What if the reason you're struggling at work isn't that you're not talented, motivated, or capable? What if the problem is that nobody ever took the time to see what you're actually capable of? We promote people because they're good at their jobs, then expect them to be great leaders. And when they fail, it's often their employees who pay the price. Today's guest believes it's time to change that. 

And she's got a pretty simple philosophy for that. It's called give a shit. Welcome back to speaking with confidence, the podcast that helps you build the soft skills that lead to real results, communication, storytelling, public speaking, and showing up with confidence in every conversation that counts. 

I'm Tim Newman, a recovering college professor turned communication coach, and I'm thrilled to guide you on a journey to becoming a powerful communicator. Today's guest is Michelle Edwards. Michelle is a leadership strategist, human resources expert, and the author of DEI Died and Leadership Lives. 

Over more than two decades, she has built leadership and talent systems that transformed cultures, resulting in better business outcomes. She is the creator of the GES strategy, you know, the give a shit strategy, a leadership strategy rooted in the belief that when leaders take care of people, people take care of the business. Today, Michelle works with organizations and leaders to build stronger leaders, unlock untapped potential, and turn better leadership into business results. 

Michelle, welcome to speaking with confidence. Thank you. Thank you for having me. 

I'm happy to be here. Well, you know, the GES theory, the give a shit theory, it's so simple. If we just care about people and take care of people, a lot of these things that we're dealing with just kind of go away. 

Right. Yes. And we get better business outcomes as well. 

Exactly. But you said something in a pre-interview that really kind of stuck with me. And that is you spent years trying to fit into corporate environments where you couldn't always be yourself. 

You know, as a recovering college professor, I've seen students and young professionals struggle with that same thing for years. So at what point did fitting in start costing you parts of who you really were? When I was stagnant, when my career was stagnant and I wasn't moving up, I feel like I spent probably half of my career being told I was doing a good job and keep doing what I'm doing. And that was it. 

So there was really no when you do that for people like you, you just I'm accepting who they are right now and not helping them grow. They say stagnant. And so I had a manager that challenged me in my last half of my career. 

And she also we had tough conversations like she also asked me if I could be myself at work one day. And it just unlocked a conversation that I had never had at work. You know, she was hinting at, you know, me being a black woman. 

You know, what is it that what type of baggage am I bringing to the workplace and how can we break down that that wall? And, you know, it was a conversation we had for days, weeks, months, years, and we kept having it. And she was able to unlock all that I was able to go on to do and help others. So what was that initial conversation like? What feelings and emotions did you have? Because, you know, that just to to to be in that position and have somebody see you and knowing that you've suppressed yourselves and we all do it, we suppress ourselves at work.

What was that conversation like and what feelings did you have? It was a very emotional experience for me. I know that a lot of people have that at work, like they suppress themselves. You know, they don't always feel like they can be the true selves. 

But for me, it was as if like I wouldn't be accepted because I was black, because I was in spaces where there weren't people that looked like me. So I always try to assimilate and, you know, not bring my full like culture, like even like my natural hair and how I speak and all of that. And when we started to break it, break those walls down and I started to bring all of me to the work, into the business, I started to be more creative, more bold with my ideas and perspectives. 

And I just felt safe to express myself and express my ideas and thoughts. And we went on to achieve many great things and transform our culture overall. That's such a powerful statement that, you know, and we do that all the time. 

And a lot of times we put ourselves in that box. Right. You know, and it's nothing that nobody, and sometimes it is, but sometimes it's not something that nobody else does. 

But we keep it to ourselves and to have somebody who noticed that and to bring it out of you and to kind of enter you and put you on a different path. Again, that's really powerful. Yeah. 

So that's where I get my strong beliefs about leadership and how leadership can change the trajectory of people's career and therefore the business. It is a responsibility of leaders to help people become all that they're capable of becoming. But a lot of times we're not taught as leaders that that is our role.

Exactly. And so how do we know, you know, when we're protecting ourselves and we're becoming our own biggest obstacle? How do we know when that's happening? Yeah. How do we know when we're protecting ourselves and we're becoming our own biggest obstacle? Because we condition ourselves to coming in and like you said, not being who we truly are, leaving other things outside that could make us in the business better. 

And then it just becomes a habit. How can we realize this and break out of that? Sometimes it takes someone else to see something in us. You know, I think the responsibility in the book, I say that the responsibility is on both ends. 

We are conditioned to what history has told us. And it is up to us to break the cycle. Like, you know, I was taught that differences may not be embraced and expected in the workplace. 

Right. And so I showed up that way. And, you know, the leaders around me was taught what excellence looks like based on what they've seen that it looks like historically. 

And so it took our leaders to decide that maybe let's try something different. Let's not have the same old thing that we've always had, the same capability, the same skill set. Let's try to innovate by bringing in differences. 

And then it us as we come into the workplace in a space where, you know, it's not traditionally we've seen ourselves in positions of leadership in these spaces. It takes us to kind of break the cycle of assimilating and code switching and just kind of breaking out of our shells and feeling comfortable. But I think it's up to leaders to create that space and that environment.

Yeah, I completely agree. Leaders have to go first. They've got to take the first step. 

And I completely agree with you that it's on both sides. And I talk a lot about this when I'm talking about intergenerational communication. There's one in four, excuse me, I know I'm wrong. 

But the younger generation isn't speaking to people over 50 in the workplace. And the older generation has more propensity to not speak to the younger generation in the workplace. And so we have created this. 

My generation has created this. We have to take that first step. But the younger generation has to be willing to take a step as well when we do that to, like you said, learn the best of both worlds and interweave them and interconnect them, because that's the only way we're going to get the best out of everybody.

Right. I say all the time that companies are paying for potential that they never get to realize. Yeah. 

Because, you know, we are paying people a salary for them to contribute. But we're not teaching our leaders to develop the people so that they can contribute. We're not teaching our leaders to have the tough conversations and be clear about the high standard that we are expecting. 

And here's the thing that I'm expecting. Here is what I see. Here's what I need you to do. 

And here's how I'm going to help you. Like we need to have more of those conversations. Right. 

A lot of times we judge quickly. We judge quickly. Very quickly. 

Yeah. Yeah. Very quick. 

Let's go back to the whole idea of the evaluation, because I think you said it and it immediately got me. You've been told you're doing a good job. Keep doing what you're doing. 

OK. What does that mean? Right. Great. 

Thank you. That's awesome. Right. 

And at the time, I didn't know to ask for more. Right. I just thought, OK, I'm doing a great job. 

And at the time, I wasn't even I'm. Aspiring for more like I spent 10 years in the same role in the same company and just being told year after year, I'm doing a good job and I get my, you know, increases every year and just just happy with that. And so, you know, when I started to to create a talent strategy where every single person can grow in their career, I started to make it clear what good looks like at your current level. 

But I created levels for people to grow and created the what good looks like for each level so that people can aspire to grow and and get to the next level and increase in their title and increase in their scope of work and stretch beyond what they were currently doing. And I think that it is on our leaders to create that type of environment where people get to stretch, because otherwise you are leaving revenue on the table like companies don't even realize how much revenue they're leaving on the table by not helping people to stretch beyond what they're doing right now today. Yeah. 

Why do you think that is? Is it is it does it go back to being comfortable? Does it does it go back to maybe not knowing or not thinking about it? What's the what do you think is the core reason why why why this happens? I think a lot of times we don't prioritize the developing people part of our job. We prioritize like getting work done and you know, getting that client or whatever it is that's in the scope right now. That's all we want to do. 

You want to do, do, do, do, do. But we never stop to prioritize developing others around us, because if we do that, we get the outcomes that we were looking for and more, because now we're creating, we're creating a stronger workforce. We're creating a brighter workforce. 

I'm preparing a presentation and kind of talking about some of these issues. And you know, there are some people who don't want to work, don't want to, some people don't want to work. They don't want to grow. 

They don't want to do the work to grow. And that's you know, that's I guess that's fine. But it's also, I think it's incumbent upon leadership to give them those opportunities and encourage them to take those steps to growing. 

Because again, I think the only way, like you said, the only way that we get better as an organization is to help those people grow. Like here's a poor example. I at one point thought it was silly to go to another country and teach. 

I actually said those words until I did it, right? Until somebody convinced me and said, you know what, you really need to go and try this and do it. And it opened my eyes. So we can have those, as workers, we can have those thoughts. 

But it's also up to leadership to encourage us and give us those other opportunities that maybe we don't even know anything about. Yeah, absolutely. So there are, you know, people who don't want to grow and that's okay too.

They could be subject matter experts in their role. And that's fine. I just always want to have that conversation with people. 

I want to make sure we understand people's ambitions. We understand what motivates them. We understand what barriers may exist so that we can help them realize their ambitions. 

And, you know, sometimes people are fine right where they are and that's fine too. That's fine, right. Because I mean, it could be the season of life that they're in. 

It could be any number of reasons, right? And like you said, that's fine. Yeah. I just want them to be great at that thing. 

So if they want to stay at that thing, they'd be the subject matter expert at that thing. They'd be good at that thing. We still hold the high standard.

Exactly. Now, when you had that conversation with your manager, you know, to me, trust is paramount. So you have that conversation with your manager and she's pulling something out of you.

You've got to have some incredible trust on her to break out of your shell, break out of the persona that you had created because you didn't want to be judged. What did she do differently that made you comfortable showing her who you were and to be able to trust her? Yeah. We spent a lot of, we had one-on-ones every week and I didn't even, I didn't come from an environment where I had one-on-ones with my manager. 

Like, I only talked to my manager when it was something to talk about. But she insisted on having these one-on-ones and that became something that I required of all managers. And so we had these one-on-ones every week and she would always start off with, how are you? How was your weekend? She would talk about my kids. 

How's your husband, Aaron? Like she knew my kids' names, my dog's name. Like she was always interested in me. And that just started to build the relationship and the trust. 

So I started to teach my managers that, you know, a lot of their one-on-ones don't have to be about work. It's about getting to know the person and understanding who they are. You know, the first pillar of the gas strategy, the give a shit strategy, is go deeper. 

You cannot see people succeed unless you first see them. You have to get beneath the superficial levels of engagement to truly understand what motivates people, what their ambitions are, and how you can help them enable those ambitions. It's so important. 

Gosh, it's so important. You know, I think back on my career, and especially in higher education, we don't, there's no training at all. At all. 

I was a little bit different. I was never taught how to teach, but I did come from a practical business background. I was never taught how to teach. 

Our department chairs were never taught how to be a department chair, how to manage people, how to manage budgets. And then they get promoted into administration, which is managing more people and more budgets. And there's never any training. 

Yeah. And, you know, when I do what we do, right, and I try and help them say, look, okay, you probably need to get to know some of these people. You need to understand what makes them tick. 

Why do they do things a certain way? And the pushback that you receive. Did you ever have any real pushback from managers when you put this forth and said, I want you to have, or you need to be having one-on-ones every week to get to know your team members? Did you ever get any real pushback? Yeah. Yeah. 

I got, I got a push, I got pushed back, but there was a lot that we, I did. I realized pretty early on that no matter what we were trying to do as a company, that it would live and die by how well our leaders led. And once I realized that I literally spent all of my energy and time developing leaders. 

And so it was bigger than you must have one-on-ones. Right. Oh yeah. 

Like we created a manager manifesto. It was eight sentences long and it started off with, we do not manage. We guide, we counsel, we inspire. 

Awesome. We started out with the manager's manifesto and it was eight sentences long, but it was the standard of what we expected from our leaders. And everything we did went back to this foundation.

We created toolkits. So we gave them the resources. We had regular manager meetings.

So we were always talking about what's happening right now and what conversations we should be having. But part of the manifesto was that you had to have these weekly meetings. You had to be clear in your communications, meaning setting clear expectations and having real-time ongoing feedback. 

And that we hold the bar high and we expect people to meet the bar. And we don't accept mediocrity. And we started to manage, we started to evaluate how well managers were performing based on how well their people were performing and how well their people were growing.

That's awesome. And how much their people really trusted them. Right. 

And that became part of their performance. And I think a lot of times companies, first of all, they promote people, like you said, into manager roles because they're doing a good job. They're good at their craft. 

They're good at their skills. So automatically now they're in charge of people when no one has ever given them the tools of what it means to be in charge of another human being. So I created this rule, no automatic managers. 

Now I didn't hold you back. If you were getting promoted into your next role, I didn't hold you back. I let you get a promotion, but I did not give you direct reports until you had manager bootcamp with me, which was five hours and three parts. 

I put you in coaching and you got trained on the manager manifesto. And once I was convinced that you embraced that work, then I gave you direct reports because you had to prove that you understood the responsibility of having another human in your care. Yeah. 

You got to have that buy-in into the system. To me, as I said, it's even deeper than buying into the system. It's buying into what a leader does and pouring value into other people.

That's what you have to have buy-in to. So you can have the system all you want. You've got to have buy-in to what your calling is, what leadership is, and what you're truly supposed to be for other people. 

And that's where it comes down to. Yeah. And your original question was that they challenged me. 

They challenged me all the time. I didn't let them get away with anything. Every time my leaders came to me and was like, this one is not doing what I want them to do and blah, blah, blah. 

And I'm like, well, you, did you do this? Did you do X, Y, Z? Did you have this conversation? Did you tell them this? Did you give them time and space? Then you go back and do your job first. Because I think that we as companies, we evaluate employees harshly and quickly and we evaluate managers and leaders generously. And one thing that I've always made sure is that I held my leaders to such a high standard and they fought and kicked and everything else, but they loved me in the end for it. 

To this day, leaders will always tell me, you made me a better leader. You made me a better leader because I challenged them. I challenged them to do better all the time. 

Yeah. And that's, again, that's so important, especially when you get the pushback from a manager or a leader and so-and-so isn't doing what they're supposed to do. I don't know if you read the book, How to Work with Complicated People by Ryan Leake. 

It's a phenomenal book. And basically what it comes down to is it's not them that's complicated. It's you. 

You haven't done something like, just like you said, they're just different. They go about it differently. Right. 

And there's certain things that we have to as managers and leaders, we have to look at it differently and we have to interact with people differently based on who they are. Right. Yes.

I, one of the commandments in my book, because there's 10 commandments, one of them is fire leaders who refuse to lead. And I feel strongly about holding leaders to a standard. And if they can't meet the standard, they they need to not be a leader in the organization. 

And I have, I have proof in that. So we had a leader who was really, really tight with the client. And we were, and, but they were causing a toxic environment around them. 

Right. People were leaving, people were complaining, you know, this leader took credit for other people's work. This leader like, you know, talked over people, didn't make it safe for people to bring ideas to the table. 

It was a lot of toxicity with this leader. And but because they were so tight with the client, we did not, we were afraid, like we knew we were aware that they were causing internal conflict, but we were so afraid of losing this client that we let this leader stay in the organization way longer than they should have until finally we found the courage to fire a leader who refuses to lead. And we found out that we were scared of a thing that wasn't real because we ended up putting a better, stronger leader in the position, a leader who was able to create an environment and create the space for people to become all that they were capable of becoming. 

She made it safe for people to bring ideas into, into, you know, she poured into them and had the tough conversations to help them be better. And the work got better. And the business grew exponentially, like it grew way more than it was with under that other leader. 

So we were like, so scared of something that wasn't even real. And we were counting the revenue that that client brought to the table, but we never counted the revenue that we were losing by keeping this leader in, in the space. Yeah. 

And we find that so often and it's that person becomes a cancer, becomes a cancer to the entire organization because you have your standard here and this person has their standard here, right? And everybody sees what this other leader or person is doing. And they say, well, why should I raise to this? If you're letting this go, then this, or, you know, the lower standard becomes the standard. Right. 

Right. I always say that once you've lowered the standard for one person, you've lowered the standard for for everybody else. I mean, look at, look at companies like, like Chick-fil-A.

Everybody has a standard. I mean, and they, they follow it. They, they live it. 

They breathe it all the way down to say, and it's my pleasure when, when, when they, when they, when they get, when they're helping the customer, right. Customer says, thank you. The employee says, my pleasure. 

And everybody on the team, if has the ability to call somebody out, if somebody doesn't say my pleasure, everybody. I didn't know that. I mean, there's, there's so many examples like that out there. 

And we're, we're still dealing with, with people that, that, that we allow to get away with things just because of bringing in revenue. Right. And it, it, it, it, it's, it's a cancer. 

It damages everything that you've worked for. Everything that you're trying, trying to build. Okay. 

Yeah. You're making a few dollars, but how much does it cost to replace an employee? Right. Right. 

Right. Yeah. And in this case, my guess is you're losing more than one. 

You probably lost two, three, maybe four. Right. Right. 

We never counting the money we're losing. Uh, it's crazy. How'd you teach new leaders, new managers, how to recognize potential in someone who doesn't see it in themselves? Cause that's what, that's a real skill. 

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, um, I think it all like come back to the gas strategy. 

Um, so the gas strategy has the four pillars, right. Go deeper. Okay. 

It's the first pillar and it's probably the most important pillar because I feel like when you go deeper, you start to see some of that. And I think that's what happened with my manager as she went deeper, she started to see, um, that I was holding back. And, you know, the fact that she always, um, talked about me and who