Nils Vinje on Leadership

Be Customer Led – Nils Vinje on Leadership

[00:00:00] Nils Vinje: Welcome to be customer led where we’ll explore, help leading experts in customer and employee experience are navigating organizations through their own journey to be customer led and the actions and behaviors, employees, and businesses exhibit to get there. And now your host bill stagos.

[00:00:32] Bill Staikos: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to be customer led. I’m your host bill. Staco another great show for you all this week. Neils Viya accelerated from individual contributor to vice president in 30 months. That’s a, that’s gotta be a record somewhere in some book. I, to be honest with you, every team Neils has run has become a high performing.

[00:00:52] The process behind how he did this, formed the foundation of his leadership coaching. And once Neil’s clients started using his playbook, and we’ll tell you a little bit about in one second, the results were remarkable and I’ve actually gone through this playbook. And it’s really, really amazing. So Neils is offering a free digital copy of his best selling 30 day leadership playbook.

[00:01:14] And it literally is day by day, what to do you’re guide to becoming the leader that you have always wanted to. It’s at 30 day leadership.com/book Neils. So excited to have you on

[00:01:27] Nils Vinje: this show. Hey bill, thank you so much for having me excited to dig in and I appreciate that warm intro. And just to clarify for the audience, it is three zero day leadership platform.

[00:01:39] And just wanna clarify, forward slash book, get a free copy. I’ll send it to you right away. Yeah.

[00:01:44] Bill Staikos: Neil and Neils by the way, was nice enough to have me on his podcast. And I was like, Hey, I, I want him on, on, on B customer led. I think that our listeners are gonna get a ton of value from this conversation Neils before we get started.

[00:01:55] Right. You’ve spent most of your career in customer success. Yes. And now coach CS teams, right? Mm-hmm by and large. Tell us a little bit about your journey to get to where you are today. Because one, I think it’s a pretty incredible journey that you said, you learned all this great stuff, then you package it and you said, you know what?

[00:02:13] I want to amplify this message. And I wanna help as many people as possible, but wanna hear from you in your own words?

[00:02:18] Nils Vinje: Yeah, absolutely. Well, the first 10 years of my professional career bill, I had absolutely no idea where I fit in the professional world. And I literally tried everything from being a software engineer of which I was absolutely terrible.

[00:02:32] To being a Xerox sales rep. That’s right. I went door to door selling copiers and it’s for those of you who are not perfectly lined up with that profession, it is just as bad as you think. . So I learned an awful lot about that. The extremes on these ends of the, industry didn’t work for me. And I tried lots of things in between.

[00:02:51] Dabbled in marketing in, not really much product, but some product marketing, consulting solutions, engineering, sales, engineering. I literally did everything except for accounting and finance. Cause I knew I didn’t belong there, but I had no clue where my skillset was gonna fit and where I was gonna be able to add the most value.

[00:03:08] And I was really frustrated for a good decade. And that was the, the fuel that at one point I got so fed up, I did what all people who get fed up, do they go back to school? And I went back to school and I got an MBA in management and organizational behavior. And that is where the light bulbs started to go off for me, all of a sudden I understood that the entire profession of management and leadership existed and all the environments, mostly of them, most of them are startups.

[00:03:35] That I previously worked for and the people that I worked for just had no notion that this stuff even existed. And I was fascinated by leadership, leadership development, bringing teams together, bringing organizations together. It was incredibly exciting time. And I, when I graduated from grad school, I said, made the commitment to myself.

[00:03:53] I said, I have to bring incredible management and leadership to tech companies. That’s what got me back in. And that was how ultimately I got into my first role as a customer success manager. This was 10 years ago now. So this is very, very early days, downtown San Francisco, where customer success was just barely being a thing.

[00:04:14] Yeah. Salesforce had only. Come out with it a few years prior, SAS had only been around for a few years prior as well, and the world was changing fast and I got to grow up from a CSM to manager director to VP in 30 months in one of the most intense environments with an incredible network of people who were the very earliest pioneers in customer success.

[00:04:33] Cuz we were all basically in a very small couple mile radius in downtown San Francisco was fascinat. So that was the, the customer success side of the journey. And when I got to VP, I had some great success. And at the end of my last stint, I, was very honest and I told the CEO that he didn’t need me anymore.

[00:04:52] That the systems I had put in place and the foundation that I built. Was designed to run without me. And I was kind of expensive and wasn’t really needed, frankly. I was bored too. Wow. Yeah. So I decided at that point that I would leave and he said, well, what are you gonna do? And I, at the time, I hadn’t honestly given it a lot of thought.

[00:05:09] I was like, huh, That’s a good question. Yeah. I don’t know. so I went and I thought a little bit about it and I said, well, I, I could go join another company as a CS leader. Yeah. That totally normal. There was plenty of opportunity at that time. And I said, rather than just joining one company and being a big part of one org I’d much rather be a small part of a lot of orgs.

[00:05:27] And so I decided that, it was time for me to be, share my expertise and share the things that I had learned. In a meaningful way, because I just knew at the time that there were other people who weren’t as far advanced as we were on the customer success side. And I knew there would be a lot of demand for this in the future, just given the nature of the industry, the nature of SAS, all that good stuff.

[00:05:48] So I decided to form my consulting firm, which is called glide consulting. Interesting fun fact. It was the, and is the very first customer success consulting firm that ever existed in the world January 1st. How is

[00:06:00] Bill Staikos: that? How do I know? How did you know that?

[00:06:03] Nils Vinje: Oh, because I knew every single person who went into the customer success consulting field and they all came after me.

[00:06:10] so that’s true. We have a good laugh about that. Cuz a few other people were close and there’s only a small handful of CS consultants who have legitimately been in seat, not in a tangential role. And then, kind of become a consultant in the space. I mean, like been in a CS leadership role inside of a SAS fast growing business where CS was born.

[00:06:32] So that was fun. And for the last seven and a half years, I’ve gotten a chance to partner with everybody from early stage to growth stage to scale stage, to fortune 100 companies, to help them build world class, customer success organizations. So that part was a blast and, had the pandemic not happen.

[00:06:50] One, we may not be having this conversation yeah. Of what I’m about to tell you in there. But two, I would’ve just continued on consulting as I had. And one, tidbit that is, that plays into this a lot is that 10 years ago, almost at the same time that I got into my first CS role, I went through a program to become a certified leadership coach.

[00:07:10] And that was a transformational point in my life. Because you cannot go through the process of learning how to become a coach without really going through the process of coaching yourself. And it was game changing in everything that I was experiencing and the power that coaching had on helping me to handle my situation.

[00:07:29] Was absolutely unworldly and unlike anything I had ever experienced before and I was hooked and it always said, wow, this is so powerful. I’m gonna bring now coaching skills into the work I do with my teams into the work that I do with the teams that report to me in the future with the I’m gonna, I use coaching skills with my clients.

[00:07:49] This is part of what enabled me to go from CSM to VP so fast is that I had this incredible toolbox of tools from my MBA, as well as this coaching skill set. And I put them all to use to serve the needs of other people. That was huge. So over the years, I consistently would coach individuals on the side and on the weekends on at night, and then I’d do it inside of my day job too, but I did wanna get paid for it.

[00:08:14] So I did it like that when I became a consult. Coaching always became a part of my projects, but it was never the front runner. It was never the thing I focused on most. And then the pandemic hit and my consulting business disappeared in 48 hours. Just completely gone. I’m talking literally zero . That’s what it went to.

[00:08:32] All projects disappeared, all spending stopped and all phone calls were not returned. wow. It was a real gut check moment, right. To say, wow. Okay. I got a family of five that I support. I have demands. I have things I gotta do. Yeah. What do you do now? And my preference. Is to adapt to the situation as opposed to go crawling a hole.

[00:08:53] Yeah. And, or go back to, I could have very easily just gone and gotten a VP of CS job. Yeah. I entertained it. I’ll admit for about two weeks. And then I said, no way, that’s not me. This is, I am, I can add significantly more value going down this path. So. I took a step back and I said, well, let’s look at all the skill sets that I have.

[00:09:09] Let’s look at the markets that are available with these skill sets applied to and how I can add value. And I chose to focus on the leadership skills market on account of my leadership coaching that for 10 years been doing this, one-on-one used all these tools with my teams, with my clients, teams side, this incredible ability to share really impactful tools with people.

[00:09:29] And now I have an opportunity to share this with the world and not just people who can pay me a lot of money to coach one on one. and that was why I wrote the book 30 day leadership playbook. Your guide to becoming the leader. You’ve always wanted to be it’s called 30 days just because I organized the chapters as days one through 30.

[00:09:45] Yep. So literally you could read a chapter day and at the end of 30 days, you’ll know more about leadership than the vast majority of the world period.

[00:09:51] Bill Staikos: So, so I love the book and I love how you later it out. I just thought the concept, I mean the title and then sort of the concept every day, you’re learning something new.

[00:09:59] It didn’t take, I didn’t do it over 30 days. You can actually read it and much more quickly than that. And I did, and there’s a lot of good tidbits that come out. And I wanna talk to you about those as we’re coming through before we get into that, like, how are you working with your clients and through glad consulting, are you, is it more one on one, are you doing peer to peer groups or like what kind of styles do you kind of bring into the work that you’re doing with your.

[00:10:23] Nils Vinje: Yes on the consulting side, I still consult in the customer success space. Yeah. That is still very high touch one on one, where I go in and work with a customer success organization, mm-hmm inside of a company and help them either solve challenges they’re facing now, or build it from scratch or scale it or whatever the challenge is.

[00:10:40] Now in the leadership side, I took a completely different approach when I built this business after writing the book, which is 100% group based because I was not willing to go down the one to one path anymore. And I have successfully enabled significantly more people and been able to help a lot more people as a result of this model.

[00:11:01] So I run a program called the B to B leaders academy. Which involves content that I take. I start with the premise of what I talk about at a high level in the book. And then we go much deeper on each of these areas. And this is a way for me to provide my expertise and access to leadership training and leadership coaching.

[00:11:20] On a subscription basis. That’s actually affordable bill. Like this does not exist in the world really, except for in this program. And if you wanna learn more, you go to B the letter B the number two, the letter B B2, B leaders, academy.com and check it out. Cool. We’ll

[00:11:36] Bill Staikos: definitely put that in our show notes.

[00:11:38] So, all right. Let’s talk about the book 30 day leadership playbook. So you start off the book with the first pillar, which I thought was incredibly important. It’s leading yourself and you got sort of multiple pillars in. I intuitively you wanna start and you even mentioned that, right? Like first you gotta learn how to coach yourself, but why start there, like, why is it important to understand how to lead yourself first?

[00:12:00] And then later in that section, I thought was really interesting. You talking about bulletproofing or leadership style has that. Change, maybe at all, since you wrote the book two years ago, particularly given like the pandemic are the things pre pandemic, maybe the same as they are now because the world of work has changed so much.

[00:12:18] Right. And leadership frankly has changed so much.

[00:12:20] Nils Vinje: Yeah. So pillar one, leading yourself, everything begins with you and it, it really begins and ends with you. Yeah. And that’s why it had to come. And everything that I talk about in the book in the B2B leaders academy, in my B2B leadership podcast, everything comes down to having psychology and having tactics.

[00:12:39] If you have the right psychology, You will and not the right tactics. You’re gonna be really excited and have great mindset, but you’re not gonna make very far if you have the right tactics, but not the right psychology. You’re gonna get really frustrated cuz change will not last. However, if you have the right psychology and the right tactics, that is the magic secret sauce that when we put those two things together and supply tools that enable both of those sides to be met, we get incredible change.

[00:13:08] From a leadership perspective. If you are not able to lead yourself, it will be incredibly difficult to lead other people. Right. And I don’t just mean this lead by example, kind of genericness I’m talking about, when I talk about Bulletproof, your leadership psychology, I’m talking about being confident about who you are.

[00:13:26] Mm-hmm and how you show up and what your strengths are and what are you naturally talented to do? So that you can destroy the possibility of imposter syndrome if it exists today, or if it should ever come into the picture tomorrow, every single leader, myself included very, very visceral experiences with this have struggled with imposter syndrome.

[00:13:47] Sure. It’s hard. But the source of imposter syndrome is the comparison to someone outside of yourself. And I’m saying, don’t worry. At first about that night, the comparison isn’t, what’s important, what’s important is being confident in who you are. And I have a series of tools and exercises and things that take people through to help them claim their strengths, to help them build their confidence, to help them feel as if they can take on any challenge, because they have a set of tools that are going to empower.

[00:14:17] So, that’s a little bit on that and happy to go into the, has work changed, but I wanna pause there for a second. See if

[00:14:23] Bill Staikos: you anything give me so look, and, when I went into my new role at the company I’m at today, I had imposter syndrome. I was managing a team of leaders who had, who had been in the customer employee experience space for decades.

[00:14:36] As much as I had did incredible things work for major brands, right? Like, yep. How, give us an example of how you might talk to someone about. Rethinking them for themselves. Why, why it’s about me? It’s not, it shouldn’t be, I shouldn’t focus that energy on somebody else. Like how might

[00:14:53] Nils Vinje: I approach that?

[00:14:54] Absolutely. So I’m gonna use the, the psychology and the tactics. Yeah. Example here. Okay. Psychology is. That the focus is on you. That’s why the pillars called leading yourself. Yeah. And both grouping your leadership. Psychology. Nobody else’s let’s talk about your leadership psychology. So the mindset is personal focus.

[00:15:11] Mindset is on me. Now that one of the tactics that I would use in this case is as wonderful assessments. My favorite one in the whole world. It’s from the research company, Gallup it’s called the strengths finder assessment. You can, I have nothing to do with this assessment. I just happen to love it and use the results.

[00:15:28] With, with my clients and the people that I work with, but anybody can take this assessment in a matter of 20 minutes and you pay 20 bucks and get incredible insight into what you are naturally talented to do. Right. Bill, have you ever taken the strengths finder

[00:15:42] Bill Staikos: assessment? I have. I bought strength finders 2.0, I think it was the book.

[00:15:45] And I took the, I took the assessment out of that. I think I was, I think it was an integrator. Is that sound right? It’s been a while

[00:15:50] Nils Vinje: it’s been awhile. I don’t think it was that I don’t. I think of another, I’m thinking of another, I think we think of a different, a different one. Right. And, and that is that’s the rub.

[00:15:57] So the most of the other assessments, the Myers Briggs, the, yeah, whatever, all the other, I can’t even think of them right now. All of them have labels just like integrator or I’m a more sales focused or an introvert extrovert. I’m not of a huge fan of labels, right? Because there’s just too much nuance to each individual person.

[00:16:18] I am an introvert. However, I am very extroverted in some things that I do. Yeah. I just have different sides to me that I pull out at different times. Now, what I love about strengths and the reason why I think it’s so powerful is that it is simply a language to describe what you’re naturally talented to.

[00:16:35] And every single person in this world has a set of strengths that are 34 in the universe of Gallup’s assessment. And they are ordered by most dominant number one to least dominant number 34 mm-hmm now the vast majority of the work that I do with clients and where I found like the definitely the 80 20 is in the top five strings.

[00:16:55] If you know what your top five strings are. It completely changes the game with understanding what you are naturally talented to do, where you’re going to Excel and where you’re going to struggle. And if you know those boundaries, then you can focus on the things where you have strengths to Excel and do even more of those, but acknowledge where you don’t have strengths.

[00:17:18] And that’s where from a leadership perspective, you bring in other people who do have strengths in those areas who are going to be able to do whatever that task is far more effectively, efficiently, have a lot more fun and be way more. So confidence builds when you have clarity of what it is you are naturally talented do.

[00:17:36] And I’ll share with you. My number one strength in the strengths finder assessment is something called maximizer. What maximizer means to me. Is that I see strengths in other people oftentimes before they see it in themselves, mm-hmm and bringing awareness of strengths to others gives me tremendous satisfaction.

[00:17:54] This is what makes me tick literally to a T this is what makes me a great coach. This is what made me a great leader. When I was an operational seat. This is what makes me, enables me to be, an incredible facilitator in the B2B leaders academy, cuz my sole job, the thing that I can do. Better than I don’t even compare myself to anybody else, but better than anybody else is.

[00:18:13] I can see strengths in people before they see it in themselves. And when I bring that awareness to them, everything changes.

[00:18:20] Bill Staikos: Cool. I actually was looking while you were talking, I went to my. Clifton strengths finder app. And I, I have to repay to get my five strengths. So I’m gonna have to

[00:18:28] Nils Vinje: do this again.

[00:18:29] You gotta do it. I wanna hear what your top five is. Send it to me after

[00:18:32] Bill Staikos: I actually recently went through, there’s another one out there called 16 personalities. They do a little bit of a Meers Briggs output, but the one I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it, but, I’m a protagonist. So basically like I really.

[00:18:44] look out for the best of teams and the success of people, et cetera, and trying, simply similar to what you had seen, yeah. In, in, in the gall strengths finder. So let’s take it back to the question though. How maybe has that changed? Yeah. In the last two years, if at

[00:18:56] Nils Vinje: all. Yeah. So the interesting thing is the principles that I teach in that I focus on from a leadership perspective.

[00:19:04] They are foundational and they are just as relevant now as they were 10 years ago, they will be just as relevant in 10 years as they are today. Like these are universally applicable principles. Doesn’t matter what discipline doesn’t matter level in the org doesn’t matter industry. Like they are applicable because they’re about people, right.

[00:19:23] And people is a constant, no matter what, department you’re in, no matter what industry you’re in, just doesn’t matter what product you’re supporting. Right. So what changed though, in the last two years with the pandemic and remote environments and just work changing largely is the application of some of these.

[00:19:40] I’ve always said that you, working in an office. And being in an environment with your entire team, kind of in a lot of ways, like taking the easy way out. And what I mean by that is it’s always easy to have a quick side conversation with somebody it’s always easy to catch somebody in the hall for a couple minutes, just right before lunch or waiting in the lunch line and make a quick decision.

[00:20:01] And then, maybe casually mention that decision to some other people, but inevit. Something gets dropped because somebody wasn’t in that casual place where it worked out and somebody doesn’t know something. So when I say it’s easy, it’s easy because you don’t have to put a lot of effort. You just casually turn around to somebody, have a quick conversation, move on.

[00:20:19] Now we celebrate that as moving fast. That’s one way to look at it. But the other way to look at it is that the structure of your leadership and the systemization of your org actually falls apart. As soon as you go. And that’s what we had to do. And that’s what you saw in the very, very beginning of this.

[00:20:35] So, it actually takes much more effort to do the exact same thing in a remote environment than it does in an in-person environment. And that’s the, what change. So that’s the application of these principles change the fact of how you connect with people, the coaching work that you do, the questions you ask your.

[00:20:53] None of that changed. All of that still remains exactly the same, but how you go about it and how you, strategically insert routine into things that were really easy before is what people had to adapt to. And for the most part did a pretty good job.

[00:21:09] Bill Staikos: I actually, now that you said that I do wonder if like remote work increases inclusivity.

[00:21:14] I never thought about sort of like, right. Like I never it’s shame on me for actually having that realization now, but now that you said. the, the, having it easy, like the stuff happening in between meetings in the hallways, over the cubes. You’re right. That does cut people out. But if everyone’s on the zoom everyone’s involved, which

[00:21:31] Nils Vinje: is so important, or if everything is every, if a decision that it needs to be communicated to the team, which previously would’ve been just said in an open area, right.

[00:21:42] Is now has to be documented in a central place and then had sign off that everybody actually saw the decision that was made. And understood it right by checking a box that, yeah, I saw this that’s an infinitely more valuable system than just the ad hoc in person situation.

[00:21:59] Bill Staikos: So Neils in the second pillar of the book, leading others right now.

[00:22:03] Okay. Leading yourself. Now you’re onto leading others in the book. You had a really interesting concept called the social contract, which I, when I read it, I was like, that makes sense. I had never heard it call that, but I really like the term. And what, and how you described. Tell our listeners, what you, how you, what the social contract is for you.

[00:22:24] And then, do you think that the violation of social contracts is a big reason why we’re in the middle of the great resignation right now, too?

[00:22:32] Nils Vinje: Yes, absolutely. All right. So the social contract is the unspoken agreement typically. Between two parties. This is, there are social contracts. You have all over the place that exist.

[00:22:44] There is agreements between you and your boss, you and your company, you and another department. And when I say unspoken, what I mean is that we all have expectations of other people that we don’t bring to the surface and we never voice. However, we hold them as if we did. And what happens when another party does not live up to those expectations is that we feel this violation of our social contract and this causes tension to happen.

[00:23:12] So bill, if I was working for you and my assumption was that you would always look out for me and identify projects. That would be great for my skillset and support my growth and develop. And something happened where you didn’t do that. And there was something that I thought clearly was a great use of my skillset and a project.

[00:23:29] And you didn’t even consider. That would be a violation of my social contract. And at that point I would probably lose some of the connection that I have to you because I’d be like, well, bill doesn’t care about me. It doesn’t live up to my expectation and Bill’s gonna turn around and say, I had no idea that’s what you wanted me to do.

[00:23:45] Yeah. Right. So this is an example. So this is pervasive and lives inside of every single two people at, at them had a minimum coming together. Right. And so the job as a leader, Is to identify this and bring it to the surface and get everybody to agree. What are the expectations that you have of me as a leader?

[00:24:05] And what are the expectations that I have of you as a team that forms the social contract, which is actually ends up being a written formal document that everybody signs and agrees to. And the reason why that’s so powerful is that then everybody has the responsibility to hold each other accountable.

[00:24:21] The team holds the leader accountable. The leader holds the team account. And there’s no more hearsay about I expected you or I assumed, or you should have done X, Y, or Z.

[00:24:31] Bill Staikos: And do you think that these should be updated like annually every couple years? Like, or. Because they must, right? Like teams change, they evolve.

[00:24:38] Yeah. Strategy changes, goals, change. Like how often do you, should these be? That was the one question I had going through my head actually, when I was reading this. Yeah. How often would you recommend people update the social contract?

[00:24:47] Nils Vinje: Yeah, I think annually is totally fine to revisit this. Your team is gonna change as well.

[00:24:52] One of the most powerful things is that the people on the team have a hand in shaping this. Right? So as that evolves, as your team grows and changes, there’s gonna be different voices and different things. It’s a great way to introduce people to the team and say, these are the, this is the social contract we have as part of this team.

[00:25:11] These are the expectations from the leader. These are our expectations. If there’s something wildly off, we can add, we can have a discussion about it. Usually it’s we covered the basis, but in the social contract, we’re talking about things that are going to be applicable regardless of time. So it’s not just about that this project or this initiative is centered around that.

[00:25:33] It’s around my expectation of you bill, as my leader is to do everything, to support the growth and development of my career. Right. That’s something that’s gonna be relevant today. It’s also gonna be relevant next year. It’s gonna be relevant as long as I work for you, period. Yeah. Right. So that’s the level that we’re talking about at those.

[00:25:51] And I think it is absolutely a hundred percent fair to revisit and adjust it on an annual basis. And most people have an annual either kickoff or an offsite or something virtual that they do today. And that’s a great time to take a full step back. Hey gang, let’s review our social contact. But it is something that should be embedded within the culture.

[00:26:09] Like this. Isn’t something that you just do once and then put in a Google drive folder and then forget about for a long period of time. Yeah, it is up to the leader and to reinforce this and to build it into the team culture and to hold the team accountable. And it’s up to the team to build it into the culture and hold the leader accountable too.

[00:26:25] It is a. Really, really powerful exercise and why I’ve run this for, I’ve run these sessions, you can run them yourselves. Of course. Yeah. But I’ve run these sessions for leaders, upwards of, having a very, very senior leadership team, around the table and of course of an hour and a half, like we had a very, very powerful discussion and it completely transformed.

[00:26:45] The relationship between that leader and their team, just because we brought all this to the surface and got it all out and everybody was a hundred percent agreement on what was gonna happen going

[00:26:54] Bill Staikos: forward. Very cool. I love that. Let’s talk about leading with communication. And in there you had a section that it’s a philosophy that I just live and die by professionally.

[00:27:05] It’s called, who knows what you do. it was just kind of one of the sections in there. In there, you talk about it and you provide a framework, which I love too. And I, I just, I love framework should just help me think through like an approach. And it’s very clear for people. Right. And, and talk about expectations.

[00:27:19] It kind of sets those as well. Tell our listeners a little bit about the w 3m communication framework and, and how they might be able to put it into practice.

[00:27:29] Nils Vinje: Yeah. So the leading with communication as a whole, from a pillar perspective, starts with the premise that doing the job as a leader is not enough.

[00:27:40] You cannot just show up and do your job and expect that other people will know what you do. Yeah. It’s just not gonna happen. So leading with communication is all about how you communicate your value, your expertise, the progress that you and your team are making the value that you’re delivering to an audience that has no idea what you do, right.

[00:28:00] Cause bill outside of your immediate team, is there anybody else inside your company that has any clue what you guys.

[00:28:06] Bill Staikos: Well, we’re a smaller company, but I’ve worked for like big banks, like chase. Yeah. There’s 250, 300,000 employees. So like, and big, the bigger the company, the more important frankly, this, this becomes, right.

[00:28:17] Yep. And that’s where I think your success. And not only that, but your team’s success more importantly can live and die by this role.

[00:28:25] Nils Vinje: Mm-hmm . Yep. So, yep, absolutely. A hundred percent. And your ability to craft how you are perceived. Is directly related to the, your ability to effectively communicate what it is that you do.

[00:28:40] Mm-hmm, in a way that anybody can understand. And for that, we use the construct of building a framework. Won’t get into that, cuz there’s a lot of meat behind that, but a perfect example of a framework to break down a complex topic is the four pillars of leadership. Just like we’re talking through today.

[00:28:54] Yeah. Yeah. You can summarize my entire. About everything I know about leadership by telling you there’s four pillars, pillar, one, leading yourself, pillar two, leading others, pillars three, leading with communication, pillar four, leading with metrics. And then I could guide you on a path through any one of those, depending on your specific and unique situation.

[00:29:10] So well, just one example of yeah. How frameworks are so powerful. Now, the one you mentioned that I used in the book I called out was the w three M, which is a communication one. And it stands for the w stands for why. And this helps really to make sure that what you are communicating in the moment is the most important thing that you want to get across.

[00:29:31] And just a little bit of a gut check, cuz we can all send emails and send slack messages and send things that sometimes don’t get our point across in a as efficient way. So the w stands for why, why are you sending this message? And then there are three Ms. The first one is, and the message. What is the actual message itself?

[00:29:51] Now? The second one is the medium and the medium comes into play is what is the most appropriate medium for this message to be received? Is it email? Is it phone? Is it zoom? Is it in person? Is it, slack? Is it teams? What is the media appropriate? Medium. And then the last M stands for motivation. Yeah.

[00:30:14] Motivation. And that is all about what do you want the individual to do on the other side, as a result of this message. So if you can break down something that you are going to send out by looking at it through this simple framework here, you can barely clearly see if you’re going to achieve your outcome.

[00:30:31] Cause if it’s not lined up with what you want to achieve, then this will all fall apart and your message will unfortunately fall flat on the.

[00:30:40] Bill Staikos: So simple, and so easy to put into place I’ve been using it actually, since I’ve read the book. So thank you for that. All right. I, the last part of the book, the last pillar is leading with metrics.

[00:30:50] Now I love a good metric. More importantly, not so much the metrics sometimes, but what you do, the action that you take on those metrics, more importantly, but you give a really neat example of a friend of yours who said you need to get to yes or no. Now you can’t get any more black and white than that, right?

[00:31:05] At the end of the. Why is this important and how can our listeners put this into practice? So what is you need to get to yes

[00:31:12] or

[00:31:13] Nils Vinje: no mean? Yeah. So any the, and the, the actual co-op from friend was anything can get to a yes or no. And at first I completely did not believe it. I was like, no there’s stuff. I do, in my world, in my life and all this stuff, I was like, no way.

[00:31:29] And he was like, no, no, let’s experiment with this. So I’ll give you the example. oftentimes we can, sometimes it can be a challenge to control the amount of email that we deal with on a day to day basis. And let’s say that one of the things you wanted to do was get a little bit more control over your time and the email and whatnot.

[00:31:48] So you might say, well, I’m gonna need better about checking my email less times per day. It’s like, okay. That’s very general. How are you gonna know if you actually did check it less times or checked it more times? Yeah. While you needed more definitive measurement. So what he had me do was set up a yes or no situation.

[00:32:08] And I took that vagueness and I turned it into a yes or no. And I said, well, okay, what have I only checked my email four times a. Well, then I could say definitively at the end of the day, I either did check my email four times a day, or I did not, as in, I checked it 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 times. And that was the first aha light bulb moment for me when I realized that was that this seemingly vague thing that I used to put in there as I would check, spend less time in my email, actually transitioned into something very concrete, very specific.

[00:32:41] That was an action I could take. And then I could measure. And the best part was I could hold myself accountable to it because if I looked on a little, even wrote it down at the end of the day. Yes, I did check it only four times a day or no, I didn’t like, it was a gut check when I had, when I said no.

[00:32:57] And so that’s the power of getting to know is any activity, any activity. Can be broken down into a yes or no, and is incredibly powerful for driving the right activity, measuring whether or not it happened and then making improvements so that you get more and more yeses.

[00:33:11] Bill Staikos: Very cool. Very cool. I love the simplicity of that.

[00:33:14] You can’t argue with yes or no, actually. Right,

[00:33:17] right.

[00:33:17] Nils Vinje: And that, well, that’s the best part because what do we do? What do all humans do? We give ourselves space. Yeah, we are vague. We introduce gray area, right. We just, we just want to have an out, well, this completely eliminates that. And it’s like, and I tell my clients all the time it’s either.

[00:33:33] Yes, you did it or no, you didn’t. That’s it. I don’t, I don’t really care about the rest of the story. It’s just yes or no. And then they start to hold themselves accountable to that and it completely changes the, the way they look at all the activities that they.

[00:33:46] Bill Staikos: So cool. Hey, I’ve got two more questions for you.

[00:33:48] I know we’re late getting later on a Friday, where, or do you have any specific leaders Nils that you look up to from a business perspective, whether that’s in coaching customer success or, or just business

[00:33:59] Nils Vinje: broadly? Absolutely. So I spend a lot of time outside of my immediate areas, trying to learn from the best to the best mm-hmm

[00:34:08] The wonderful part about the world that we live in today is that there is access to world class experts, everything in virtually any discipline, anywhere in the world. At the swipe of a credit card. And I have swiped my credit card many, many, many times. So my current coach, this guy named James Tramco, he’s based out of Australia, he’s been in the online business and marketing space since like 2000, since 2004, six or something crazy long, long time.

[00:34:34] Yeah. one of the most well known names in that space. And he has developed, this, membership model and has taught numerous entrepreneurs how to build a membership model, for their business. And the B2B leaders academy surprise is a membership model that has modeled a lot after the experience I’ve had.

[00:34:53] In his coaching program. So I, I look for inspiration on how to deliver exceptional value to my clients, by finding the experiences where I received exponential value in a group based environment. And that gives me insights and glimpses. And then I take the pieces that work for me and I massage it and I turn it into something of my own.

[00:35:12] So that is, it’s been a long time to get to this point. And I’ve had many coaches prior to this where I’ve spent significant amounts of money over the last three, four years, trying to figure out how to evolve my business. And then once I, wrote the book and then started building the B2B leaders academy, I knew I needed a different approach.

[00:35:30] And that’s where James came in and it’s just been a wonderful relationship, cuz he has such great insight and advice to give me and I get access to his expertise and I get to take the fast track. He’s one of the people that I look up to most and others outside of. My immediate, I spend a lot of time in customer success.

[00:35:46] I spend a lot of time in leadership, but I actually love on the marketing side. I find it fascinating because really, really great marketers are incredible at psychology and tactics and behavior, driving behavior and change. And so there’s been a number of books that I’ve read in the last six months that have been just focused on marketing and just great minds and things that have, I just find so interesting.

[00:36:10] And then again, I take a little piece outta each one of these, and I integrate it into a weekly email that I send or into the next conversation that I have on the podcast or something like that. So that’s really, my main sources is I usually go try to go outside of my immediate stuff that I spend the most amount of time in, on a daily

[00:36:26] Bill Staikos: basis.

[00:36:27] Very cool. I’ve got one last question. Where do you go for inspiration? I’m sure. There’s places you go to fill your tires.

[00:36:34] Nils Vinje: yes. So this. I do meditate. I use transcendental meditation. And as I mentioned before, I am an introvert. So I drive energy from being with myself. And then when I spend energy with, or when I’m with other people, it is more a depletion of energy.

[00:36:52] I enjoy very much just like this conversation. Yeah. But when I need to recharge, it’s a personal thing and I love. Being, on my own for a period of time, I love to meditate. Right. Which I do every single day. I also love to be with my family. I got three young kids, my wife, we’re going to Vegas this weekend, getting respite a little time away.

[00:37:11] And then I also love riding my motorcycle in the desert. I got a 2017 victory octane and I, hit the road on that thing in the Phoenix desert. And there’s nothing but mountains and open cactus around like it’s a blast. that is kind of how I, how I recharge myself. When I am in coaching conversations with clients, even though that is with another piece that gives me tremendous energy.

[00:37:34] Like that’s where I could have a day full of coaching meetings and I would be, and just as energized at the end of the day as the beginning of the day versus the consulting side, I’m probably gonna be a little more exhausted at the end of the day. But if I am coaching and helping people discover. answers their problems, helping ’em work through situations that is, music to my ears.

[00:37:52] Awesome.

[00:37:53] Bill Staikos: Awesome mills. This has been a great conversation. I’m so happy that we’ve had an opportunity to meet and get to know each other a little bit better. And. I hope, I hope the conversation doesn’t stop here and, looking forward to, hope look, look for listeners down, certainly after this, download the book, I think the context Neils that you’ve provided on this show is gonna really help the book come alive.

[00:38:13] And, like I said, a lot of great, just kind of tidbits coming outta there that I’m Al already putting into practice. So. Thanks for writing the book and, and for those folks who want to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to, to get, to get access. Yeah,

[00:38:25] Nils Vinje: you can find out everything@thirtythreedayleadership.com.

[00:38:29] First simply send me an email Nils, N I L S 30 day leadership.com. Tell me about your situation. I love to connect with people who are also passionate about leadership, who also recognize that they don’t know everything. I recognize that I don’t know everything. Even though I lo run a program called the B2B leaders academy.

[00:38:46] Yeah. That’s okay. Right. It’s all about learning and continuous improvement. If that’s you drop me a line, tell me about your situation. I would love to connect.

[00:38:53] Bill Staikos: Cool. All right, everybody. Another great show. Focus on leadership. All need more focus on that. No matter what your role you’re in. So. We’ll talk to you next week, everybody we’re out.

[00:39:04] Talk to you soon, everyone. Thanks for

[00:39:05] Nils Vinje: listening to be customer led with bill Staco. We are grateful to our audience for the gift of their time. Be sure to visit us@becustomerled.com for more episodes. Leave us feedback on how we’re doing or tell us what you wanna hear more about until next time we’re out.