1967 – Eliminating Lazy Leadership with Chinook Executive Solutions’ Julie Holunga

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1:05With us right now, it's Julie Holunga. Julie, you are a leadership trainer, TEDx speaker, coach, author. You help attorneys, CPAs, and female professionals lead with influence and authority. You are also the principal and executive coach with Chinook Executive Solutions. Your website is julieholunga.com. We've got the link to that to our friend that's listening to our conversation. Just click on the information button, click around, find the show notes, and we've got that. And Julie, it's so great to have you. Man, we got to talking and I'm like, we got to hit record. We got to go. But I just really appreciate the work you're doing.

1:39I'm so excited to share a conversation with our friend that's listening right now. Thank you so much, Julie, for joining us. Thank you, Josh. And I'm excited to have this conversation with you and your audience. Absolutely. Well, tell us about the work that you do. I'm on your website right now and I love this tagline. It says, I'm on a mission to rid the world of lazy leadership. Can't wait to learn more about that. Yes, yes. And that's really, I think of myself as someone who comes in as an advisor. So yes, I may be teaching some tools and skills, but really the work that I do and the impact that I want to have is really helping people change their thinking patterns and see things a different way and maybe see their own role in a certain situation that could be different.

2:26And if they changed a little bit, the impact that they're able to have, you know, I think of like the throwing a pebble into a lake, right? And the ripple effect that then happens when they are deliberate. So, you know, the opposite of not practicing lazy leadership is practicing deliberate and being thoughtful. And we all are so busy in trying to accomplish so much and impact and sell and influence those around us that we often, myself included, I have to remind myself, okay, pause for a second here. What is it I'm trying to do? Who am I trying to impact? And we so often as leaders get so involved in the technical aspect of what we're doing that we forget about and we don't prioritize this other piece of leadership that really is what's going to make a difference in the success of our people, our company, our customers, our clients, whoever it may be.

3:22Yeah. On your website, Julie, you share that your leadership affects everyone. And certainly that's what you're kind of referring to right now. But maybe can you talk about for someone that maybe doesn't either believe that or they don't really stop to consider that, how does that generally play out? And I know, again, you work with a lot of great leaders out there, but, you know, even if it's just a leader of a three-person organization or something like that, we truly do impact the world, you know, in maybe small ways, but, you know, it could be, you know, again, the way those ripples work, a little bit of that butterfly effect.

4:03But can you share or illustrate that a little bit more for us? Sure. So typically leaders come to me because they feel that they could be performing better. they could be having a better impact. And so we work together and it typically is around communication and conflict. Those are my areas of specialty, but also because it's what people keep coming to me with. Like they feel like, how are people not hearing what I'm saying? Or they feel that their employees are constantly turning over and they are noticing that maybe their teams are working in silos or maybe there's a resistance to change or they're avoiding accountability and so we really work on declarative clear communication and I help them the biggest thing I hear every single day Josh is you know I should be having that hard conversation and I just don't want to or I don't know how to or I had that hard conversation and nothing's changed.

5:09So helping them think through how it is that they're communicating, they're influencing the immediate, whether it's a direct report or a colleague or a client or customer, and really thinking through that communication to be clear, concise, declarative, because what I have seen, and certainly the research backed me up on that, leaders who are able to be concise and clear and declarative. They have far more of an impact and their lives are easier, right? They're less stressed. They're spending less time worrying and ruminating about something that's not working quite well in terms of people. And then what happens is that they realize their eyes are open, like, oh my gosh, this is a role I've been playing completely completely unintentionally, right?

5:59Like when I talk about lazy leadership, notice I don't say lazy leaders because it's a behavior, right? It's lazy leadership. It's always unintentional. It's a complete, like, I just, I'm so focused on what I'm trying to do. I didn't realize I was doing it. So we work together to change those thinking patterns, to change those behaviors, to improve their communication, to allow them to see conflict as actually constructive and useful. And then what happens is they go back into their environments with their teams, with their key stakeholders, and they realize something's still not working. They've changed, but the environment hasn't changed.

6:42Sometimes they're welcomed with, you know, great, oh my gosh, this is so useful. But oftentimes there's something still not quite right. so I use the metaphor of you know you take a a fresh cucumber from your garden and you make it beautiful and you water it and you feed it and all the good things and you have this beautiful cucumber right think of that as the the leader once they've worked with me and then you put them into a jar of vinegar right it's going to turn into a pickle there's no question there's no doubt that's what's going to happen so my leaders often come to me they've made all these changes.

7:21They feel really good about themselves, but there may be just a little something that's not quite working within their teams or organization. So then the next step is to come in and move from being teams that work in silos that, as I said, resist change. They avoid accountability. They unintentionally maybe are withholding information. And in our work together, Then they become teams who share information, who are clear about this is the impact I'm having. This is my role and responsibilities, and this is yours. So, Josh, you're going to focus on this. I'm going to focus on this. When conflict comes up, it's not about you and me.

8:04We make it about the task. We are innovative. So we're not losing people. We're just doing better at what we do. So we communicate well. That builds trust. we share goals and all of a sudden we are far more of a productive and value-add team because we're cohesive we're aligned and I hear it all the time from my clients like oh my gosh this is just so much easier I'm not as stressed I know who I need to go to to share information if we're in a sales, if we have a great sales opportunity, I know who to bring in. I know who has a really good pulse on the industry or what's going on. So all of a sudden, it's just like, they always say to me, like, you just fixed our people.

8:55Life is easier, which is, you know, I love to hear that because that's truly what I feel that I'm here to do. Yeah, clearly. Tell me just a little bit more about the work you do. So, you know, I'm on your website right now and, you know, hovering over services here. I see that you're involved in retreats, training, coaching, and something called Emergenetics. Yes. Yes. So I do all of those things. Emergenetics is a phenomenal assessment tool that looks at the way people communicate. And it's really, it simplifies human behavior. So it looks at how we prefer to think and how we behave. And that's where I always start because it sheds a light for the teams that I work with on, oh, this is why Josh is always asking why we're doing something, right?

9:46Okay, he's got an analytical mind. So all of a sudden, it gives people the language. So it's not, you know, pointing fingers and saying, why are you always asking me these questions? But it helps people to anticipate if I need to get Josh on my side, I need to give him data. Or maybe it's someone who really needs to know about processes or needs to know like, how are we connecting to things down the road? So it's a phenomenal tool that not only helps people individually understand themselves and communicate, hey, this is what I need from you. But even more impactful is as a team, it helps people understand who's in the room, what they're going to ask, how they relate, who has that unique perspective that maybe they're not tapping into, all with the end goal of having that diversity of thought, to be innovative, to be really thinking the whole picture, to just, again, be so much more effective.

10:45So I always start with that. And then we talk through about, okay, what are our opportunities? What are our blind spots? What are those threats that we're not taking advantage of simply because of time. And so we paint this picture. And then we start with, okay, what are we truly trying to achieve? Where do we want to be a few years down the road? What threats exist, as I said, in the industry? And what opportunities haven't we taken advantage of? And once we paint that picture, and we see what our team's blind spots are, then we may go into a little bit of skill development. And I say a little bit of skill development, because what really matters, especially for more senior leaders, more experienced individuals is, okay, so this is how we give feedback, or this is how we deal with conflict.

11:33But how do we as a team take those skills and make it our own? What does it look like when we, this group of eight or 10 people, engage in conflict? What does that look like for us? So they really get to personalize it. And what happens then is when something difficult comes up, when something controversial, that conflict comes up, they go back and they often say to me, hold on a second, Julie told us, because I always tell them, you can blame me. If that's the instigation that needs to kind of take a pause, they can go back and say, okay, we talked about this. This is how we want to relate with one another in these situations.

12:13So it becomes less about the individuals and pointing fingers and more like, who are we collectively as a cohesive, aligned, and value-add team. Yeah. Julie, your website is juliehalanga.com. You have a lot of resources, including a link to watch your TEDx presentation, which I highly recommend. Although I have to tell you, I feel like we've gotten a kind of a mini TEDx presentation here on this conversation. You know, in addition, I'll talk about the website in just a second. Would you mind maybe sharing a little bit more about like your, your ideal kind of like who you serve or, and it could be, obviously you could talk about, you know, industries and people within those organizations.

13:00But, but psychographically, like if they're like, I believe in X, they, you might say to them, oh yeah, we need to talk. Yes. Yes. So it's so funny you say that. Cause I was just talking with, with my own coach who I work with and we were talking about like the ideal situation, the ideal client. And what came up to me was I want to have a huge impact on people to then have to continue that, that ripple effect. So the people who come to me and say, you know, I'm in my fifties and I still could be a better leader. I know I can do more. I know I can pull more out of my team or out of myself or out of, you know, the people that I work with most frequently, that's who I love working with.

13:46The people are like, I'm 50, I'm good. We're probably not going to have as much impact on each other, to be honest. So it's people who have done well because they're really strong on the technical side of whatever industry or role that they're in. And they know that there's more out there. And I see as leaders become more and more successful, whatever industry they're in, there is a certain point where they are closer to the end of their career than the beginning. And they're really thinking about that legacy. They're thinking about productivity. And I don't mean productivity of, you know, 20 years ago, where it's like turn and burn.

14:30It's productivity, like, let's be innovative. Let's do things differently. It doesn't have, if we've learned anything in the last few years is that, you know, what used to work doesn't necessarily work anymore. So they're, they're thinking about mentoring. They're thinking about, I want to really have an impact on the greater organization. That might be the company as a whole. That might be a particular section or business unit that you're in. They want to have that impact. That's what's, that's their why, right? They really want to give more as opposed to this is all about me. It's really, they're living that owner's mentality, even if they're not a shareholder or an owner of the organization.

15:17You obviously do a lot of speaking, quite a who's who in your past speaking engagements roster. So congratulations on your impact in the world. Julie, your website, juliehalunga.com And again, to our friend that's listening, just kind of click in, open up your podcast app where you're listening right now. Click on the information, click on the show notes, and we'll have a direct link there. But Julie, what resources would you recommend? So when someone goes to visit you online, what would you recommend they do? I will throw this out. If you don't say it, I'm going to say it. You're a great follow on LinkedIn.

15:51Thank you. Thank you. So thank you. I appreciate that. So I have tons of articles on my website. They're free. There's no signing up to receive them. And there's tons in there. So, you know, if there's a particular situation and you're like, I just need a quick read to figure out what to do with this difficult person or this difficult situation, or I'm thinking I want more or I want to help. I recently wrote a piece about executive presence for your emerging leaders, you know, to be able to coach others. So if it's not only about you, but really helping others develop on LinkedIn, if you connect with me, I have a monthly newsletter, not too much.

16:33It's typically my goal is to write something that you can read in under five minutes. And it's really the issues that I'm hearing over and over again through clients, through conversations that I want to share my insight, a couple of tips. I like to be practical and I like to push people to think a little bit differently than what they've always done. So those are two great resources available to listeners. Excellent. And again, juliealunga.com. Julie, it's been a great conversation. Thank you for the impact that you have in the world. Again, you're a leadership trainer, TEDx speaker, coach, author.

17:11Author, Julie, what's your book? It's called On the Rise. Somehow that escaped me. Yeah, it's called On the Rise. And it is, I wrote a chapter for the book all about my own experience of how I got out of my own way as a leader. And it's all around, all the stories in the book are about female. They're from the perspective of female leaders, but it's a great read, no matter your gender. Excellent. Julie, thank you so much for joining us. Great conversation. Thank you, Josh.

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