of checking in personally, how you doing? What's going on? That was always really important. And then one question that my friend Nora taught me was, how are you doing? Let him answer, then come back.

Diana Alt [00:36:11]:
But how are you really doing, but.

Eric Girard [00:36:13]:
Really, how are you really doing? That just shows so much respect and so much honor for the other person. You know, like, yeah, I have an agenda, but I want to make sure that you're okay. And if you're not okay, you know, there's to within limits. I want to help. Like, I'm not, I'm not suggesting that managers become psychologists or counselors, but you know, if somebody's got a real issue someplace, there's the employee assistance program, there's hr, there's resources that you as a manager can refer your employees and follow up to make sure that they're using so that your employees are all right and able to focus on work.

Diana Alt [00:36:48]:
I have one thing to jump in here on that eap. You gotta be careful how you suggest that if you do not build rapport in advance with the person, EAP feels like a punt. So if you haven't built the rapport and then it comes out that somebody's struggling with something, especially if it's like acute and it happened, like the thing with like with you talk in your book about your mom, I'm getting cancer, and your boss Brent saying like, do what you got to do. If that comes up and you haven't built rapport and then you say go to eap, it's actually saying the opposite of what it says. When you've built rapport.

Eric Girard [00:37:33]:
Yeah, yeah. And that's, that's why I think rapport is so important. That's why those one on ones are so important. You know, you've got to build that relationship. If you want people to perform for you, if you want people to follow you as a leader, they have to know you and trust you.

Diana Alt [00:37:47]:
Yeah.

Eric Girard [00:37:48]:
Vice versa. That to me, I think is the biggest thing. So for example, in my next management role, you, you bet your boots I'm going to spend a lot of time in rapport building and getting to know each other without doing kitschy team building stuff. I mean, I'll do some team building and it'll be fun, but there will be a point to it. But who are you and what are you about what?

Diana Alt [00:38:11]:
So what else?

Eric Girard [00:38:13]:
Well then I think like what I love about what you said is it's not a status readout. It's like, hey, what's going, what's going really well right now and where do you need help? So, you know, crow for a little bit and tell me about what's really great and then if you need a hand, let me know. And you know, the boss's job I think is to help remove obstacles, remove roadblocks. If there's something in your way, if you're having an issue getting something done, please tell me and I'll help. Or, you know, and whether that, that help is coaching you to solve the problem yourself or whether it's having a quiet word with somebody on the side, I mean, whatever it takes. But you know, what's going great, where do you need help? You know, and then using the grow model, so making sure that people understand that there's, there's kind of a flow to this. And what are we going to talk about? What's going on right now? What have you tried or what could you try? And then what will you do? So what are you committing to?

Diana Alt [00:39:13]:
Yes.

Eric Girard [00:39:13]:
And then writing that down and sharing it with both parties and saying, okay, you know, by this time next week I'll have an update for you on A, B and C and hopefully I move the ball down the field on, on all three of those things.

Diana Alt [00:39:26]:
Yeah, I think that that's really important to how you handle it because it's like when you're in a one on one. I think there's a tendency for bosses sometimes to ask the employee, what are you going to come back to me and have done in a week or two weeks or whenever we're meeting next? But they're not as great about being reciprocal. Well, you know, and not. That's not to say that if the employee has three things, the boss should have three things because the employee probably has, the boss probably has six other people and their own workload. Like we've got to be sane about that. But if there's one impediment you need me to help with and you're going to come back to me with three things that you've made progress on, like that feels pretty good to me. But so often it ends up feeling like micromanaging or nagging because the boss is not willing to say, I'll be accountable to you, team member, for, you know, running cover on X and I need you to move the ball down the field on A, B and C. Yeah.

Eric Girard [00:40:32]:
And so often I've had bosses who, you know, made commitments and one on ones or made commitments period, and just, it just vanished.

Diana Alt [00:40:39]:
Yeah.

Eric Girard [00:40:40]:
And then they would get pissy when I'd say, well, what about X? Well, I've, you know, that you should, you know, why are, why are you asking me? You should be doing. And it's like, well, wait a minute, you should. You said you do.

Diana Alt [00:40:49]:
I mean, I'm cool with that. But you said you're going to do it. So if we're changing that, we can talk about that. But not a lot of people have the gumption to do that, especially young professionals. You know, they'll just be like, oh, the boss says I should have done it. I guess I up. Well, maybe, maybe not. Maybe your boss needed to renegotiate which things each of you was going to do when people are transitioning.

Diana Alt [00:41:17]:
So there's the situation you had with your manager role that you talked about, and then one that I had were different in that it was within the same org for both of us that you got promoted over direct peers that you were on the exact same team with. And I got promoted to manage a team of people that were peers. But in another function. What are some of the things that you think are important for people to realize and be most conscious of whenever they're being promoted over peers?

Eric Girard [00:41:53]:
I think regardless of what people say, there's going to be some competition. There's going to be. There's going to be some version of what I'll call hard feelings. I should have gotten that job. I should have gotten that job. I. Why is he leading us? Like, I could. I could do that job.

Eric Girard [00:42:13]:
And so being. It goes all the way back to my favorite topic of empathy, like being empathetic toward people and just saying, you know what? I want to hear how this lands for you. I'm excited about this role. I really am excited about leading you all. I realize you may have some feelings about this, so let's get that out now. Let's deal with that. I think that's important because I remember one boss who there was a merger, and the merger was clunky anyway. And then the acquiring company put in all their leaders and pushed out all my company's leaders.

Diana Alt [00:42:51]:
Brutal.

Eric Girard [00:42:52]:
So now suddenly I'm reporting to somebody I don't know. I already don't like her because she's taking over the role from somebody else who I did like and respect. And she doesn't do any team building. She doesn't do any rapport building at all. She says, okay, we've got to focus on NHL. Let's go. And I'm looking around going, who are you? Like, do you know us? Like, you're just trying to get to work here. This is not going to go well.

Eric Girard [00:43:21]:
Yeah, sure enough, it did not go well.

Diana Alt [00:43:26]:
I think that that's a really good point. And one of the things that I really find important to think about, like, there was a leader that I was Coaching a couple of years ago, and she'd worked. She's another person that had worked at a company for like, 10 years on a small team. The boss retired. She was the heir apparent that got promoted, and she didn't have pushback on why did she get promoted. But the transition was still tough for some people.

Eric Girard [00:43:54]:
Yep.

Diana Alt [00:43:55]:
So in her case, one of the things she and I talked about was the need to reset. Like, you guys have been working as peers. You're friendly. Fortunately, she didn't have anyone that was like a best friend where it was going to be ruined by the fact that she turned into. Into the boss. But it's like you have to kind of renegotiate the social relationship because the working relationship has changed. Do you have any tips that you guide new managers through and kind of resetting that social boundary?

Eric Girard [00:44:29]:
Well, this. This gets into change management. So, yeah, so this.

Diana Alt [00:44:35]:
This gets into the manager because there's. There's a whole thing with what goes on with kind of that social relationship. But then there's also, like. It occurs to me that there's a lot of right. There's a lot of wrong ways to do the big reveal. You know, there's a lot of wrong ways for an organization to share out to the team of. You know, a lot. Most of the time, when it's a new frontline manager, it's like five people.

Diana Alt [00:45:03]:
You know, it's not 25 people. It's five to eight people is pretty common from what I see in my industry anyway. So what do you do with those five to eight people that are about to have a peer get promoted over them for change management? Because I. I think that the new manager has responsibility there, but, like, the grand boss, for lack of a better word, also has a responsibility. What do you think is a really good model for change management in that?

Eric Girard [00:45:31]:
Well, I'll tell you how not to do it. This actually happened in one of my companies where I want to hear how to do it.

Diana Alt [00:45:36]:
Let's go.

Eric Girard [00:45:37]:
One of my peers got promoted over all of us. So it was a team of like seven or eight. And I was in contention for that job, and so was my friend Tim. And Tim and I had talked and we had decided that regardless of which one of us got promoted, we'd be happy working for the other guy.

Diana Alt [00:45:56]:
About the third guy, we didn't.

Eric Girard [00:45:58]:
We didn't know about the third person.

Diana Alt [00:45:59]:
Oh, no.

Eric Girard [00:46:00]:
So this third person gets promoted, and the announcement was made at a team meeting in front of all of us.

Diana Alt [00:46:07]:
Okay.

Eric Girard [00:46:09]:
And so, like, I I think, I think I had heard, but I didn't say anything because I didn't know who had heard. But Tim was blindsided and he's like, what the, like, what's this? She was even in contention.

Diana Alt [00:46:25]:
What's the right way to do it?

Eric Girard [00:46:28]:
Well, take all the, Take everybody aside. If you can, take everybody aside one on one, especially if people are in contention for that job, take people aside one on one and say, hey, listen, I just want to let you know that this is, this is the new thing. And then be ready for what I call the change curve. So this, this is based on Elizabeth Kubler Ross's work on grief and death and dying.

Diana Alt [00:46:54]:
Okay.

Eric Girard [00:46:55]:
It's a, it's a much simplified version of her change curve. And so I call this dreck. Denial, resistance, exploration, commitment. So it's denial, Denial, resistance, exploration and commitment. Okay, so, and this may take a while for people to get through, but everybody's going to go through this curve at their own speed and you need to allow them to do it. But people are going to deny that the change is happening or denial that it's going to affect them. At some point they're going to resist and put up blocks and barriers to accepting it. Then eventually, and this is where the boss's job is really important, you want to get them to the point where they start to explore what's in it for them, what's the good in this change.

Diana Alt [00:47:40]:
Yeah.

Eric Girard [00:47:41]:
And then finally you want them to commit. Commit. And so denial, resistance, exploration and commitment. You can imagine kind of a U shaped curve where the emotion goes from, you know, positive or neutral down to negative and then back up to neutral and positive.

Diana Alt [00:47:58]:
So basically, if I'm understanding you correctly, at the, at the front of it, like setting the curve aside, which makes complete sense, that curve, you're recommending that the grand boss actually tell the team members, here's what's going to happen one on one. Do I understand that correctly?

Eric Girard [00:48:18]:
I would say so, if you can.

Diana Alt [00:48:19]:
Okay. Do you think that it makes, like, at what point do you think it makes sense to involve the new boss in the conversations? Because that's a lot of awkwardness. Like, okay, well now everybody knows that Tom is the new boss of our team because the grand boss went and told the five people. Then what would you do to actually have that new manager start to step in? What do you think?

Eric Girard [00:48:48]:
Yeah, I think you could probably have, I mean, one possibility, one way to do this is to have three way meetings where you've got the grand boss, the new Boss and the employee.

Diana Alt [00:48:58]:
Okay.

Eric Girard [00:48:59]:
Just want to let you know, Diana, we've promoted Diane, and Diane is going to be leading the team.

Diana Alt [00:49:05]:
Okay.

Eric Girard [00:49:05]:
Give you a chance in private to ask any questions and kind of clarify things.

Diana Alt [00:49:09]:
Okay.

Eric Girard [00:49:11]:
Logistically, that may not work out with a large team. And so then the grand boss has to really think about, how are you going to do this reveal in a way that isn't just a. A big matzo ball.

Diana Alt [00:49:23]:
Good. Yeah.

Eric Girard [00:49:25]:
You know, but, you know, let's say you've got a large team and you haven't got the time to go through one by one by one. How can you bring everybody together for the purpose of the reveal in such a way that it doesn't shock everybody?

Diana Alt [00:49:40]:
Okay. That's a really good way to think about it, because there are times, especially if you have an organization where they're really trying to index on who's going to be the best people. Manager has the those best people skills instead of indexing on tenure and on who's the best functional person. So I went through a very tough situation. I had a job where I had a company that I interviewed for, got an offer to work in one department. So I had every. All the manager and director. Everybody that I talked to was in one team.

Diana Alt [00:50:21]:
And then I literally found out the Friday before, oh, by the way, you're going to be asking for Craig instead of Julie whenever you come in on Monday. Okay, fine. That's cool. Come to find out, they had placed me on a whole different team because the original team had not had a proposal come through that was going to fund my role. But instead of rescinding the offer, they said, okay, well, we have a space for you. I never got to talk to any of those people. And the culture, it was awful. The culture on the team that I went to was one that valued tenure above Dan near anything.

Diana Alt [00:51:02]:
So there was a woman there that had been promoted. She'd worked at the company for years. She'd been promoted for the first time after 10 or 12 years. And she could never wrap her head around why I would be a new hire coming in to lead a different team, but at the same level of management because she had, like, customer support, and I had QA and business analysts. And I mean, to tell you, from the very first day, she and another person that didn't understand that spent. They undermined me.

Eric Girard [00:51:33]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:51:34]:
Every day that I was there, I stayed there for three years because I'm stubborn. I should have left after a year, but it was bull. It rose to the level of Bullying. It was terrible. And it was all because, you know, like, they changed the game. There was a lot of different moving pieces that weren't handled very well. But I think even if I had interviewed in that team for that BO for that role, that it still would have been a problem because none of them could wrap their head around how could an outsider possibly be good? Oh, and real, really one of the things I knew was audit, like, and they had failed. They had failed a socks audit or a SAS 70 audit, same kind of thing.

Diana Alt [00:52:16]:
But they had failed the tech side of an audit and they were having to remediate that. And I had audit experience and so I could come in and help drive that. And that right there would have been enough to justify someone new coming in because if they had that competency, they wouldn't have failed the audit. But what are the top two mindset shifts that new leaders need to be aware of? So for the leader themselves, what are one or two mindset shifts that they need to make in order to be successful?

Eric Girard [00:52:49]:
Yep. I think the first one is shifting from I am a high performing doer to I am a leader. I think that's really important, you know, rather than. Because if you don't make that mindset shift of moving from doer to leader, then the temptation to want to backslide into what you were great at when things go wrong.

Diana Alt [00:53:18]:
Right. That's a really good one. I appreciate that. And also, like, I'm gonna. This is my hot take. You can't say I'm a high performing leader yet. So if you have high performer as part of an identity, but you are a people leader for the first time, it's gonna take a minute before you can attach that to your leadership. That's not to say that fundamentally, like, as a human, you're not a high performer, but you're not there yet.

Diana Alt [00:53:50]:
If you try to say I'm a high performing leader immediately, you're going to miss opportunities to coach. You're going to be more likely to make mistakes, but not acknowledge them and correct them, which can damage rapport and like all of those kinds of things. So I think that's really good. Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about empathy for one minute. I know we probably should have talked about this at the beginning because it's one of your favorite topics, but when I talk about empathy and something I was like riffing on and researching is the difference between empathy and compassion, because a lot of people think that they're the same. I've had people say no you want to be compassionate at work, not empathetic. I don't think anybody knows what the words mean anymore.

Diana Alt [00:54:46]:
So can you talk to us about how you define empathy? Yeah, go ahead.

Eric Girard [00:54:52]:
So my, my favorite, my favorite author on this topic is Brene Brown, our.

Diana Alt [00:54:57]:
Lady queen of courage and vulnerability. Dr. Brene Brown.

Eric Girard [00:55:02]:
Yes. Yeah. Brene Brown is amazing, super duper smart. And there's an animated short on YouTube where somebody has animated a talk she gave on the difference between empathy and sympathy.

Diana Alt [00:55:22]:
Oh.

Eric Girard [00:55:23]:
And it's, it's really well done. If you just go to YouTube and search, you know, Brene Brown on sympathy, animated short, something like that. So, you know, imagine that, Imagine that there's, there's two of you standing around a hole. There's a hole in the ground, Right. And one person is feeling really bad and they climb down into the hole. Sympathy is the person up who's not in the hole looking down, saying, wow, that sucks. Want a sandwich? You know, something I can do for you? Get your sandwich. Get you something.

Eric Girard [00:56:01]:
Empathy is crawling down into the hole with the person.

Diana Alt [00:56:05]:
Yeah.

Eric Girard [00:56:06]:
And listening to them and really getting it. And again, you know, you want to be careful about this in the work context because you know, somebody's having a really tough personal issue. You don't want to become Dr. Phil. You don't, you don't want to become a psychologist.

Diana Alt [00:56:22]:
You don't want to become a psychologist. And you also, like here, this is the thing that I probably messed up the most. Whether it was leadership or peers or whatever, like I was not always healthy about this. Sometimes you end up absorbing that and then now you're in it too. Especially if it's a work related issue, like if there is strife and struggle due to like bigger things going on in the organization and you're trying to hear and empathize with the feelings, there's a risk that you're going to put on those feelings too. And then you become useless to others.

Eric Girard [00:57:02]:
Yeah. So that's, I think, I think there's, there's a professional level of empathy where, you know, you can sit with somebody and look them in the eye and listen to them while they talk and you can say genuinely, you know what? I, I've been there. If you have, you know, I've been there.

Diana Alt [00:57:19]:
Right.

Eric Girard [00:57:19]:
I know what that's like. That must be awful.

Diana Alt [00:57:25]:
Yeah.

Eric Girard [00:57:25]:
What do you need from me right now?

Diana Alt [00:57:27]:
Yeah.

Eric Girard [00:57:27]:
And you know, sometimes a person just needs to be listened to. Sometimes they might need a day off. And if they need something beyond your capacity, then you can Say, well, may I suggest, for example, we have the EAP program, but to your point, only suggesting that after you've built rapport. So my task in my next management role is to build rapport first.

Diana Alt [00:57:53]:
Yes.

Eric Girard [00:57:54]:
So that when shit comes up, I can say, hey, you know what? This is, this really sucks. I'm really sorry you've had this death in the family. I'm really, really sorry you've lost the baby. I'm really sorry that these things have happened. Can I suggest some resources to you? Yeah. And I'll still be here for you. I'll still, I'll still be happy to listen. Like, I can certainly listen.

Eric Girard [00:58:17]:
And we can use, we can set aside time beyond our normal one on ones where you can just talk to me and I'm happy to listen to you, but I'm not a professional. So I can refer you to professionals.

Diana Alt [00:58:28]:
Yeah, I think that also something to understand. This is a thing every. There's different people go different places when they're upset. Some people go to what's more clearly sad. Other people go to something that seems fearful. And I think it's really easy for people to empathize with that. But other people, and I'm one of them, when we're good, when something's happening that is not great for us, it often will come across as anger for some people. You're an angry guy too.

Eric Girard [00:59:04]:
Oh, yeah. I'm. I'm not a nice person when I'm upset.

Diana Alt [00:59:07]:
Yeah, I'm. I'm not. I. Yes to all of that. And I ended up. I ended up discovering some personality models after I left corporate that if I would have had them five years earlier, like my professional life might be significantly different. But something I've discovered is that it is just as important to be able to sit with people in anger as it is in sadness. And where a lot of people get lost is if their personality shows anger first before they would showcase sadness, they will get written off as they're just a complainer.

Diana Alt [00:59:48]:
They're just this, they're just that. I don't think that that's fair. I mean, it is on the person. It is on us all professionals to understand a little bit about how they're perceived. But it's very easy to discard the concerns of someone who tilts towards anger or seeming like they're angry instead of tilting towards sad or other emotions. Yeah, I've experienced the heart draw out the heart springs. Yeah. We could do this all day.

Eric Girard [01:00:19]:
We could.

Diana Alt [01:00:20]:
We're not gonna. Because both of us have Things to do. But I do have a little bit.

Eric Girard [01:00:24]:
Of sickness anyway, so.

Diana Alt [01:00:26]:
What'd you say?

Eric Girard [01:00:26]:
I said I'm sick of this anyway, so.

Diana Alt [01:00:28]:
Well, I got a little like lightning round. That's not really a lightning round is what I call it. So we're just gonna go through a couple more questions and then we'll let you talk about what you're working on and where people can find you. I've got some banners I've been putting up for people watching.

Eric Girard [01:00:44]:
Yeah, very clever.

Diana Alt [01:00:45]:
We'll do that part. So my first question. What is the worst piece of career advice you've ever received?

Eric Girard [01:00:54]:
Maybe this isn't the job for you.

Diana Alt [01:00:57]:
Whoa, I need to hear more about that.

Eric Girard [01:00:59]:
Yeah, this happened in my last role actually. I was in a team meeting with my manager and my team, my whole team, they had all flown in. We're having a meeting, we're talking. I was disagreeing with something that was coming up. My boss pulls me out of the room, takes me into a crowded break room where people are getting coffee and so on. Takes me to a corner of this break room and says, this is where coaching comes in. Maybe this isn't the job for you.

Diana Alt [01:01:29]:
I want to punch a wall right now on your behalf. Four years ago when that happened. Because that's one of those destructive uses of coaching.

Eric Girard [01:01:38]:
Yeah, exactly. It was horrible. Yeah, I, I am that person. Did not last long in the organization. Thank goodness.

Diana Alt [01:01:45]:
Oh, okay, good.

Eric Girard [01:01:46]:
So that was the worst piece of career advice I got.

Diana Alt [01:01:49]:
What is a personal habit that's helped you be successful?

Eric Girard [01:01:53]:
I live by my calendar. If it's on the count, if it's on the calendar, it gets done. So I treat my calendar like a to do list and I will make little, little appointments for myself. Little 15, 30 minutes appointments to. To get a task finished and then it's done. And then, you know, it's not on a huge, depressing, never ending to do list. It's on the calendar to get done Tuesday at 2pm and then it's. It happens.

Diana Alt [01:02:22]:
Yeah, I do. I'm very calendar driven too because I run an appointment based business and you know that from having run a consulting business, I tend to manage a lot of things based on energy. So I have all my client appointments and like certain bigger things that land on the calendar. But for the 15 minute task, I put a reminder or like a task reminder thingy on my Google calendar and then I only let myself have so many of those that would be on any given day and then I can look at the day and say, oh, well, my energy for that looks the best here. So that's a great suggestion. Last one is, what's something you changed your mind about recently?

Eric Girard [01:03:10]:
Work related, but also not work related. I had it in my head, I've had it in my head since about 2018, 2019, that I was going to retire or semi retire early and go teach scuba someplace tropical.

Diana Alt [01:03:25]:
Oh, okay.

Eric Girard [01:03:26]:
So that was my, that was my retirement plan was I was going to knock off work a little early, retire about 60, 20, 30, and I was going to go to Hawaii or Roatan or Raja Ampat and teach scuba. So I was all excited about that. So I went through all the certification process to become not just a scuba instructor, but a master scuba diver trainer. So I became, I kind of was on my way toward becoming the person who teaches instructors how to teach. Like that's where I was headed.

Diana Alt [01:04:00]:
Okay.

Eric Girard [01:04:01]:
And I had a student in my last class, actually, this just happened. Student got hurt, something went wrong, he got hurt, he's fine, everything's okay. But he got hurt. And I realized just the extent of liability that I was personally responsible for.

Diana Alt [01:04:22]:
Yeah.

Eric Girard [01:04:22]:
Like I have an LLC for my scuba business. I have a million dollars of insurance. I have all these waivers and I could still get sued.

Diana Alt [01:04:33]:
Yeah.

Eric Girard [01:04:33]:
And, and not just, not just, not just getting my hand slapped, like life altering lawsuit sort of stuff. And I'm like, okay, I don't, I don't, I don't think I really signed up for that.

Diana Alt [01:04:46]:
Right.

Eric Girard [01:04:47]:
And regardless, teaching scuba was starting to get really stressful. It was, it was starting to make me not enjoy teaching scuba anymore because new scuba divers do stupid things. They, they do amazingly stupid things underwater. Like they're trying to drown themselves. And I'm like, oh my God. Like, I don't need this.

Diana Alt [01:05:07]:
I don't need you to commit suicide on my scuba class.

Eric Girard [01:05:11]:
Yeah. Like, go drag yourself on your own time. So I actually, just before this, before this podcast, I actually just did something called putting myself on non teaching status where I have a different level of insurance that covers me in case something comes up from something I did previously and I'm not going to renew my membership. And so I'm still around, but I'm not teaching. I'm not, I'm not.

Diana Alt [01:05:37]:
Wow.

Eric Girard [01:05:39]:
Yeah. I'm like, I'm not.

Diana Alt [01:05:41]:
That's kind of a big, you know, shift for you and your family to try to figure out, what does this mean?

Eric Girard [01:05:46]:
Well, you know, is. And it isn't. Because to me, the attraction was to, to be diving someplace Tropical. And I thought that.

Diana Alt [01:05:58]:
Huh, you could still semi retire and go dive and do.

Eric Girard [01:06:02]:
Exactly, exactly. So you know, the thing was that I was going to be doing this, this little thing on the side, but teaching scuba is a good way to lose money and get stressed out in the process. So I'm just, I'm going to keep diving like monthly at least, but I'm not going to teach.

Diana Alt [01:06:22]:
Well, I appreciate you saying that. And also I know like for the listeners who are concerned, Eric's situation with the person that got hurt was fully investigated and you didn't do anything wrong. You didn't do anything wrong. Everything's fine.

Eric Girard [01:06:39]:
Everything's fine.

Diana Alt [01:06:40]:
But. Well, thank you for sharing that. That's a pretty vulnerable moment and I really love when people share something in that that is not necessarily directly related to their job. So Eric, it's been wonderful. Tell people where they can find you, what kind of opportunity to work with you, get to know you, you want them to know about, and then we'll close.

Eric Girard [01:07:02]:
Yeah. So easiest is LinkedIn. I'm Eric P. Girard on LinkedIn and then you can also find me on my website, gerardtrainingsolutions.com and if you would like to talk about management development and leadership development, especially helping new managers transform from being great individual contributors to outstanding people managers, look me up.

Diana Alt [01:07:25]:
All right, great. Well, thank you very much, Eric and I hope everyone has a great day. Hey there. Do you ever find yourself wondering, is it finally time to walk away from this job? You might want to go over and check out my free mini video [email protected] it's going to walk you through the four pillars of an aligned career and let you know whether it's time to start making your move. That's is it. Time to walk. And that's it for this episode of work. Should feel good.

Diana Alt [01:07:59]:
If something made you laugh, think, cry, or just want to yell yes at your phone, send it to a friend, hit follow, hit, subscribe, do all the things and even better, leave a review if you've got a sec. I'm not going to tell you to give it five stars. You get to decide if I earned them. Work should feel good. Let's make make that your reality.