How to Lead with Emotional Intelligence with Susan Power

Opening remarks and introduction to Susan Power

00:00Bill Gallagher: Have you ever had a week when you're completely slammed, but somehow nothing actually moved? Is this one of those weeks? That's not really a time problem. It's a busyness habit problem. My new book, Busy Is Broken, Do Less, Scale More, is all about growing by doing less, not more. Read or listen to a sample chapter over at busyisbroken.com. That's busyisbroken.com. It's also on Amazon and other booksellers.

00:31Bill Gallagher: Well, if you try to scale your company just by working harder, you'll hit a ceiling at some point. And, you know, there's only so many hours of the day, and you can't use them all for work or you will just burn out. We're gonna talk about all of that and more just coming up. What are you struggling with today? Are you trying to limit? Are you trying to work more? Are you trying to sleep less? Are you coming up against your limit as a leader? We're gonna get into the whole conversation today about your leadership style and share some stories with you about that.

01:05Bill Gallagher: Hey, everybody. Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of this super groovy Scaling Up Business podcast. Our show comes to you weekly. And whether it's a guest or a story about one of our clients, that kind of thing, we try to help you scale up your business. 650 plus episodes now at scalingcoach.com or wherever you're getting this right now. YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts, LinkedIn, wherever you get it. Turn on your notifications, like it, subscribe. You know what to do. If you wanna do us a solid, share it with somebody else. Tell somebody else that you love the show and you got something out of it. Spread the love around. It helps us all day long. If you wanna find out about our own coaching and that kind of thing, you're gonna go to scalingcoach.com where you'll find all the show notes plus our coaching programs and our workshops. We do workshops, like, every month and speaking, things like that. So you can find us somewhere and do all that. scalingcoach.com. Alright. Listen. Enough of that and me and all that. Let's talk to Susan Power.

02:07Bill Gallagher: Susan, welcome to the show.

02:11Susan Power: Hi, Bill. Thank you.

02:11Bill Gallagher: Hey, everybody. Susan is a business coach. She's a founder of a company called PowerUp Leadership in Canada, and she's a podcast host of her own show called Inspired Leadership, which she hosts. And she's got some great stories to tell about leadership, and we thought it'd be great to have her on the show. Thanks for joining us from Canada today.

02:33Susan Power: Yeah. Excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

02:38Bill Gallagher: You know, these days, going back and forth between our countries is easier on Zoom sometimes than it is at the border crossing.

02:48Susan Power: Yeah. I was just in Florida the other week. I had no trouble crossing the border, but people like to talk about it being more difficult these days. I haven't had an issue yet.

02:58Bill Gallagher: You know, sometimes it goes like that. I've gone in there like, are you here to work? And I'm like, no. I'm just here for a meeting. Okay. Well, as long as you're not getting paid. And I had a guy from Canada who was trying to come down here to do some stuff. And he's like, oh, well, you're not going on the right visa. You've got to think, because you're coming into a meeting and anyway.

What leaders still control that their teams should handle

03:17Bill Gallagher: Here's my opening question for you. If we looked at your calendar for a week, what's the first thing we'd catch you still doing that your team should actually be doing?

03:29Susan Power: Oh, that's a really good question. I think I am still too involved in providing the weekly client updates that we send at the end of each week. My team puts them together, but I review them. And before they hit send, I really don't need to do that. Like, they can figure it out themselves, but it's maybe a little bit of a control function that I like to know what's going to the client before it goes out. But I shouldn't, I should just let them do it.

04:02Bill Gallagher: That's interesting. I love that you said control function. I think a lot of times we're, like, reluctant to let go. Right? We say in relay running, pass the baton. And then we pass it. The other person sorta got it, and we're like, I'm not gonna let go of that. Right?

04:23Susan Power: Yeah. It's true. There's a comfort of being in the know on things. Right? And especially if you're an entrepreneur, sometimes that attracts a Type A personality. But, oh, jeez. When I think about how much I've let go compared to when I first started, like, I remember hiring an EA for the first time where it was a virtual assistant initially. Now I have an EA in my city. That was, like, letting go of email and letting her manage my email. That was a good exercise in letting go.

04:52Bill Gallagher: Mhmm. You know, I see it start even with companies of, say, only 50 people, where, you know, 50 people, you've got a couple of people on your team that are leaders. But if you're micromanaging them nonstop and involved in everything, you're not being strategic. Right? And probably it's annoying to them whether they're conscious of it or not. Right? It's suppressive. It's controlling.

05:18Susan Power: That's right. It's like, even if this isn't the intention of it, it's communicating, I don't trust you to do your job and be smart and figure things out because I need to be involved and touch everything. So it's not helpful for building strong relationships to be trying to be involved in too much.

05:39Bill Gallagher: So, let's talk about your own story a little bit first, before we get into some of your clients. You've gone from a founder to an executive to a founder, and you've been involved in a couple of different things, and your leadership has gone through different phases. Let's share with us a little bit of your story and what you notice about that that relates.

How Susan's leadership style evolved across different environments

06:02Susan Power: Yeah. So I had a business in Newfoundland, Canada doing HR consulting when my kids were young for five years. It was a small business, but I did have two offers to purchase it when I was exiting. And it makes me smile when I think about it now because oil and gas was tanking. There were nine houses for sale on my street. I was an independent consultant. My partner at the time was an independent consultant. So we're like, our risk profile is too high. We need to get out of here. I applied for one job. Didn't wanna sell my business. I'm like, okay. I'll apply for a job. I got the job, which never happens usually when you are job hunting. For whatever reason, I got this job working for the Irving family, which is one of Canada's billionaire families in New Brunswick. And I had something like sixty days to relocate and sell my business. And I got two offers on my business and had to do this handover within and get there within sixty days. Didn't even have my business valued by an accountant. Like, I just did it for the first time all on my own. Didn't do it right. Learned a lot. Still sold it. And got some more executive people management experience leading a team at the Irving, J.D. Irving Limited is the name of the company. Then when I left seven years ago to start up PowerUp Leadership, I really missed entrepreneurship. I came back to it. I had just learned so much working for this, you know, super wealthy family, smart executives mostly that worked for them that it really helped me grow a lot quicker the second time.

07:38Bill Gallagher: What did you notice about yourself in the different environments? How did your own leadership style change through there?

07:46Susan Power: I learned a lot by seeing how other very polished executives functioned, like in, I think of things like labor…

07:59Susan Power: Union negotiations, watching their chief legal counsel negotiate with difficult unions. I'd never been involved in that. I think about some of the team members I had to lead and helping them navigate their own careers and having different bosses that were very different personalities and different strengths, like levels of people in terms of their career level that I had never been exposed to before. So I think I became a better manager, if you will. I learned daily management skills, things I hadn't learned in my more junior positions, which really helped me with entrepreneurship because I knew how to manage my business better when I started up PowerUp.

08:44Bill Gallagher: Yeah. As we're getting ready, you referenced the CliftonStrengths with one of your clients. I'm guessing you used CliftonStrengths in your work a little bit. What do you know what your top five are?

08:58Susan Power: I know a couple of them. It's been a while. Futuristic is one of mine. Do you know yours?

09:05Bill Gallagher: Oh, yeah. For sure. So ideation, communication, strategic, activator, command, for sure. And when I think about those and then I know that my weak ones are more relating and executing. So the ones around relationship management, I'm just terrible at it, and the execution one. So anytime there's consistency involved, I'm terrible at that. As you go down, I know like significance and achiever. So I'm a hard worker, and I have an ego. But I am a learner also, and I am competitive.

09:50Susan Power: Interesting. I just looked mine up as I was listening to yours. Achiever, focus on executing, top two. Maximizer, which is making the most of your resources. Intellection and futuristic, which is in strategic thinking, are my top five. So number six is connectedness and relationship building, but yeah, more on the strategy side and execution for me.

10:14Bill Gallagher: When you think about your struggles as a leader, what do you think is the struggle for you? Which of those get you in trouble or are the limit?

10:22Susan Power: Oh, easy question now. Achiever, because it's number one for me. I will try to take on so much all at once that I have to be careful because I don't want to burn them out, but it's just how I operate with myself that I go really fast. And sometimes I could just tell by the look on her face, like, does she really think we're gonna get this all done in this time frame? And then I have to back off a little bit.

Using CliftonStrengths to understand your leadership limits

10:51Bill Gallagher: Yeah. Any others that stand out for you?

10:58Susan Power: I think I've gotten a lot better at this. I know how important it is, but it's just kind of embarrassing to share with you. But I didn't understand until I was, I'm 48 right now, but I didn't understand till I was 40 years old how important relationship building was. I thought it was a waste of time. And now I know so clearly your network is your net worth. Like, I 100% believe that. But I didn't grow up in a family that really prioritized social connections. My dad was a serial entrepreneur. He sold six businesses. He was a hustler. He was a really hard worker. So that was my template going into life. And I guess I just learned through a little bit of friction along the way that relationships, they just make it so much easier. Like, people can help you and vice versa.

11:49Bill Gallagher: Is your dad still alive?

11:51Susan Power: He is, and he still works ten hours a day. He's like 82. He's still at his desk, just creating new products. God love him.

12:00Bill Gallagher: What's his name?

12:02Susan Power: John.

12:03Bill Gallagher: Thanks for sharing a little John with us. Yeah. He's a good guy. I get it. Well, I think we all have these things. Like, I know that my command gets, command is bossy pants, right? It's taking charge of things. It's really useful sometimes, but it's you need to use it sparingly. Like, and I know ideation gets in trouble. Like, I just have a new idea every five minutes, and it gets in my way. But it really gets in the team's way because if I don't learn to control it or rein it in and I just spit them off, like it's destabilizing, defocusing for the team.

12:39Susan Power: Right? Yeah. Because they get confused. They don't always follow all the ideas like an ideation person does.

12:48Bill Gallagher: You've had, so how many episodes have you done now with your show?

12:54Susan Power: Inspired Leadership, we've done around 40. So not as many as you at 650, but we do it off the side of our desk.

13:04Bill Gallagher: We've been doing it for a little while. And but you had Dan Martell on. Tell me about that and what you heard from him and what was great about that conversation.

Dan Martell on bringing high energy to everything you do

13:14Susan Power: Yeah. I really admire Dan Martell. I actually have signed up as a lead entrepreneur. He has a group coaching program, and I've had some private coaching with him since he came on that episode. And so I've learned a ton from him through those forums as well. But I remember one of the things he said when he was on the podcast was he was talking about driving through the U.S. and going through some of your paid tolls. And the lady, I think it was in North Carolina, asked him, how's your day going? And he, super high energy guy, works out every day, like, it's just who he is at his core, does adventure sports. He's like, amazing. How's your day going? And she kind of stopped in her tracks. She's like, oh, well, that's good. You keep on having an amazing day. And I remember saying to him, bet you she doesn't get that very often. He's like, I know she doesn't. Exactly. Because it literally stopped her in her tracks. But I think like, bringing that level of energy where it's authentic to everything you do is really why he has had such success because he's just, he says, your vibe attracts your tribe.

14:24Bill Gallagher: That's interesting. I noticed sometimes I come off like that, and I'll be like, and it could be arresting. It can get somebody's attention. It can help them wake up. People appreciate it. But other times, like, it's out of sync, and they're like, woah. Like, I'm not ready for that energy right now.

14:44Susan Power: Well, then that's not your tribe.

14:47Bill Gallagher: Yeah. Maybe. Or, it's just a choice. Look. If you come at me before I've had my coffee or things like that, I might not be ready in the day. Or maybe it's winding down time. Like, there's a different beat for every moment of the day in my world, in my view. Sometimes I'm ready for the high energy whatever, and sometimes I really need to make it mellow. Like, there's waves through the day. It's not just one rhythm.

15:19Susan Power: That makes sense. Yeah. That makes sense. And I'm just picturing how I would hear him responding to that, not to speak for him, but, you know, he always talks about shining your light and not dialing it back to make other people comfortable too. And I think that's just the way he is. Like, that's just him.

15:38Bill Gallagher: Well, let's talk about some of the people that you've coached. As we got ready for the show, you mentioned a sales leader who was challenged by a change in territory and was confronted by some stuff. Why don't you tell us about that person?

Coaching a sales leader to believe she could build a new territory

15:53Susan Power: Yeah. So the thing with sales, as you would know, Bill, it gets so much attention in an organization because it's sexy. People like to bring revenue in the door. But what I think a lot of people forget is that the better leadership skills you have, the better sales performer you will be. So a lot of it comes down to mindset.

16:15Susan Power: communications, influence, all that good stuff. So this particular leader, she would have been closer to the tail end of her career, had been in the same role for 20-something years in a technology company. And I remember the day I met her in the sales meeting when I was trying to get them as a new client. She walked in the door, she sized me up from head to toe, and I knew I was trying to sell to salespeople, her and her boss, which can be a little bit daunting going into it. And I thought, oh, she's gonna be a challenge to work with. But she turned out to be one of my most favorite customers I've ever worked with, and I've worked with a number of other leaders from their organization. But her big challenge was adjusting her mindset to think she could build up a sales territory from scratch, which can be hard to do without support. Right? To go from, she had multi, multimillion dollar sales territory in her current role, which was no longer her role, to have to build up a new region, and she did it. Within nine months, she met her target and then exceeded it. But the first step was getting her to believe she could do it and then coming up with a plan of how she was gonna do it and then executing the plan.

17:27Bill Gallagher: So what was the challenge for her in believing she could do it?

17:34Susan Power: She thought it was too big a number. She felt like she didn't have the support to do it. It felt like an impossible task. If you think about having recurring revenue from existing clients year over year, and that's your territory, all of a sudden, you gotta find new customers and you're tail end of your career. It was like, how am I gonna do this?

17:56Bill Gallagher: It was overwhelming. So what was the work that you did? How did you get her to where she could see that she could? What was the shift?

18:05Susan Power: We had to tap into her really wanting to do it and uncovering, first of all, did she want the job? She was in the job, but she could have said, no, I don't wanna do this. We'll go find another opportunity. So that was, are you on board? Getting her on board. And then her realizing that this was not an impossible task, that there would be a way to succeed once she wanted to do it. So it was really just sitting through the process with her and asking her questions to understand how she was thinking about it and how she could think about it so she could be successful in taking the action she needed to take.

18:47Bill Gallagher: Yeah. I think that's a regular that I think about for myself. And somebody told me once, that I repeated for a lot of folks around different problems. Right? They said billions and billions of people before you have encountered and overcome challenges greater than this one. Right? So first, what are the sort of challenges people have overcome? And then get the magnitude of humanity encountering whatever savage living conditions and war and being subjugated and fought and victimized and enslaved and, you know, whatever else. And then consider all that. And then consider the resources and abilities and, when I think about it in context like that, and I just pause to reflect on it, I'm left with that I have more resource, more intelligence, ability, experience than many billions of people who probably had much darker challenges than I presently face at any given moment in life.

19:59Susan Power: No. I mean, you paint a very strong picture there. Right? But it's so easy to get sucked into this negative thinking pattern for all of us when we have a problem that we forget about all those resources.

20:14Bill Gallagher: I've said more than once to my son who is now a dad, which makes me a grandfather, unfortunately, or fortunately. I said to him more than once, listen. Remember the billions of people who came before you who managed to succeed at being a dad, with less intelligence, less resource, less stuff than you have, you're gonna be okay. In any given moment when you're exhausted, when it's really confronting, when you're at odds with your child or your spouse or whatever, just remember, you can do this.

Why not me: believing you can achieve what others have

20:50Susan Power: Yeah. Payback time.

20:54Bill Gallagher: Yeah. And I think the same is true, right, for us as entrepreneurs, as leaders. Whether you're staring at an economic challenge, a customer issue, an employee… it's useful to remember that. So you look at this sales challenge, and you're like, oh my god. It's really daunting. And you're like, have other people sold at this level before, either on their own or single or with a team?

21:23Susan Power: Yeah. You're reminding me of something else Dan Martell would always say on the group coaching call. Why not me? He was from kind of my region in Atlantic Canada from Moncton, New Brunswick. He completely self-made. He was in jail when he was a teenager. Did not grow up wealthy by any stretch. Now he's, you know, I think his net worth is $250,000,000, sold three companies, completely self-made, beautiful family. Why not me? So you need to really believe that to go for it. Otherwise, you're not gonna take the risk or take the action to meet your goals.

22:03Bill Gallagher: Yeah. I think this is a thing I notice again and again. One is you said with the sales leader, do you wanna do it? Right? Whatever you're trying to grow with your business, do you actually want it? Or did you just take it on because somebody else did? And whatever reason you took it on, it's useful to stop and go, do I wanna do this? And you could choose it or not choose it. Right? But sort of being half-assed at it because you haven't committed to it is not so fun.

22:30Susan Power: Yeah. Exactly. I don't wanna reach the end of my life and get to the top rung of the ladder and realize the ladder is against the wrong wall. Do I want this? It's such an important question. And that shifts sometimes, right, over the decades. What you want when you're 30 is different than what you want when you're 50, etcetera.

22:49Bill Gallagher: So true. And I don't think there's any reason to right or wrong. Want anything. Want whatever you want. Go for whatever it is. Right? You got this life to live. But I think it's good to do it freely and fully and not sort of half-baked, right, going through it because you thought somebody else expected it of you.

23:08Susan Power: Very true. Yep.

23:10Bill Gallagher: So then there's, is it even possible? And it's very easy to think it's not possible, whatever it is. Right? And for sure, there are some things that are not yet possible. Right? So we haven't yet figured out how to put a man on Mars, or a woman on Mars, a person on Mars. But we certainly have a whole bunch of people working on that right now, trying to do it for the first time. I think most of us are trying to do things that are far more modest. Build a billion dollar company, take yours just to a $100,000,000, go nationwide. Whatever it is that you're trying to do is far more modest and achievable than than something like that.

Helping an explosive executive regulate his emotions

23:50Susan Power: Do you remember Anthony Robbins? He's still around. You must know he was a coach. Right? He's like the grandfather of coaching. So I'm rereading his book from the eighties, Awaken the Giant Within, which is fantastic. Yeah. He has this exercise in there, Bill, where he says, out of 10, rate your life like financial, health, career, relationships…

24:12Susan Power: Right. Five years ago, where was that out of 10 in each category five years ago? Rate it today, then rate where you want it to be five years in the future. And I think it's so cool because you realize often how far you've come, at least in some of the categories, if not all five, if you compare five years ago to today. So it helps you realize, well, jeez, look how far I can get to maybe in the future. Because you're right, I think we underestimate sometimes what we're capable of doing. But one year is such a small window, but compared to five years.

24:44Bill Gallagher: It is. And there are moments where you frog, right? Like, things happen really fast. Like, COVID accelerated some things. Anytime you've got a stressor, there are some things that accelerate. I think in any given moment, life's hard, right? At any moment in life, it's hard. And yet when you look back, right, look back 10 years ago, oh, how did I relate to my finances, my health, all those kinds of things 10 years ago? And then I look to today. It was hard then. It's hard now. It'll be hard in the future, but I've taken ground, and I'll take more ground as I go forward, right? I will accomplish more. I've built more capacity. It's really useful to think about that. If you are a runner or you've ever run, right, you'll know every single run is hard, right? And some are easier than others. But if you're expanding your stuff, they're all going to be hard. And yet if you look back at your development over time, you'll be like, your time, your capacity, your endurance, all of those things will improve, right?

25:46Susan Power: Yeah, definitely. I'm a runner. I can relate to that. I just started back not that long ago. Did a 10K. It's called the Blue Nose 10K in Halifax. You go across, I think it's the MacKay Bridge. And I remember my calf cramped up when I did this for the first time, and I'm like, I'm not walking the 10K. But to run that 10K with the cramp the whole time, I'm just like, oh my god, this is not how I pictured this going.

26:14Bill Gallagher: Yeah. That actually, after you've run for a little while, that's one of the dangers of a sport like that. Your chemicals and your stuff can, you can run like on broken, torn body parts and because you're not going to stop.

26:30Susan Power: You're not going to stop. Nope.

26:33Bill Gallagher: You can actually get, yeah. And that's, right, another great analogy for this. Let's talk about managing our emotions and things like that. We all have times where we lose our cool or where we can't express something. You worked with a guy who was pretty explosive, who was frustrated. Talk about your work with him. What was he like? What kind of work did you do? How did that evolve?

27:00Susan Power: Yeah. I think emotions is something women and men, sometimes it's stereotyped that it's always women have trouble with, but it's the biggest thing, I think, in leadership, managing your own emotions, regulating them, and helping others regulate their emotions as a team. So this fella, he was explosive. The team wasn't performing. You know, he was cursing at them, like, unabashedly, and giving them a hard time. They probably deserved it, but it wasn't helping them perform. And he was looking for help on how do I regulate this so I don't explode. So he started to write down the curse words rather than say them was his first step along the way. He's like, get it out, but he wouldn't say it. And then he got like progressively better where he could communicate to motivate them and try to understand the problem so he could help fix it with them versus just pointing fingers. But by the end of the coaching engagement, he came on, surprised to me, all teary-eyed about, Susan, what really has gotten me is my relationship with my teenage son has improved because now I can regulate my emotions and not go off. And now he's talking to me. And that was the real win. I mean, the business performance improved too. That was good, but he really valued the relationship improvement with his son.

28:25Bill Gallagher: You know, guys, we get that training early on to, oh, don't be emotional, right? And in the beginning, that's like, don't cry, right? As probably the guy thing early on. And then later, it evolves in different ways, like don't be too whatever. And so we think we're not emotional. Oh, I don't want to get emotional here. I'm not very emotional. And yet, and then we do things like that, right? We're explosive or we are like a practiced phony kind of thing. Like, I noticed that I, early in my career, I got embarrassed and scolded for being overly exuberant and, you know, peppy and like that. And then I sort of suppressed it, got flat, right? And then I noticed, like, as a speaker, if I spoke at a conference, I'd get the conference ratings as a young executive. They'd be like, average, boring, you know? And then with a side of arrogance.

29:40Susan Power: And that thought, right?

29:42Bill Gallagher: And it sucked, right? And then I did some work on speaking and coaching and leadership work and things like that. And then I sort of took the lid off it, and I got back the range, right? The first thing that came out is I cried all the time. And then I got like louder and sillier and, like, I got the whole range of things. One of my coaches said, okay, we've seen you cry a bunch of times. It's powerful, Bill. But what else have you got, right? Like, don't cut the other sides. And then kind of the humor came in and that kind of thing. And then I had to sort of be responsible for the range of the emotion because I could move through things like faster than people, like get super emotional and then silly and then whatever. And that could be like weird or uncomfortable for people.

30:36Susan Power: We're all over the place.

30:38Bill Gallagher: It's actually useful as a speaker or as a facilitator, right, to move people through spaces because we've got them. Like, giving people an outlet for it is useful. But being able to be aware, like this guy that he's explosive at his, like, he's got a set point to manage in that.

30:58Susan Power: Yeah. I think a lot of people aren't always tuned in to like the full gamut. Like, I know at PowerUp Leadership, my company, when I work with clients on emotional regulation, I'm always asking them, do you use an emotion wheel? Because, okay, you know you're angry, you know you're sad, you know you're happy, but do you know when you're disappointed versus frustrated versus shameful? Like, you know, there's a lot of emotions we have that we don't always tune into quickly enough exactly what they are so then we can't frame our response because we're not recognizing it. And I know I worked with a coach myself on expressing authentic emotion because I found that difficult myself. And partly, like, I'm a doer, right? Like, an achiever. Like, we talked about CliftonStrengths Finder. I just get things done, and you've got to slow down to feel and pay attention to your body. And I'm still working on this, but he helped me a lot. And just like you shared, when I first started working on it, his exercise for me was when you lie down at night to go to sleep, scan your body and just feel any emotion you're feeling and just see what comes up and go with it. If you want to scream into your pillow, I'm like, I'll be doing that. But he's like, if you want to yell into your pillow, do that. If you want to cry, do that. And then it was like the floodgates opened, and I remember crying all the time. Then I remember getting angry, and I was thinking, what has he done to me? Like, I feel like I'm losing my mind, but then it stabilizes.

Slowing down to feel: using the emotional wheel

32:23Susan Power: And then you can communicate with more emotion. And I thought, okay, there is something to this. He's there is value to this. But a lot of people are out of tune with it is what I observed from coaching. And I'm not a therapist. I know that. But it's still a part of leadership to communicate with emotion and authenticity and all of that.

32:45Bill Gallagher: A good book on the subject. I spent some time this summer with a woman named Susan David who wrote the book Emotional Agility. I want to make a note. Let's get Susan on the show and talk about the book and that kind of thing. Wanda's my assistant and our producer in the background.

33:03Susan Power: Yeah. That's a great book. I love Emotional Agility. She would be a great guest, 100%.

33:09Bill Gallagher: We should do a show. I talked about it with her, and I just forgot to schedule it. But I think that being able to move through things, not being stuck with it, right? You could talk about something that matters to you a lot and then talk about something that amuses you. And then you don't have to hang on to a particular thing. I'm humbled all the time and sad and frustrated. Right? And I miss things. But I don't, like, okay, that's true. And then if you don't suppress it, right? And I think a lot of times if you have rage or you have whatever, that's just like repressed. Right? And you need to find an appropriate outlet for it. So you can't always scream F-words at your team.

34:01Susan Power: You won't have a team for very long if you do.

34:05Bill Gallagher: I had a boss once who, I'm making my annual plan presentation to the executive team of a multibillion-dollar company where I hold one of the more pivotal parts of the business, and he starts laying into me and using the F-word and that kind of thing in front of my peers. And I just wanted to cry. But I, like, toughened up. And I, but later I had to, like, move through it. And I carried the experience of that forever. Like, one is don't let the emotion take you down. Right? Like, it's okay to have it. In that moment, I chose to suppress it and to hold it back. I don't know if I might say today, do you really mean to be so offensive? Do you mean to tear me down right now, or are you trying to make me angry? Like, what is your intention? Right? But I'm 61 now, and that's a different stage of life to be able to ask that kind of question than I was at that point at, like, 25. So being able to move through it, understand it, but then also being thoughtful about where and how you use it with other people. Right? Like, he was frustrated and probably feeling ineffective or whatever when he was thoughtless with his, where I'm sure he wasn't just thinking. Was just, you know.

35:26Susan Power: He felt like he had some emotional regulation challenges of his own. Right? Something.

35:33Bill Gallagher: I think there's a lot of that. Let's talk about we're going to run out of time here, and I want to be mindful of our time. But let me ask you about succession. You do a lot of work with succession and funded teams, that kind of thing. Maybe you mentioned one tech team in DC or whatever. Why don't we do that story before we run out of time in the show?

How you show up affects whether people give you feedback

35:48Susan Power: Yeah, sure. So we work with a lot of hyper-growth businesses at PowerUp Leadership that are scaling really quickly, and we work with them from a people readiness, leadership readiness side. So often, you know, M&As, they have team integrations or succession planning. Do they have the right C-suite in place to scale to the next level? So often they're PE-backed companies. So the one in Washington, D.C., is a technology firm. Been working with them since January of this year, and I think we've coached so far, they keep sending us more every week, but we've coached five or six of their senior leaders. It's great. Yeah, it's great because they're seeing an impact in terms of behavior change and performance. So one of these leaders is also on the sales side and really, really effective, high-potential, high performer. But where she struggled was in, I guess, the feedback side of things and really, like, she was wearing her emotions on her face. And really, I guess, having trouble accepting feedback where people were eventually stopping giving her the feedback, which was not at all what she wanted. But it was just they felt like they were aggravating her by giving her the feedback. So it's just interesting that how you show up as a leader can really impact your future performance in ways that sometimes people aren't always aware of. So that's the value of coaching. You help increase the self-awareness, as you know as a coach, to help leaders really recognize where they're getting in their own way sometimes.

37:37Bill Gallagher: I think it's really useful to know how you come across even in how you come across getting feedback. Right? Like.

37:46Susan Power: Are you, like, I want the feedback. You're like, you know, no, I don't.

37:52Bill Gallagher: Yeah, yeah. Well, and sometimes, right, that's just you're cold or your back is tired or you have a natural set point. Right? However, the body, or you're more expressive emotionally than somebody else. Right? So let them know, hey, this is kind of how I am. Like, I noticed the best times when I go to, like, work with a group somewhere or even remotely on the phone or whatever, say, hey, I'm kind of like this. I'm kind of irreverent. I'm a little more emotional. I'm a little more expressive. I'm a little freer in some ways. Like, letting people know how you are, then they're not inhibited by your sort of natural set point, your way of being.

Free leadership resources and where to find Susan

38:38Susan Power: That's so refreshing. A lot of people don't do that. Right? They're not that forthright, and then people misread it or they don't know how to communicate with them. But you're making their job easy by telling them.

38:48Bill Gallagher: It's, you know, it's hard, I think, when you're young in particular. And young is relative speaking. Right? Like, every person who is younger than you seems young to you. Right? Like, oh my god. But you think about early in your career, everybody is a team player, self-starter. They work, their only fault is they work too hard. Right? Like, it's really hard. When I ask people their strengths and weaknesses in coaching them, especially new client, I ask people, what do you think your strengths and weaknesses are? And they don't speak, like, from my CliftonStrengths kind of thing. They speak about them organically. But they really don't say a lot of weaknesses.

39:34Susan Power: Or they're like, oh, I need to work on my skills with spreadsheets or something like that. Like, no. They don't know what the answer is a lot of times when they're young. And if I can mention a free resource for your listeners, on our website, powerupleadership.ca, we have a free download section, and we have a million different leadership resources there. But we have, in particular, succession planning framework, as well as a values finder. So if you're earlier on in your career, you're trying to figure out what's important to you, you can check that out. There's also a leadership diagnostic.

40:11Bill Gallagher: We share all our content for free because we know our value is in the implementation of it and in the coaching. At any point, self-reflection, self-awareness is so powerful. Right? It's very hard to get there if you don't know where you are right now. So understanding your starting point or where you are, your strengths and weaknesses, is fundamental.

40:33Bill Gallagher: Definitely, to any kind of leveling out.

40:36Susan Power: Definitely.

40:38Bill Gallagher: PowerUpLeadership.ca is the website. We'll put it there. There it is on the screen. It'll be in the show notes. You can find it again. You can try and remember it. PowerUpLeadership.ca is the website. Susan, I know you've got to go in just a second. We're running out of time. Thank you for coming on the show today and for sharing some of your stories and your experience and your work. If you want to know more about Susan's company, go there, PowerUpLeadership.ca. If you want to know anything more about our stuff, you know, wherever you are right now, just like it, subscribe. That's all good. ScalingCoach.com is our website. Big shout out, thanks to Wanda and Anna. We get our show produced every week. To my friend and mentor, Verne Harnish, who created the whole Scaling Up framework. That's the core of our work. And thank you again for watching, for listening. Until next time, keep scaling.

41:33Bill Gallagher: Thanks for listening today. One last thing. If anything in this episode hit home, my book digs into it further. Busy Is Broken: Do Less, Scale More. It's all about how to stop drowning in work and build a business and a team that scales without you. Available right now with content samples at BusyIsBroken.com. Go grab it. Be less busy.