Unpacked with Ron Harvey
People Always Matter. Join Ron as he unpacks leadership with his guests.
Unpacked with Ron Harvey
The Do Better Plan: Why Micromanagement Kills Organizations
Ken shares his leadership expertise from 20+ years in franchises, nonprofit work, and ministry, focusing on how to build organizational trust through intentional team development.
• Effective leaders develop other leaders, empowering teams rather than becoming bottlenecks
• Most organizations look for polished resumes when they should focus on developing existing talent
• Regular one-on-ones with clear goals and expectations create accountability and trust
• The Working Genius framework helps place team members in positions where they naturally excel
• Promoting top performers to management requires intentional development support
• Executive presence sets the tone for organizational culture and performance expectations
• Time management and avoiding overcommitment are essential for maintaining trust
• "Be where your feet are" - being fully present shows people they're valued
Connect with Ken through LinkedIn for professional inquiries and discussions about team development, or follow his more personal content on Instagram.
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.”
Learn more about Global Core Strategies
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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 Unpacked Podcast with your host leadership consultant, ron Harvey of Global Core Strategies and Consulting. Ron believes that leadership is the fundamental driver towards making a difference. So now to find out more of what it means to unpack leadership, here's your host, ron Harvey.
Speaker 2:Good morning. This is Ron Harvey. I'm the vice president, chief operating officer of Global Core Strategies and Consulting, a professional leadership development firm. We spend all our time helping organizations create sustainable leaders to run your organization for the foreseeable future. That's the reality, and what we've done when I first started in leadership is not what I can do today and expect to be around tomorrow. So we talk about how has it changed and what do leaders need to embrace, and we spend all of our time doing that. We love it. We enjoy it. I'm a veteran. My wife and I run the company.
Speaker 2:I've been doing it for 11 years but we found a nice opportunity to share with you some of the things that we've learned over the course of all that time from our military time to our company that we share on this podcast. The beauty of it is I bring people from all walks of life, from all around the globe to talk about their own experience, and that's why it's called Unpacked. So I'm happy to say that we're going to talk. We're going to talk openly, but we will talk leadership and I give our guests a chance to really share their perspective, and I love that. Our community accepts it's a perspective and everybody has that. So we want to ask Ken to come on off a mute. I'm going to hand him the microphone. He's out in Austin Texas, another hot place like South Carolina.
Speaker 2:That's right, it's a different hot, it's a different hot, it's a different barbecue too. So, right Well, thank you, man, for joining us. Let me hand you the microphone.
Speaker 3:However, you want to introduce yourself, I invite you to do so and then we'll dive into some of the fun stuff. Yeah, ron, thanks so much for having me on. I love talking, leadership and just learning from each other. I think it's so great and that's what I've learned in the last 20 years plus of being a part of franchises Applebee's, bailey's, sports Bar and Grill, been in nonprofit world for almost 20 years now, and before getting into all that, I was coaching basketball, so learning how to coach and lead people from right out of college all the way through my professional career. So I love helping people, I love helping organizations and really I like to dive into kind of team dynamics right, like how is your team functioning? What are the pain points that you're experiencing? I think a lot of times, what we'll see as leaders and we'll see as bosses will usually have one or two employees where the best plan that they have is do better. But do better is not a plan.
Speaker 2:And so what I?
Speaker 3:try to do is I try to come alongside them and say what is your plan to help your team actually do better? And that is one of the things that people like to. People like to ask a lot of questions around Like that is a good question. I have only told them just to be be be better at what they're doing, rather than giving them an action plan following up with accountability and giving them real practical steps in becoming a better individual as well as a better team member. So I love doing that and love learning from guys like you as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, appreciate it, ken. I mean, we'll learn from each other on here, and that's the beauty of it is, school is always class is always in session on this podcast, so we're going to learn from each other. Have fun. You're also in the ministry too, aren't you, ken? Yes, yes.
Speaker 3:Yes, I'm an executive pastor currently at Life Family Church. We have seven different locations, about 3,500 people on a weekend and 50 employees, so we've got we've got a lot going on and I've learned a lot of how to translate from a nonprofit world to for-profit world and back and forth. So it's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when you're in that space, you know you got to know leadership and you got to understand team dynamics. So you know and I'm glad you share that, I mean because it's it's team dynamics yeah, you got to know how to do that. So I want to dive in. You know, when you think about, you know the work that you're doing and you know, based on the experience that you share you had to start really young but you've had a wealth of experience, going from profit to nonprofit, to organizations to a ministry. You know what is the thing that when you think of leadership, what's the thing that's unique across all of those different organizations or industries or disciplines? What role does leadership play? That you found that's pretty common, regardless of whether it's for profit, not profit ministry, corporate America. What's pretty common about leadership and all those?
Speaker 3:Yeah, leaders are our leaders, and the best ones actually lead other leaders.
Speaker 3:And so, when you think of a replication, when you think of empowerment, when you think of trusting your team and raising them up, leading them to lead themselves and then lead others, that really is the thing that probably is the same across all walks of same across all walks of organizations.
Speaker 3:The ones that end up pausing or taking a step back or just not moving forward in the future is because they're not embracing the opportunity to release their leadership, to let other people lead, and I see that over and over and over I'm sure you do as well where you did the stop gap, the bottleneck, whatever you want to call it, continues to be. Well, I have to be the one that makes the decision, or I have to be the one that makes sure that I know what is being done. I'm micromanaging, I'm overanalyzing and instead of doing that, the organizations that are moving forward faster and they're being more productive and their teams are being more productive, are the ones that are saying I'm going to develop you, I'm going to trust you, I'm going to let you fail forward, which will lead to more success as as an organization, and and I think that you've probably seen a lot of that in your line of work as well, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, let's unpack. I mean you gave a lot to unpack. You know, which I love about our guests all the time is they give us stuff to really have real conversations about. That People don't necessarily always talk about in the boardroom or an open forum like we do on this on this platform. Trust is at an all time low. Yeah, you know, people are really. You know, trust is we said easily, but it's not as easy as it is to say it.
Speaker 1:You know, if you built this company or?
Speaker 2:you're the, you know you're the pastor or you built this organization and everything's riding on your brand and your reputation and your revenue and the longevity or livelihood of your organization. For, in reality, how do you get past the fact that that maybe you've been burnt once or twice and maybe someone has let you down and maybe you at some point had to micromanage because your team wasn't up to par yet? How do you get to be more trusting of your team so you can literally do the things that you should be doing and stop doing the things you shouldn't be doing? How do you build that muscle to trust your team better?
Speaker 3:Well, I think what I've experienced is there's especially now, in the world that we live in today, we're looking for more resumes than we are replication, and we are not replicating our own leadership. We're not developing people. We're not taking the time because it takes time to develop people. You're not just going to send them through an onboarding, you're not just going to send them to a class or a certification. You're not just going to get them straight out of college and they're ready to go. It takes time to develop people and what we want is we want a shiny resume that they've already come prepackaged and ready to go, and then we get frustrated why they aren't succeeding or they're not leading at the way that they should. So I feel like the number one thing that leaders can do is spend time developing their staff, and that means regular one-on-ones, that means check-ins, that means setting clear goals and expectations, that means setting clear deadlines and expectations for those deadlines. And when we don't do those things, there's that expectation gap that continues to grow and grow and grow and that leads to CEOs or founders or executives, c-suite, whoever, even managerial staff right at a lower level, to get into the details that they really shouldn't be in because they haven't spent time developing on the front end. And the more that they spend time, the more that again it's a trudge right, like you're just kind of trudging through the mud. It feels like, oh, is this guy ever going to get it, is this girl ever going to get it?
Speaker 3:Well, you, I would say you would. You should probably take a good six months of intentional leadership development and assess that leadership development in those one-on-ones, in those small goals. Give them something that they can accomplish. Hey, follow up with these three people. And if they didn't follow up with those three people, then you can quickly in a regular-based one-on-one, you can quickly adjust them or you can quickly assess them.
Speaker 3:And I think too often again, we just kind of let people run down the road and we're like, okay, great, you're hired, here's your job, go. And then three months later, six months later, we've not even had one conversation with them on what their goals were, what those expectations were, and. But we see that they're failing. And now we see that they're failing. We say, okay, it's time to move on from you. We say, ok, it's time to move on from you. And I got to go find another shiny new resume where if I had spent that six months in development and intentionality, then that person is probably going to have built my trust over those six months and now I can give them more because I know that they can be successful.
Speaker 2:Wow, I mean I love that you land on a model in which I always ask people that you know we on the podcast what's the model? What's the steps? You know practical steps and there's a lot behind doing all this stuff. But I think you're hitting on a lot of things, ken, that are super important. Is the developmental piece of your workforce, your talent, you know, and how much time do you spend in getting people ramped up and understanding expectations? Where do you get to as a leader after those six months? Where's the line in the sand where this person is not a good fit? Is there a time window that you're working hard? You're doing the onboarding right? You're doing the development? How long do you keep someone that you see that's not a good fit, that just they're not meeting the mark for you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, one of the things that I love to do is I'm actually a working genius facilitator to do is I'm actually a working genius facilitator, pat. Pat Lencioni developed this a couple of years ago actually almost six years ago now and I was one of those first facilitators for him learning and gaining knowledge, and what we've done is we've done this. Working geniuses is there's a lot of personality assessments out there. There's a lot of things that are kind of like oh, who am I? Enneagrams, myers-briggs, all that stuff, and those are great things.
Speaker 3:You want to make sure that you're continuing to discover who you are for sure, but you also need to be able to discover how you do things right. How do you get work done? How do we accomplish these tasks? And the Working Genius that's a great framework for that and gives you an opportunity to discover more of that right fit, as you, as you mentioned, right. So it's like maybe you have the right person, but they're not in the right role, and we'll let go of somebody because they're not in the right role, but maybe it's just because you need to move them in a different area. I'll use this example in sales a lot. We see this right. So in sales, you'll see somebody that is just crushing the sales goals. They are like the number one top performer and then you put them into a management or a leadership role.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:And they are terrible at it, right, they don't follow up with any of their team. They're like, oh I don't understand why they're not as good as me, and they get frustrated with their team not being as good as them because, they're not a good manager, they're not a good developer, they're a good performer, but they're not a good manager or developer.
Speaker 3:And I've seen this in resumes. I'm sure you have over and over again that, especially in that sales kind of funnel, right they go sales to management and then they then they don't work out in management and they go back into sales Right, and then they go sales great salesperson back into management and then they they work for three or four different companies and they keep going back and forth. And again I believe back to that first point is that management team didn't spend time developing that salesperson to be a good manager. They just promoted them based on their results. And you can promote people based on results, but you need to also make sure you have a development plan for them to be successful.
Speaker 3:Some people can never be in management and that's OK.
Speaker 3:You need them to be the driving force, the workforce, the sales leaders. But you might you're, you're a lower end sales leader, sales performer might actually make a great leader of a team, might actually make a great leader of a team. You've got to develop and understand what their working genius is, to say why are you working in that way? How are you working and how can we set you up for success, to be successful in our company and, ultimately, our company to be more successful? Because you and I know too the train that keeps rolling, keep going down of like, oh, we're hiring somebody, well, now you spend all this money on hiring and then that person doesn't work out. And now you got to hire somebody else and you spend all that money on hiring and you're spending more money on training, on development, on onboarding, than you are. Or just on onboarding, not on development, onboarding, then you are. Or just on onboarding, not on development, just on finding resumes and onboarding rather than developing who. You've got to stay there for the long term.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you're spot on. I mean I think there's a lot of money associated with turnover, and how much turnover can we attribute to we just didn't develop people at the end of the day, or do we have the people in the right seat for what they are good at versus what we need? And I felt you know I've done that before, I need this, so let me just move Ken over here and he'll get it and I'll teach him and I'll train him, but it's not the best place to have him. So the right person in the right seat, doing the thing that they thrive at they do with their eyes closed. It right seat doing the thing that they thrive at they do with their eyes closed. It's their sweet spot. Like you said, it's the genius part of how they get things done, and so that's important. So you think of leadership and you think of coming into organizations. What do you help leaders do that? Go from manager to some executive level, where now their technical skills won't help them be great.
Speaker 1:How do you help?
Speaker 2:them make that transition where they don't feel less than and they don't keep reverting back to their old, old job or task, so they can feel good about themselves.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, executive leadership or C-suite leadership is is really that empowering, like I trust I am making sure that I have developed and I'm in a continually developing mindset. So if there is somebody new, if there's somebody different, if there's somebody that needs to onboard, how am I helping them succeed? I might be two layers removed from them, but if I can get down to that layer and say, hey, what is it that you're struggling with? How can I help you? Because their immediate manager is probably in so many details of the day-to-day or the week-to-week they're like, hey, if I can just get them to get their job done, then that's good enough, but that's not really development. And so if I'm developing that manager to lead at a different level, if I'm developing that person, even underneath them, to think at a different level, that executive leadership is not.
Speaker 3:A lot of times people are like what? They just sit in their office and they don't do anything. They just check emails or they sit in meetings. The executive level leader is usually the decision maker level leader is usually the decision maker. You have to be able to make decisions that are data-driven, that move your organization forward without emotion attached and again, with a lot of entrepreneurs with a lot of founders. That's hard to do, right? This is my baby, this is my thing, this is what I've got to do. However, your ability to say let's strategically and non-emotion set drive decisions that will help you and your organization move forward. Because you say I need more people in the room than just me, right, I need whether it's a board, whether it's again a C-suite, whoever it is that you say I trust these people. It gets back to trust, right, I trust these people that we are making the decision together on what we need to do moving forward for this organization, because if it's just based on me, that's going to be a problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you're right. I mean because when you get to that level, your skill set will not be enough to help the organization be sustainable or scalable and you got to be okay with what's your new function or your role.
Speaker 3:I think that failure piece is huge. It's like well, I don't want to fail, I don't want to fail, I don't want my team to fail, I don't want this, I don't want that. Over and over again in history, it could be anyone. You've probably heard the saying. It's like Michael Jordan said it, jay-z said it. People have said it over and over the more I fail, the more I set myself up to succeed, because I learned what not to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've learned how to manage this Right. So I think that, as founders and as leaders, if we're not set our setting ourselves up to to not fail to, the company goes under but take small risks, calculated risks, that allow you to say, man, that we failed at that, but we learned something and and I'm moving forward and my team is moving forward because of it- Absolutely.
Speaker 2:How much does you know when you're in a leadership role? Does your presence and, being mindful of that, how much does the executive presence help enable the team or be destructive to the team? Because there's a way we show up that can work for the team or can be very destructive. So when you're thinking about it, you work hard to get here all of a sudden you're there. How much does how you show up, your presence, have an impact on the team.
Speaker 3:I think it's critical, it really is. Again, executive leaders if they are absent, then we're not really moving the organization forward. You're not moving your team forward. Again, I told you I was a basketball coach for several years. Like I love the athletes mindset of I'm going to get in the gym, I'm going to work harder than anyone else is going to work. I'm not just going to rely on my talent or my own decision making. I'm going to make sure that my my work ethic matches my talent or even maybe over over states, overcomes some of my talent.
Speaker 3:And I'm not sure if Kobe was the most talented player, but he definitely was the hardest working and his talent plus his work ethic allowed him to be great and allowed him to set the precedent. For if you're again a basketball fan, a Dream Team fan, he took that Dream Team, that second dream team. He took them to the gold and he set a precedent for all of them. Where they were going, they were coming back from the parties and you know they were going, they were, they were out clubbing or whatever it was. And when they're coming back to the hotel, kobe's coming out the door, going to the gym and he set that leadership mindset, and I think executives need to do that.
Speaker 3:They need to say look, I'm in before you, I'm out after you, I'm doing, I'm moving this organization forward as much or more than you are, because when we set a bar, whatever that bar is set, the people will probably often miss that bar. I'm working out and my trainer is setting a bar and I miss that bar a lot. Dude, you are killing me, bro. I cannot do this right now. But if he were to set the bar where I'm always beating it or I'm overachieving, then I'm not stretching, I'm not pushing myself to the limits that I could. So I think executives have got to push that limit and say I'm going to set this bar so you can strive to continue to be great.
Speaker 2:I love it. I mean because you're thinking about, you know the work ethic of it and, as an executive, you know people are watching you all the time. I mean you're the most visible in the organization. How do you help? You know if you and I are working together and we're peers and then you get promoted and you're now you. We used to hang out, we used to go to that party together. You know, I know my dirt and now you're my boss. How do you help, which is a hard transition. I'm a veteran. That's one of the most difficult things to do is become the supervisor of someone that was once a peer. What are some tricks that you can share with people that are listening? If that's the transition you're making and now you're leading people that used to go to lunch with a hangout and all those things, how do you make that transition without feeling guilty or without being destructive?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I try to go straight into coach mode a little bit. First, I'm their friend, right, as you mentioned, we're friends. So if, ron, I'm going to come to you and I'm going to say, hey man, I got this promotion, I want us to still hang out, I want us to still be friends I know it's going to be a little bit awkward at the office for a couple months, but I want to know how do you feel about this? Do you feel like you were looked over? Do you feel like you were more qualified than I was? I'm going to be there for you as a friend and as a teammate and I think just kind of squash some of that jealousy, some of that envy that just builds up over time.
Speaker 3:And naturally I think people are like look, I got the promotion, you should be happy for me. Well, that's not always the case. And that's like let's meet each other with grace, let's meet each other on a friendship level, and then let's squash some of that, that chatter, Right, and if we get squashed some of that chatter, then it, then it'll help, I think, overall be better together and then if I'm committed to our friendship, then I can also be committed to your development. Hey, man, I want to make sure that you are up for the next promotion that's available within our company, you know, the next executive or the next management, whatever leadership position, whatever you want to strive for, I want to help you get there. So don't see me as the enemy. See me as your guide, see me as your helper, see me as your supporter, because I'm in your corner.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it. I mean because that's a challenging time and I know someone's listening to that that goes through that and you're trying to figure out how to navigate. It won't be comfortable. So what? I love that you didn't say, yeah, this is going to be easy. No, it's not. Yeah, they're going to be like open arms. Let's have this conversation. Some will, some won't, you know, and you don't know what that person. So meet them where they are and meet them with grace and try to help them navigate those waters. And I love that you're going to them versus waiting for it just to show up and then you got to deal with it. So you're some secrets. I mean you sound like you're doing well. I mean you're doing work, you know, with the genius, you're in the churches, you're in the communities and you're having fun. What are some of the things that have made you successful as a leader?
Speaker 3:I would say humility is probably the. You know it's hard to say that you're humble, but I would say humility is probably the. You know it's hard to say that you're humble, but humility is one of those things that you say. If I'm always constantly learning, I have not got this figured out. I need to learn from you, ron. I need to learn from other leaders. I need to be reading. I need to be going to conferences, I need to be taking certificate programs, I need to take continuing education. Leadership is ever evolving.
Speaker 2:And if you think that you've got it all figured out, well then you are a terrible leader.
Speaker 3:You're in trouble. I got it all figured out. Well, that's a terrible leader right there. So I need to be always learning, always open and always humble enough to learn from someone else.
Speaker 2:Awesome, Awesome. As you look at your journey and I'm sure you've made a mistake. What's a mistake that you made that you learned from that and you know that you'll never make that again, Because sometimes we make it look easy. Honestly, we were perfect and we've never gotten it wrong and we've always had. When people look at us and it's intimidating, we all know if you're that person. It's not true. First of all, let's be real. I remember a community that's never gotten it wrong and did it right all the time. What's a mistake you made that still sticks with you today? That is a guiding principle for you to be effective.
Speaker 3:Yeah, one of my struggles, and it will continue to be. I always say it's a tension to manage, right? There's always tensions in leadership and this is one that I'm constantly managing. I haven't figured it out and I fail often at it, but I try to get better at it and that is over committing. I oftentimes I'll say yes to three meetings when I should really only say yes to one, right. I'll say yes to four podcasts when I should only say yes to one, yes to one, right. I'll say yes to four podcasts when I should only say yes to one, right. So it's like man, how do, how? How I need to manage my own expectations. Um, that will allow me, cause I realized when I overcommit, then I'm ultimately letting someone down, which then breaks that trust that I'm trying to build. My dad told me and I'm sure your coaches or influences, your father, may have told you something similar you can build trust for years, but you can lose it in minutes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is the one thing that I've learned over time, Ken, that when you lose it, you're in trouble. When you lose the locker room that's what I tell people. I'm a sports guy too. When you lose the locker room, you're about to lose a lot of games. That's right.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:People are going to be in uniform, but they're not going to be playing. They're going to be out on that field and the quarterback it's like a quarterback that doesn't respect the offensive line man. You're going to get hit more times and sacked more times and threatened more times and because it may look like they're blocking as well as you want them to block, but you'll know that you're not when you find yourself on your back more than you probably should be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, so I love that you're saying, hey, you know what I got to not overcommit, because it's easy to especially, most leaders are servers Like, honestly, and when you're a server and you have a server's heart, you tend to want to help everybody and you can't. It's just not possible. I love that you said, hey, I got to figure out how to manage this and navigate this the only way. I've done it and been successful at it. My team controls my calendar. I'm like nope, Ron, you can't do that. Nope, you got to come here. Nope, you got to hand that off. I live by calendar.
Speaker 2:It's the only way so I can not let people down and I can live up to what my degree of how good I want to be. I got to be mindful how much I'm trying to do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I would say the same thing. Like calendar is everything I live and ultimately die by that. Yeah, and block scheduling is very is something you've got to. If you don't know what block scheduling is, google it, chat, gbt it, whatever you got to do, find somebody on your team that knows what it is. But blocking out your time will make you more effective. Block out your time even for you to get your head around your tasks, what you need to complete all the meetings that you have coming up. Block out that time, don't let anybody else take that from you.
Speaker 3:And then again I would say commit to commit. Yes, so if I am over committed, then I am not actually committed. Right, I've got to commit to commit. And if I'm going to have a conversation with Ron today, I'm committed to that conversation. That's it. I'm not blocking, I'm not scheduling anything else. And then I'm going to commit my next time to whatever is next. Right, I've got a team meeting right after this and I texted my team last night I said hey, I've got something. I'm going to move some things around for us to spend some extra time together today because I'm a commit to you.
Speaker 1:And when we commit to commit.
Speaker 3:Then people will build their trust in us as leaders yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2:The one thing that I've learned, ken, over time, is there's the one thing you can give to people that are super important is time. And if I can spend 10 minutes and it doesn't have to be leaders I say look, if you don't check in with your team, you're showing them that they're not as important as you say they are. If you don't have time for me, it sends a signal, no matter who. If you're talking to your child or your wife or your partner or your church members, or your business or your client.
Speaker 2:When you say I don't have time for you, or you step on time. It sends a signal that it wasn't that important. So I would tell every leader make sure that you intentionally build time to be committed. You know, as Kenneth said, the thing that I was like be present.
Speaker 3:Right, be present with that, because you and I we've had a great conversation. Because we're present. We're not checking text messages, we're not email, we're not scrolling through social media or LinkedIn or whatever. It is Like we're here and we're intentional, we're present, having this conversation and that's what. That's what people want. They want, they want you to be present.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the phrase I use in the kid. You know you, you trigger thoughts that you, you're having this conversation. I use this phrase. I say be where your feet are. And people are like what I said if your feet are in front of me, I want your head and your heart in front of me too. You know I don't want you to be here, but you me like right now for 10 minutes, something that that so you mentioned on there. Ken, as we get ready to wrap up, you mentioned block your time. How important is it that you don't stack meetings like you jump up here in three minutes? You got to be on another meeting, right, you can get yourself together. How important is it to block time after the time?
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, I do that. I do that regularly as well, as I actually use a. I'm not great at it, so I try to use tools. I think finding tools or finding people to help you be good at the things that you're not good at is is part of leadership as well, right? So when I schedule something, my my tool that I use is motion and that motion calendar that I use is motion and that motion calendar. It connects to all my tasks, but it also blocks out.
Speaker 3:When I book something, it automatically blocks a 15 minute window. So 15 minutes after this meeting. So that gives me space. If our conversation goes a little bit longer, then now I've got space. If our conversation goes shorter or is it directly on time, now I still have 15 minutes. I have space before my next meeting. To you know, take care of my personal needs, get something to drink, whatever it is like, set my mind in the right preset to go into this next meeting. Um, so I think that that that intentional, intentional blocking of extra time if you've got a 45 minute meeting, schedule it for an hour. Schedule that 15 minutes of extra space to process and to prepare for what's next.
Speaker 2:Absolutely love it. Well, ken, it's been great man. I mean you shared a lot of great things. I love it. You know, thank you for being present with us and having fun with us as well and dropping some real tips. You know how do people, if they want to get in touch with you, what are some things that you're doing that you know that companies will be going through? Say, hey, give Ken a call, what's some things that will be happening in our company that says I can use your service.
Speaker 3:Yeah, as I mentioned before that Working Genius facilitation, I just finished up with a group of about 20, a nonprofit organization that is growing and they're trying to figure out adding to their team and where their team is and where they need to grow, and I just did a full day session with them, a facilitation session, to say discover your genius, discover your team, how they work together, how they need to work together better and where maybe you need to put some people on your team in a different seat.
Speaker 3:So I would encourage you you know, if you want to dive into it yourself, take that work, ingenious assessment If you want me to help you or help your team understand that better, to be able to partner with you and help you become a better team together to to really reach the goals that you've set ahead of yourself. So best way to reach me is is direct message, right, I love the direct message. That's how we got connected, right? Just a direct message, so you can direct message me on LinkedIn. You can send me an Instagram message as well, if you prefer that Instagram, just so you know you're going to see more of my family on Instagram, right? You're going to see more of me professionally on LinkedIn, but whatever is more comfortable for you, I'm sure Ron will drop that in the notes, in the session notes as well, but we'd love to connect with you and help your team really be successful in 2025.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it. Thanks, Ken, and thanks for dropping that other nugget that your Instagram and your LinkedIn shouldn't look the same. He dropped that in there for you. That's what he's really telling us. I love here. I don't want to see your family on LinkedIn. This is professional.
Speaker 3:Right, right, know your platform.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, get it right. People, if you're listening, we want to have fun with you, but we also want to educate you, so make sure your LinkedIn and your Instagram don't look the same and if you use the Facebook, the three of them don't look the same. All of them have a different reason and you want to use it for the right reasons, or you turn off some people that don't want to see it. You know Facebook. You want to drop a meal. We don't want to see it. Yes, yes, well, thank y'all so much. Ken.
Speaker 2:It's been a lot of fun and, as Ken told you, definitely he's a working genius and I'm familiar with Pat's team and I know the program is really really solid. So, if you're trying to build a team and you need to figure out how to do that, we got a lot of personality assessments, but this is more about your team and how you work, so it's a phenomenal tool and resource. You can always find me on LinkedIn as well. That's that's my primary source of reaching me. Or go to our company's Web page, and you'll always be able to find us there. Thank you for everyone that hung in and that listened to this podcast with Ken and I. We had a phenomenal time. Hope you did as well. Hopefully we gave you something to make you more effective. Until next time, ken and I are going to sign off and tell you to have a wonderful day and we look forward to you joining us on the next podcast.
Speaker 1:Have a good one, everyone. Well, we hope you enjoyed this edition of Unpacked Podcast with leadership consultant Ron Harvey. Remember to join us every Monday as Ron unpacks sound advice, providing real answers for real leadership challenges. Until next time, remember to add value and make a difference, where you are, for the people you serve, because people always matter.
