Episode 88: 30 Day Leadership Playbook with Nils Vinje

Nils Vinje: 0:00

Your environment will never ever change, you will always have an exponential amount of demands that you probably some you can meet some you can't meet, you will always have. If you're in a client facing role, you'll always have clients that are demanding things from you. And even if you're an internal facing role, you will always have internal people who act like clients who need things from YouTube. So nothing can really change until you are ready to change yourself, which is why that question is so important. And that's why the first pillar in the book is called leading yourself because it starts with you.

Kyle Roed: 0:30

This is the rebel HR Podcast, the podcast where we talk to HR innovators about all things people leadership. If you're looking for places to find about new ways to think about the world of work, this is the podcast for you. Please subscribe, favorite podcast listening platform today. And leave us a review revelon HR rebels Welcome back rebel HR listeners extremely excited for the conversation we have Niels Vineya with us today. Niels has written a book called the 30 day leadership playbook. He has helped create internal transformation for hundreds of companies from early stage startups to Fortune 100. For the first 10 years of his professional career, he bounced from job to job not knowing where he fit. After being frustrated, he invested in himself and became a certified leadership coach and began working with clients to put his newly found wisdom to the test, extremely excited to dive into the book today. Thanks for joining us Neil's

Nils Vinje: 1:30

there. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on Kyle,

Kyle Roed: 1:33

we're extremely excited to dig into this. You know, leadership is one of those things that is just kind of interwoven in everything that HR does. But it's not something that HR necessarily invests a significant amount of time. In, especially for themselves. I think that's one of the challenges that many HR professionals have is, is trying to find the time and the tactics to become better leaders and to help others become better leaders. So I really want to dig into that a little bit today. But before we get started, what inspired you to write a book about leadership?

Nils Vinje: 2:17

Well, Kiley, really the pandemic played a big part in the drive to actually create the book. So I've been had up until the pandemic hit that time, I had been running my own consulting firm, primarily as my my central piece of what I did. And it was focused in the Customer Success base, b2b SaaS, businesses, helping the organizations that work with customers post sale, that was my wheelhouse. Now, for 10 years, I've been a leadership coach. And I've been coaching people one on one, in a very private context, and usually as a part of some of my consulting engagements. But when the pandemic hit, my consulting world completely disappeared. And I was left with a family of five to support, we're looking at the outlook of no business and no funnel and No, no prospects and people coming in, and no end in sight. And so I had to take a real honest look and say, Well, can I continue in this mode of working one on one with with my clients? Or do I need to, you know, take what I've learned from over the last 10 years of, you know, not only from myself, and putting these tools into action, but also coaching others to put them into action, and then sharing them with more people in a bigger audience so that I could, you know, ride through these kinds of ups and downs that I'm going to have in the future. So when the pandemic hit, and everything went to zero on the consulting side, I decided to make the pivot in my business and said, you know, what, the leadership skills market isn't there, I also have a tremendous amount of expertise in, but I've never made it the focal point of my business. And that was the shift. And that was the point at which I said, Well, if I'm going to do this, I need to go into it with a bang. And the book became the central Cornerstone piece on which I wanted to build everything out. So I'm very thankful for the pandemic, because it gave me the push to actually finally, you know, put pen to paper and get this book done. And this was all the culmination of, you know, 10 years of coaching 20 years in the professional world, bringing all that experience into a, you know, cohesive framework that other people could understand and, most importantly, take advantage of, and ultimately make some improvements in their world.

Kyle Roed: 4:25

Absolutely, and good for you for for, for making the pivot. My My guess is that in that 20 years of experience in the professional world, you've learned that, you know, being resilient and adaptable to those sorts of changes is important for continued success.

Nils Vinje: 4:41

That's right. That's right. And nothing will teach you that even more than I've now it's been seven years that I've been, you know, working for myself, primarily, you know, consulting and now focus heavily on the leadership side in a broader sense, and that adaptability is the single most important thing to your livelihood. And I think it It applies as a leadership principle, just across the board. And adaptability is absolutely huge and something I reinforce with my clients all the time.

Kyle Roed: 5:09

Absolutely. So I'm curious to understand a little bit more about your your approach to to the playbook. So it's a it's a 30 day playbooks. So what what inspired you to focus on, you know, kind of that that short term, 30 day, you know, kind of tactical approach to leadership.

Nils Vinje: 5:31

So, the book, the the 30 days equates to 30 chapters. And so in the very beginning, in the introduction, I talked about how, if you read just one chapter a day, for 30 days, you will know more about leadership than the vast majority of the professional working world. And that was my goal, right to share that wisdom, share that experience in a way that is easily consumable, and not going to, you know, require months on and to try to get through or some heavy, you know, theoretical stuff like this is tangible, crispy, actionable stuff that people can put into place. And many have commented in the reviews and things about how big a difference they made when they put these tools into action. And that was the goal. So that's where the 30 days came from. And I was coming up with the title and trying to figure this out and brainstorming all the structure of the book, you know, I thought about, well, what's the most meaningful impact that I could make in a short period of time to get people started, or to get to the next, you know, one next tool that you could implement that could make a difference. And that was where the 30 day notion come in. And lo and behold, I had roughly 30 chapters that I wanted to work into. And those chapters fall into four main pillars, which we can talk about. So that's how the structure came about. And that's why I called it a 30 day leadership playbook, because it is a playbook, it is a reference guide. And everything's covered from day one to day 30. And you can have a very solid understanding of some core principles and some great tools to put into action, some are basic, some are a bit more advanced, but easily consumable in a short period of time.

Kyle Roed: 7:05

I love that. And I think, you know, from my standpoint, so, you know, I get a lot of books, as a, as a podcast host, which I love, I love to read and, and invest that time. And I love the I love the complex and challenging kind of the macro thesis type approach where you where you try to, you know, understand the broad concepts. But at a certain point, like, I need something that's pragmatic in something that's actionable. And and, and a lot of times you read these books, and you're like, Oh, that's interesting. I have no idea what to do with this information. So I appreciate that.

Nils Vinje: 7:44

And as that was my thinking, to like, the best books that I've ever read, that have made the most impact on me have been very specific, very, to the point where the author has taken their incredible knowledge, broken it down into a framework that is easy to understand. And then provide specific guidance on how to implement write that to me is like a magical book. And then that was what I wanted to create. I can't do theory, I can't do fluff. I'm not a researcher. I have no intention of being but I have a lot of very practical experience and advice and tools to share. And that was what I put everything in the book.

Molly Burdess: 8:19

Yeah, especially as we're so busy, it's, the theory is awesome, but it's like, Okay, now we got to move, what can we do to make an impact in our business today on our team today?

Nils Vinje: 8:30

That's right. That's right. And I went to grad school, I got an MBA in management and organizational behavior. That was the starting point where I learned the value. And the fields of leadership even existed from a scientific point of view. So I've got all the theory, I just can't, you know, nobody who comes to work with me is looking for an MBA, they're looking for specific tools to implement in the moment to help them have a better one on one conversation with their employee to give a better give a better presentation, to their team, to their direct reports, or to their executive team. And all those pieces are things that everybody every single leader is involved with every day. And if I can integrate some incredible tools, into someone's day to day life, then their life gets better. Their team's life gets better everybody, the world's a better place when we have better leaders. Yeah, before

Molly Burdess: 9:23

we jump into some of the like pillars and all that stuff, I'm just curious, just because of the timing of this all do you find? Or did you find the time it had anything to do with kind of what you were writing what you were learning about meaning like has leadership has the principles as the actions change with not only the pandemic, but also what most of us are going through now with this great resignation? Right? And we mark it, like, did you find some of this stuff changed or was it pretty consistent?

Nils Vinje: 9:51

So the the core concepts remain consistent, and I'll give some examples of that when we talk about the specifics. The application is what changes. And that's been a key focus on the work that I've done since the pandemic and everything is that you still have to do the same things as a leader. But doing them in a remote environment is completely not completely different is going to take more effort, right, and it is absolutely 100% possible to have the same relationships with your team to have the same level of visibility inside your organization that you want. However, it takes a different set of tools, and sometimes even a different level of effort in order to ensure that you show up in the way that you want to show up. So I don't think the principles changed so much. And the tools change, but it is the application of those and the level of effort that's required, because it's a lot easier to do things in person, let's face it, than it is to do things in a remote distributed environment, which still the large percentage of the world working world is in today.

Molly Burdess: 10:57

And for me, what I'm finding in my workplace specifically, it's more, it's more on the, the great resignation than it is the pandemic at this point. It's like I'm finding my leaders are afraid to do things that they would have done, such such as, like holding people accountable, because they're afraid they're gonna walk out right or setting clear expectations. And that's, that's the challenge. And I've see my leaders struggling with,

Nils Vinje: 11:23

see, I Well, those are fascinating examples. And I think those are two perfect examples of exactly what you need to do more of, because people want to be held accountable. People want clear expectations, if you don't do that, then an assumption can be made that you don't care or that it's not important. And then that leads to a, you know, dissociation from the organization. And then oh, I might start looking at some other opportunities, or the next time I get a recruiter ping on LinkedIn, I'm going to entertain the conversation, because I don't feel like I'm growing here. So I think it's actually the exact opposite, that if you're fearful of setting more, you know, consistent and in strict expectations and holding people accountable, lean into that, do that, and it will actually have a more positive effect on the person on the other end. Because that is what drives you know, individuals and contributions to the company and being committed to the work that they're doing. And knowing somebody else actually cares.

Molly Burdess: 12:20

That's an interesting way to look at it and great and great way to look at it.

Kyle Roed: 12:25

You're taking notes, Molly,

Molly Burdess: 12:26

I am I'm like, oh, yeah, let me just repeat that back.

Kyle Roed: 12:33

I think it's, you know, it's a really important point. And I do think it's, it's so different to be a leader in an environment where you bump into someone and you have a five minute conversation, and you do maybe a little bit of coaching, you do some connection. And you're good, right, and you're but in a in a virtual remote environment, where it's where you're distributed, and, and you don't intentionally have those accidental interactions. leadership's a lot harder, it really isn't, it takes it takes intentional effort to be a good leader.

Nils Vinje: 13:06

And that's, that's the key, it takes intention. In order to do that, it absolutely 100% can be done. But it has to, you have to have that intention. And you have to have the drive to do that and be willing to do it every single day. Because whereas if it was ad hoc, in the office, it's like casual, sometimes it happens sometimes doesn't not a big deal. It'll same environmental happen next week. But in the remote environment, you got to look at the entire way that you engage with your team, and the way that that you systematize the connection with each person, because that you have to orchestrate, it can't just fall into your lap, and it will

Kyle Roed: 13:43

100% recurring meetings are my friend in this in this environment. I do I struggle I you know, before the before the pandemic, I was traveling, you know, around 50% of the time, and we have a distributed workforce anyway. So, you know, part of my job is traveling and seeing people. And then and then I lost all of that context when when travel was shut down. And and to try to be an effective human leader. It took took a very different set of skills. And it took a little bit of a pivot, but the I would agree the principles of leadership, you know, remain the same. Yeah. So in that context, I do want to start to dive into some of the content of the book and we've already alluded to this. And I think everybody everybody listening right now probably understands this stuff's really important. I really need to invest in this and I need to understand more about leadership and that starts with me. I think everybody probably universally understands that fact. The issue is finding the time and and the energy to do it. And and one of the things that that you talk about in your book is how to save five hours a week. By answering one simple question. So take us through this question, please.

Nils Vinje: 15:05

Yeah, absolutely. This is my favorite lens, and one that has yielded just gains like that I've hours a week back just by answering one simple question, the simple question is this, who is in control? That's it. That's as complicated as the question gets. And the reason I asked that question, anytime our worked with anybody for the last 10 plus years in the coaching capacity, and time is an issue, which, let's face it, basically, is everybody. The reason I asked that is because change begins with psychology. And if you do not believe that you are in control, you're never going to change, you can be as frustrated, as you know, the most frustrated person in the world with how your schedule is arranged. But if you don't believe that you have the ability to control your schedule, to exert influence over your environment, whatever tactics I give you completely useless. However, if you make the decision, and you answer, I am in control, not my environment, I am in control, once you make that decision, then all the tools and tactics that I have to share will be incredibly powerful. And that five hour example back in a week has been returned in multiple times from people who have gone through my training and my program like coaching, in order to put these things in action, but they have to answer that question first. And I tell them, there's only two answers. It's either you, or it's your environment, in my environment. I mean, your emails, your meetings, your clients, your work, etc. That's your environment. So it's either you are in control, or your environment. And until you are ready to answer that you are in control, Nothing you do will make any difference. So that is just how powerful that one question is. And that's what leads to the tools being able to be adapted. And then the time gets saved. And that particular, just a month ago or so, had an individual in my program, who went through had was having a lot of trouble on the time engine mastery side, went through the content, my coaching, and came out on the other side, saving five hours a week, which he then dedicated to more strategic efforts, he decided to spend some of that time with his team, he decided to spend some of that time on strategic projects for his team looking forward. And every single time this has happened with a client, they have found incredibly better uses of that time than they what they were doing before.

Molly Burdess: 17:36

To me, that's less time putting out fires and more time in control with intention.

Nils Vinje: 17:44

Yes, that's right. And your environment is never going to change. This is like one thing is really, really important to that I want everybody to just think about listening to this, your environment will never ever change, you will always have an exponential amount of demands that you probably some you can meet some you can't meet, you will always have if you're in a client facing role, you'll always have clients that are demanding things from you. And even if you're an internal facing role, you will always have internal people who act like clients who need things from you, too. So nothing can really change until you are ready to change yourself, which is why that question is so important. And that's why the first pillar in the book is called leading yourself, because it starts with you.

Kyle Roed: 18:27

It's a powerful question. And you know, when you asked it, you know, it prompted me to think back, you know, certainly early in my career where I didn't have any control over my schedule, and it was almost like, you know, what, what happens if someone walks in my door and takes control of my day? And I know, I don't know, a single HR professional that can say, Yeah, my day hasn't blown up because of somebody else's agenda. Right? Yep. And some of that is, is, is unavoidable in our job to a certain extent, but I think the things that are within our control, you know, and having that, that thoughtful, you know, question? That's a that's a little bit of a game changer. So, you know, so tactically, you know, I've heard some people have like, they will block off their calendar for time to think or they will, you know, maybe have like office hours or that sort of thing. What kind of tactics? Have you seen that work for people who are living in the mode of being in control of their of themselves and their schedules?

Nils Vinje: 19:40

Yeah. And so taxes vary across the board, depending on the situation. So first step is we answer that question and we get full commitment that I am in control the individual Of course, then we can move into the tactics. Email is still the most prolific and proficient tool For all communication in the business world, and also a vast majority of the distraction in the business world, I'd say slack and other teams, you know, chat programs are probably very close second, if not, some of them and some organizations have overtaken them. So what it looks like to exert control over those tools is very specifically, I am going to decide how I use these tools as opposed to these tools deciding how they are going to use me, what I mean is the example you just share, somebody else's day happened, that influenced me, and all of a sudden, the rest of my day is gone. Right? That is a very difficult place to be in, because all the things you had planned to do, suddenly are on the side. Now, I fully understand that situations occur, where you're not gonna be able to control everything, that's totally okay, which is why we plan for chaos. We plan I love to have at least 20% of your day available to move things around in case the inevitable blow up happens. And that's one of the techniques on the calendar blocking is that plan for chaos, don't wait for it to happen, anticipate it's going to happen, then when it comes, it's simply, hey, chaos is here, I just need to move this around. And I can still get done the things I need to get done today. Right. And there's a lot of specifics on the email management and things that go into probably too much to go into here. But taking control of when you are going to engage with your email, how you are going to handle the emails that come through, when you are going to gauge with Slack or teams, how you are going to process that information in a way that keeps you in control. Because the most likely response when everybody goes into their email or into Slack, is just I get a message. And now I feel something and now I have to do something that maybe wasn't even in my sphere of knowledge beforehand. And now I have to attack it. Well, if we look at it from the perspective of I'm in control, it looks a lot different. And there's some very simple ways that we can work together in order to you know, give tools that reinforce that control feeling.

Kyle Roed: 22:03

I love that. Yeah, I would say, you know, from my standpoint, you know, I've not always been good at this, you know, I'll just be blunt. Because I've always been, you know, kind of conditioned to think a full schedule means I'm effective brain, you know, I'm busy. I'm impacting others, you know, that's, that's a good thing. But, you know, what I found is, if I don't block out that time to think, and, and that buffer, I'm always operating with my hair on fire. And it's always like it's going from crisis to crisis, as opposed to stepping back, taking a deep breath and realizing, okay, you know, now, here's this situation, I can work through this, because I've given myself enough time and I I love that use the tool, don't let the tool use you, I think that's a great way to think about it. You know, whatever that looks like for you.

Nils Vinje: 22:52

Yeah, and remember, the your environment isn't going to change, right, the only thing that can change is you starting with your mindset and then starting with these tools and tactics, that is the way we drive change from a time mastery perspective, and the way we drive change through a lot of this but in particular time mastery is you taking charge Kyle, tomorrow morning, if instead of going right into the you know, back to back meetings that you have, if you took whatever time you think is appropriate 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 25 minutes, 30 minutes, and took a breath and planned out exactly what you needed to get done today. So you went into it from a different perspective, I would be you know, highly likely that you would feel differently going throughout that day, which would then give you another set of motivation to do it the next day and the next day and little little wins stack up over time. And that helps you take control. I love that you're

Molly Burdess: 23:45

giving kind of homework right now. It's part of my job you know, for me, just the simple thing of not having my email up 24/7 has been so impactful for me you know, I look at it three times a day and I get so much more done and I feel so much better about it. But also you know, thinking about our world and HR how you're talking about like our day really kind of depends on what walks in our door. I also think for HR professionals specifically having good processes in place that people know like will really help us whether that is you know a good process for for employees reporting issues and or okay now what do we do with those issues, investigation processes, good leave of absence processes, so it's not always like especially for those HR departments have just one or two it's not like okay, what do I do when this situation comes up? That only happens maybe a few times a year? You know, you don't have to kind of recreate that wheel you just have documented known process

Nils Vinje: 24:52

is Molly hit the nail on the head that we create our own chaos? Right by not having systems in place like that part of the fourth pillar is also called Building repeatable systems doing exactly what you just described there. So that, again, it helps you maintain control. Because if you have, you know, ad hoc things come to you all the time. And you deal with each one in an ad hoc way, your level of context switching is gigantic, and it reduces your level of productivity. And this is, you know, whether you're in HR or whether you're in another function, it's universally applicable. And so building those processes, and giving people that need to have access to you, whether it's your team, or whether it's your employees, or whatever it is giving them the certainty that if they have an issue, or a need, or a request, and you have a way to for them to, you know, get that to you, gives a tremendous amount of freedom and comfort to them. And it keeps you in control. Right, it's when we don't do any of that, that we respond ad hoc. That happens a lot. Because we don't take the time to build the system and make it repeatable. When we don't do that, then we just fly by the seat of our pants and get to the end of every day, we feel really busy. But we don't really know what we got done. And that's a dangerous place to be in any leadership position anywhere.

Kyle Roed: 26:20

Absolutely, I you know, I think it's interesting. It's an interesting insight, Molly. And I think one of the things I'd be curious to, to dig into a little bit is it's really not just your own personal leadership, but influencing the leadership of others. So as as we think about the, you know, the 30 day leadership playbook. How can we translate some of these leadership best practices are tactics into performance within our leaders on our team? How do we, you know, how do we focus on on that influence and impact?

Nils Vinje: 27:01

So I think one of the most effective ways to teach someone else is to one go through it yourself, of course, to become proficient, you don't have to be an expert level, but become proficient, and then actually teach it to somebody else. And this is, you know, part of my personal drive is just continuous improvement, and always challenging everything and looking at things from a new perspective and seeing how can I improve and get better every day? I've, you know, I'm teaching things now that I've been teaching for a long time. And some of the things I'm teaching, I've been teaching for a relatively recent time, because I've continuously evolved. So if you're an HR professional, and you're thinking about wow, you know, my day is chaos most times, and hey, maybe nose has some ideas on how I can master my time, that would be awesome. Love that question of who's in control, then get the tools, right, master your time for a little while, find out what works and what doesn't. And then find somebody in the organization who also is struggling with mastering your time I guarantee there are a lot of people, and then teach them some of the tools that you have learned and explain that, hey, look, I'm not an expert by any means. But these are some tools that really helped me Molly, like you said, they're checking your email three times a day, the first question people say, when I suggest something like that is, oh, my gosh, what happens if something comes in? Well, there's this thing called a personal SLA that we define, which helps us feel comfortable with the response time that we're going to have. So all these little pieces, then end up as tools that then can integrate, and when you teach something to someone else, you learn it number one even better, and they get to, you know, experience the knowledge that you have, and you get in and everything everybody benefits. So if you're willing to invest in yourself, which is a, you know, primary core thesis of mine, that you have to be willing to invest in yourself, invest in yourself, and then teach it to somebody else doesn't have to be a gigantic full blown company wide program, just teach one thing to one other person, and see what kind of an impact it has, and see what challenges they have, and see if they come up with different strategies than you even thought of that might impact how you do it. And I think that's a really effective way to spread this throughout organizations. And sometimes, certain tools will grab hold, and be, you know, be be really adopted by a lot of people. And sometimes maybe they will, they won't be that's okay, it's just about experimentation. And everybody can constantly improve, myself included, right? I'm always on the lookout for another program or tool or book that can help me get better so that ultimately I can then help my clients get better. And that's just going to be a never ending process. And I would encourage the everybody else do the same thing.

Kyle Roed: 29:43

Yeah, and it's almost like you know, it's the the theory that if you teach somebody something, you're going to get better at it. Yeah, yeah. Because you're you're reinforcing you know, the behavior and you're learning more as you teach. I think that's a that's a great tactic. Mom I don't know about the three days, three emails a day, or checking emails, right? That's right their

Molly Burdess: 30:08

work life.

Nils Vinje: 30:11

Right now stack it with the being in control piece and the world looks a lot different. And all of a sudden, you will see things in a completely different way. That's a perfect sample, Molly got an opportunity to teach cow a little bit more about that. And Kyle would be in a totally different place.

Kyle Roed: 30:26

Yeah, I'll buy you a beer if you tell me how that works.

Nils Vinje: 30:31

My, one of my mentors, has a great saying it says the to the to the fourth grader, the fifth grader is a genius. And and what he's getting at is that you don't have to become a master at any, you know, one particular area, it's when you know, just something slightly more than somebody else, because you've had the good fortune to invest in yourself or to experience a presentation that was really impactful. And you can share that with somebody else. And they will, you know, to the fourth grade, or the fifth graders, a genius. That's literally the difference in sometimes in level of knowledge. But it's about improvement, getting better helping other people become better and just be more engaged overall, I

Kyle Roed: 31:10

think that's a great call out and a great reflection of the point you just made. And for you know, for all the HR people listening here, you know, you are the fifth grader in a room full of fourth graders as it relates to human resources. Yeah, and as it relates to leadership, so if they're not doing this, and you're not doing this, then who is right, so it's like, you know, your organization is actually expecting you to do these sorts of things, whether that's just impacting one person, you know, maybe it's a program that you start out as a small pilot program. But yeah, it's you've got to try something. So I think that's a great call to action. And super helpful, I do want to dig into one one additional topic that I think is really, really pertinent to, to the day and age that we're in right now, some of the things that HR deals with, and that is a term that you use called Rhino skin resilience. So and and it's really about becoming immune to negativity. So and it's no surprise here that we deal with a lot of negativity, in our role. So so so how do we become a rhino?

Nils Vinje: 32:23

Yeah. So this is still focused on the the first pillar of leading yourself, which is all the first part, the very, very beginning, one of the some of the first chapters are dedicated to your leadership psychology. And that's where this Rhino skin resilience comes from. As we've talked about before, psychology plays an incredibly important part in leadership, it is not the only part. But it is without it, all the tactics, and they kind of fall apart, it's really, really hard to make progress if you don't have the right psychology. So that resilience comes from number one having a very clear understanding of your role. And what it is that you are ultimately there to do. Whatever role you're in, whether in HR or some other function doesn't matter. What is your role. Number two is something I call claiming your strengths and having a very solid understanding of exactly what you are naturally talented to do. The assessment I love to use more than any other like every coach has lots of assessments, but there's one that over the last 10 plus years has been the best at just getting to the core of understanding what someone is naturally talented to do is the StrengthsFinder assessment from Gallup. I have no association with Gallup. It's just my absolute favorite thing that I put everybody through. Strengths started as a research project by Gallup where they wanted to answer one question, they said, What makes a high performing team. And they did hundreds of 1000s of hours of research, crunched all the data and came to a one single sentence conclusion, that is that highest performing teams have individuals in roles that maximize their strengths. So by claiming your strengths, and being able to very clearly articulate what it is you are naturally talented to do, builds a tremendous amount of confidence, which then builds up the resiliency and supports why you are in the role that you're in. So there's a little bit about the combination of the psychology side with some tactics side to ultimately build that out. Now, if you're uncertain of why you're in your role, or uncertain of the role that you're in, you don't know your strengths. It's really hard to show up every day, and get the barrage of stuff that I know HR professionals sometimes receive are on the receiving end of and if we flip that table back to our control theme, right? It's about taking control of No, this is who I am. This is what I do. This is what I am most talented to do. This is how I'm wired. That changes the game entirely.

Molly Burdess: 34:52

Yeah, you mentioned confidence and I couldn't agree more that confidence in anybody will make you excel. I think it'll make you happier. Your role, so anything I think we as leaders can do to help build confidence in our team will make a huge impact.

Nils Vinje: 35:07

Absolutely, absolutely. 100% very quickly to like time sometimes is like, it doesn't have to take, you know, these are not years long things. These are I'm big fan of like we integrate tools into your daily life. If we get the aunt the results of the StrengthsFinder assessment, and then you take on, go through a series of questions to go deeper than just the assessment results. Very, very quickly, every single person that goes through that is eyes wide open going, Oh, my gosh, I know exactly how to describe who I am. And what I do. Now. This is This is amazing. And now I look sometimes they look at their job and say, maybe this lines up perfectly, maybe some of it doesn't. But at least they have a lens to look at their work through and a lens to look at themselves through in a different way than they've ever had before.

Kyle Roed: 35:54

Absolutely, I think that's a really great insight. You know, I'll be honest, one of the reasons that I started a podcast was because of the StrengthsFinder assessment, not and for me, it was Woo. and communication are my top two. Oh, no, I thought well, how do I you know, how do I how do we leverage those skills? And you know, sure enough, podcast requires both of those things. Now, when it comes to asking hard hitting questions, that's why I need somebody like Molly. Because I just like to talk to people and get to know others and connect, you know, Molly likes to come down with a hammer with all those tough questions, but, but it but it is a great example of you know, if you truly know yourself, you, if you go back to that question who's in control, right, if you know, your strengths, and you know, others strengths, and you can complement, you know each other. Now, now you're getting into, you know, you can build great teams, you know, you can build a good team around you, you can build out great mentors, you can be a mentor others, you know, it really is, you know, foundational to what an organization really needs and a leader. And ultimately, you know, for for individuals who are trying to figure out, okay, you know, what do I want to be when I grow up? You know, figure out what you're good at? And then yeah, and then do more of it, right? And eventually, you'll figure it out.

Nils Vinje: 37:19

That's exactly right. And in the world today, right? Nobody is very few, I should say, very few people will work for one organization for even a long period of time. Right? Definitely not what it was generations ago, when there was one company one career, one job one role, that was it, like you kind of put all of your essence and being into that organization and hope for a big payout at the end. Right? Nowadays, I you know, use the term and champion this, that every single individual is a CEO of his or her career, you're in charge, there is no more like putting your hands, your development and your future and your growth into the hands of somebody else who's going to decide for you, where you get to go, how much you get to accomplish in your career, the opportunities you have, the game has shifted, and the power is in your hands. Literally, that's I mean, that's part of why we're in the great resignation is a piece of it. But you have to claim that you have to be ready to take full control. And that comes with this psychology piece and leading yourself when you're in that position, problems and negativity, they just don't matter. Right? Because you are able to make decisions with the best information that you have available at the time. And whatever the decision is, you made the call not somebody else.

Kyle Roed: 38:33

Absolutely, you know, I think it's interesting, because, you know, a story from my, my earlier years in HR, we, I used to struggle with the bad stuff, you know, our I call it like the dark side of HR, right? So terminations, performance management, investigations, like it just not fun. If it is fun, maybe don't be an HR that scares me. But but you know, to go into those situations, you know, kind of, without that type of mentality where, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna help the situation by leveraging my strengths or, or without having maybe the the confidence that I know what I'm doing is really, really tough. And you know, that the way that I overcame it was, was actually understanding that, you know, my strength in that situation, is the ability to articulate somebody else's feelings into a calm and rational type of communication that others can understand and interpret, to help find some sort of common ground or some sort of resolution. And ultimately, if I can do that, if I can leverage that strength. I'm happy to do that. Because I'm not I'm not going into a negative situation, completely out of control. I'm going into a situation to help resolve it. And ultimately, you can't resolve all the situations. At least I can say, you know, we We did our best in this situation. And you know, here's the outcome. But it's so that's,

Nils Vinje: 40:06

that's a perfect example of looking at the work you have to do through the lens of your strengths. Right. So what was previously the dark side that you, in the earlier days were a little bit less comfortable with, you still had to do those things, but you looked at it through the lens of your wound communication as your top two dominant strengths. And that made you exceptional in that role. I wouldn't be surprised at the people who went through some of those dark things probably said some very nice things about the process. And you going through it and having you on the other side was really helpful. Right? Wouldn't be surprised.

Kyle Roed: 40:38

We'll see. Not everybody felt that way. But no, we gave it our best college try.

Nils Vinje: 40:43

There. Fair enough. After this thing, Laura, how about that?

Molly Burdess: 40:47

Miss imagine, man, that was the best termination I've ever been a part of gosh, I mean, that's my job. But he was so nice doing it, it has

Nils Vinje: 40:55

happened before, right. And it comes back to you are naturally talented to win, whoo stands for win others over and communicate and use those strengths in a challenging and difficult situation and felt good about it as compared to when you didn't know that and early days, and you were probably a little bit fearful of it? Absolutely.

Kyle Roed: 41:17

Well, I, I wouldn't encourage anybody to learn about this, I don't think this has anything to do with me, this isn't like, you know, some intrinsic skill that I have to do this, I went through the work, I was fortunate to go through an organization that used tools like that to help leaders and future leaders understand their skill sets. The other thing I would say, and I I know, Molly, you and I've talked about this quite a bit is I also came from a leadership background before I got into HR. So I didn't have you know, I didn't necessarily have the theoretical Human Resources stuff figured out when I started in HR, but I definitely had the the bumps and bruises of being a leader, and learning from, you know, being a frontline leader of, you know, dozens of people. And, and bringing that into the HR world. You know, I think also kind of built up that that resilience, that that Rhino skin, if you will, to to deal with some of that stuff. So,

Molly Burdess: 42:23

see, and I didn't have that. So it was really interesting for me, you know, I would be coaching leaders on how to have a difficult conversation or how to terminate this person. But then when it came down to an I personally had to do this, I'm like, Oh, my God, I've never actually done this. It was, it's crazy. And I'm sure that's how a lot of HR people out there have come up, but it's like, it was just crazy. Yeah,

Kyle Roed: 42:55

absolutely. So I think, you know, maybe the, to wrap that part of it. Yeah, that's, that's a better term. See, Molly. That's, that's it. That's why That's why you're good for this podcast. But I think it does, it comes down to you know, being aware of being self aware. And so if you have some leadership experience, leverage that if you don't leverage others that have that experience and learn from them. And it goes back to that, you know, that that principle of of who is in control? Well, you are, if you don't have leadership, then go get it. Yeah, go learn, go ask somebody, Paul Mills, he'll come in, we'll do a full on workshop, you'll be good to go. You can play there.

Nils Vinje: 43:41

Thank you appreciate that. And you couldn't even start I got good news for the guests of your podcast. I'm giving away free digital copies to my book 30 Day leadership playbook. To get one all you need is your name and emails very simple. Go to 33 Zero Day leadership.com forward slash book and you can read the old content. The pillars we talked about most today was pillar one leading yourself but there are three other pillars leading others is pillar number two leading with communication is pillar number three and leading with metrics is pillar number four, and get kind of a broad strokes and find one of those areas and implement one of the tools that I talked about in the book and that's you know, take one step to go further and you can do it for free today.

Kyle Roed: 44:23

Love it and we will have will have that information in the show notes. So open up your podcast player, click in there. Check it out. Niels thank you for being so generous with that and for sharing the knowledge with our team. With that we are going to shift into the rebel HR flash round. So three quick questions. Question number one, what is your favorite people book?

Nils Vinje: 44:46

Alright, favorite one of all time has to be working with emotional intelligence by none other than Daniel Goleman when I read that book the first time was in grad school, and it just was eye opening that that There was a different way to measure success in today's world that didn't involve IQ because I was not at the top of the IQ scale. School was hard. But I knew how to connect with people. And that was when I learned that, you know, the future success of you in your career is all about how effectively you can work with other people. It gave me a completely different light to follow. And that was absolutely a hands down one of my favorites, recommend it to everybody. Yeah, it's a blast.

Kyle Roed: 45:26

Absolutely. And I second that I had an opportunity at a Sherm conference a few years ago, to attend a seminar by him and and you know, powerful stuff, I think many of us in the HR space are, are higher EQ than IQ. And it was it was empowering to understand that, you know, the, there's a different way to think about success and what good looks like and how to measure that within my my field. So yeah, I strongly, strongly encourage that. Question number two, who should we be listening to?

Nils Vinje: 46:03

Alright, so well, you're already listening to the rebel HR podcast. So that's our list. Of course. I also have a podcast called the b2b leadership, podcast, all all leadership focused, talking to b2b leaders, business to business and just pulling back the covers on leadership development, how did people in director, Senior Director or VP C level positions get to where they are today? And what advice do they have to share? The other piece about who to be listening to is I would encourage everybody to listen outside of your domain outside of your discipline. So some of my favorite podcasts have absolutely nothing to do with leadership, or even with customer success, where I have a lot of expertise. So my favorites are in the marketing space, I have a passion for understanding how does marketing work. And then I bring in tools that I learned from the marketing space into my leadership work, and it actually complement in a lot of ways. So you can oftentimes find some really interesting insights and different ways to look thing by going outside of you know, if it's your HR is your domain, going outside of HR, I love the story brand podcast company, by Donald Miller. phenomenal piece of incredible marketing. And another one is my coaches, James Schramko, he runs a podcast called super fast business. He's on a episode almost 900 or something. So there's an endless amount of entrepreneurs that he's talked to, that I get to listen in on conversations as fascinating. And some of it has things directly related to me. But a lot of it has things that are completely unrelated that then I might take into account when I'm teaching something or working with one of my clients.

Molly Burdess: 47:37

I love that answer. And especially when we're talking about HR, I mean, that's exactly what you need to do to elevate the profession. Yeah. 100%.

Kyle Roed: 47:46

Absolutely. All right. Last question. hard hitting question, how can our listeners connect with you?

Nils Vinje: 47:51

Yeah, absolutely. So the website is 30 day leadership, calm three, zero day leadership calm. As I mentioned, the free book, is it 30 Day leadership, com forward slash book, podcast, b2b leadership podcast.com. And the program that I run, which takes all the concepts from the book, and goes deeper and gets to work with me on a training and coaching basis is called the b2b Leaders Academy is information on 30 day leadership, calm. But if you liked the content in the free book, and you want to go deeper, and you want to build your leadership skills, you want to work with me, as a coach, check out the b2b Leaders Academy because my job is to empower leaders with the tools to confidently handle any situation, just like we've been talking about today.

Kyle Roed: 48:33

Awesome. And again, we'll have all that information in the show notes. Check it out, Nelson Pinja. Thank you so much for for joining us. It's just been a wonderful conversation, some really great content. And thanks for spending the last few minutes with us.

Nils Vinje: 48:47

My pleasure. Thanks, Kyle. Thanks, Molly.

Kyle Roed: 48:50

All right. That does it for the revenue HR podcast. Thank you to our guests. Follow us on Facebook at rebel HR podcast, Twitter, at rebel HR guy, or see our website at rebel human resources.com. The views and opinions expressed by rebel HR podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of the organizations that we represent. No animals were harmed during the filming of this podcast. Maybe