Become a Stronger Leader with Christina Howard
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
Christina Howard has two decades of HR leadership experience with Fortune 100, nonprofit, and global companies. She now helps leaders align internal success with external success through coaching, custom workshops, and training programs.
Christina is also an executive coach, facilitator, and former circus performer, which taught her resilience and overcoming fear.
Defining Leadership
Leadership is the ability to solicit followership—aligning individuals to willingly engage with a mission.
Great Leaders must create a clear vision, focus, listen deeply, and demonstrate empathy.
Empathy in Leadership
Two Types:
Cognitive Empathy: Intellectually understanding others’ perspectives.
Emotional Empathy: Intuitively feeling others' emotions.
Markers of High Empathy:
Feeling drained after deep conversations.
Strong desire to fix others' problems.
Potential Pitfall: Over-empathizing can lead to micromanaging and preventing others' growth. Leaders should ask, "Whose problem is this to solve?"
Building Empathy:
Understand motivation styles (e.g., affirmations, incentives).
Believe in your team's capabilities.
Building Trust and Psychological Safety
Trust: Built on character and credibility through consistent actions and inspections of expected outcomes.
Psychological Safety: Fostered by:
Leaders modeling vulnerability and openness.
Inviting and respecting team feedback.
Framing debates as collaborative explorations rather than competitions.
Christina’s Content and Connected Methodology
For High Achievers:
Helps leaders at a plateau redefine goals by increasing self-awareness and self-acceptance.
Encourages leaders to shift from running away from pain to running toward purpose.
Key Pillars:
"Feel, Don’t Fix": Focus on understanding rather than solving others' issues.
Navigating Polarizing Conversations
Leadership Approach:
Align discussions with company values and culture.
Create safe spaces for all perspectives to foster belonging and connection.
Key Insight: Polarization often stems from a loss of belonging, making empathetic listening critical.
Impact of AI on Leadership
Tool for Efficiency: AI accelerates tasks like drafting content or aggregating information, enabling leaders to focus on strategy and development.
Key Differentiator: Leaders with high emotional intelligence will excel as AI lacks genuine emotional connection.
Thanks for listening!
Apply for a free coaching call with me
Get a Free Gift ⬇️
🆓 The limitless organization short video course
Connect with me
www.instagram.com/mikegoldmancoach/
www.facebook.com/mikegoldmancoach/
www.www.linkedin.com/in/mgoldman10/
I invite you to assess your team In all these areas by taking an online 30-question assessment for both you and your team at
-
Mike Goldman: for almost two decades. Christina Howard led the HR departments of fortune 100 nonprofit and privately held global companies today. She works with focus leaders and companies that want to ensure their employees achieve internal success. To match their external success.
Mike Goldman: She does this through coaching and by creating custom programs, workshops, and training designed specifically to increase productivity, communication, accountability, and connection. She's an executive coach, facilitator, and ex circus member. We're definitely going to get back to that, which makes her perfect for corporate environments, I guess, especially the circus stuff,
christina-howard: Right.
Mike Goldman: but so today we're going to talk about everything leadership, but Christina, welcome to the show.
Thanks so much, Mike, for having me.
So before we get to the obvious circus question that I've got to, I've got to ask, I always ask the same first question, more important than even the circus question. And that's Christina from all of your experience. What do you believe is the number one characteristic of a great leadership team?
christina-howard: I listened to a few of your episodes and I might've said the one that was on the last one, which is the ability to assess talent because that is a critical skill of a leadership team. And then I thought about it a little bit more and what it came to, it's really the ability to have kind and candid conversations.
Mike Goldman: In
christina-howard: an emotionally neutral way so that they can get better results.
Mike Goldman: Kind and candid. I like that. And I'm sure in some way we will get back to that theme as we dive into leadership. So, all right, so now I got to go back to the ex circus member. So when you say ex, I'm thinking, what did you do to get kicked out of the circus? But I'm also thinking, what did you do at the
christina-howard: Well,to get kicked out, you have to graduate because it was at Florida state university when I was going to college and I was in the marching chiefs at the time. And was twirling flags. And when I looked across the field, there was the circus tent. And I thought, well, that would be fun to go and do too. So I would go from the chief's practice over to the circus, practice. And it was a blast that we didn't have any clowns or any animals. It was purely circus acts. And it was such a great experience because it really taught, a lot of things around like overcoming fear. like the fear of heights and twirling through the air without a net underneath you and just a lot of resilience because a lot of people don't know, but being in the circus is quite a painful thing to be in physically and emotionally and mentally too, because of the things that you're asking your body to do and that you're expecting yourself to do.
Mike Goldman: It sounds remarkably similar to being a member of a leadership
christina-howard: Exactly. It's
Mike Goldman: no net underneath you. Most days could feel kind of painful. So beautiful.
so we're, I'm going to start with a, with a simple question, but probably not an easy one, maybe easy for you, but since we're going to talk all things, leadership, how do you define leadership
christina-howard: The ability to solicit followership,
Mike Goldman: and followership is what?
christina-howard: having folks aligned and ready to focus on our mission and they're going to do that willingly and invest extra energy and engagement to make that happen because they care about the team and the results.
Mike Goldman: Got it. and along with that, and maybe I'm going to ask this anyway, even though maybe you just said it is, so that's how you define leadership. What's the definition of a great leader?
christina-howard: Well, that's where I think that it is about the ability to solicit followership. If you can do that as a leader, most things are possible.
Mike Goldman: And what is, let's kind of dive into what stands in the way. Of that, right? But nobody, people want to be a great leader, but not everybody is a great leader. So what stands in the way of people being that great leader of, of generating that followership you talked about.
christina-howard: I would say empathy, deep listening skills, focus, and the ability to set a very clear vision for the team.
Mike Goldman: So talk about empathy a little bit more, and I'm sure while I'll talk for myself, I have worked with leaders that are very naturally empathetic and others that Are not so much and need to work at it. So is that empathy?how much of that is natural and how much of that is, is a skill we need to build.
christina-howard: It's, it is a skill that can be built. Sometimes we lack empathy because we're a little bit out of touch with ourselves. And if you're out of touch with yourself, you really can't be in touch with others and all of that gets in the way. And that's where we see a lot of ego sometimes, though we might not call that ego in general, though, empathy can be learned.
The intellectual kind of empathy can be learned, and the emotional type of empathy sometimes is just inherent in the person. And yet that can also be learned over time by getting in touch with your own emotions.
Mike Goldman: So you called it intellect. So you've given me two different ways to think about empathy. So you said intellectual empathy and then emotional
empathy. Talk about the difference between the two. And then I want to dive into how you build that stronger.
christina-howard: Yeah. The intellectual, you could call it cognitive empathy as well. It's the ability to just look at a situation. Somebody's telling you a story and you can pick out or you would say, I can see these pieces in that process or in that conversation, which would require me to react a certain way based on what that person is saying. And so they may not feel it because some people that have it very naturally feel empathy on a kind of an intuitive feelings based level and others can listen to the conversation or listen to what the person is saying to them and just say, Oh, well, that person's, you know, dog, cat, whatnot died. And so I need to express empathy or concern now, but they may not feel it. At the onset. Does that make sense?
Mike Goldman: Yeah, it sounds like, what's the guy from big bang theory? like someone who's Sheldon, who's gotta be like, okay, I'm supposed to feel this way now. but it, so, so is the intellectual empathy enough? It would sound like it's the emotional empathy that really creates great leadership, but dive into that a little
christina-howard: Well, one might take more effort than the other, right? So the emotional empathy may not take as much effort because it's natural. The intellectual cognitive empathy may take a little bit more focus for the person to really pay attention because they don't just naturally feel it. And so it becomes more of a learned skill, that you have to direct energy towards to make sure you're listening for the empathy.
Mike Goldman: So how do you build greater empathy? If we assume. As you say, you don't just, you have it or you don't have it. And some people may have it more naturally, but how do we, I guess two things, how do we know whether we have high empathy? Cause I think most of us probably think. We have it,
but maybe we don't.
but so, so how do you know whether you've got that, that right amount of empathy? And then once you do not know that, are there things we can do to strengthen our level of
christina-howard: Okay. Well, I, the, I believe, you know, you have empathy when you're listening to someone at the end of that conversation, you might feel tired. You might feel a little drained because you're really engaging in the conversation. In the conversation on many different levels, not just through the listening ear, you're also, you know, kind of on a felt sense listening to the person.
And so it takes a lot out of you. And so that's why sometimes it's important for folks with really high empathy to learn good boundaries around assessing what's there. Problem. And what's the other person's problem or challenge, if you will, so that they don't take it on. So another marker that you might have high empathy is if you find yourself wanting to, jump in and fix things for somebody because you feel their pain or you don't like it.
The way that discomfort is feeling. And so you want to jump in and solve other people's problems. And so that would be, you know, a marker of high empathy as well. So those two things, just having that like drain at the end of the conversation or that like pull or desire to jump in and solve and fix.
Mike Goldman: So I want to hit on that desire to jump in and fix, which is not always the right thing to do. So is there such a thing as having too much empathy that where you feel so compelled to jump in and fix the problem, you wind up micromanaging or hurting somebody else's ability to figure it out.
christina-howard: Yes. I call that, being mindful to not steal the struggle because oftentimes we advance in our careers because we struggled through something and that builds a lot of resilience. And sometimes folks with high empathy, they remember what that felt like. Because it's hard when you're going through a struggle, it feels painful. And so when you jump into fix, you actually steal somebody else's struggle and you're also stealing their growth and development in the process. and so that's what I ask people to pay attention to is ask themselves one question, whose problem is this to solve? Truly, right? And you can do that if you look at like the role in the organization, the role in the family, you know, who said that they were going to be responsible or accountable for it.
So whose responsibility is this to solve? And if it's not yours, then you have to practice sitting in the discomfort of not taking over.
Mike Goldman: which is difficult for some leaders that want to jump in. and sometimes it's because they want to be the hero, but it's also sometimes because they believe that's the quickest way. If I just, I'm just going to give them advice, tell them what to do. I'm going to solve this for them. Not realizing that it means probably a lot more pain later because you haven't taught them to do it themselves.
christina-howard: correct
not scalable. You can't scale that, right? Because if a leader is jumping in and solving everybody's problems, then, you know, that person's presence is required 100 percent of the time. And then they get to some point down the line, and they're, they have this view that I'm, you know, Surrounded by idiots, right?
They wouldn't say that because they're highly empathetic, but they'd say, you know, why don't I have a supportive team? I do everything for everyone. And, you know, where can I find confident, capable, you know, folks that can do the job that I need them to do? And the answer is by stopping yourself and allowing the people to the job that you hired them to do.
Mike Goldman: So, so you talked about the markers. One is you're kind of feeling tired at the end of the conversation. The other is you feel their pain. So you want to jump in and help how for those folks that. Don't feel those markers as often or folks like me, you know, if you're familiar with the disc scale, the high D's of the world, like me, and I'm a high D I so, so I do have some empathy there, but for the high D's in the world, which is a lot of entrepreneurs that are just like.
Just give me the facts and let's get the job done. and, you know, empathy is not always part of the equation. what could those leaders do to better buildthat skill?
christina-howard: It's a really good question. And folks that are high D's on the disc, they're always focused on a task, right? You're always focused on the task. And what is it a result that we're trying to get? And in order for you to get that result, you've got to motivate this one individual to do that. So it's your job to figure out What motivates them? So is it words of affirmation? Is it right? You know, some level of appreciation. Is it a cash bonus? So it's your job to figure out motivation. That is a way to give empathy because you've identified something that's quick for you, that works with them, that allows you to show that you care, because that's what empathy does at the end of the day, it allows you to feel connected to the person and show that you care.
So if you can figure out how to motivate that individual. Then you demonstrate that you care, then you can focus on the task.
Mike Goldman: Diving into that. I mean, if I'm in figuring out how to motivate the person, it would seem to me like, like we've got to cultivate. a certain attitude about them. Because if I want to figure out how to motivate someone and my attitude is they're lazy and I've got to figure out how to motivate them, then that I'm probably not being very empathetic.
I'm not going to come off with a lot of empathy. So is there, how should, for those who are very task focused and very factory, just give me the facts and let's get it done. How, what kind of attitude. might we need to cultivate about other people that would cause us to not just think about them as, you know, people, we've got to push to get the job
christina-howard: Right. Well, that the last thing you said that you have to push them that already denotes that there's going to be this, you know, high level of effort on your part, less on their part. I would say though, that the belief about people has to be that they are capable and you believe that they can actually do the job as a leader.
If you don't believe that, then they should not be on your team.
Mike Goldman: That's a great point. and how do we, so, so you've got to believe people are capable of doing the job.
I want to broaden that in thinking about how we think about others on the team is I want to talk a little bit about trust. on a team and building a, that psychological safety on a team, because I have come across a lot of leaders who, whose attitude is, you know, I will trust him when he proves that he's worthy of my trust.
and my thought is you've hired this person to do a job. You need to trust they could do the job, or maybe you've hired the wrong person, but how do you. As a leader, how should you think about building that sense of trust and psychological safety on a team?
christina-howard: I feel like those might be maybe two different buckets, the psychological safety and then the trust, because trust oftentimes for folks is built on character or credibility or some combination of the both. So the person that says, you know, I can't trust that person yet, it's probably a credibility person they've hired somebody. You know, they think that they can do the job, but they don't know yet. So those people, I would say what a very, wise mentor said many years ago, like 30 or 30 years ish ago, when I started at target said, you have to inspect what you expect and that's how you build trust over time. And so you give somebody a project and you calibrate on the results.
And you build the trust that you need to be more and more hands off as the leader, you know, continues to engage with this person. And you're right, though, that if they've hired the person, they have to extend the trust from the get go. And then they have to design the experiments to see if that trust deepens over time. And So from a psychological safety perspective, the more consistent the leader is, the more trustworthy they become for the team.
Mike Goldman: What could a leader do focusing on the psychological safety part of that? What could a leader do if they have got a team that is hesitant to Challenge that's hesitant to disagree that fears, you know, jumping into the fire of maybe a difficult conversation. how can a leader. Increase what Patrick Lencioni would call that vulnerability based trust, not the task based trust where, you know,but that vulnerability based trust, how have you seen leaders?
build that psychological safety piece. You know, are there specific exercises or does that just come with experience over time? How do you build that?
christina-howard: It's a muscle that I believe can be built over time, and it takes some reps for people because in the past, in the workplace, you know, we've been told, check your attitude, your feelings, your emotions at the door. Don't bring those into work. And the landscape around work and how we work has changed so much that the lines feel a bit more fluid.
So people have different expectations of their leaders in the workplace. And so we just have to acknowledge that, you know, leaders are having to change in ways that. They didn't think they would need to later on in their careers, oftentimes too. And for those folks, you know, the advice or the activities we usually do are around allowing themselves to receive feedback in public from others.
And I know Patrick Lencioni has, you know, an exercise for this and you don't have to do that, you know, large exercise, but the leader has to ask for feedback. You know, how did I do on this meeting? How am I doing on the strategy? You know, what have you noticed that isn't working? And then allow the rest of the team to see, you know, them be challenged and see that they have a really good mature, measured, appreciative response to the feedback.
Go ahead. Nope.
Mike Goldman: what I have found that, and I'm wondering what your thoughts on this is kind of two things. Number one, I remember I had For three years, I had a staffing and recruiting firm that I own, by the way, worse business for me, all my money went flying out the window. so, so it was not a great experience, but somehow it all led me here.
So it's all good. but I could remember, you know, I was reading all the books and, you know, was using all the quote unquote techniques to try to get my team to open up. And. There was a member of my team that, that wouldn't just wouldn't really open up as to what she was challenged with.
Wouldn't challenge me if she disagreed with me. And then, and this was totally by mistake, this happened and it worked is I wound up being vulnerable about something that I was having a challenge with. And what happened is when I showed that vulnerability first, all of a sudden. The folks on my team felt like it was okay for them to be vulnerable and ask for help or even to challenge me on something.
And I'm wondering if you know, is that a, I mean, that, that was something I did by mistake, but it would feel like that's not a bad technique is to say, if you want people to be vulnerable with you, you've got to show it first.
christina-howard: and I almost said that is the first answer is that you have to set the level of disclosure by doing something like that for in front of the team as well. So, when I go in and do leadership workshops, one of the first things I do is ask folks a series of questions and then we talk about them as a team and I always talk to the leader of the team first and let them know that they have to set the level of disclosure and how things are going to go today, right?
Or through the workshop series. and so, that can be pivotal. And if we're talking about, you know, what's the biggest fear, what's the biggest thing you've learned in the last year, right? I don't want. the first person that goes to talk about something funny or flippant, right? Because that sets a level of disclosure.
So that's why I kind of preclose the leader, if you will, so that they're setting the right level of disclosure that they want on the team so that we have a really productive workshop.
Mike Goldman: How do you, again, along the lines of that psychological safety and feeling comfortable entering into the fire and the debate, if there is a decision that needs to be made as a leadership team and the CEO, the leader of the leaders feels very strongly about going with option A versus option B.how should that leader think about making their argument?
Without shutting everybody else down. Right? Because I've seen leaders that try, they're trying then and specifically a CEO trying to win the argument here, all the reasons why this is the right answer. And it just shuts everybody else down because they don't want to go into battle with the CEO.
So they just nod their head, yes. And move on. And it's like, wait a minute, there needs to be a debate here. So how should leaders think about. I should CEO specifically, or the leader of any team, think about entering into a debate without shutting the rest of the team down.
christina-howard: While I would offer that the first thing they would do is not consider it a debate.
Mike Goldman: Okay.
christina-howard: Because in a debate, there are winners and losers, right? And this is a conversation about what is best for the company and what is going to lead us to our ultimate success. And in order to be able to have that conversation, it needs to be exploratory and the leader needs to ask better questions.
Mike Goldman: I love that. I think that's the key. In fact, there's a book. Have you read a book called conversational capacity?
christina-howard: No, I've not heard of that one.
Mike Goldman: It's a wonderful book and it gets to the idea you're talking about here, which is when you are. When you're having a discussion, I'll use your term, when you're having a discussion,
They're kind of two extremes of having a discussion where you are, where people may be arguing points and one extreme is to minimize and minimize is when you sit and go, well, what, you know, this may not be important, but, or you guys know more about this than I do, but, or The extreme version of minimizing is it stays in your head and you never even say it, that's one extreme, which is not great.
The other extreme is winning. You're trying to win the argument. You're trying to be the winner of the debate to your point. That's not good either because you're shutting people down where the right answer is right in the middle, which gets to your idea of asking questions, which is you are having this discussion.
I'll use my team. I'll use the term debate. You are entering into this debate not to win the argument, But to gather the information necessary for the team to make the best decision they could make at the time. And the best way to do that is even if you are emotionally arguing for your answer is saying, Hey, I know there's a lot of smart people around this table that disagree with me, help me seriously help me understand what I'm missing here.
Like those kinds of questions.
christina-howard: Yeah. Help me see what you see. Right. And another really good question, you know, is around something to the effect of how might we solve for X? Because oftentimes a CEO has already thought of the six or seven things that are going to be additional challenges if they take a certain approach and so the CEO has to be really good at identifying what those challenges are and then using the Socratic method to help the team see things sometimes or to help pull out of the team the solutions that they have that the leader has not thought of yet. And so that can be very important. And the, the discomfort with debate, if you will, that comes from all kinds of things that happen outside of when we come into the workplace. It's just what happened in your family around conflict, right? What are your experiences around it? What are your experiences with people on this team and potentially even the CEO? What is your confidence level in your own voice? Right. So speaking to the diminishing yourself or others in the process. So there's just so much invisible, psychological, emotional, you know, stuff going on and those conversations. And when we keep it in the intellectual, it's almost like pretending like all of that's not there. Um, and so creating a space for that by a leader being vulnerable and asking better questions is going to help the company get to where the CEO wants it to go faster. By slowing down just a tiny bit.
Mike Goldman: I read, I forget if it was on your website or somewhere else you talk about, you have a, is it a content and connected methodology? talk about what that's for and what is the methodology?
christina-howard: The, so the methodology is actually broken down into different pillars and the,the type of client that comes to me often is the one that is, you know, a successful high achiever. They've, you know, achieved more than they ever thought was possible, most likely, and then they get to this point and they're thinking, you know, So what now?
It's almost like they plateau. They're not sure what they want to do next. The things that they were doing were, you know, haven't given them the sense of like fulfillment or purpose that they wanted in their life or they thought was going to make them happy. So it's almost like this little bit of disillusionment at that point. And, and so what we have to do is, to, increase their self awareness around what they really want, because they've been chasing all of these things externally that everybody told them that they should be chasing without actually considering what they do want. And so what happens is it ends up trickling out.
into their business, they might hire people that depend on them more than they do for the company, right? They might, bring on vendors that aren't really aligned to their values or the culture because they haven't really thought about, you know, what. their needs, what their standards are, what their expectations. And so we've got to go on this journey around understanding that increasing self awareness, increasing self acceptance, because the only way to continue to grow is by understanding, where you are weak as well as where you are strong and not. Apologizing for that anymore and just really embracing that and then holding people accountable to your standards as you understand them and the person that you are today. And so at that point, you're able to feel much more content, much more peaceful and feel connected to all the people around you because it's clear how to win with you.
Mike Goldman: so what are the pillars there?
christina-howard: So it depends. So there's 12 different ones.
And
Mike Goldman: 12.
christina-howard: yeah, I know. I'm like, I don't think you want me to go through all of them. Right. but one of them is,I would say, feel don't fix. Feel don't fix because they have to understand, as I was mentioning before, where they might be jumping in to solve people's problems.
That are preventing them from learning the information that will actually take the company to a much better place and free up a lot of the CEO's time. and so we do a deep dive on a lot of practical exercises and understanding what that, you know, what, how to do that. and so that becomes one of the methodologies that we use.
Mike Goldman: God. And you mentioned as part of this, methodology, you mentioned that it starts with a level of self awareness to what you want. how does, how do we know if we're self, again, it kind of like empathy, we all think we're self aware. How do we know if we're self aware and how do you build more self awareness?
christina-howard: You know, yourself aware when you can genuinely laugh at yourself. When you see that you've made a mistake or you realize that you're just simply not good at a certain thing and you don't feel this compulsion to try and make it better and you're comfortable talking about it in public. Right.
Mike Goldman: That I must be incredibly self aware because I stink at a whole bunch of things I'm very good at a narrow set of things that I stink at most so I'm I feel good. I'm very self
christina-howard: That's good. Right. and you can be playful about it and you're willing to give other people permission to give you feedback when you are working on something. So I'll, I remember when my son was pretty young, like eight or nine, I realized that I had a little streak of being passive aggressive and I didn't, I actually didn't think that I was. And I. I told my son what it was, what passive aggressiveness looks like, and I said, I want you to tell me when I'm doing this so that I can get better at it and how fast do you think I fixed that when my nine year old was telling me how passive aggressive I was being. So okay.
Mike Goldman: So so a big part of this is being coachable
christina-howard: A hundred percent. Right. So yes, coachable and also just willing to be vulnerable and willing to ask folks around you to be mirrors for you because it is impossible for us to be a hundred percent self aware. We are the fish in the bowl. We do not see the water and we have to have people around us that are willing to tell us the truth and we have to watch our reactions.
To somebody telling us the truth as they see it, sometimes as they see it, right? and be willing to integrate that into our way of thinking without going through the shame spiral, because that's where we get stuck. If we wind up in a shame spiral, because we feel like we shouldn't have done this, we shouldn't have done that, then we've stopped being self aware.
Mike Goldman: I'm going to make a left
christina-howard: Go for it.
Mike Goldman: and I want it to actually, I've got in my head two, two things I want to hit before we start to wrap up that are more, more current and less kind of just general leadership things.
And one is the polarization we're all living through right now. And, you know, when this.
when we're recording this and when this airs, it's not too long after, you know, our presidential election in the United States. And you know, I'm old enough to remember the days when, you know, you were never really supposed to talk about politics in the office, but. 25, 30 years ago, you can do that and have an intelligent conversation and not you get yourself into too much hot water,by, talking about left versus right or Democrat versus Republican.
We live in a very different time right now and have for probably 20 years, but it's continued to get more and more polarized. How do we, how should leaders think about that? Cause I've had leaders. Bring it up, bring up the election or politics and what they think. And I'm thinking, Oh my God, what are you doing?
This is not going to go well. And sometimes it goes perfectly fine and sometimes it doesn't. but I've also seen it. Come up, you know, on teams and cause issue. So as a leader, how should we be thinking about those types of polarizing conversations? Do we jump into the fire and be vulnerable and have those conversations?
Do we stay away from those conversations at all costs, or is there some healthy place in the middle?
christina-howard: Yeah, it's a good question, especially in this day and age. You're right. And I've got leaders that I work with that are, you know, kind of all over that spectrum. Some talk about it very openly at work and some say it should never enter work. I'd first ask a leader to go to their culture. And their values whether or not talking about politics is aligned to what their culture is and what their values or principles are, if transparency and candor and these types of things are their values and they're actually lived in the business. Then they might be able to talk about politics and the key will be to create space for everyone's perspectives because that's what gets missed. A leader has to understand when they speak, they have positional authority. And what that means is that, you know, how they believe about politics is going to influence the way the team may feel about politics and the team may react to that. And so they have to be prepared for that.when you have seen it work well, versus when it didn't work well, what was the difference? Right.
Mike Goldman: and I haven't thought about it, you know, the, I think the difference was at a willingness to listen to the other side, whatever the other side is. And, you know, there tends to be. We've all seen this. There's tends to be this feeling of if I'm on one side and you're on the other, it must be because you're stupid or because you're a bad person or because you're crazy.
And I was just in a situation, not a work situation, but a friends over for dinner situation,not too long ago. And. Someone started talking about politics and was making the assumption that the people that disagreed with her were just lunatics or not very smart. And that when I never see that go well, whether it's in a social situation or a business situation, but I've seen in social situations and I've seen in business situations, people who have the ability to say what they believe.
But say, Hey, you know, what am I missing? Like, how do you guys feel about this? or, you know, some ability to see the other side as normal, good people, you know, trying to do the right thing versus demonizing the other side. that to me has been the big difference. And you just, you see that less and less often these days, the willingness to not demonize the other side.
christina-howard: Yes. And I, so this will be a little bit of a left turn too, because when I think about that, what I see is that people have genuinely lost a sense of belonging in a lot of areas of their lives. And, you know, as we move to more remote workforces after COVID and during COVID people, you know, aren't the church attendance is down, right?
There's lots of affiliations that we used to have that we don't have anymore. And so the sense of belonging comes out of, you know, the social media or in our political party or wherever we can find it. And, and so if. You have a different opinion than me, then you are threatening my sense of belonging and that I matter, right? and and that is, you know, an existential, but also like a survival threat, right? Just the, our brains have not evolved to the point yet where we can withstand that kind of, you know, threat of being cast out of the community. So when a leader does talk about it, I would imagine, like you said, they have you know, deep listening, all of that.
That's what I meant by making space. It's, they talk about it in a way that invites the other person to talk about themselves and what they believe. And they still create a sense of community and belonging in the process that we all are still together here. We just want to create this container where we can have these conversations. And, you know, this happened. Back in 2016 during the first election, I found our family, my husband at the time and my son and I had all very different political views and it was a complete surprise to me. And I would love to say that I handled it perfectly the first time. I absolutely did not.
One of the worst parenting moments ever. and it was all full of ego. And then that started to started a journey to where up to this day now, it's very easy for the three of us to have conversations about politics and to really understand each other's perspectives because there's still a sense of family there and that we are connected, even though now my husband is my ex husband and there's still a sense of family and connection so that we can talk about those things.
So that's what leaders need to do is connect. Create that sense of belonging, the community before they attempt to have a conversation like that.
Mike Goldman: It's so important because what you're making me think, and I agree with this, is that it's not, when people talk politics these days, it's not what they're thinking or how they're feeling or what they believe, it's become who they are. And if you are. Challenging who they
christina-howard: Exactly.
Mike Goldman: or you're telling them who they are is wrong.
There it's hard to find a way back from that. And leaders need to understand whether whatever, whether they're on the right side or the left, they need to understand that people relate this stuff to who they are. So tread carefully and don't, you could have an interesting discussion, but don't.
Don't,don't challenge who people are. So I like that.
The other thing that is less generic and more kind of current events is AI, artificial intelligence, and you know, it feels like every month that goes by, there's about a five year leap, you know, in technology. how should leaders be thinking about.
AI these days, does it, and how does it impact leadership or is leadership pre AI and post AI the same thing?
christina-howard: Absolutely. I've been thinking about this a lot, actually, and I had an argument with Chat GPT about it too. So I basically, I did
Mike Goldman: did you create psychological safety with chat GPT and
christina-howard: yes, because I started, you know, I actually told it at one point it was gaslighting me and I didn't appreciate it and it apologized. And, but I asked it, I said, you know, moving forward from a leadership perspective, what is the difference between what you can do, chat GPT, for employees, and managing that a leader can or can't do? So it was a very interesting conversation and, but I think, you know, in general, AI is a resource and a tool for leaders and they need to look at it that way. So, you know, if I'm putting together a job description or marketing or a copy or whatnot, chat, GPT is a great resource for that. They can do in two minutes what might take me or you or somebody else, you know, a couple of hours to sit down and do all the research.
So it's a great. Aggregator information. It's, you know, it accelerates a leader that's willing to jump in and figure out how to use it well. And quite frankly, the way you use AI really well is ask it better questions. So there's a theme there. And, and so it will be very helpful to the leaders in the future.
I think the leaders that will transcend AI. are quite candidly the ones with the highest amounts of emotional intelligence because I does have intellectual empathy, cognitive empathy. It knows how to respond to you, but it doesn't know how to make you feel like it's connected to you. Humans can still do that much better than any advance.
Mike Goldman: Yeah. And at least at this point and who knows where it's going, but at this point, I look at AI for leaders as. You know, most leaders have a goal of spending more time working on the business, which includes working to develop their people and working on strategy. They want to spend more time working on the business and less time working in the business.
And AI handled the right way is something that's an incredible tool to allow you and your team to do that. Now, maybe down the road at. You know, it, it develops feelings and connections like we do. And then we've got to think of a different way to,to leverage that. but I do think it's the best tool I've ever seen to help us spend more time working on the business than in the business.
christina-howard: Absolutely. And if you get good at training a GPT to, you know, with your company's, principles, values, you know, kind of your handbook, any of your acronyms and all of that, then it becomes an invaluable tool to help you create anything and everything that you might want to do for your company.
Mike Goldman: Christina, as we start to wrap up, I want to focus more on you and your company and what you do. So tell us more about, I don't even know if we said the name of your company anywhere. So tell us the name of your company and kind of who you focus on helping and how you help
christina-howard: So the name of the company is Intently and I support two types of leaders. One in the one to one. I have a very small number of clients that I work with one to one and these folks are usually leaders of very large teams, very large organizations and are really looking for support on strategy, leadership, teamwork.
team development and their own personal development and oftentimes a lot in communication too. And when it comes to the group coaching program, that's really the mid to senior level leader that I talked about earlier that is, you know, at this plateau where they have achieved a high level of success and they don't know where to go from here, and they're feeling a little bit lost because they've always been the good person, the good leader, and they don't know what to do next. And so that's where they start the journey in the group coaching program through the content and connected methodology so that they understand themselves better. They develop a level of self acceptance and then they're able to, you know, kind of take off again because in the past they were running from something quite, you know, possibly and after we go through the program, now they're running towards something.
They know what the aim is towards. It's just not escaping the pain or expecting to be what you know, everyone around your society expects you to be,
Mike Goldman: And if people want to find out more about you or intently and your programs, and of course this will be in the show notes, but where should they
christina-howard: well, definitely the website. So that's www.intentlyco.com
And if they'd like a copy of our inner critic guide, overcoming your inner critic, because we all have that negative self talk at times. And so I've got a great guide on how to identify it, how to overcome it and work with it. Uh, or the values exercise, workbook.
We have that as well as some unique exercises that help you uncover your values, not just the, the unconsciously accepted ones that, that folks believe that they have, they can email join at intentlyco.com
Mike Goldman: beautiful. Definitely take Christina up on that. and as I always say, if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. Christina, thanks so much for helping us get there
christina-howard: Thanks so much, Mike. It's been great.