The Corporate Yogi Podcast Julie Zuzek

INTRO:
Hey, thanks for tuning in to the Corporate Yogi podcast, I’m your host Julie Zuzek. This pod is YOUR dedicated time for growth, developing practical tools to use with your team and other relationships and to learning deeply about who you are and what makes you tick! Because you are a brilliant and powerful being and I want you to invest more time reflecting on WHO are being, not just WHAT you are doing. Doing is awesome, but BEING, well that is where the magic happens and what makes you truly feel fulfilled. You’re going to love this episode on the  that leaders make. So here’s a look at what you’re going to learn today
1 – In the first segment we’ll introduce you to powerful questions and when to use them
2 – Then in the second segment we’ll explain the main categories to use them
3 – And in the last segment I’ll share the best powerful questions to ask in certain situations
 
 
So, get out of your head and into your heart, and let’s dive right in shall we?
 
 
 
SEGMENT 1  
 Do you ever wish you had a truth serum pill that would get people to tell you what they really want, reveal their truth. Well you do and it’s asking powerful questions.  They will get people to reveal their truth. You can use them when you want people to open up, be more introspective and consider aspects of themselves they’ve never done before. So what distinguishes a regular question from a powerful question? A Powerful question will get people to stop and think. It disrupts them from unconscious thinking and patterns and makes them think deeply about their answers. Powerful questions have these 3 qualities or aspects: 1 – they’re short. The shorter the better in fact. We sometimes have the bad habit of wanted to use these  questions to make ourselves sound really intelligent, so they end up getting long and complicated. 2 They should be simple, dare I say, bordering on dumbed down, only one dimensional. 3 they should be neutral and not leading and not specific to our target.
How do we ask them in a way that we have success with them?
Be confident when asking, sometimes they don’t have an answer right away, and that’s ok. Allow for silence and space after you ask so your employee can reflect.
Don’t have an agenda and predetermined answer you’re hoping to hear. Don’t be leading or make it about you. Use them in “real-time during the conversation and ask them one at a time. This is an advanced use case if you’re real-time solution finding.
 
 
SEGMENT 2
 Why do powerful questions work so well? There’s a few reasons. They give the power to the other person, let them be the expert for a turn. They also force them to get in their head and think and reflect. And because they’re so simple, it gives them a chance to be in the drivers seat for a change. There are two main reasons to use them, First in a premeditated state and second is in the moment. Let’s start with the premeditated situation. This is a situation that you know is going to happen and creating a powerful question helps to prepare you. It’s like. It’s like a situational blueprint – like a job interview, or if their unfulfilled at work, or want to have a conversation about their career planning or finding their life purpose. What makes this scenario unique is you usually have a SET series of questions that you ask all the time. So for a career planning discussion you would ask them where they want to be, what is important to them, what makes them feel fulfilled? For a job interview you might ask the same series of boring questions – what are you good at? Where have you failed? What are you proud of. The other situation with powerful questions is where the situation is a surprise and you just wing it. An example would be conflict at work, or disengagement, or your employee has a death in the family....

INTRO:
Hey, thanks for tuning in to the Corporate Yogi podcast, I’m your host Julie Zuzek. This pod is YOUR dedicated time for growth, developing practical tools to use with your team and other relationships and to learning deeply about who you are and what makes you tick! Because you are a brilliant and powerful being and I want you to invest more time reflecting on WHO are being, not just WHAT you are doing. Doing is awesome, but BEING, well that is where the magic happens and what makes you truly feel fulfilled. You’re going to love this episode on the biggest mistakes that leaders make. So here’s a look at what you’re going to learn  today
1 – In the first segment I’ll reveal the 3 biggest mistakes
2 – Then in the second segment we’ll talk about your leadership legacy
3 – And in the last segment I’ll give you a 3 step process to start defining your leadership brand
 
So get out of your head and into your heart shall we?
 
 
SEGMENT 1  
For those of you who are managers I know you’re striving to be the best manager you can be. There’s no end to the number of articles, blogs and books about Leadership, but most of them are overwhelming and theoretical. So today I wanted to do something different. I wanted to give you real advice from my real clients about what they really want from their managers. No theory today, just real world practical advice you can translate into action immediately. And we’re going to start off by talking about the biggest complaints that people share about their managers. Remember every day all day, I’m working with clients and I get to hear what they really want and what they’re most frustrated by. Do you have an idea or a guess about what it could be? OK I won’t leave you in suspense any longer, here they are, the top 3 mistakes that managers make. Starting with #1 not giving enough feedback, the 2nd is not having proper career conversations, and the 3rd is Lacking vision and confidence. How did those land with you? Any surprises in there. Well there shouldn’t be. At the end of the day people just want to be seen and heard. They want to know you’ll stand up for them and they want to know you care. Great leadership isn’t complicated, but it is time consuming and it does require consistency. Before we dive in deeper to each of these 3 I want to check in with you. Do you feel like you’re guilty of any of them? What about your employees, what would they say? Would you have the courage to check in and ask them? OK let’s start by talking about feedback, it’s a delicate balance of how to give it just right. So I’ve gathered a long list of ways we screw up when we give feedback. Buckle your seatbelt bc this is a list of 5 ways we screw up when we give feedback, then at the end I share a couple tips of how to give feedback correctly – OK the first way we screw up when we give feedback is - We don’t give enough feedback. Our team members want to hear from us, they’re craving feedback and they want lots of it. Feedback helps them to know if they are on track with their goals. It helps them know if they are delivering in alignment with what is expected of them. It helps them to know if they are growing in the right ways. We also screw up with feedback when we don’t give the right context or situation of what happened. Brene Brown is famous for saying being clear is kind. So that means be really specific about the environment our employees were in, and the circumstances they were in and the people they were with. We screw up with feedback if we don’t give both positive and negative feedback. Usually we’re hard wired for one or the other based on what our manager did with us.  It’s just as important to deliver the constructive feedback as it is the positive feedback. So be thorough and use the full spectrum when you give feedback. We also screw up if we are not authentic...

INTRO:
Hey, thanks for tuning in to the Corporate Yogi podcast, I’m your host Julie Zuzek. This pod is YOUR dedicated time for growth, developing practical tools to use with your team and other relationships and to learning deeply about who you are and what makes you tick! Because you are a brilliant and powerful being and I want you to invest more time reflecting on WHO are being, not just WHAT you are doing. Doing is awesome, but BEING, well that is where the magic happens and what makes you truly feel fulfilled. You’re going to love this episode on Micro Cultures and discovering whether or not you have one or maybe even need one. So here’s a look at what you’re going to learn today
1 – In the first segment I’ll explain why you would build one and what it actually is
2 – Then in the second segment I’ll explain the advantages of building one.
3 – In the third segment I want to make a note about loyalty
4 - And in the last segment I’ll explain how to build one
So, get out of your head, into your heart and let’s dive right in, shall we.

 
SEGMENT 1
I think the best way of describing a micro culture is explaining why you might want to build one. Have you ever felt like you didn’t belong to the rest of your organization? Ever felt like the Black Sheep, or the rebel. Maybe you felt like the one person who constantly viewed things through a different lens. These feelings of not belonging may have led you to define your own team brand, core values, purpose, and vision that feels different from your boss and the greater company. This could have been caused by many different reasons. Your boss doesn’t respect or appreciate you or the work your team does. Or vice versa because you don’t feel like you respect them or their work. It could be because you feel like you value and appreciate things that aren’t really important to them, or they’ve taken actions that you don’t respect. Either way, over time, in order to survive or thrive you and your team have developed your own code of conduct and no longer want to be dictated by the typical company culture and be stuck with values that don’t align with you. This is building a microculture, and it serves two purposes. First, you’re responding to the fact that you don’t agree with what they’re pushing as culture and second, you are organically creating something that fits more with you and your team. It    create the type of environment that allows them to thrive, be the best version of themselves and contribute to creating the most fulfilling environment to do their best work. Whereas the main company may find it difficult to attract an employee or retain an employee, a microculture allows them to thrive, which results in you establishing a very loyal and hardworking environment. In many instances a microculture is established by a team that is disenchanted with their greater company at large, thereby creating an environment whereas a microculture retains them and makes them stick around. Another scenario when a micro culture may be created is through a merger or acquisition. I had this experience years ago when we were acquired by a large corporation. I remember the day when the announcement was made, and the CEO looked me in the eye, then proceeded to scan the rest of the room and said he was excited to work with us because our cultures were exactly the same. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. We had flexible hours and casual work from home culture. He did a 9:00am walk around to make sure that everyone is at their desk for core working hours. It couldn’t have been further from our culture. So we unintentionally kept our company culture and traditions alive to honour this great business we had built, we were creating a microculture. We held on as along as we could, then they eventually just consumed us. That wraps segment 1 on explaining what a micro culture...

He really just got me - he knew that travel was my love language and it was the ultimate thing he could do to motivate me at that point
INTRO:
Hey, thanks for tuning in to the Corporate Yogi podcast, I’m your host Julie Zuzek. This pod is YOUR dedicated time for growth, developing practical tools to use with your team and other relationships and to learning deeply about who you are and what makes you tick! Because you are a brilliant and powerful being, I want you to invest more time reflecting on WHO are being, not just WHAT you are doing. Doing is awesome, but BEING, well that is where the magic happens and what makes you truly feel fulfilled. You’re going to love this episode on employee motivation and how to apply this to your team. So here’s a look at what you’re going to learn today
1 – In the first segment I’ll explain the biggest mistake leaders make
2 – Then in the second segment I’ll explain the AMP model
3 – And in the last segment I’ll share the motivation model I share with all my clients
So get out of your head, into your heart and let’s dive right in, shall we.
 
SEGMENT 1
One of the most common requests I get from leaders is that they want their teams to work harder. They don’t want to make any changes themselves or do anything different. But they want their employees to be more engaged. I hear it all the time, “Julie I don’t want to do any of that touchy feely stuff or change anything, but I want my team to deliver more.” I find this really strange, because A – I love the touchy feely stuff. And as a leader part of your responsibility is to be involved with your team, so how can you possibly get them to change their behviour without you being involved in some way? As a leader it’s always important to be authentic, and never ask your team to do anything you wouldn’t do. But this isn’t the big mistake that we see leaders make. The big mistake is trying to motivate their employees with financial incentives. You see, many studies have proven that employees don’t actually respond to financial incentives, and it can actually have the opposite impact we want it to. The London School of Economics found that financial incentives can actually demotivate employees and have the opposite impact we want them to have. Let’s see how this played out with Amanda. She had very aggressive career goals and had many conversations with her boss about building out a team and getting to the next level to be a manager. Whenever she brought it up with her manager, he was very dismissive about the whole thing. He said he’d get back to her by the next promotion cycle. This was really important to her, she trusted him and just assumed that because he made that promise, that he would follow through on it. This my friends is a heartbreaking mistake I see over and over again. Assuming that promotions will just happen bc we want them or we deserve them. I wish we lived in a world where promotions were just handed out to people who were deserving of them, wanted them and were ready for them but sadly we don’t live in that world. There are a few organizations I’ve come across where HR initiates this, but it’s very rare. If you want a promotion, it’s up to you to initiate it and make it happen. Long story short, when it came time for Amanda to be promoted, she actually wasn’t included in the promotion cycle, and she was very disappointed. Recognizing this, her boss put a proposal forward to top up her salary and stock options. And although she was really flattered, she was really disappointed, bc it wasn’t money she was after, it was about furthering her career. So Amanda said she appreciated the salary increase, but it really wasn’t what she was after. She tried many times over 2 months to have this conversation with her boss, but he didn’t make himself available to meet or make it a priority. In the meantime, while Amanda’s boss had his head in the sand, Amanda received a call...

Intro Teaser
Today I want to tell you about Kate and her Fear Fantasy. She was an IC at a large mortgage company, had been there for years, she worked hard, harder than her colleagues and at most times harder than her boss. And every year when it was time for her performance conversation, she would pump herself up to have a conversation with her boss.  She knew she deserved the promotion, BUT she was consumed by the fear, potential rejection and judgment she thought her boss would have waiting for her if she brought it up. This perceived fear consumed her and held her back from getting what she truly deserved. Welcome to Kate’s Fear Fantasy.
INTRO:
Hey, thanks for tuning in to the Corporate Yogi podcast, I’m your host Julie Zuzek. This pod is YOUR dedicated time for growth, developing practical tools to use with your team and other relationships and to learning deeply about who you are and what makes you tick! Because you are a brilliant and powerful being and I want you to invest more time reflecting on WHO are being, not just WHAT you are doing. Doing is awesome, but BEING, well that is where the magic happens and what makes you truly feel fulfilled. You’re going to love this episode on Fear Fantasies and discovering whether or not you have one. So here’s a look at what you’re going to learn today 
1 – In the first segment I’ll explain exactly what a Fear Fantasy is
2 – Then in the second segment I explain how they are so paralyzing 
3 – And in the last segment I’ll share how to overcome your Fear Fantasy, so it doesn’t completely keep you stuck
So get out of your head, into your heart and let’s dive right in, shall we.
 
 
 
 



 
SEGMENT 1
Fear fantasies are stories we create that allow us to stay small and stay stuck. They justify us not acting and allowing our fear to be greater than our desire. I want to start by telling you a story about Kate and her Fear Fantasy about asking for a promotion. You see, Kate was in her role for years. She was an IC at a large mortgage company and had been there for years. She worked hard, so very hard, harder than her colleagues and at most times even harder than her boss. And every year when it was time for her performance conversation with her boss, she would START with the same excited thoughts running through her head. This is the year that I am ready for a promotion. I know I’m ready, I deserve it, I can do the work and I’m ready to break through to the next level. And yet every year, no matter how much she pumped herself up, she never actually went through with it and initiated the promotion with her boss. She never had the conversation with her boss about getting promoted, or if she did, it was watered down and lacklustre and she didn’t even really try. She was consumed by the fear, potential rejection and judgment she thought her boss would have waiting for her if she brought it up. This perceived fear consumed her, and she held onto it so tightly. This was her Fear Fantasy. It’s as if the disappointment of being stuck and not asking for what she wanted became more familiar and more comfortable to her, it was part of what kept her stuck. Fear fantasies are normal and more common than we think. It’s so easy to spot them in other people and call them out, but when they’re our fear fantasy, they feel real and all consuming, we don’t feel like we have any other options.
 
Common fear fantasies happen around promotions and career, around pitching or sharing an idea in a meeting, around asking for people to be our champion or advocate on our behalf. It boils down to advocation on our own behalf or asking someone else to advocate for us. As leaders it’s so easy and second nature for us to champion our team members, but when it comes to self-promotion, we often struggle, and haven’t always built the same...

So this is the story of Sean and her high profile career as an IC at a high-profile law firm. She wanted so much to become a people manager but as with all people taking that step there were two major barriers standing in her way – one was actually getting herself into the role, and the second, more challenging barrier is learning how to be the great leader you envisioned yourself actually being. I’ll be the first to confess that eadership is so much easier on paper. We all know WHAT we need to do, but the actual doing of it, getting out of the weeds and giving away the LEGO – that is always the hardest part of being a new leader. Little did she know it – Sean helped me create the perfect model to master the skill she needed most, and now clients around the world, now including this podcast, will benefit from her brilliance and creativity.
INTRO:
Hey, thanks for tuning in to the Corporate Yogi podcast, this is your host Julie Zuzek. This pod is YOUR dedicated time for growth, developing practical tools to use with your team and in your other relationships and to learning deeply about who you are and what makes you tick! You are a brilliant and powerful being and I want you to invest more time reflecting on WHO are being, not just WHAT you are doing. Doing is awesome, but BEING, well that is where the magic happens and what makes you truly feel fulfilled. You’re going to love this episode on the Circle of Control model and learning about other models that are easy to use. So here’s a look at what you’re going to learn today
1 – In the first segment I’ll introduce you to the powerful world of models
2 – Then I share my favourite models that I use all the time
3 – In the last segment I’ll share how to use the Circle of Control with your team and others
So get out of your head, into your heart and let’s dive right in, shall we.
SEGMENT 1
The other day I was walking a client through a model and I realized that this is something I really want to do more of because she was really grasping it quickly and excited to use it with her team. Models are powerful and share an outside perspective to understand our current situation, which inspires us to take action in new ways. I want to use them more and knew that you’ll benefit not only from understanding HOW to use them more, but walking away with a couple really good ones in your pocket you can use right away. There are so many different types of models, some are really complex and have a number of components and some just contain 2 components and are really easy to use and teach. But let’s start by talking how they work. Models give us an outside perspective of looking at our current situation. So often when we’re looking at a difficult situation, we get in the habit of trying to approach it the same way we always have – it’s like that great Einstein quote, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” We have to bring in fresh information perspectives and ideas. To be honest this is a big part of what we do in coaching, we challenge people to look at their situation differently. This can be in real-time where we look at different options available us. It can also be done as a tool, in advance of the situation where we create a variety of different perspectives and call upon them on an as needed basis. Let me share a few personal examples. We’ll start by talking about using the real-time options available to us in the moment. I talked a few episodes ago about being given the archetype of the Dominatrix, and while it is primarily something we would use as an archetype, it really offers us a perspective of how to approach things in a different way. Examples of this would to be more confident, stronger, demanding and louder. Other examples of common archetypes we turn into perspectives to really open people minds are Motivational Speaker – which puts people into the mindset of being more...