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Katie and Car
ol talk about Tips 30, 31, and 32 from their book Skirt Strategies: 249 Success Tips for Women in Leadership.
What might you think is the common theme for these three tips? Be the GO-TO place for materials on leadership and team building! This will enhance your power and influence as a woman as well!
Tip Number 30. Keep leadership and team building books on your shelf, including inspiring books on CD. Use the good ones as reference when you need ideas.
If you enjoy listening to audio books or podcasts, there is a pleasant byproduct to this tip. Instead of the news or TV, opt to listen to something on your iPod or smart phone. You’ll be surprised at how much of the negative clutter you eliminate from your life. Positive internal messages result.
If the last audio device you used was called a Walkman (or even a phonograph), then you are rapidly becoming a dinosaur, but we kinda relate to you. Getting into the 21st century is critical to your image at being adept and on the forefront. If you don’t know how, learn. Ask the nearest teenager to teach you.
Tip Number 31. Encourage your employees to check out any of your books.
You are responsible for creating the environment where others can thrive. When you design your surroundings around what you value, it permeates to those that live there. And when you empower women, you create networks that encourage a diverse workplace.
Consider how knowledge and intellectual growth will contribute to performance and how it will make the work environment a place of learning.
Tip Number 32. Keep a book of trivia in your office. It makes you look interesting.
Banter with your employees over interesting trivia.
There will always be something interesting in a trivia book, regardless of the background of your employees. Use that as a lead into the conversation at the lunch table, or build the reputation of those books so that they become references in workplace conversations.
If you’d like ideas for which books to get, take a minute to wander around a bookstore. It’s always enjoyable to see what quirky subject-matter someone is writing about that may enthuse your friends.
This is also an excellent exercise for building the brain and using what has been recently discovered as neurogenesis. We actually build new brain cells through mental challenges like discussing trivia.
That’s right! You can recover those college party years of brain-cell killing.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Hello and welcome to the Skirt Strategies podcast, the podcast to help you get the support, validation, and skills you need to accomplish your goals and really succeed in a male-dominated world, all without having to give up your incredible female strengths.
It’s another podcast of Skirt Strategies for women in leadership.
Carol: We are here today talking about tips from the book, Skirt Strategies: 249 Success Tips for Women in Leadership.
Katie: In general we’re here for professional training and coaching for women.
Carol: We absolutely are.
Katie: Because we all need it. And I think women work well when they are supported by other women, which is what you and I are here to do. It’s our mission in life. I love that.
Carol: It’s like better than a bra.
Katie: A mission in life is like a bra?
Carol: No we’re better than a bra. We support women.
Katie: Oh gotcha. That’s true. Bras are expensive. Let’s start talking about that. Let’s get off track right off the bat.
Carol: Let’s do.
Katie: We’re fun that way.
We’re dealing with a few different tips in the book Skirt Strategies: 249 Success Tips for Women in Leadership, and each of our podcast, at least right now, we don’t have every podcast focusing on the book, but recently they’ve been focused on an episode.
Carol: One tip right after the other because they are all good.
Katie: We’re the tip generators. The tips that we’re on right now are tips Number 30, 31, and 32. So Tip Number 30 is what Carol?
Carol: Keep leadership and team building books on your shelf including inspiring books on CD. Use the good ones as a reference when you need ideas.
Katie: When you are at a loss for what to do with something you go to a friend or sometimes you go to your bookshelf.
Carol: And then sometimes you have friends go to your bookshelf. I was talking to a friend recently and he said, “Do you know that every good book I’ve read, business book, in the last year has come from you. I’m sitting here looking at two of them on my desk right now that I need to give back to you.”
Katie: I thought you were going to say that you wrote them.
Carol: Well, one of them. Yes but really you know between my husband and I we buy a lot of books and we support authors is what we do and we just love reading them and getting through them on CDs, excuse me, on audio books as well as the written word.
And interestingly a lot of times we will buy an audio book and get through it and realize that you really want to underline something you want that in your hands. So then we buy the book and then we’ve just supported the author.
Katie: That’s good. I do that a lot. I don’t listen to as many business books on tape, on audio. I’ll be one of the two of us that relates to the women in the audience that don’t do a lot of reading or if they do, it’s the nonfiction, or it’s the fiction vs. the non-fiction stuff. I look for the executive summary.
Carol: Or you ask me?
Katie: Or I ask you. This actually, if you call it a problem, not asking you but not being able to read business books was the colonel of start for Skirt Strategies: 249 Success Tips for Women in Leadership because I was frustrated with these big hefty tomes like what was the one I just saw on your bookshelf?
Carol: The Success Principles and it’s probably about three inches thick.
Katie: I thought don’t make me do it. Why do you have to be – why does it have to look like you’re in a master’s degree program in order to continue to be a great leader?
Carol: And a great learner? So we are continuous learners.
Katie: We are continuous learners. So it sounds like I’m contradicting our tip doesn’t it?
Carol: No it doesn’t at all. And I get what you’re saying. Really at this point in my life, I’m not going to go through a huge tome of information. If the author couldn’t have boiled that information down any better that they probably were too wordy anyway.
Katie: And sometimes you can get a good amount of the content out of the first hundred pages and then it is just reinforcement but keeping leadership and team building books on your shelf – one of the reasons we have this as a tip is to remind people that lifelong learning is built into natural leadership.
If you’re out there, if you are listening to us, you’re probably the kind of person that is constantly growing. You are evolving. It’s a relentless pursuit for you.
Carol: I wouldn’t say relentless but it is a pursuit, right? The lifelong learning and keeping fresh and keeping on top of things – I love learning new things and I forget it almost as fast as I learn it but I really do love reading and keeping up.
Some of the books I have on my shelf that I really love: of course we talk a lot about The Charisma Myth and that was a fun book to read and I thought for what we do professional development for women, I thought that was so important to let women know that you can build your charisma.
Katie: The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane.
Carol: A couple that I just love are: Switch and Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. They are absolutely brilliant as far as getting your message across to people whether you are writing, whether you are talking, public speaking, whatever, how to get your message across. They do it beautifully.
Katie: I remember when I read Made to Stick. It gave me so many ideas so fast I was scribbling in the margins. It’s kind of a motivational book that way.
Carol: Especially for you because you are a public speaker and it gives you lots of ideas about how to make your stories stick in people’s minds.
Katie: So true.
Carol: And then for those of you who are entrepreneurs: The E Myth. It’s a classic. It’s been a long time but I still go back to that for my friends who are entrepreneurs. Are you building the systems you need in order to walk away from your business so that you don’t have to be there all the time. I think that’s very important. I think that’s the top line message from The E Myth, is building the system so you don’t have to be there all the time.
I work in the restaurant industry and I see this happening a lot where people basically are running on the treadmill all the time and never build systems so it’s a big one for me.
What about you?
Katie: I’ve been using Susan Scott’s Fierce Conversations a lot in workshops. She’s got a way with words where she talks about interrogating reality, being fierce, coming out from behind your words, things like that that resonate with me because so many people come to us to help with communications. So her book is Fierce Conversations, Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time. Love, love her.
In fact I just brought it up in a leadership one-day retreat that I worked with a client. It was front and center of how we went through making sure we held each other accountable to say what we mean and mean what we say.
And then Martin Seligman is the guy who wrote Learned Optimism. And another one of his books that I’m looking at right now is Authentic Happiness which came after where it’s using the new positive psychology to realize your potential for last fulfillment. It sounds a little woo woo but –
Carol: Oh it’s fabulous.
Katie: It’s not woo woo, it’s researched stuff.
Carol: All the work that’s being done right now on happiness and gratitude, The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor – just fabulous books that keep you very positive. Because you learn that it pays to be positive and so you just read these book and it’s like, “Yes, that’s what I want in my life.”
Katie: I’m positive again.
Carol: And going even further into the woo woo though is a book called The Answer and it’s been a while since I’ve read it. It has to do with The Secret. Do you remember The Secret?
Katie: I don’t know if I saw the movie but the concept of The Secret, well I’ve got my own theory for the concept to have The Secret but go ahead.
Carol: No what is your concept for The Secret?
Katie: Well it has to do with brain psychology and we don’t get what we want we get what we focus on and so the secret is really all about focusing on, I think they say, the ABC’s or if you believe it you will realize it and really to me it’s not so much, I’m not saying beliefs are valid, it’s not saying don’t believe it, it’s saying focus on something because that’s what you’ll get because you are focusing on it.
So the answer just takes it – it says, “Grow any business. Achieve financial freedom and live an extraordinary life.” It’s by John Assaraf and Murray Smith and I just loved it because it is a little bit more on that woo woo side of business but it’s a business book that allows you to be a little bit less left brained.
Katie: More right brained.
Carol: A little bit more creative, a little bit more – I don’t know, it’s been a while since I’ve read it.
Katie: More conceptual than hard core. Okay, I like that. So keeping those sorts of books, listen to the sort of conversations that you and I have just pulling a book out and saying, “What did you get from it?” This is why people have book clubs.
Actually we could morph this tip into have a book club at work. That’s a great idea. Or just have a book club that you participate in sometimes the people at work aren’t going to love the things that you love but a mastermind group or some other group would love the same kind of books.
Katie: We had a mastermind group that was into the Gitomer’s list of how to build relationships and we went through his list. That was fun. Were you in the mastermind group when we did that?
Carol: I was not there.
Katie: It was Gitomer’s. He has The Little Black Book of…, The Little Red Book of…, and this happened to be How to Make Connections and so we talked about it and used one another for support. But it was girl friends but it wasn’t girlfriends that I work with. It was working girlfriends. Not working girls.
Carol: So keep leadership and team building books on your shelf, including inspiring books on CD. Use good ones as references when you need ideas.
Katie: All right, lifelong learning.
Okay, next tip.
Carol: Encourage your employees to check out any of your books.
Katie: So affiliated with that same tip, associated with the same tip, encouraging them to check out any of your books. Make a little checkout list. I like that you are the little library. And you are encouraging your employees to come on over because you are the person that sets the environment for how others – if you are the leader you are the influence.
Carol: Right and are they lifelong learners? The other thing I do for my staff is when I see webinars come across my desk and different seminars and things that are in town, I will send that out to my entire staff and say, “Who wants to participate because I think it will be good for all of us?”
Then we usually do one of these in our office but it’s a little bit beyond the books but still it’s encouraging other people around you to be that lifelong learner.
Katie: I would like to think that companies do – people in companies – big or small – but I’ve seen several companies that not necessarily larger ones where they are pretty good at sending people to training, but it will be the technical training or it will be in the health care industry or it will be in the nonprofit, but it’s not about leadership or it’s not about communication or it’s not about relationships, and those are – that’s the glue that holds all of the above together.
Carol: Well and I think it’s really important if you have folks that work together, I think it’s very important to do some kind of styles coaching, team building styles and the reason for that is it just – everybody gets to relax around each other because they learn that other person isn’t behaving the way they are believing just to irritate me. They are doing it because that’s their personality and when you can – where everybody can learn that about each other it’s very powerful for the team.
Katie: It gives you grace for how to understand and in some cases tolerate. When you’ve got people you don’t think you can deal with, I say well just try to understand what their intent is, where they are coming from and what can you tolerate? Just go for a level of tolerance. Often when you know what their style is, there’s always those people that are rub us the wrong way.
Carol: Sure and they probably rub you the wrong way because of a brother you had –
Katie: Oh God my brother was such a bully. He probably listens to this too.
Well, with the styles and with the team building, I had a client who, on their leadership team – there was one guy that had a reputation for being difficult to get along with. He’s an engineer. And when we were doing a leadership – we were doing some strategic planning but I do my strategic planning with a lot of interdependence. It’s about you guys as a group. You have to be the ones that have to rely on each other to make it happen.
So we did some understanding about what’s important to you, where did you come from, a little bit of your background. I think I actually pulled it from some ideas from the seven dysfunctions – sorry, it’s 5, The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni and in there he recommends that you find out what someone’s story and their background is and this guy actually, one of his first job had been in a prison so he had learned early on that you can’t take things for what they are – what they appear to be. People generally have differing intents and they have conflicting ways of – they manipulate you, because of the environment he was in.
So he seemed to be a rather sarcastic guy and everybody heard this about him and they were like, “Oh my God, I didn’t know that about you. I get you now.” They suddenly got this guy and why part of that had drifted into his – the early way that he developed his leadership.
Carol: Interesting so keep these books around. Read them with each other, read them with your mastermind.
And the next tip we’re going to go over is Number 32: Keep a book of trivia in your office, it makes you look interesting.
Katie: I just think we tossed this in because it was interesting.
Carol: Because it is fun.
Katie: How many U.S. soldiers were killed in the movie Black Hawk Down?
Carol: I don’t believe I saw it. I tend not to see horror movies or heavy movies.
Katie: Well this – it just occurred to me that having some trivia along the lines of sports or movies or war, could help you connect to men better in the office. The answer is 18.
A tetrahedron is composed of how many triangles?
Carol: Three.
Katie: Wrong, four. I’m the engineer. I took so much math.
Carol: Did you know the answer to that?
Katie: No.
Carol: Well I was just going by the T in the “tetra” so I thought it was three.
Katie: Okay so you might get this one. Colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel are referred to as what? You know how the color wheel works?
Carol: No I know and you can actually look at green and close your eyes and you’ll see red.
Katie: Because it is opposite, which another word for opposite is, complimentary colors. So see how fun it is?
Carol: Red and green and bue and yellow?
Katie: I don’t know. Now you are testing me. Which ones are opposite? Like yellow and purple? We’ll find out more specifically on the website.
Carol: Okay give us more trivia.
Katie: Okay in Norse Mythology, who are the female attendants of Odin?
Carol: Sirens.
Katie: No but there was a movie called this – the Valkyrie. With Tom Cruise.
What is the common name for the collegiate church of St. Peter in London?
The geography one. What is the more common name for the collegiate church of St. Peter in London?
Carol: St. Peter’s Basilica?
Katie: No. St. Paul’s Cathedral.
And then there’s a whole category of fun trivia. You see it just kind of lightens it up. We’ve just spent this last podcast, most of this podcast talking about things that are published, things that are trivial, and they all have to do with building our brains. Only good can come from that. It will keep us from getting early onset alcohol induced dementia.
Carol: That’s right. Actually alcohol keeps you from getting dementia.
Katie: Some.
Carol: Did you read that?
Katie: Is it only red wine?
Carol: Yeah it’s red wine.
Katie: Yeah and I think there’s probably a law of diminishing returns on that, like more is not better.
Carol: Darn. Okay, well I’ll have to live with that.
So what I thought in this is not just keep a book of trivia in your office but take that old trivia box that you have take it to work because you are not using it and then people can pick up cards and ask you questions.
Katie: That’s fun. Put one on the bulletin board.
Carol: Or maybe if somebody’s going to come in and ask you something, they have to pull a trivia card first and answer it.
Katie: You must answer the questions three before you come in the room. What’s your favorite color?
So these three great tips, we hope you are enjoying our podcast.
Carol: We sure enjoy doing it.
Katie: We love doing it. You keeping me on my toes and coming up with questions and ideas and things that we can do as women and anecdotes of what happens to you in your little world because it’s really different than what happens to me in my little world. Those followers of ours, boy do they have different worlds. I love hearing that.
Carol: We really would. We would love if you all would go to our podcast and post comments and like it and share it.
We just looked and we had some record number of 612 people listening to our podcast.
Katie: So you are not alone. You think you are the only one listening but somewhere out in the Antarctic are other people listening.
Carol: Keep listening.
(Music plays)
That’s it for this episode of the Skirt Strategies podcast. Thank you for joining us and please be sure to leave a question or comment at Skirtstrategies.com. Remember that success comes when you lead using your natural female strengths.
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