The mid-year check in. Pt. 6

Welcome, and thank you for tuning into the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. I'm your host, Ralph Fones, along with Terry Baylor. In today's episode, we'll cover topics such as why your relationship with your direct manager can determine your success, The power of negotiating the interpersonal conceptual, technical and the tactical and the power of building business relationships. Enjoy the show.

You know, and there's a lot in here. There's a lot in here. You know, and they talk about, you know, some of the things, you know, I'll just read this real quick here to you, right? It says, and this is about army leaders, right? What makes army leaders of competence or skills with people, ideas, things, and because this is the army, and war fighting.

But they break those four things down, people, ideas, things and war fighting into interpersonal. Right. We've talked about that conceptual. Right. We just talked about that your ideas and things you're going to bring technical.

Right. That's the stuff, you know, and tactical. That's what you do every day. Yeah. Right.

And so it's that interplay of those four areas, Interpersonal, conceptual, technical, tactical.

It's good.

And when you and Raf, I love what you said. You said that the leader, would you state that again? What you said when you hear manager, what did you say that was? I don't wanna misstate it.

Yeah, when you hear boss or when you hear a manager, the word that comes to mind for me to sum up their relationship is alignment. It's not about kissing up to them. It's not about bowing down before them, letting them run all over you or anything like that. It is about alignment. And in order to have, precise alignment, you have to communicate with this person.

You have to check-in with them. You have to understand what their goals are so that you make sure that what you're doing is going to align with their goals and make them successful. Right? This is a technique that I've used over the years to help me get past working with bosses that don't have good character. Right?

And definitely not saying that about where I currently work because, where I currently work, that's not the situation. But, there have been other roles that I've had where I've had bosses that did not have good character. And you can get stuck on their bad character, but the the reality is this, that's still your boss and your relationship with your boss is is one of the key relationships that you have to manage in order to be successful in your career. Right? So if you understand what it is that's gonna make them successful and you align your plans, your roadmap, which leads to your KPIs, right, which leads to, your stakeholders.

If you understand what makes them successful, then everything you should be doing should be aligning towards their success. And I'm sorry,

go ahead. No. And what I was gonna say on that is so I love that these four areas, when you go in and talk to that leader, right? Your boss, your leader, the interpersonal, the conceptual, the technical, tactical, right? There should be points in your exchange with that leader negotiating all of those.

You negotiate what that interpersonal with you negotiate what the conceptual right? I see us doing a B and C And sometimes you may have to push that leader a little bit because we've had leaders, I'm gonna be honest with you, they're scary. We've had some scary leaders that won't take any risk. But there's a way you have to negotiate that success to help them understand this risk is going to create a huge benefit for the business. And then with your technical, right, which will help limit or reduce their fear about taking that next step.

Because you express a high level of understanding of this technical area and then the tactical. How you plan man? Have a plan. Whether you do waterfall, or agile document your plan.

That's

right. Love a minute plan. If it's something that it has to do with a maintenance window some short implementation and evening work, have it documented down to the minute on what the expectation is. That's how you have to negotiate that success with that leader and with the business, because that same plan, all these areas in the personal conceptual technical and the tactical you communicate that same thing to your internal customer.

Yeah. Yeah. That's good, man. That's really good. Yeah.

No, that really works. Okay. So just to summarize the business performance aspect of the media check-in, making sure that your KPIs are defined, that you're tracking on a systematic and periodic, timeframe, your numbers to your KPIs. How are you presenting that data to your stakeholders? What was your roadmap for this year?

And what do you plan to complete second half of the year? And have you conducted your mid year check-in with your boss to make sure that you all have complete alignment? All right. So, moving into the second part of the mid year check-in. Now we're gonna talk about personal development.

All right. So one of the first points there is how many new business relationships have you built? So this can go in a couple of different ways. This could also aid in your business performance. Because a lot of times we only talk to the people who we work with in business.

But sometimes you need to get outside of what you do and go understand how the business works in totality. In other words, put yourself as the owner of the business and start to think about all of the different roles that everybody across the business has and go learn somebody else's business. When you do that, you gain a greater appreciation for how the business runs, what impact you make on that part of the business. And you start to build your personal brand by meeting new people that open you up to different ideas and different opportunities that frankly you would never have found on your own. Right?

A lot of times, and I know Terry, you feel the same. A lot of opportunities that we get come from people that we know, not because we're so great and people are gonna notice how great we are. Right? So that you have to be intentional about going out and making a new business relationships. Terry, what comes to mind for you for that?

Man, I just had an experience where I hadn't seen someone for a while and happened to be in the office and they were they just lit up. And I'm like, man, you know, I'm trying to, you know, I'm like, hey, it's good to see you too. And it was due to the very thing that you were just talking about, right? Getting outside of myself, getting outside of what necessarily I wanted to see accomplished, But really stepping inside of someone else's world, spending some time with them, they were new to the organization at a certain point. I went out of my way, did a few things, make sure that their onboarding was smooth, solved a few problems, not anything huge, but that individual has yet to forget that.

Right. And whenever I see this individual or I've had I've asked for some input or for them to pass a message up here or there, they've done it without man, without question, because essentially, I made their their need my need

essentially. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It could go out of your way to help somebody else get what they need. That's what I'm hearing Terry say. Go out of your way, step out of your what you're doing and go help somebody else.

Right? Because if you don't understand that you have a personal brand, you do. And people are judging you by the things that you do. But when you start doing things like this, you start creating friends and allies in other places outside of your department. Guess what?

When those conversations start to happen that you can't be in, where you need a champion to champion for you and a sponsor to speak up for you, those people will not forget what you did for them. To Terry's point. Right? Anytime you need anything, they're gonna be there to assist you because you didn't have to go out of your way to help them. And we're not talking about manipulation.

Right? We're talking about genuine, honest, just wanting to, hey, I just wanna learn what you do. How can I help you? Correct. You spend a lifetime doing that, you'll turn around one day and see an army behind you and you never saw it coming because you made it a way of life to really go out and help other people.

That's what we're trying to say. I mean, any thoughts on that, Terry?

No, man. I I agree. I agree. I agree. I'm looking at, you know, at this at this at this manual and they talk about the core values of a leader in the United States Army.

And there are about seven tenets here of values embedded in their force. And what you were just speaking to, there's at least two of these items that fall into those categories. There's loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, courage. So what I hear you saying is selfless service. Respect, duty.

I hear duty in that. I have a call.

Right, that's right.

To do the right thing. I have a call to ensure that the business isn't able to succeed.

That's right. I think Zig Ziglar said it this way, if you help enough people get what they want in life, people are going to help you get what you want in life.

Yeah, mean, I attest to that.

Yeah, it's reciprocal man. It may not happen in the Bible's cause it's sowing and reaping.

Right? It's the same concept, Time and harvest, brother.

That's it. That's it. You sow enough of those seeds, they will come back to you. I believe we were listening to someone who called it the law of, how how do you call it? It's not, causality.

The law of

Yes. Yes.

Right? When you do something, there is a response that has to happen.

Yes. Yes.

Right? So you just live your life that way.

Yes. The law of causality.

Yeah. You just live your life that way. And there is a, I won't call it a repercussion, that easy, a reward or a consequence that's gonna happen from every deed that you do. Right? So yeah, just build those relationships, build those business relationships that's strategic, just helping as many people achieve their goals.

Right? It's just the laws of sowing and reaping. That's gonna come back to you. Thank you for listening to the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. We hope that you not only enjoyed the content, but gained something to help you on your personal leadership journey.

Feel free to reach out to us on x and Instagram under the handles Leadership Sovereignty. Until next time, stay safe, peace, and blessings.