The Four Pillars of Leadership with Leadership Coach Nils Vinje

The Four Pillars of Leadership with Leadership Coach Nils Vinje

On this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, Jenn sat down and talked with Nils Vinje. Nils accelerated from an individual contributor to vice president in 30 months. And every team that he ran became a high-performing team. So what did he do? He deduced this experience down to a process, a process that formed the foundation around his leadership coaching. Once Nils started using his playbook, the results were remarkable. Join Host Jenn DeWall as she talks to Nils about his playbook, the 30 Day Leadership Playbook and the four pillars of leadership. Enjoy the conversation.

Meet Nils Vinje, Leadership Coach and Author

Jenn DeWall:

Hi everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall. And on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I am so excited to have the one and only Nils Vinje! Nils and I are going to be talking about a lot of different things as it relates to a leader. We’re going to be talking to Nils about how you approach leadership. We’re going to be talking about techniques to make your leadership style, hopefully, more impactful more influential. We’re gonna be talking about a lot of different things and what you call your pillars of success or your pillars of leadership. And I’m so excited to bring that to the audience, but before we even go forward, I have to ask, I love the origin stories. I wanna know. How did you come to be? How did you come to be a leadership coach? You have all this experience within customer service as well. I mean, you have such a great diverse background. I wanna know. How did you come to be today? What, what would, what did that, I guess career progression look like?

Nils Vinje:

Hi, Jenn. Well, thank you so much for having me on as a guest. Super excited to dig into all things leadership, and I love this as an opening question. I think it’s a fascinating story just because there is no one perfect path. And I, I do stress that with everybody I’ve always worked with, there is no one defined perfect path for anyone. And I’m a perfect example of that. So the first ten years or so of my professional career, I had no idea where I fit in the professional world. I literally bounced around and did every job, from being a software engineer, which I was absolutely terrible at, to being a Xerox sales rep. I actually went door to door selling copiers, if you can believe that! It was just as painful as it sounds. There are some people in the world who are cut out for that. I, however, was not one. And I’ve learned that lesson very, very quickly. And it was quite an interesting experience. So I got to the point where I was like, I have no idea where I fit. I’ve tried everything stints in marketing and sales, engineering solutions, consulting, consulting, you name it. I tried it. And then I got fed up, and I did what all people do when they get fed up. I went back to school,

I got an MBA in management and organizational behavior. And that’s when the light bulbs started to go off. And I realized that that point, which was shocking to me that the whole field of management and the whole field of leadership had an entire science and industry research, everything behind it. Yet, the people that I worked for in the organizations that it worked at for that ten years, never really knew anything about this. And I was compelled and driven to bring great leadership back to the companies that I worked for after grad school. So I went, got back into the working world. I was part-time. I was working full-time, sorry, going to school part-time and then accelerated the second half of the program and took a little break. I got back into my first role is what’s called a customer success manager. Now in the B2B SaaS world. This is the team and the individuals who are responsible for the customer post-sale. So when’s sales team goes out and sells a deal. Then the customer success team takes over and works with those customers to ensure they get onboarded, the software gets integrated, they ultimately get value and they renew and expand their contracts. So this was finally where I felt like I fit in the world. All of a sudden, all those little skills, the sales piece from Xerox, the technical skills from trying to be a software engineer, the solutions consulting, sales, engineering, all those skills were needed in this role to serve the needs of the client. And that for me was like just awesome. It was just amazing.

So from that point, I went on a very fast track because my alignment with the work was tremendous. My passion for this field was amazing, and it was a very, very just nascent field. It barely even existed. This was 10 years ago, and I went from an individual contributor to a vice president in two and a half years. I was so driven and had the previous 10 years of knowing what I didn’t wanna do that. Once I found the right fit, everything went up into the right now; at the beginning of this time, I also became a certified leadership coach and began to coach people on the evenings weekends whenever I could. I started coaching people outside of work. I started coaching people inside of work. Whenever I brought up the topic like, Hey, I’m, I’m a coach. They’d be like, oh, tell me more about that. They were always really interested in it, and I would share, and I’d ask ’em some questions and say, well, there might be some opportunity for me to help you. And then we’d go on. And that was the way it went for many years when I formed my consulting business in 2015. That was when I took all my expertise in the customer success base and said, I wanna help more companies build great customer success organizations. And I also did a lot of leadership coaching, but it was never at the forefront. It was always an add on to the projects and I didn’t really ever know how to make it the primary thing until the pandemic happened. And when the pandemic happened, my consulting business went to zero in about 48 hours because it was all built on very high touch, one on one close relationships. And you might imagine it was a tough time. And I had to look at my skill set, look at the things that I could do, the value I could bring to the market, the market I was bringing it to.

And I decided to pivot my business to focus more on the leadership development. And that’s what drove me to write my book 30 Day Leadership Playbook, which we’re gonna get into more. And then ultimately build a program called the B2B Leaders Academy and run a top rank podcast called the B2B leadership podcast. So there is no one perfect path that I took to get to this point. It is the amalgamation of all kinds of different experimentation and really never being willing to settle for anything less than. And I thought was exceptional in those jobs, in my roles, in my company, looking at everything with fresh perspective and trying to adapt to the situation as best I could.

Jenn DeWall:

That is a phenomenal story, especially around, you know, I know people hate this word, but , the “pivot” or adapting, right? Making, Hey, you know what I, my business went from blank to not really,

Nils Vinje:

It was really good, right. It disappeared.

The Importance of Leadership Development

Jenn DeWall:

And there are many people that were faced with that crossroads. Yes. Do you keep pushing and figure out a new way? Do you, you know, decide to close up, shop, go a different way, end it all, whatever that might be. But one of the things that I love that you even cheered, because I think it’s just an important conversation is just how a leadership is initially formed to us earlier in our careers and how that, you know, you and I talked about this in the pre-call about just the different observations of kind of the, wow, why is leadership maybe lacking in these huge organizations where you would think they have the resources to be able to, you know, invest in this development, but yet it kind of still falls in those, you know it’s a nice to have.

Nils Vinje:

It’s a nice to have. We don’t have time to do it, we’re busy.

Jenn DeWall:

I love that because there’s, I know I love that story of observing that and recognizing it, there’s gotta be a better way. And so if you are in an organization, you know, here’s your opportunity to either advocate for leadership development or to recognize like, Hey, there’s other organizations that are going to place us at the forefront. You may have some leaders that maybe could benefit from training, but you know, don’t personalize those things. I look like to look at that as research that then researches, what would you do differently? How could you engage and influence? But I love that you said there’s not one defined path because we always get to choose it. We always get to reinvent ourselves. You’re only one with the limits.

Are You the CEO of Your Career?

Nils Vinje:

That’s right. That’s right. And, and that, that is, that was not apparent to me until the time that I went back to grad school. Because up until that point, I had never seriously invested in myself. I waited for my company to provide training for me. I waited for them to tell me what to do. I was in the backseat. There was a, a Saturday morning in, early in grad school when we’d have outside speakers come in and they’d spend a couple hours with us on Saturday morning. It was a really cool experience and great opportunities. And this one speaker came in on one Saturday morning, first semester. I’ll never forget. It was sitting in the audience couple hundred people. And the speaker walks out on stage, stands, square, right in the middle looks directly in the audience. I felt like he was like looking into my soul and he asked one very powerful question. He said, are you the CEO of your career? Ha. And I went the what? Excuse me?

Me, hold on. And in that moment, my entire professional career flashed before my eyes, I literally saw all these situations and things. And I began to get angry with myself, sitting in that chair. And the resenting answer that came outta my mouth at that time was no, I’m not. And I was so angry with myself, having never been asked question, having never asked this question myself, that it was the turning point where in that moment in that chair, that Saturday morning, I made the commitment to never, ever not be the CEO of my career. And from that point on any investment in myself was a hundred percent my responsibility. I was never gonna wait for a company. I was never gonna wait for a boss. I was never gonna wait. Somebody reimburse me. I was going to make the investment well matter what it took and get to what I wanted to do, cuz I was the only one in charge cuz I am the CEO of my career. And I flipped the script that day. And that was a huge pivotal moment for me.

Jenn DeWall:

What a powerful story of just taking charge or having that awareness, you know, that all took was one question to make you think, oh my goodness. And being engaged, being open to that question, right. Not looking at it as I don’t need to reflect on that. I love that and how that completely altered different paths and choices and also recognizing you always get to choose it. That’s right. So powerful. Thank you so much for sharing that.

Nils Vinje:

My pleasure.

Jenn DeWall:

Go on, oh, go ahead.

Nils Vinje:

That was just that one. I mean that sentiment of one being open to question, but just the, the power that even just one question has. You know, and that’s a core, you know, leadership fundamental piece too, is if you have better questions, you will get better engagement, better responses. And this example is perfect. One single question was worth it, is worth, you know, what it add up to the last 15 years of my career and the success that I’ve had and the things that I’ve gone on to do came from that one powerful question. If that leader had started off that presentation any differently, I might have been on a completely different trajectory than this point, but I’m very thankful for that. And I think as leaders, we always need to keep that in mind that, you know, the questions that we ask have the ability to positively, or certainly negatively impact the people’s lives that work for us. And that is why it is so important to ask the right kinds of questions, to put yourself in the right situation, to help other people transform and see, just like in my example here.

Jenn DeWall:

I think that there are so many, you know, I hear, and I’m sure you have two in your experience as a leadership coach at a pain point for some leaders, maybe that they feel like people aren’t driving the career or taking the lead and growing it. And I feel like that is the best question that they should all ask their team. Are you the CEO in your career? Yeah. Instead of just waiting for maybe that leader to figure it out, like, are you the one that’s driving that? You know, are you taking initiative? I think you just gave people a powerful tool because it’s much more impactful than, are you happy here? Yeah.

Nils Vinje:

I’m happy today. I might not be happy tomorrow. That’s a, you know, it’s not gonna get you very far. That’s a, a generic question. But when you ask something much more powerful it opens the doors and you know, then there’s an honest conversation about what does it even mean to be the CEO of my career, hang on. And most of the people, you know, I share this regardless of their first time managers, directors, VPs, even C-level people, this one resonates in incredibly well with everybody because there are points in time where you may have taken control and then there’s points in time where you likely have let it go as well. So if you’re in one of those points in time where you’ve let it go, or you’re not quite sure what to do, right. Take a step back and ask yourself the question. Well, as a CEO of my career, like what’s the strategic decision that’s gonna make the difference for me and what I want to do, irrespective of the environment what’s going on with my company, my teams, other things, what is it that I’m going to be able to do to get to contribute the most amount of value to everybody else?

The Four Pillars of Leadership

Jenn DeWall:

Yes. I love that. I think this is a powerful segue into being the, talking about being the CEO in your career. It also starts with thinking about the type of leader that you want to be. How do you wanna show up? What type of impact or influence do you want to have? And you have four pillars or I guess I just wanna hear kind of your framework around how you approach leadership in your business with your clients. How do you start to approach leadership to help people develop that soft skillset, hard skillset and just have that competence to lead.

Nils Vinje:

Thank you. Yeah, leadership is big, big topic, right? And so what I do is break it down into the four pillars, leading yourself, leading others, leading with communication and leading with metrics. Now within each one of these, there are different areas of focus to drill in deeper in order to get some specific tools that can help help you improve your skills in each one of these areas. You’re never gonna do all this at once. And I would advocate, don’t try to do it all at once, right? These are things that take time. And the only thing we have is time because as we were talking about before leadership is a long term game, and if you are in it for the long term, then you owe it to yourself to invest in yourself. And the way people invest in themselves and like work with me is by working systematically through each of these four pillars to build skills in each and the these areas so that ultimately they can feel confident handling any situation. That’s my job, ultimately, as a coach is to empower my clients with the tools to handle, to confidently handle any situation.

The First Pillar of Leadership – Leading Yourself

Jenn DeWall:

Yes. So let’s dive into that first pillar. I feel like this is. This goes right to that opening question. Are you the CEO in your career? How do you recommend or how do you work with people to help them best lead yourself? So leading yourself is the first pillar, sorry if I maybe threw that in with a bunch of words, but leading yourself is one of the first pillars of leadership. How do you approach that?

Nils Vinje:

So there’s, there are three key areas in this that break it down and more being continuously added. But this is kind of the core essence of what I think it means to lead yourself. Number one is what I call bulletproofing, your leadership psychology. And as we were talking about here, you have the ability to take control it every time at any point in time. And I found the greatest benefit for my clients over the years has been when I combine strategy with psychology, right? So we have psychology to handle the mindset piece, and we got strategy and tactics to handle that. Actually, what are you gonna do? One without the other. You’re not gonna make as much progress, but both of them together is amazing. So when we talked about bulletproofing your leadership psychology, this is all about truly appreciating and accepting the fact that you are the CEO of your career and looking at the decisions that you make and also the decisions that your team makes against that lens.

This also involves what I call claiming your strengths. Strengths binder is one of my favorite assessments to give us a language to describe what you’re naturally talented to do when you know what you’re naturally talented to do, you immediately build confidence and that helps bolster your psychology. So all these pieces come together in that first main air area of bulletproof your leadership psychology, and the other two core areas are mastering your time and building repeatable systems. Lots more to dig into there, but I don’t wanna go too deep just yet, but that leadership psychology one is where it all starts.

Jenn DeWall:

Yeah, absolutely. And well, and I love that taking that claim own your strengths, too many people. I think I see it as leading without your resume. It’s like, you just bring, it’s essentially like you’re talking and handing someone a blank resume. We don’t even know what’s on it. What you even did. And we’re doing ourselves a disservice as it relates to how we lead to others because we don’t get to see how we can contribute or provide value. I think that’s so important.

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The Second Pillar of Leadership – Leading Others

Jenn DeWall:

So your second pillar is all about leading others, which I think might be either the most favorite part of a leadership role or someone’s least favorite part of a leadership role.

Nils Vinje:

It’s polarizing for sure.

Jenn DeWall:

How do you start with that? Or like, what are your, I guess what’s your opinion as it relates to how to approach leading others?

Nils Vinje:

Yeah. So leading others is all about your, and in my framework, I’m talking about it in the context of your team, the people, your organization, the people that you are closest to in your work as a leader. And there are three core areas that are focused on here. Number one is building a connected team, and this is all about creating a team identity. Nobody shows up and gets outta bed every day and shows up to just be part of their boss’s team— insert your boss’s name here. And despite the fact that that’s how a lot of people view their role, oh, I’m just part of Jenn’s team. I’m just part of Nils team. I’m just part of Sam’s team, whoever it is. And it’s a huge opportunity that is missed when you don’t have an identity that this group of people who are coming together shared and helped to create.

Nils Vinje:

So there’s this bond that can be created there, and you can get tremendous leverage from an engagement perspective, from a trust perspective, from a reporting perspective that is absolutely phenomenal by going through the process to create an identity for this team. And that was some of the secrets behind how I went from an IC to a VP in two and a half years and built high-performing teams along the way I was building those identities as I went. And these incredibly strong bonds everywhere, every team that I interacted with. The second – yeah, go ahead.

Building a Team Identity

Jenn DeWall:

Let’s say I’m more curious, and maybe it’s because of a conversation I had earlier. Let’s say that you were new to an organization, maybe new to a leadership role. Where would you recommend someone even begin to look at developing a team identity? Because that can feel, especially if you’re new and you may not have the expertise within the organization. Maybe you don’t have the confidence yet because we might have that imposter syndrome. So how do you start with building that team identity?

Nils Vinje:

Well, the best thing is you don’t have to have any of the answers. You just have to have a framework and some tools and some structure, which I, 100%, absolutely can provide. I’ll give you the high level here. And then there’s more details in my book, which got a free copy available, which I’ll share a little bit later. So first up is the components of a team identity. There are three things that are really important. Number one, a clearly defined purpose statement. The purpose of this team is X; whatever team it is, whatever your purpose is, doesn’t really matter. But you fill in the blank purpose of the team is X. I’m gonna tell you how we get to these answers too. In just a sec. The second thing is a set of core values. These are the, that represent how your team commits to going about and fulfilling the purpose.

And the third element is a team brand. So this is the name. This is where we get to have some fun and really brings to life the, the type of personalities that are on the team and the type of things that the team likes. And so those three things together, the purpose statement, the core values and the brand represent to me a very strong team identity. And the way we go about this is the best thing is that you, as the leader have, all you have to do is facilitate getting to these answers. You do not have to come up with them yourself. So what we do is work with our teams and provided with the specific agendas and some meetings and some constructive brainstorming time. We pull out all this information, cause guess what? It’s already there. They already know how they work with themselves, how they work with each other, the ways they approach working with other teams, with other companies, et cetera, we just have to pull this out and then get everybody to agree on what the stuff that we 100% stand behind really is. And that’s some of the fun and the step by step process that I work with clients on the B2B leaders academy is how to go about this. I got templates tools, the whole nine yards, so that you can literally set up the meetings and then follow the schedule and come out with a team identity in a relatively short period of time.

Jenn DeWall:

I love that they can have that. I mean, I think I still think when I think of values and I know they’re so, so important, they act like that compass that we need to shed light on our decision making. But I, the moment of trauma around a company values or team values for me will come from, it’s not trauma. Okay, I’m being dramatic. But earlier on in my career there, I worked for an organization that, you know, they’re going through this values, rebrand. They wanted to change them. I am talking on every single outside cubicle. There was a values, I think, set values. Then they actually had actors that had different outfits representing each of the values. So there were six different actors. And then when it came down to launch it, they had people, they had brought in those actors that they photographed. And they had them come in and take pictures with people. I think they had cookies. I mean, they made this values launch huge. I can’t even imagine how much resources they, and then you go into a meeting and you’re like, I’m sorry, what were, were these our values? So how would you recommend people building that accountability? Because I still have that pain of, or the insert eye roll, tell me your values, but if you don’t follow through it, so how do you recommend to be accountable? Because I think there are leaders that sometimes think check minute. Yep.

Nils Vinje:

A hundred percent. I, and I, and I appreciate you brought up that story because I’ve experienced the same thing myself. And the first time going through this, I even questioned myself. Like, is this really a point? But the, the way that I was able to get buy-in from my team and to uphold and to drive the accountability was in the shared agreement. So in that situation with your organization, these values were created and then delivered to you through a series of actors and some other stuff that went on, right?

Even if you’re running a small team, even if you’re running a big team, doesn’t matter. But when people have an opportunity to shape those values are and when they are specific to them in their circumstances, that automatically changes the engagement level. Number one, number two is after they’re defined and everybody agrees to them, there is a what’s called part of it is a social contract where we agree to hold each other accountable to these values. And it is the leader’s responsibility to kind of push the edge on this, to say that, Hey, in every single meeting, how did we how, what’s an example of how someone lived up to one of our values, how did you use one of our values, excuse me, to make a decision. How would you use a value in this particular situation? So it’s the integration of these values into the day to day life that is gets the most leverage.

And that is where oftentimes companies fall down. When they do this at the big company level, they think that rolling it out is the end of the train. And the reality is that’s like barely even the beginning, right? It’s about infusing it into the culture. And that is a responsibility of leaders to constantly talk about it. When they’re giving feedback, give feedback in the context of values, when you’re having team meetings, bring it up. When I was talking about the brand piece, all of these pieces, the purpose, the core values rant, the integration of them into your day to day life with your team is what’s going to make it stick. If it, if you don’t do that, it will be gone in a matter of weeks, it’ll be “poof”. It just like it never existed. However, if you integrate it into your team’s daily operations and weekly operations, it has the chance to flourish into take hold. And that’s really exciting time.

So one of my very first teams that I did this with when I became, went from IC to manager. On Friday, I was a peer. On Monday, I was a boss and I, the first thing I wanna do was get the pressure off of me and say, Nope, we’re coming together. We’re gonna form this team. We’re all going to agree to what it means to be here. I just happened to be the leader and was, this was the set of exercise I walked through. And our team name was Team Solid. That was the name. And then our weekly team meeting became the team solid meeting. So it was no longer Nils’s team meeting. It was Team Solid meeting. Now we start building and having some fun with, well, what does Team Solid actually look like? From a visual perspective, we came up with a little icon and things, but this was all organic stuff that came as a result of everybody having buy-in and having a really strong alignment with it because they had buy-in. And by the, you know, I could pick up the phone 10 years later now and call anybody from Team Solid. And it would be right back. Like we were 10 years ago.

Jenn DeWall:

I love that. And it’s, I think it’s so true that the trust that’s bill, I guess the loyalty that’s built extends beyond the time that the team might be, you know, one whole unit. Oh yeah. You can still feel bonded to those people many years beyond. That’s a great example of the power that they have when you can actually build and integrate that into a team. Yeah. That’s fantastic.

Nils Vinje:

It’s a hundred percent possible in any environment with any team virtually any situation, you know, it is possible because people wanna be part of something that’s bigger than themselves. And they wanna be part of something that they feel they have a hand in. I mean, think of any point in your life, the things you’ve been most engaged in were probably the things you contributed to in a larger way than some of the others. And bringing that into the work environment, I think is a fantastic idea. And it brings people together and everybody has a shared agreement and then everybody gets to hold each other accountable.

Jenn DeWall:

Yes. I love that. Get that social contract going. Now I know that I cut you off, because I, I just have my own personal, you know, thing that I had to ask about as it relates to value, but I know that you were going in other directions as it relates to other key things that we need to focus on to be more effective as it relates to leading others. So I’ll let you take it away from there. Cause I know I interrupted you.

Driving Team Performance

Nils Vinje:

Oh no, it was perfect. That was a great, and it was a great point to call out because I get that look a lot. When I talk about values like, oh, here we go with the values thing again. I’m like, oh, this is a slightly different angle than you might have been experienced with before. And it’s, it’s all good. So the second major area in leading others is all about driving team performance. And these are the core foundational things that you have to do as at a really exceptional level to be a great leader. Things like setting expectations, driving accountability, giving feedback, like conceptually simple concepts that a lot of people would probably say are, oh, that’s just common sense. Of course, I know that already Nelson. And the thing about common sense is it’s not so common. And when I drill in, when people tell me, oh yeah, I’m, I’m good at giving feedback.

Nils Vinje:

And I drill in and I ask questions about, well, how do you give feedback? And how often are you give feedback? And what is the response to the feedback? I find a lot of holes. And so there’s specific tools that I use to help build that and build the repeatability and build the consistency. There was a great Harvard business review did a study, not long ago that asked what do people like the most and want to do the least? And they, people wanted the most was negative feedback or reinfor or corrective feedback. That was what they wanted the most. However, what they wanted, what people wanted to do, the least was give feedback. So the very thing that people want the most is the very thing that nobody wants to do.

Jenn DeWall:

Like it’s always negative. It wasn’t just feedback in general, they want negative feedback?

Nils Vinje:

Because they wanted to learn. They wanted to grow. And the thing that people did not want to do was give negative feedback. And it’s, it’s true. I mean, my own personal experience, it was feedback was kind of rare, right? And it was silly. It just didn’t, it wasn’t necessary. And I think the reason for that largely is there have been lots of different, you know, grand scheme feedback formulas and things, the feedback sandwich and all that stuff.

Jenn DeWall:

That’s happened. We,talked about that. We hate it, please. Don’t do that!

Nils Vinje:

You can see it coming a mile away, right. It’s just not authentic. And there are ways to do it. That is 100% can be aligned with you. You can feel comfortable. You can do it every single day and your team will absolutely 100% guaranteed appreciate it because it is the thing that everybody wants. Everybody wants to grow in some way. And if you have a formula to follow, then it’s a piece of cake. So that, you know, that feedback piece is a big one. I focus on and conceptually again, so simple, but so, so powerful. And when you get it down to a science where you can just consistently rely on your tools, it’s a piece of cake.

Jenn DeWall:

Gosh, I feel like I was always looking for negative feedback, but that’s because I’m a hardcore perfectionist. Mm. Tell me what I’m doing wrong because then I’m gonna try and do everything to try and, you know, show that I’m good enough show that I’m valued. And so when I heard that, I was like, that’s a trigger for me, because I used to aspire for that. Like they could be like, you did a really good job. No, but tell me what I, I know. I probably,

Nils Vinje:

And they were probably looking at you going, are you doing a reverse feedback sandwich

Jenn DeWall:

On it’s lot? Like people want this, like I want for a form of self-torture. I’m pretty sure. I don’t know why, but that’s so interesting. But yeah, I mean obviously through the different lens, people want to be successful. Like they want to perform for the organization!

Nils Vinje:

They want to grow! And They can’t. And they can’t, if they don’t know- like nine times out of ten, feedback that is given comes when it’s received, it’s like, oh my gosh, I didn’t even realize I was doing that. Or I didn’t even realize that’s the impact of what I did. Because we’re wrapped up in ourselves all the time. So if you assume that somebody else knows how they acted and how it impacted somebody else, I guarantee almost a hundred percent you’re wrong. And so that’s where this feedback piece becomes so, so important. And the pace of growth, just like you’ve naturally wanted to find, just goes exponentially faster when that feedback is provided. And again, a hallmark of great leadership is giving that feedback to help other people grow.

Jenn DeWall:

Oh my gosh, here is my PSA to anyone that is leading remote tea,s. Make sure you’re giving that feedback to those people that you’re not seeing all the time,

Nils Vinje:

Especially in the remote world.

Jenn DeWall:

Yeah. People wanna hear it. They want to know. I, I just, I think, and I, I still think of my friend that for six or seven months of the pandemic, she didn’t have one video conversation with her leader, and she was as an individual contributor. And that is just, how do you build culture? How do you build connections? How do you make sheep? For sure. People are executing on deliverables. If you do an out of sight out of mind, I, I get it. I know it’s timely. I know that sometimes it’s difficult. Right? You said it, people don’t like giving it, but there’s so much time saved. When you just give it,

Nils Vinje:

Is that and, and well, considering that the cost of an employee turning over is one of the greatest costs in any business. It’s gonna pay for itself very, very quickly. I mean, six or seven months without a video connection. I gotta imagine your friends, probably one foot out the door, if not two very quickly. Because emotional ties get cut when I don’t think they, anybody cares about them. Right. And that’s a fastest way to get somebody out the door is just ignore them and that’s what a lot of leaders do.

Jenn DeWall:

Oh my God. Yes. And it just makes me like sad. It shouldn’t ever feel like in Adele song where someone is calling to say hello, it’s me. I’ve been waiting several months for you to connect with me. Like or whatever that might be like, no one should wait for that. If you’re a leader, you’ve gotta make contact.

Nils Vinje:

That is a great, great connection to, I’m gonna think of that every time I hear that song now.

Jenn DeWall:

I don’t even know why I just did that. And that might be the first time I’ve ever actually tried to remotely sing on the podcast. So I’m so sorry to the listeners. If you had to turn down on your podcast here, I love, I’m loving this conversation. Nils, where do we go with the, the third pillar now? So leading others. And I know that you’re, that you had a few more points in there, but I wanna make sure we we’re covering that’s our other pillars. Cause they you’re going to get a free copy of his book. So what is your third pillar?

The Third Pillar of Leadership – Leading with Communication

Nils Vinje:

So the third pillar is called leading with communication. And in this pillar, we’re starting to branch out our communication beyond our immediate team. So this is all about how do you communicate your value and your team’s value to people outside of your, in your immediate organization. So other leaders in the organization and this all starts with the cornerstone, which is how having a framework to be able to talk about your, your team, your values, your accomplishments, everything. And one of the interesting things of why this framework a framework is so important is because it helps you overcome. What’s called the crisis of context. Now it is total human nature.

Jenn DeWall:

Yeah. What is the crisis of context? It sounds like it should follow with a dun dun dun

Nils Vinje:

Dun dun, dun. Maybe we need some sound effects. Totally. It is, it is totally natural to believe that other people have the same level of context about a topic as you do, only problem is it couldn’t be further from the truth. Now in a leadership position, you know everything about your team, your organization, the goals you’re working towards, the activities, you’re doing everything. And when you talk with other leaders inside your organization, they don’t have anywhere near the same level of context about your work as you do. So if you talk to them, like you talk to your team, you are missing a of opportunity to connect. And what you say will likely go straight over their head and they will refer to you as having a conversation. But having absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.

Jenn DeWall:

So many people can relate to that right now. I know it.

Nils Vinje:

Some people refer to this as like, you know, more executive-level communication and whatnot. And I’d say, yeah, that’s fair, but I’m breaking it down simple as possible. Other people do not have the same level context as you when, and if you talk to other people like you do your team and you don’t have a different level to talk with them, then it’s just not gonna work. So a perfect example of a framework, it’s my four pillars of leadership. I created this as a way to connect with anybody and tell my story of how I view leadership. When I was writing my book, that was where this framework came about. All the research I did all looking back at everything I knew about leadership, everything I coached people on for 10 years and I boiled it down into these four pillars. So when I’m meeting with someone like yourself and having a conversation on this podcast, if you rewind, you’ll notice that in the very beginning, I just said the high-level version of the framework.

I said there are four pillars leading yourself, leading others, leading with communication and leading with metrics. And then, we were going in and dove into each one of those in more specific detail. But if I, I just started with feedback or if I just started with expectations, if I just started with psychology, you would’ve gotten lost because it would’ve been like, well, these are interesting topics, but how does this all fit together? Do I have to do a million, one-off little things? And I’m saying, no, we just focus on these four major pillars. And then we systematically work through each one of them. So that’s an example of how powerful a framework can be.

Jenn DeWall:

That’s a fantastic, yeah. I love that example. And I think it’s often an underutilized tool is we’re probably, I’m sure many people going from project to project, task or email to email, whatever that might look like. Yep. And then just not, you know, passively sending things, but not making sure that it’s clear. I mean, in it, I know that we may not like it, but people’s attention span is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. And so when I, you know, if someone wrote me a full long multi-paragraph email today, it actually would be harder for me to process to understand and distill what the primary, what do you want me to do with this? Yeah. And yet I still get them. Hey, did you follow up on my email? First of all, you didn’t even ask me what you wanted me to do. You just sent me a novel and I don’t know what you want me to do with the novel. Right.

When You Communicate – Assume Zero Context

Nils Vinje:

Right. And that is, that is, that happens all day. Every day, email inbox is clogged with that exact stuff because we make an assumption that other people know what we know. And we go into great length of detail without stopping saying, okay, what level of context does this person actually have about this situation that I need to bring to their attention? And they either have zero context. They have some, or they have all the context, like kind of think of it in three levels like that. And if they have zero context, you can’t go much further than just the very high level pieces. Cuz they’re not gonna understand any anyway. So you might as well start

Jenn DeWall:

Love that framework. Who is your audience? Do they have, what did you say? Zero context.

Nils Vinje:

Zero context. Anybody outside your media team assume they have zero context. If they’re an executive at your company, if they’re anybody else in a different department, assume zero. That’s the starting point.

Jenn DeWall:

Oh my gosh. I think that’s such a great thing to say is assume zero. Think about how many I got, how many miscommunication, I guess, issues you could hopefully eradicate by just going there and also not going so technical to the point that someone just, you know, falls asleep on their keyboard or starts to peruse that they actually hear your message and that it’s a good return for both people. Love it. Right. That’s fantastic.

Nils Vinje:

As soon as you lose somebody in like you talk at too low level of detail or they, they get the sense that they don’t understand what you’re talking about, you’ve lost them and you it’s really, really difficult to get ’em back if you, if you possibly even can. So know that that was that beginning piece, whether it’s email or verbal or phone or zoom, it doesn’t matter that first connection piece of meeting them where they are is incredibly important and oftentimes gets overlooked. And the framework is the ultimate antidote for how to do that effectively. Cuz you be able to communicate with people who have zero context. People have some context and people have all the same context as you. And those are kind of the three levels of framework that I like to think about.

Jenn DeWall:

Yes. I, I mean, I think that that’s already gonna help me in thinking about things. That’s a really great framework. Thank you for the tool. My Pleasure.

Jenn DeWall:

So leading with communication, I know you have a few other tips. What would be one other tip that you would provide to leading with communication?

Nils Vinje:

Just the high-level. The other key foundational pieces here are creating unstoppable presentations. So once you have a framework and you can talk about all the great work and the value that you and your team are delivering is really helpful to be able to package that up in a meaningful presentation that can to your audience, that can take them through a story that can inspire them, whatever the situation is. And because you have to do an effective job of telling your story. And if you can’t tell your story, nobody’s gonna listen and you’re not gonna get approved for initiatives. You’re not gonna have a lot of trouble getting OKRs bought off on, et cetera. So those, there are some tools and some skills like there’s a whole lot more. We don’t have time to get into today. But the third key area in leading with communication is all about what I call marketing or leadership.

And here’s the underpinning of this. You doing the work as a leader is not enough. You have to tell a story about your leadership. You have to tell a story about your work. Nobody knows what you do assume that nobody knows what you do. Even if they say they know they don’t assume they know nobody knows what you do. It is your job to effectively market your value, your skills, your team, your success, your failures, successfully market that within the organization and the audience is gonna determine the level of context that you need to communicate at, which is why the framework and the presentations are so important. So it’s kind of like the, you know, encapsulating thing on the leading with communication is ultimately being able to effectively market your leadership.

Market Your Own Leadership

Jenn DeWall:

Yeah. Well, and I think that goes back to even the driving your career piece. Are you the CEO in your career? Do you, are you aware of how you provide value and goodness, if I could just build competence in every single individual that I ran into contact with because leaders don’t always see their values, they get, I guess, for lack of a better description that I can think of off the top of my head is they get bogged down. They feel like they’re sinking in maybe failure or these small mistakes instead of looking at how, how they did contribute, looking at what they did achieve. And I just think that’s so important. And I think it also competes with maybe how some of us have been raised. I know I was raised with the notion that you don’t wanna be too confident because then you’re going to come off as cocky or arrogant, which is extremely offloading. But you’re saying get comfortable with promoting yourself, market your leadership. Yeah.

Nils Vinje:

Yeah. And it’s, it is not about being cocky. Like there is a difference between confident and cocky and this is one that comes up all the time. People are like, well, how do I, how do I market my leadership and how do I promote myself without tooting my own horn? And without sounding like I’m cocky. And I say, well, it comes back to one, the leadership psychology that you have, number two, finding an appropriate way, using a framework to tell the story of your work, right? So you’re not talking about you, you’re talking about the work that you’ve done and the leadership that you’ve provided and the value of the company through a vehicle of which anybody can understand. This is not just, oh, Jenn did this and Nils did this and Nils did this and Nils did this. No, no, no. It’s about, well, here was a big picture problem in situation that we had, we approached this through the four pillars of leadership pillar 1, 2, 3, 4. Here’s what we did in each one of these pillars. This is how we contributed value to the company. Now all of a sudden people can understand your message and they, it wasn’t about you at all. It was actually the framework was the great vehicle to be able to communicate to them because they didn’t know what you did.

Jenn DeWall:

Yes. Can I, I wanna get your take on this. Like one of the things that I say with clients is that you have one end of the spectrum is cockiness. The other end of the spectrum is low confidence. If you have been operating with the fact that cockiness is your enemy, the likelihood of you jumping onto the cockiness train overnight or becoming arrogant it from what I see is, is pretty small. Yeah. And so just putting that out there, cause you would really have to work to then get that there. So, I love the tools that you’re sharing with them because give yourself permission to try. Because you’re not all of sudden gonna swing overnight to telling everyone that you lead them from an ivory tower and look down at them.

Nils Vinje:

That’s right. And even if you’re, you know, don’t have the framework in place yet. That’s okay. Like simple matter of fact is- make it not about you. If you let’s say you ran a project, let’s say a project was wildly successful. Let’s say you led that project. And it led to some wonderful result for the company that added some amount of measurable value. Right? Very generic example here. But instead of saying, I led this project, I got this to this value. I did this. You just simply take yourself out of it and talk about, all right here was the situation that we had. This was a challenge that was recognized. The team came together. We identified some possible solutions. We came up with the best possible scenario based on our understanding. At the time we put together a, you know, implementation plan, we this into action and we achieve this result. That’s an effective way to market your leadership and you never use the word I that’s. Okay. Right. So even if you don’t have a full framework built out, framework’s obviously gonna make it infinitely easier and, and more effective. But even if you don’t have it out, take yourself out the equation. Don’t talk about, I talk about the, the situation, you know, what, how the team came together or how the solution was arrived at and then what the end of end of result was and what the impact was.

Jenn DeWall:

Yes. That is a fantastic way to just approach it. All you have to do is get into it and just start going or even start with the we, what did we, as the team go, and then you can bring that back. Let’s get into your final pillar. I cannot this, I feel like this is blown by. So your final pillar is.

The Fourth Pillar of Leadership – Leading with Metrics

Nils Vinje:

With metrics. So this is the measurement piece. And as you see, like they, while we can, and with my clients, we do go in different order and sometimes focus on different areas of time, depending on the situation. However, the original construct was that, well, you gotta focus on leading yourself. Then you can effectively lead others. Then you can effectively lead with communication. Then you can effectively lead with metrics. So the measurement piece is critically important, but not at the expense of everything else. And these, the couple key areas and things in here are around driving personal and team performance. And the one takeaway I would share here is a very powerful lesson I learned many years ago from a close friend of mine, was that any activity can get to a yes or no. And that was a game changer for me. So I’m not naturally metrics-driven, but I have learned to adapt and build, bring metrics in so that I could drive my team’s performance when I was in an operational role.

And when I’m working with my clients and sharing these tools and tips and helping them to drive performance, because here’s what happens most times, okay. Leader says, Hey, our sales number is down. You need to go fix it. Our retention number is too high or sorry too low. You need to increase it. We need to go from 80% to 90% go do it. And then they say, well, I trust my team. They’re smart. They should figure it out. And that’s the absolute worst thing to do because nobody has any idea what it means that the sales number is down like was that the result of marketing efforts was that result of sales development efforts was that result of close rates, pricing, packaging, 8 billion other possibilities

Jenn DeWall:

Or a pandemic!

Nils Vinje:

Global pandemic. Exactly right. But that’s where a lot of metrics get left is they get left at the lagging indicator, high-level things that just do not like inspire action cannot be tied directly to action. You cannot in a day influence that lagging indicator metric. So this pillar is all about learning, how to break down those big lagging indicators into leading indicators, which translate then into activities that you and your team can work with. And you can hold ’em accountable to actually doing things. And the best part is they will know exactly how the work they do on a daily basis influences the leading indicators, which ultimately influences lagging indicators. And so that closes the gap on the measurement piece, which is pervasive across all the business world.

Jenn DeWall:

And that’s so important. I think that that’s often an overlooked area of development within organizations, not even describing at a simple level, how your organization makes money determines what success looks like. I know we teach a class all around building your business here at cross com, but it’s when I worked at an organization, I remember feeling completely detached. I, and the example that I share as it relates to that is there. I think it was my manager or leader at the time. I didn’t necessarily. They gave, they, you know, came and delegated the task here is said tasks that we want to do. And in my brain with limited information, limited context, I was like, this seems redundant. Why are we doing this? And then fast forward into, I went and I have, I worked for a publicly-traded company. I sat and listened to our quarterly earnings call. My mind was so excited to have an understanding of how that strategy then connected back to me. But yet that took me going in and actually seeking out the information. And I think it’s low hanging fruit for leaders to just have these conversations. I hear how people understand. That’s how they’re making informed decisions. I just love that you’re bringing this up.

Nils Vinje:

It all, it comes back to the metrics, right? If you know what the metrics are at the high-level, you know, I, I use these levels level 1, 2, 3 in multiple areas, as we’re talking about with framework. And it’s just a great way to just break it down. Right? And, and when you’re communicating metrics about your team, guess what metrics other people who have no context need to know, level one metrics, the highest level, the lagging indicators, they don’t care about the stuff that happens day to day. They’ll never be able to understand it. They don’t understand why they, they don’t need to, but if you’re communicating with your team, you can’t communicate it. Level one metrics, you can’t communicate that our sales numbers are going down because then there’s this huge gap of, well, how does what I do actually impact that outside of the once a quarter measurement that I hear about with that number, it just doesn’t make any sense. So closing the gap is really, really important. It’s kind of at the heart of this entire pillar. Yeah.

Jenn DeWall:

And it’s a way to drive engagement. I don’t wanna feel disconnected, but it, you know, if I’m just missing information to understand the value and I have all these competing priorities, right? You don’t wanna assume that the employee’s trying to go against it. They might just not see how that connects. Thank you so much for bringing that up to as a point of leading with metrics of why it’s so important to build that interior leadership style Nils I’ve loved our conversation. I, same here, truly loved it. I feel like the energy’s been fun. I don’t know why saying for my first time, but I want people to be able to connect with you. I know you’ve offered to give and provide your book that they can download, but tell, tell me or tell them how they can connect with you?

Where to Find Nils and Get a Free Copy of 30 Day Leadership Playbook

Nils Vinje:

Absolutely. Yeah. So you can get a free copy of the bestselling book, 30 Day leadership playbook, your guide to becoming the leader. You have always wanted to be by going to 30 Day leadership.com/book. And that just submits your name and email, and I’ll send you the book immediately within a few minutes. Either for the information on the B2B leadership podcast or the B2B Leaders Academy, where it go deeper with all these tools and provide access to not only the tools and the content, but also coaching with me, just go to 30dayleadership.com, and you can see the whole menu of services there would love to connect with you. You can always send me an email at nils@30dayleadership.com if you have a specific question. I look forward to connecting in the future.

Jenn DeWall:

Nils, thank you so much for just sharing your knowledge, expertise, and passion for leadership. This was a great episode, and I know that our listeners will walk away with some tangible takeaways.

Nils Vinje:

My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on

Jenn DeWall:

Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit popped cast with Nils Vinje. I loved the conversation. It was so dynamic, and I learned so many different characteristics, tips and techniques that I can try. As you heard in the episode, Nils is offering you a free digital copy of the 30 day leadership playbook. And you can access that by going to 30dayleadership.com/book, or you can find that link in our show notes. Also, you can connect with them there. You can find additional resources. And if you know someone that could benefit from hearing this conversation, don’t forget to share this with them. And of course, if you’re looking for leadership development, we would love to assist you here at Crestcom, we offer a one-year-long comprehensive leadership of development program that is focused on creating more authentic and human-centered leaders. Thank you so much for listening until next time.