Mentorship, Sponsorship, and Leadership Pt. 6

Welcome to Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. I'm your host Terry Baylor along with Ralph Owens and today we discuss with Akpower the value of understanding your audience and reading the room, how engagement requires managing short, mid, and long term goals, and how adaptability is key to success. Enjoy the show. So Ralph, the other thing I wrote down is, and I love this, right? And I will definitely want you to chime in on this.

You gotta read the room.

Oh man, absolutely.

Who's that disrespectful? Absolutely. Your first, you called the meeting. Your session.

Yeah. That piece I think is not discussed enough. Right? The ability to understand who your audience is and how to connect with them. Right.

That's the piece that this is what I've learned in my experience. Right. And Akbar please chime in on this. So I've learned that a lot of successful people in business typically when they come into the room, they've already come up with a strategy, a plan. They know who's in the room, what position they have on certain topics.

And they've already crafted their approach based on all of those many factors. Whereas some of us just show up in the room for a meeting. Right. You know, I started to realize that, oh, these people are not playing. They, they they've already profiled everybody around the table.

They know, you know, what position each person holds as it pertains to this topic that they're going to present. Right. They know who's passive on this. Who's aggressive on that. And they take the time to plan a strategy in the way they do their delivery that touches all of those different components and moves everybody in the right direction.

Right. So reading the room for me is so much different than what it used to be. Right. Reading the room for me before used to be, Oh, you know, I just want to see how I'm coming across to people so I can, you know, navigate or moderate, you know, how I'm okay. My inflection is too, too, too, too loud.

Right. I see him leaning back. Right. Or, Oh, I got them right now because they're leaning forward. Right.

You know, I thought it was just that. But now I'm starting to understand that it is, it is imperative for you to basically understand everything that's going on in that room in order for you to be the most effective. But, I mean, Akbar, what are your thoughts on that?

No. You know, it's funny that you mentioned that. I want to say that it's been one of those things that I've kind of started to notice as well. It's almost as though the meeting is almost feels a little more ceremonial than anything, in the sense that the decisions were made before we were stepped in there. Was more of a, there were a few unknowns, and most of the unknowns have to deal with the individuals in the room, part of reading the room.

So, we're having this meeting not because I want to present you with information. I'm very curious about your response to this information. That's the missing information I don't have. And I started to realize that most of these meetings, yeah, you're, you know, what's that old saying we've always heard, know, this could have been an email, this could have been something, you know, over a phone call, but there's value to that. I, you know, I still push hard on a lot of our vendors that want to have face to face meetings when they're presenting.

And you know, it's very obvious why, because you're looking to hopefully get more communication from the visual aspect than just from the physical. But on the other side, sometimes you don't want to share this, so sometimes you don't want to have that physical contact. That's right. Reading the room is important and it is a very important component of that, but you're absolutely right. It is also one of those things that I realize that even personally it's a challenge for myself, hey, I'm going go into these meetings, let me try to take that approach, let me start doing my own research before I go into the meeting so that, again this isn't a surprise, this is just a recap with a few bits of information that I gleaned from a visual standpoint.

And that

is

something that again, about pivoting, about adding things to your repertoire, you start realizing these are things that are always happening around me that I really just been focusing on. So now it's how do I ingest that? How do I utilize that more? So how can I emulate that or at least get something a little more beneficial from my experience in these meetings than I've been getting in the past where I just come in and shoot from the hip based off the information that's been given, you know?

You know, it's what's crazy about that is I know, and again, I can only speak for myself, right? I've always been a high performer executor, but that means you're running, you're running, running, running all the time. Right. So you get into these meetings, you probably just came out of the last one and you just pop right in there. And you just, like you said, shoot from the hip.

When I started getting around people who were very strategic, they have planning time just for the meeting. Right. And they protect that. They don't allow people to take that from them because their ability to execute highly in these meetings and to win people, you know, their direction and to move things in, it takes time. It definitely takes time.

So I'm having to discipline myself and my schedule to allow for the planning, going into the meeting so I can be successful and get the things I need to get done. Right. Because when we were executors, individual contributors, that wasn't so much of an importance for us. Right. We basically going in and giving facts about where we are on this or that, and, you know, maybe getting some more information.

But when you have to win a collective to move people in a certain direction, it takes more intentional time, you know, to do so. But Teri, what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, so Ralph, I'm just, I'm picking from this. I listen to the shows, man, just so you guys know. So the other thing I wanna add to that is, Ralph, you talked about this, is sometimes you got to give something, right? When you give, okay, you know what, I'll give that point. Because you understand, guys look, just checkers and chess.

I'm sure now they have the, I don't know, I forget what they call the, I think it's a Chinese game where you have all the moves on the board, main jingo or something, I don't know. But again, I'm sure there's a high level right? Where now it's digital, right? And so now the game is being played at a much Oh man, this is good. The game is being played at a much faster pace and now it's just not two people playing now.

Now there's six people. So now everyone's playing the game at the same time. So how do you navigate that? Sometimes you have to decide, I'll give up this player. I know this move is gonna sacrifice whatever, but the long term goal.

And so this is, I think, gonna transition us a little bit to where, Akpara had shared this and I love this aspect of it. And it ties, Ralph, directly into what you were saying about sometimes you have to open up and let the conversation flow because you're willing to, you know what, I'm not gonna be so rigid on this point. Understanding, I'm looking back at my notes here, understanding there is a short game, a mid game and a long game.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Please explain. Please explain.

Look, the funny part is that it's actually not a foreign concept. I think we all do it in some way, shape or form whether or we define it or not. But we do that. I mean, we're basically saying, in the moment, what am I working on? That's my short game.

You know. What is it that I need to address for this conversation that I'm having right now? My mid game, these are things that probably, and I'm going to butcher this analogy because I'm going to be all over the place, but work with me here. So my mid game is more of, you know, basically what are the things that are kind of important to me in the next week to two weeks, you know, what are the things that I need to focus on? And my long game is more what is my overall objective, my career objective?

What are the things that I'm looking for from a long term engagement?

Right.

I would say a lot of what we were talking about just the meeting, shooting from the hip, that's your short game. You're focused on your short game there. You're not really looking at things. To me, even meetings like that are really well, no, they all are short mid to long, but there components to all of that there. The point there was that we have to actually always keep all three of those on the forefront of our mind because some of the you do in the short game can impact your mid game.

They can impact your long game.

Yeah.

There may be some short wins, kind of back to the aggressiveness versus weakness. If you can come in kicking over tables, yeah, in the short game you might actually have a buy in, but in the long game you hurt your overall prospects for follow ups, for

collaboration. So

understanding that every engagement has those components to it and trying to, you know, walk that balance beam on balancing all of those is actually pretty good. I'm sorry, I was stuck on the game analogy that you made earlier, Terry, because something came to my mind. I was thinking you were talking checkers, chess, I was thinking we're tic tac toe, But here's the thing about it. We're talking about games that we're familiar with. The problem that we're running into is that we're now in an environment where we're talking about games that we know nothing about.

And that's what came up that when you said that, I was like because I was trying to say, I think Go was one of the games I was thinking of that's a game. I've seen it. I know it's a game. I have no idea how to play it. The thing is that we're so used to, again, tic tac toe, checkers chest.

This is the realm that we're operating in, but what we're missing is that there are 3,000 other games out there that are being played that we don't know anything about. Some of it has to do with reading the room, knowing, okay, you know what, I don't know this game. Let me stand back and see if I can at least understand the rules without knowing the rules. And that's what it feels like a lot of times going to some of these meetings where, again, kind of still trying to bring some of these things forth, the impostor syndrome. That's kind of where that comes into play.

Hey, here's a game I don't know. I feel like I don't belong in this room. But the truth of the matter is, you just need to stand back, take in the game and realize it's something you can adapt to, you can adjust to, you just need to understand the rules of that game. So you know, there is a that's kind of where you have you know, understanding of your level of patience, of your level of the willingness to know that I don't have to know everything. I should know everything.

And as you've mentioned, everything you start, you're always going to be brand new. You've never done this before. Everything that anyone has started is going to be brand new to them. So, if you're coming into an environment that you don't know, it's a game you don't know, it's okay to not know the game. That doesn't mean that you throw your hands up and say, don't know this game and walk away.

You Right.

You figure it out. You learn the game. I have a Mhmm. I have friend that we we go to Vegas often and he always plays baccarat. I've never seen I've I've never knew how to play the game until I watched him play it and I still don't know how to play the game.

It is a Mhmm. From what I understand is a very fun game, a lot of math involved. But it's one of those things that I realize, you know, there's a lot that I don't know about a lot of things that are out here. I think it's just being okay with not knowing at all is also one of the things that kind of helps you to know that what you're working on or what involved in or engaging with sometimes isn't always going to be there for you. And so understanding how to position yourself, how to make sure that you're factoring in your immediate, your midterm and your long term needs along with all that are going to be extremely valuable and really kind of an exercise for all aspects of your emotional spectrum to kind of figure out how do I navigate through this?

How do I obtain the knowledge and still stay in the game?

Yeah. Man, that's so it's so much in there. That is so good. And I can definitely relate to that. Being patient with yourself, allowing yourself to be human and understand that this is new to you, right?

You get into some of these new roles to Akbar's point, it is a new game that you've never played before. And when you approach it that way, you give yourself the patience and the kindness to yourself to say, okay, I need some time to learn this game. So maybe I'm gonna be a little bit more observant. Right? Then that kind of goes back to the whole point of the mentor because the mentor has already played the game.

So they're coming in and they're telling you, this is how this game works. This is what you wanna look out for. These are the things that you wanna do, you know, things of that nature. Right? That was a piece that I had to learn from my own self.

The current role that I'm in, this is the first time I've been in this type of role and I didn't know how that game was played. So I immediately started searching for people who had played the game to try to help me to understand it. I had a bit of that whole, man, you know, the overwhelmingness feeling, you know, do I belong here? And those types of things. And those mentors really spoke into my life, but that was one of the things they had to help me understand.

You gotta be patient with yourself. This is new to you. Right? If you've never played cricket before and you get out there and start trying to swing that thing, you mess around and hit yourself and hit the horse or whatever. Right?

Because you don't know what you're doing. Well, you got to give yourself the flexibility and the patience to say, okay, this is where I'm at. Right? This is a new game. I need to learn how the game is played.

Right. But the awareness to say what I don't know, okay, I don't know how this game's played. I'm going to seek someone or something to help me understand the game. And I'm gonna be patient with myself as I'm learning, but I'm also gonna push myself to make sure I learn quickly. Right?

Because I have to be able to compete in the game. Right so I thought that was really really good.

Thank you for joining Leadership Sovereignty the Podcast. We hope you obtain something of value as you walk out your journey. Connect and grow with the community of LS pioneers on X, Instagram and LinkedIn under the handle Leadership Sovereignty. Thank you and God bless.