The Art of Goal Setting & Transitioning Through Change

Jayne Heggen | Founder of Heggen Business and Management Consulting

In this episode, Consultant and Executive Coach Jayne Heggen shares best practices for aligning your performance goals with your personal goals, core values, and life purpose.  This is a crucial step in goal setting that many people overlook.  Jayne offers strategic advice for effectively navigating the uncertainty of choosing the best path when you come to a crossroads in your career or life.  She also shares her lifelong journey of moving back and forth between being a mentee and a mentor.

Part 2: Transitioning Through Change

This week’s episode features a conversation with Jayne Heggen. Drawing from her experience as a management consultant who helps companies and leaders transition through change, Jayne highlights the key elements needed to create successful change and employee support. She describes the motivations of the 4 generations in the workplace and offers tips for communicating effectively across an organization. Jayne also reveals the 3 most important skills a new manager must master and identifies 3 books that every leader should read.

FULL TRANSCRIPT PART I

 

Brown: Welcome to the Menttium Matters podcast, where we talk about leadership, life, and the transformative power of mentoring. This is Solveig Brown, and I am excited to have Jayne Heggen as my guest. Today, Jayne and I are going to discuss how to set goals that are aligned with your core values and life purpose.

 

Jayne is a Founder of Heggen Business & Management Consulting Group, which brings the best independent business solution thinkers together to help companies, leaders, and teams transition through complex change and create work environments that truly work. Jayne is passionate about mentoring and has been mentoring with Menttium for over twenty years. She is also launching a podcast for mentors called, Mentors by Design.

 

Jayne is a trained ICF and Purpose Coach. She received her MBA from Georgia State University and has completed the Leadership and Management Development Program at Harvard Business School. Welcome, Jayne. I am so glad to have you as a guest today.

 

Heggen: I’m so happy to be here and delighted to have a conversation with you again. This is wonderful.

 

Brown: Jayne, Menttium has just launched a cohort of new mentees and many of them are working on setting goals for their mentoring partnerships this year. You have talked about the importance of aligning your goals with your core values. Can you explain why this is such an important part of goal setting?

 

Heggen: Well, it does start with goals and sometimes we don’t think about that because we are in such a rush to get things done. But goals are important for a variety of reasons. Let me talk a little bit about the goal itself. When you are in a business, if you are working with a company, you have career goals. Those are set up for you to learn a skill, a task that aligns with what the company needs, it has its values. Those are important things for us to all do and understand because as we grow in our business, we grow with skills and understanding.

 

The other part of that though is our personal goals. We rarely think about our personal goals in conjunction with our career goals. If we look at what it takes to execute a goal, a lot of us will be familiar with this scenario. You have your goals, you get running, and suddenly you hit roadblocks. Things are hard to get done. You may have judgment coming up in your head, a lot of us do. Things aren’t working the way you thought they would. It is interfering with your home life, not just your work life. A lot of things happen that can become barriers if you are looking just at your career goals. What I am an advocate of is to start with your career goals but use your personal goals as a lens to view those career goals.

 

What are your personal goals? Personal goals are commitments to your family, your health, to your community, to learning. There are so many things that you do as a person that are important to you that can be derailed once you have made this commitment to this career goal. It is looking at your career goals in balance with what is important to you, your personal goals.

 

If family’s important to you, and learning’s important to you, and you discover in this career goal, you’re going to have to take a course that’s going to require 10 hours a week of study time and work, and you’re going to be on Zooms on Saturdays, and you find out that’s not only going to interfere with your time, but what about that commitment to your kids soccer games? What about that family outing you promised you would have and visiting your relatives? What about that new health routine you started because this is going to interfere with that. A lot of things must be in balance. So, you must look at your career goals through the lens of your personal goals.

 

When you do that, you find a better meeting place, a place of better balance. Because your personal goals aligned with your values, your career goals aligned with the company’s values. There is an intersection. You must have them both in place.

 

Brown: That’s a good point, of creating that intersection of creating balance and not having so much interference where your career goals may not match with your life goals.

 

How can someone get clarity on their core values and life purpose? If this is new to you, you may be focused on career goals and you may not think about how these align with the things that are deeper to you.

 

Heggen: Starting off with career goals, this is a great place because you’re learning skill set. It becomes more important as you gain more experience and knowledge. But if goals are all about achievement, something we’re going to achieve a corporate achievement, then we have the personal lens, which is why you want to achieve this, then values are your foundational pillars. So, values help you to make purposeful more conscious choices. Think about the lens. In a business now, you’re going to have values that are business values and a lot of us gravitate to them. Trust, honesty, integrity, these are all wonderful Uber values.

 

When it comes to you, what does that mean? It may be a little bit different. A core value to me is friendship. What does that mean? It is the ability to be myself, to be in environments where I can express my feelings to others. It is being able to make mistakes without having fear of judgment. When I look at the environments and work that I do, I really look for whether this is an environment where I feel I can be myself, that I can contribute, that is an open environment for me. So, one of my screens is friendship.

 

There you have about four or five of these screens, but you do need to go a little bit further than what is written down in the company’s values. Honesty is wonderful, but what is that to me? Honesty to you may be sincerity of communications. I am in a place where there’s sincere, authentic communications. That is a value. So, you really must take a deep dive into what are your values.

 

So, you have achievement, you know what you’re going to do and why. You have your pillars; these are the things. You make choices with your values. Then that moves you to purpose, which is your intentional, conscious actions. They all connect, they all work together.

 

Brown: I liked how in our pre-podcast meeting you talked about how if you have this intersection of all three connecting, you are less likely to get burned out because everything is supporting each other, and you have balance of those three pillars.

 

Heggen: It is true because now you have a way to negotiate. You have a way to set boundaries about what is important. When you can negotiate something that is going to interfere with your personal values, you can say, wait a minute, I can’t do that. That’s something I cannot live with. I can live with this. I can do this other thing, but this that you’re asking me to do here, I cannot do. You must have that flexibility. Where is the place you can be, and you can move forward with a conscious intention. So, to get to that conscious intention, you are really looking at what is in balance and what is not.

 

Brown: In your consulting and coaching practice, you have worked with many leaders who are working on performance goals, which requires a change in behavior and skillset. You mentioned this earlier, could you do a deeper dive into some of the best practices and tips for aligning your work performance goals, getting a new skill set and having that align with your core values?

 

Heggen: When we get into performance goals, we really are getting more tactical. A performance goal is your commitment to change. You have made a commitment to make a change, a change by learning something new, and this is going to change your perspective and often changes your beliefs. Performance goals are aligned with your core values because you are learning, you are growing, you are expanding exponentially. Skillsets will not necessarily change behavior or anything like that, but it is tools, skillsets are tools.

 

Think about it as a toolbox, and you have a hammer in your toolbox. Think about children for a moment when you have seen children playing with their toys and they most inevitably get a hammer toy, and they are banging on the little blocks. We all have that hammer in our toolbox. As we gain knowledge, as we gain information, we don’t necessarily need that hammer anymore. Our skills, our motor skills, our thinking skills are more refined. We can put the hammer down. But when we are looking at performance goals and skill sets together, what we are doing is we are learning how to load our toolbox. Maybe a wrench should be in there. Maybe there should be a screwdriver in there. Maybe there is a needle nose plier in there. Maybe there’s sticky things to hang stuff on walls in there. What are those tools that we can pull out to apply to the appropriate situation?

 

That is where performance goals and skillsets come together for me. Refining your tools, how you use them and what results you get, in turn refines your behaviors, your thinking, and your choices. Technically, all five of these things come together.

 

Brown: Then being able to identify what are the new skills or what are the new tools that I need, and then what is the best way to start developing those and getting those.

 

You have a Jayne Heggen original quote on your LinkedIn page, which I love. You say, “It’s not necessarily change, we resist. It is the uncertainty of choosing the best path”. I love that. This seems like the final piece of the puzzle in terms of our discussion on goals and values. Can you offer any advice on how to deal with the uncertainty of choosing the best path?

 

Heggen: It is something that you know internally, innately that when you are going down the path of growing yourself in your business, you are going to come to a crossroad. There’s a lot of things that happen at crossroads, but you stop at that crossroad when you are uncertain where to go. When we are not certain where to go, it is difficult to make a choice.

 

It is at the crossroads where we need to begin gathering information. Information may be about a refinement to our values, information about new tools. It could be analytical data that we need. What information do we need to look at this path to see if this is the best path we want to go down? Because usually when you are at this point, there’s multiple paths, there’s multiple opportunities, there’s multiple potentials. But we hesitate because we don’t have enough information to confidently move forward into a path.

 

Brown: Gather the information. Does it sometimes just take a leap of faith or what have you found in your personal experience when you have gathered all this information and you still aren’t quite sure what is the best way to go? How do you approach that?

 

Heggen: It is a leap of faith sometimes. Because you are indecisive, and you may have too much judgment or criticism going on to help you relax and see a little better. Here is the thing, you can start down any path, and if it is not the right one, you can turn around and go back. We forget we aren’t stuck there. We can cross over to another path. That is that path and that is where we are going to go down and we forget that paths are not straight. Sometimes they go in a circle.

 

Brown: I love that you can try something and if it is not working, you can refine it. As you said, skip paths, turn around, make a different decision, but just start on that path. That is great.
Jayne, you are a seasoned mentor, and you are starting your own podcast series for mentors. In our pre-podcast meeting, you talked about the lifelong journey of moving back and forth between being a mentee and a mentor. Can you expand on what this process looks like throughout someone’s career?

 

Heggen: It is all about learning. We learn things. We acquire things. Now we want to apply that learning into this next thing in front of us, but we have not been there before. So, you look for mentors who have been in this situation, you reach out and ask them about things. You may ask them to be your mentor. You learn from a mentor. You must have your goals and your mentor helps you bring those goals to life. So, you are constantly being a mentee, learning something, looking for advice, looking for guidance from a mentor to help you navigate. You accomplish your navigation, and then you become a mentor to someone else who is now perhaps going down a path like yours.

 

It is just a constant learning cycle, learning wisdom from others. Matter of fact, I believe in the Menttium book that was put out, Unlocking Potential, you grow with the hindsight of your mentor. It becomes your foresight. It was such a powerful statement. I always keep this one. This is one of those I keep around me. As soon as you gain something, you can give hindsight to someone else, so that becomes their foresight. It is just this continual cycle of learning, of sharing knowledge. You can even say legacy because your knowledge is your legacy.

 

Your experiences are your legacy, and sharing that out, you learn even more from that perspective. It changes; what you needed from a mentor when you are in your twenties is different from your thirties, forties, fifties, sixties. It is different. Your mentors change throughout those cycles, but you are always learning and growing, and you always need a mentor at some point in time to help you grow. Then you can turn around and help someone else grow.

 

Brown: I love the ebb and flow of helping someone else, getting the help you need, and it is a big circle. I love that your hindsight can become someone else’s foresight. Jayne, thank you so much for being our guest today.

 

I especially appreciated you walking us through how to align our goals with our core values and life purpose. It adds such depth to the goal setting process and especially figuring out career goals. I also like the reminder to take some time to get clear on what your values are, what your purpose is, what you are here to do, and how work can be a vehicle for that purpose.

 

Jayne and I are going to continue our conversation. In the next episode, we are going to talk about some of the most pressing issues affecting company cultures and do a deep dive into specific ways that leaders can create work environments that truly work.

 

Thank you all for listening to this episode of the Menttium Matters podcast. I look forward to having you back next time.

 

 

FULL TRANSCRIPT PART II

 

Brown: Welcome to the Menttium Matters podcast, where we talk about leadership, life, and the transformative power of mentoring. This is Solveig Brown, and I am thrilled to have Jayne Heggen back for an in-depth conversation about company culture. In the previous episode, Jayne and I had a wonderful discussion about aligning your goals with your values and life purpose. There were so many helpful takeaways from this episode, so if you haven’t listened to it yet, I highly recommend going back and listening to it.

 

The pandemic has created many challenges for both businesses and workers. People are experiencing higher rates of anxiety and burnout, and forty-seven million people voluntarily quit their jobs in the “Great Resignation”. The Deloitte Global 2022 Gen Z and Millennial survey indicates that Gen Z and millennials are looking for a new way to work, while also desiring more purposeful and flexible work. In this new normal, company cultures have never been more important for attracting and retaining talent. I asked Jayne back today because she is an expert on organizational culture.

 

Jayne is the Founder of Heggen Business & Management Consulting Group, which brings the best independent solution thinkers together to help companies, leaders, and teams transition through complex change and create work environments that truly work. Jayne is passionate about mentoring and has been mentoring for Menttium for over twenty years.

 

She is also launching a podcast for mentors called Mentors by Design. Jayne is a trained ICF and Purpose Coach. She received your MBA from Georgia State University and has completed the Leadership and Management Development Program at Harvard Business School. Welcome Jayne, thank you for being our guest again today.

 

Heggen: Thank you, Solveig. I’m so happy to be here once again with you.

 

Brown: Your company’s mission is to help companies, leaders, and teams transition through the complex change of creating work environments that truly work. Can you describe the different generational perspectives in the workplace right now and offer some insight on how to understand different viewpoints?

 

Heggen: It’s a very complex question. It’s a great question, and many companies are struggling with this right now because this is the first time we have had so many generations in the workforce together. I look at it from a communications viewpoint. If we can’t communicate with each other, not much gets done.

 

No matter what business you’re in or even what relationships and groups you participate in, it’s all about communication. But let’s break it out just a little bit. I’ll use the common labels, I really don’t like them, but I’ll use them anyway. We’ve got boomers, we’ve got Gen X, we’ve got millennials, and we’ve got Gen Z. Those are the big groupings, and there’s such a difference in the way we were all raised. If you look at boomers, think of it this way. Boomers basically were the first generation to explore TV. Boomers wrote the formulas that created the internet page that we all use now, so they were on the beginning edge of technology not knowing what technology was at all. Then go to Gen Z. It is networking. You use all the technology. It’s easy, it’s fast. You don’t even think twice about it because you’ve grown up with it.

 

You must understand people. It’s not that people are narrow in perspective out of choice, it’s that they become narrow in perspective because of their learning. It’s different; their schooling was different, the way they learn was different. So, we must think about that between all the different generations. There’s a lot of differences, but there are commonalities too. We get so focused on the differences that we don’t see the commonalities. Talking about communications allows us to connect.

 

Look at the boomer. Boomers really like formal direct communications. They like a lot of research. They like to understand the background of things. That’s how they learn. Gen X, informal, flexible, using emails, using texts, using Facebook, using all these other wonderful things. But they do value professional etiquette. Millennials appreciate authentic, fast communications, prefer text, check email, use Instagram. They really like efficiency in a digital first approach. Gen Z, transparency, visual communications, a preference for face-to-face, Snapchat, YouTube, TikTok. They use it all.

 

Within all of that, there’s a couple phrases that I’d like to pull out for you. Direct communication, flexible communications, authentic communications, transparent. Communications, we’re all asking for the same thing. When we lock in on communications and understand that we have a different communication style, but we’re all seeking the same information, now we can start working across generations.

 

A couple things to think about. If you’re a boomer talking to a Gen Z and then Gen Z texts you. Don’t email them back, please text them back. Mirror the communications. If you are generating a conversation with someone and they have a different communication style, defer to their style.

 

If you are in a group or organization, set some communication expectations. Once you get through this barrier of communications, a lot of other stuff goes to the wayside. That’s why I focus on communications. Get there, start talking, and once you start talking, you then start connecting on values, and then it starts working.

 

Brown: It goes back to values. That was such a good explanation of the different generations, the values they have, the preferred communication styles, because I think understanding that makes a huge difference.

 

You have stated that change is the most uncertain time for any company. What was known is no longer accessible. What is new is not fully integrated. This time that we live in now is known for being a time of accelerated change, so every company is dealing with this. Can you offer some suggestions for people navigating organizational culture change?

 

Heggen: There are a few things to think about. What we do when we go into change, and it’s all over the press, you can check it out and research, we look at the strategic initiative to be activated. What is that goal? We paint a beautiful picture of what this change will be, and then somehow magically we turn it over to the teams for it to happen and it doesn’t. It doesn’t happen because we forget a few things. Because we’re in this rapidly changing environment, we forget that there’s a transition involved. If we don’t think about the transition, what we end up doing is strategic initiative, after strategic initiative, after strategic initiative, trying to get to this goal.

 

Technically, all we need to do is to stop a moment and realize we’re starting at the end. Where are we right now? How ready are we for this change? It doesn’t take a long time to get there, but we just don’t take this step. Where are we now? What’s the gap? What are the priorities? Does everything have to change? Only a few things may change. In most change initiatives, the people who are doing the work say, what was this change? It didn’t change my work. What was all this stuff?

 

So, what really must change? What is that gap? When you look at what must change, you see the gap. Then you say, okay, we need to let go of this process that’s tied to an old system that we’re going to be sunsetting. That’s a good one. All right, great. Most people can get on board with that. But how do we do that? When is that going to happen? Is there going to be training? What’s my role? Where do we go from here?

 

You identify where you are, then what is that transition plan, and you must look at all the operational components and the people and the work they do. In strategic initiatives, you don’t really look there. You just assume it’s going to happen somehow, because you’ve given it to the change group that’s going to make this thing come to life. You must put the transition plan together. When you put the transition plan together, you’re getting the information to the people. You’re communicating to the people what needs to happen and when they get feedback, they can offer amazing insights to make this change even more tolerable.

 

Once you go through transition, you end up at the goal. The goal is the very last thing you do. Some people call it the dip, some people call it Theory U, some people call it a sigmoid curve. You begin at the ending; you see what’s there, and then traditionally, people say you dip down because you must understand and learn. In this dip down, there’s frustration, there could be some anger, there could be excitement, there could be exploration, there could be innovation. But you must deal with people and the systems they’re working with. If you’re communicating, if you have a plan for transition, if you’re really communicating with people, that dip or that learning curve reduces dramatically, and you can focus people more on innovation and contributing.

 

Once they start contributing, you come into the change you want. So, you have this dip of learning that you can either manage and be a part of and make it part of your transition, or you can ignore. If you ignore it, the organization will shut down your change because you’re not addressing the needs of the people who are having to do the work to create the change.

 

Brown: Then that will bring resistance to the change as opposed to using communication to align people with the change and expectations. The change can be messy, and all these different feelings can come up. They are responsible for part of the innovation of creating the change. I love that analogy.

 

In thinking about the change within a company, a lot of times the changes are within a team. Can you tell me how managers can create healthy team cultures or help their teams create changes that they are hoping to accomplish?

 

Heggen: It’s simple, and I tell this to all my mentees, carry your whiteboard with you at all times. We’re all familiar with the whiteboard. We’re all familiar with planning on a whiteboard. Everybody coming in, putting sticky notes down, drawing, putting boxes, and obviously some people can do beautiful art in putting together the solution on the board that we’ve all contributed to. It is the same thing when you’re working with your team. Can you, in your head, have a whiteboard? Can you let your own personal biases settle down? Can you take the assumptions you have and put them to the side? Can you hear what the people are telling you? Can you, together with your team, create a whiteboard of solutions?

 

When you gather the information from your team, your job as a manager becomes so much easier. It really does, because now you know what it’s going to take to move the team forward or the project forward or take on that initiative because you’ve got a 360° perspective from your team. Now you’re going to need to make choices of course. You’re going to decide what is going to be workable now and what may not be workable until later. Those conversations need to be had, but you do it from a place of knowledge now. You have insights, you have information. You’re connecting with your team, and you’re communicating now through this thought of a whiteboard. Let’s bring all the information forward.

 

Brown: I love that whiteboard analogy. It makes it so visceral; you can comprehend that.

 

Thinking about teams and leading a team, many of our mentees are taking on management roles for the first time, and this can be a daunting time in someone’s career. Do you have any advice for someone who is a new team leader or a new manager or is taking on responsibility for larger teams?

 

Heggen: Being a new manager, you are at that crossroad. How do you step now into being a manager? There are some things you need to know and some skills you need to acquire. You need to understand how to give feedback. You need to understand and pay attention to your leadership language. And more importantly, you need to be able to ask good questions. They’re all connected, all this stuff is.

 

As a new manager, you need to understand there’s not just one way to give and receive feedback. There are multiple ways. The three big buckets are appreciation, coaching, and evaluation. It’s interesting to think about because what is appreciation? It could be giving an attaboy or attagirl to someone. Recognition, or acceptance of an idea. Coaching may be a skill that needs to be enhanced. There may be something you need to work on with your personal relationship with someone on the team. An evaluation is more of an analysis, a comparison. When you’re looking to give someone feedback, what are they looking for? You must be able to have that conversation. If the person says, I would really appreciate you giving me feedback on my idea. Give them appreciation. Don’t give them an evaluation that’ll tear the idea to pieces. So, you must think about just at that high level, there’s more to it of course, but understanding what kind of feedback people need and what kind of feedback you are given. You’ve got to balance those.

 

Language is using your words to improve decision making, not stopping decision making. Sometimes when we’re in a leadership role, especially in meetings, when we ask people for input, our words and our actions are doing exactly the opposite. When we want to go around the table and have people tell us what they think about something, you are not going to get input. You’re not going to get feedback because essentially when you go around the room, you set the stage, you set what’s going on, now all of you around the table, tell me what you don’t like about what I’m saying? No one’s going to do that. It’s a very simple example. It’s better to have everyone take a sticky note or a white piece of paper or something, write down the issues, put them on the table, and then pick them up one at a time and discuss the issues.

 

Now you have input, now you have information so you can look to validate your thoughts and your thinking and your personal assumptions and biases, which all of us tend to do because we think that’s what a leader is. But if we have better language, we can do more than give inspiring speeches or give orders for how to execute. That is not leadership language.

 

Questions are at the core of all this stuff. If you do nothing else, if you get good at questions, you’re better at feedback and you’re better at your language. Questions help you move forward in the face of uncertainty, and they cut to the heart of the complexity. They need to be open-ended questions that ask for and invite information. And don’t ask why all the time. Why is rhetorical and it’s good to ask every now and then, but you really get nowhere with a why. A what question is better. How do we do this? How do you want to proceed? What makes the greatest sense? Good questions make a big difference.

 

For new managers, I have three resources to consider. One of them is called Thanks for the Feedback, and it’s by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, Leadership is Language by L. David Marquet, and the Book of Beautiful Questions by Warren Berger. Get these three books, read them, and keep them on your management leadership shelf. You will refer to them all the time.

 

Brown: Thank you so much for that. I will put those in the show notes for people so that they can see what they are, but that is helpful. I love that formula of feedback, language questions and how you explained that.

We have time for three final questions. The first one is, do you have habits that you feel have contributed to your success?

 

Heggen: I think what contributes most to my success, and I have seen this in others, is planning time to review my results and reflect on changes. I put together a plan, my plan’s been running for several years now. What do I want to accomplish? What do I see myself doing? What are my objectives for myself, for my business? I put those together and I give it as much detail as I possibly can, and I look at that once a year in a very big way so you can see what’s going on.

 

But I also pull them up on a quarterly basis and I look at things monthly. So, I use my plan as something that ignites my intention, not only for what I want to accomplish this coming month, for this week, and for the day that I’m at. I’m always looking forward and backwards, so to speak. Does this align with my plan? And in my plan, I have my values, I have the things that are important to me, and I look at it as a monthly intention. I say intention instead of goal because there’s so much, I don’t control. There are so many things that happen that are beyond me. I can only control how I respond to things and how I feel about things.

 

So, an intention for the month. I then look at the week, what are the one, two, or three things I really would like to get done, because this is my intention, and then I must be flexible to the day. I may look at my morning and go, I’m not going to get anything done today. I’ve got to go, I forgot I had a doctor’s appointment, I forgot this is happening. Or, wow, this just came on deck. I need to put a proposal together. I wasn’t expecting these things to happen so you must be flexible to let it go. I reflect a lot; I schedule that time; it doesn’t have to be more than fifteen minutes. Schedule ten minutes in the morning and then look monthly, what did I get done? What did I not get done? Realign it. You change it.

 

Brown: I like that that’s full circle to episode one of the importance of your values and your purpose and just checking in with that and scheduling the time for it. I think we schedule time for so many other things but are you scheduling time look at your own goals and purpose.

 

Heggen: It’s results and reflection. Results get to your quantifiable results. When you reflect on what actions happen, that’s where you realize your goals may have changed.

 

Brown: It’s the reflection piece that is so important. Because I think people are so focused on the results piece that they sometimes forget to take that time to reflect and just see if it still works. Is this still fitting. Has it changed? Jayne, what would your advice be to up-and-coming leaders?

 

Heggen: I’m going to give you four questions, and as an up-and-coming leader, these are four questions you should ask yourself. One, am I willing to step back to help others move forward? Do I have the confidence to be humble? Can I keep learning? And do I seek to create an organization in my own image?

 

Brown: Wow. Those are heavy questions.

 

Heggen: But you think about it, step back to help others, move them forward. This is all about recognizing rising stars, your high performers, the people who are really going to propel you as a leader and by helping them achieve their success, you achieve yours. Humble, it’s all about balance. When you’re humble, this is not a shrinking violet or anything like that. It’s you’re humble enough to seek balance. When you do that, you get better answers from your teams. And come on, you must keep learning. You continue reinventing yourself every single day. If you don’t, then you are not going to be moving anybody anywhere, and you’re not going to be moving yourself anywhere.

 

And then, in your own image, and this gets back to some of the other leadership questions we were talking about. The things that got you to where you are right now will not apply to anybody else that’s working with you in your teams or your peers. If you are going to create this in your own image, you will not be connecting with your teams because it is not relevant to them. Their experiences are different. You can become a coach and a mentor within the leadership realm and share experiences and share information and share knowledge so your teams and your peers can take that and integrate that in what they’re doing. Now you get to a better place, but they can’t do it, they can’t be your mirror image. It doesn’t work that way.

 

Brown: Wow, that is good. Thank you. Do you have a favorite saying, quote, or motto?

 

Heggen: Actually, I have a favorite question.

 

Brown: I love the question theme.

 

Heggen: It’s from Drucker and he gave this question a long time ago and it’s just stuck with me and it’s about us as leaders and contributors to the world. It’s, “What do I see when I look out my window that no one else sees?” And then, ” Do I see possibilities? Do I see potentials? And if I don’t, why don’t I?”

 

Brown: That is great. I’m going to write that down and put that by my computer because that is just such a powerful question.

 

Jayne, thank you for being my guest today. I feel like we’ve covered so much in this podcast. You started off talking about the different generational values and their communication styles, we’ve talked about how to be an effective and clear communicator, the importance of feedback, language, and questions. You’ve given great resources for being a new leader and shared your must-have books and then the fantastic questions you provided that help you think about where you want to go, where you are, where you’ve been. So, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

 

And thank you all for listening to this episode of the Menttium Matters podcast. I look forward to having you all back next time. Thanks.