Getting Unstuck: Turn Goals into Action with Better Beliefs

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer Nord podcast, where we work on getting better step by step, professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season of looking at how to get unstuck, how to get forward momentum. This is Developer Nord podcast, Building Better Developers. I am Rob Broadhead, one of the founders of Developer Nord, also the founder of RB Consulting, where we help you look at your technology and make sure that you take that reality check and make sure you plan before you dive into one of those more expensive investments before it gets too expensive. Good thing and bad thing. A bad thing right now in my life is that all of my family is sitting in the middle of snowstorms of varying sorts. There's a couple that are still, I think, out of electricity, out of power after now, a couple of days of it. Others that are just cold. Yes, they're going out a little bit and having some fun, but also it's just more than they wanted. More white, fluffy, very cold stuff than they wanted to have. The good thing is I'm not there, I guess, is I'm actually sitting in Portugal on the other side of halfway across the world and it is not as bad. Although we are getting like all kinds of neat little storm events over here too. It's just not the icy sort. More importantly, though, is while Michael's not here right now, I do have a guest today and we're going to have a conversation with Kim and I'm going to let her go ahead and introduce herself. Hi, everybody. It's so nice to meet you. I'm Kim Miller-Hershon of Kim Miller-Hershon Coaching and Consulting and I hopefully by the end of this podcast am going to be your favorite business coach because I specialize in helping people get unstuck and my area of expertise are mindset, interpersonal communication, skills and time management. And those are, wow, those are speaking. Those are a couple of key areas to start right into. I do want to throw out though. You also have a podcast, do you not? I do. My podcast is called Unconventional Wisdom about Conventional Wisdom. You can find it on all of your favorite podcast platforms. And might I suggest that you look up a podcast that I did with Rob Broadhead, a very, very good episode. Yeah. So check that out. Yeah. So yeah, check that out. That's what I want to go right into from the, as a coach and then the whole unconventional wisdom about, you know, about wisdom is how does that, I'm assuming that that somehow came out of or impacts your coaching style. So what is some there that like, particularly there's a lot of coaches out there. So and we, one of the things we've talked to in the past is like, what is something that you want to look for to distinguish the coach that's the best suited for you? Yeah, I think I would say trust is the first thing, right? Like just you get on a call and how do you just vibe, right? Just how do you feel with the coach? And let me just say this. It's okay to feel a little uncomfortable because, you know, you want, I think actually you kind of want to be a little uncomfortable because you want to move, right? I think you can, it just really depends on you. You can find somebody who you feel like is very similar to you, but you can also find somebody who you think is a bit different than you, right? To sort of get that contrast and challenge you be able to see things in ways that you can't see it. But most of all, I think people get, can get very concerned about, well, what are your certificates and what's your like technical background? And for me, I really think what you have to do is do they ask good questions? Are they going to help you move where you want to move? And the answer to those two things are yes, you're good. What got you into coaching? Have you, did you grow out of, you just like since a child you were coaching or what did you sort of grow into this? Rob, that's such a funny question because I do often glibly answer that question. Listen, I've been coaching my entire life. I just figured out a way to get paid for it. But from maybe a more sort of factual point of view, I got laid off and I had to really reinvent myself. I had kids in school. I wasn't mobile. It was actually in the end of 2009. So I was working in engineering firms that supported designing hospitals, big office buildings, rights of commercial, like really large commercial projects. And the crash happened in 2008. And so it really, you know, I lasted for almost actually two years after the crash, which I thought was pretty spectacular. But then by the time I got laid off, I was doing business development and marketing. By the time I got laid off, the market was just flooded with people who did what I did. And so, yeah, so it was just really, really reinventing myself, honestly. That's interesting. I've heard that before, but that is definitely, that makes sense that sometimes you want to be the first one off the ship so you can like get on to the next one versus sticking around and having that, you know, we'll call it in quotes blessing of, you know, being able to last a few more years. But then now you're on the tail end of it and everybody's gotten a head start. Yeah. Now, one of the things that I think a lot of people have had this like that kick in the butt will say essentially when something happens, we get you get laid off and you're like, okay, now I've got to reinvent myself. And this is, I think it's also very interesting to see and hear about some of the stories where people, even if they haven't been forced to reinvent themselves, but they are inventing side hustle or something like that, where they say, you know what, I want to grow in a different direction. You know, for example, like, you know, you've got a podcast at some point, you're just coaching at some point, you're like, hey, I want to do podcasting as well. But now what, what led you into deciding that, hey, coaching is a way to go? Was it, was there, you know, was it one of these, it was just like, you knew it all along or was there something, there was an aha moment or something like that? Yeah, I think it was two things, honestly. You know, we have just met, but imagine me in an engineering firm. Okay. Probably not the best fit, right? Just personality wise, right? I'm loud, I'm colorful, right? Like I have a big personality and it for business development and marketing, it was a great fit, but I was the only one, I was a department of one in my firm, right? So I spent a lot of time being pretty miserable and not doing a very good job of hiding it, right? So I think I was not a great employee in the terms of like, I did my job well, but I didn't tow the company line very well. And I also, I just didn't like the way people acted. I didn't like the fact that they couldn't make changes, that they did a lot of things that I didn't like. What is interesting though, to answer your question more directly, is that engineers for the most part don't love business development, right? And they came from a mindset of, if I just do a good job on this project, it will speak for itself, right? And then other people will want to engage our services. And in a thriving economy, some of that may in fact be true, but when you have a downturn in the economy, that is just not true. And so part of my role ended up being coaching engineers to do the business development, right? And what's so interesting about it, and I think maybe this goes to sort of also like how I coach, which is if I said, Rob, if you were one of my engineers and I said, okay, like we've got this thing, you've got to develop this business, right? You would be like, I don't sell, right? So Kim, that's great. You go away. I'm going to do my work. I'm not interested. So I started to get really clever, right? And I started to develop all of these ways of getting the engineers to take action on the things really that they needed, right? Because they all had billable hours that they had to meet and they had to bring in the projects. But I started to get really good at getting them to get out there without calling it business development, to do the activities that they needed to do in order to bring in the business. So when I got laid off, I asked myself, what is it that I like, what am I good at? Right. If I can't find a traditional job, like what am I like, what? Just lost your mic. Oh, yeah. There we go. Okay. Okay. So when we, they started to get really good at business development, the engineers. When I was thinking about, okay, there were a lot of things about my job that I didn't love. But when I went back and looked at like, well, what are the parts that I really did love? That's what kept coming back was teaching people how really, I mean, it's so interesting we're having this conversation because in a lot of ways it is teaching people how to get unstuck. It's like they knew, listen, I wasn't trying to trick them. I mean, they needed to develop business because their jobs were on the line. Right. But the idea of selling or, you know, developing business was, it was like a dirty word to them. So helping them kind of figure it out and move forward in ways that they could actually take action. And you know, you said there's a lot of coaches out there. And if I had to distinguish myself, because really every good coach can, you say, I want to get here. Like my job is here. I want to get here. I want my business to get here. Frankly, I think that there's a lot of good coaches out there that can help you figure the plan out. Right. Because listen, you know, you're not the first person who's ever done it. Right. There's a lot of people before you that have done it. There's a lot of good models of success. I think where I am really different and where I excel is I think oftentimes those plans don't consider you, who you are, how you operate, what parts you're good at, what parts you're reluctant to do, where you procrastinate, what your mind, what you believe about your ability to do it, all those things. So I think I am just very good at helping you customize things like you as an individual. How are you going to get there? And by the way, Rob, I will say that my belief and my experiences is if you don't deal with your beliefs and your beliefs don't align with where you want to go, you will figure out a way to get right back to where you've got alignment. That's a good point. I think we talk a lot about success in general, particularly we talk about projects and companies and even people. Having your why, it goes back to, you know, Simon Sinek I think is the one that does the finding your why. And it really is such an almost overly simplistic approach, but I think very key. So it is a key to happiness at the end of the day. If you know what you're doing, like you said, if you're aligned with that, you're going to grow to it. If you're not, then you're going to end up back where you are aligned to it. And one of the things that now, particularly now as people are trying to figure out how to work in the new environments and things like that and trying to figure out how to scale and figure out how they're going to grow businesses sometimes as well. So the interesting thought is, so you've got these people you're coaching that are, they've got a set of skills, they've got a set of things they like, likes and dislikes. How do you talk to them about scaling themselves when you're looking at, particularly with the idea of likes and dislikes? Because I know some people, everybody's like, I hate that. That's the first thing they jettison. They're like, I want to grow far enough that I can jettison that. But then there's also some things that they like maybe that they need to jettison as well. How do you, you have like sort of a general rule of thumb of like how people should, should take those into account when they're scaling themselves? All right. So I want to actually go back because I think the answer first of all lies in exactly what you just said before you asked the question, which is how juicy is your why? Does it give you chill bumps? Because I got to tell you, if it doesn't, you're going to have a very difficult time getting through the things that you don't like. Right? So you need a really juicy why and you need to keep going back to it. What is it that we're creating here? Why are we doing this? What do we get when we get there? So it's not woo woo. That's why I think the thing that people misunderstand is they think envisioning success in the future is you know, in sitting down and meditating on it or doing a vision board or whatever sounds very woo woo. I got to tell you, however you do it, I don't care. Right? Like do it, you know, in a Gantt chart. It doesn't matter what it looks like. Do it in a spreadsheet. But your why has to be clear and so like juicy that it gives you chill bumps to get there. So that's number one because you've got to have something to hang on to because there's it's not going to your progress is not going to be linear and you're going to have to do things that you don't like to do. Right? But I actually think that the more interesting part of this, Rob, is really the but I'm a developer so I code. Right? And now I've grown the business enough that I've got people who can code for me. But every time there's a problem, I jump back in and I code and I fix it. Right? The the giving up what you love. That I think is almost the harder part. Right? It's the how do I grow into a CEO and not a developer with a great idea. Right? And honestly, and I'm not I am not pushing my services, but honestly, I think a lot of times having a coach help you through that because those are the hard things to see. Right? Definitely. Yeah. I think those have been I've talked about that as well. Those are the hardest things to grow is when you have to get rid of the or let go of the things that you actually enjoy doing to get to whatever your your bigger why is. And then you have situations where you have I want to figure out how to say it. But basically, like people that you coach for you, you talk to and you essentially say you're not the direction that you say you want to go is actually not the direction you want to go. For example, like you love I love the idea of having a big juicy why that will just drive you through even the the late nights and all the crap that you really don't want to do. But you know that that's out there and that's your that is that carrot and you'll you'll take the stick all day long if you have to to get to that carrot. But then there's those situations where people get into I really want this and the why is because I want to be able to sit on a beach in 10 years or something like that. And it's not where their why is not aligned with their stated goals. What are you doing that kind of situation, especially from a coaching point of view? Well, listen, for me, it feels very it's very easy. You know, you have to be able to if you want other people to work for you and get to the goal so that you can go sit on the beach, it's got to be something that everybody can wrap their head around and everybody just getting rich is not it. Right. So at the end of the day, what I'm going to say to you is you have to pay attention to the financials. So I am not saying let's just go all, you know, rogue here and just but I will tell you that my experience is that if you want to rally a team and rally clients, customers, whatever you're building right around whatever your product is or service, you have to the value has to be for the whoever you're making it for, right? Whoever you're doing it for. And if there is no value there except for you to make money, then you really need to realign what you and really like why is anybody going to want to work for you if all you want like they're like, oh, yes, I want to work for Kim because I want to see her on that beach in 10 years. Right. That's the team everybody needs. That's right. I think and if anybody do you guys know how to reach me? If you guys are there, it's like I want to see Rob just retire young. Okay, retire early, I guess, because young is right. But yet no, I reach out to business, right? Because that's what we all need. Right. If you have extra bags of money, just bring them along. That's right. So I do think that having a why and having a value to people and here is the thing I do this with my team all the time is that every team meeting we meet as a team once a month all together and I reiterate the why every time. Right. And then we look at so what are the projects that we're doing that get us there? Right. And, you know, what do you need? What do you need help? Somebody actually one of the guests on my podcast said something really interesting recently and that was culture is what your employees do when nobody's looking. So if we connect that back to what you what you asked about, you know, sort of growing a team is that there's got to be value. I can think the other thing. Maybe the last thing I would say about this is that you as the leader have to walk the walk. In other words, you can't set out values and what you how you want everybody else to act in your company if you are not modeling those things. Right. And one of the things that comes up in in in tech with project managers and engineers all the time is psychological safety to be able to say I made a mistake. Right. Go ahead. Yeah. Oh, that's yeah, I think that's like that's another great way to get another nice nice little segue. I do want to like I'll go into this step. So how is that with a part of the thing about a coach is is accountability. And it is I think from a coach one of the things you would want is you're like, you know, you're paying this person to drive you so you want them really driving you forward. But how do you manage the the ability to fail the safety of being able to say I didn't get that as part of that coaching is so that you're finding that balance and how should somebody and I guess more of this is like what should somebody be looking for because that's going to be as you mentioned before there's going to be uncomfortable times. And so what should they look for in those moments? Right. Listen, you know, talk about, you know, psychological safety. You know, sometimes what I like to say is listen, I'm not the principal, right? You don't get sent to the principal's office, right? Like I think the most important thing whether you're working with a coach or you're not working with a coach is to be curious. So I think the problem with how we look at mistakes often is that we feel like they are personal failures. And and so here's I'll give you a great example. I am working with somebody right now and we're working specifically on time management because he is time man. He is a partner and so his time management or lack of time management becomes it's a cascade effect, right? It becomes everybody else's problem, right? And in this situation, which you can you can align it also to to developers, which is he happens to be an attorney in a litigation firm. There are lots of hard deadlines. Court is not interested in anything in your personal life. The deadline is the deadline, right? So a lot of fire drills, right? So he had something a deadline coming up and so we're like great. Let's it's I don't know two and a half three weeks out plenty of time to get everything done. We put together this kick butt plan, right? I had him check in with me. And I mean he met the deadline but did not follow the plan completely and it still ended up to be a fire drill in the end, right? So, you know, we did a debrief, right? We and we are like, okay, so what are the parts of this that went well, right? And we'll keep those parts. And where did this fall apart? And then we were able to identify. Ah, okay. So part I'll tell you like what because it is a really interesting thing is that it and which is very true for developers too, because you don't do your work in a bubble, which is that some of his end product depended on other people's contribution, right? So it wasn't just you know, it's funny. It makes me think of like school projects, right? And we used to have to do those group projects in school. Not one person ever said, oh yeah, that was fun. So and that was evenly distributed again from everybody, but that's I digress. So what was interesting is that what we've what we figured out from that the first one that kind of didn't go as very well was that he's really good at asking for what he needs and giving the deadline and so forth the first time and he'll send you a follow-up email. But after that he's like I got nothing right. And so the the the person didn't get him what he needed on time. Therefore, right? He didn't get the thing done on time. And what we realized is he's got no plan B, right? He doesn't like confrontation. So his his experience of having to go to the person and say I need this feels really icky and challenging. So he didn't do so he doesn't do it, right? So all that does is say, ah, okay, interesting. So now we need to actually the next time we do this we need to make sure that we have a plan B and here's the other thing which I think probably many coaches don't do but again Rob because I am really committed to making sure that you right whoever the you is right client. You get the success. We script these things. Okay, how would you say that right? What would you say and guess what? It doesn't matter what I would say. Right, which your how can how can you say this and we script this in a way that you can actually execute on it. You may be a little uncomfortable about it, but you'll still do it, right? And so that's really the difference right because it's all about action baby steps baby steps baby steps, right? Yes, love that. That's that's one of our that's the whole thing about the four momentum ideas that sometimes just like you got like a step and a step and a step and the next thing you're moving and you're you know, you're on your way. And that is where we're going to pause. Don't worry. We are not done with our conversation with Kim. We will come back next episode. We will continue on and there's a lot of good stuff coming in part 2 as well. I know because I just finished talking to her in part 2. So be ready for that. If you have any questions comments, obviously there's going to be links in the show notes as always feel free to reach out with her. She's very accessible great lady great conversations and you can definitely get her off track too. If you want to talk about her background anything like that. She is very much a great person to hang out with us talk to and I think if you're thinking about a coach this may be a really good one for you to talk to. That being said we got to wrap this one up. Thank you for hanging out with us giving us your time and your attention and hopefully you can now give your time and attention to your project for the rest of the day. Go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time. .com to start your next step forward also sponsored by envision QA. They help businesses take control of their software by focusing on what matters most quality reliability and support you can count on find out more at envision QA.com. Thanks for tuning in to the development podcast where we're all about building better developers and better careers. I'd love to hear your thoughts or feedback. So drop a note to info at the developer.com. Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcast YouTube or wherever you listen and remember a little bit of effort every day adds up to a great success. Keep learning keep growing and we'll see you in the next episode.