Entrepreneurship Skills For Women With Dr. Charlene Walters And Hiring The Right People With Andrew Lee

More and more women are starting their own businesses, and more women are Developing Entrepreneurship Skills to compete in today’s world. Dr. Diane Hamilton sits down for a conversation with author, speaker, and corporate trainer Dr. Charlene Walters about entrepreneurship. She then talks about what skills women need to develop today and how to develop them. Get ready to explore the business path the right way. This episode is a great starting point to empower women entrepreneurs.

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Next, we talk all about hiring the right person and what it takes to find the perfect new hire. It’s time to learn how to interview a rock star! Dr. Diane Hamilton talks to Talent Management Leader and TEDx Speaker Andrew Lee as he discusses his thoughts on the interview process. Andrew shares his insights on the things you need to look for during the interview and what tough questions you need to ask during an interview. If you’re a talent acquisition specialist or a business owner getting ready to interview people, this is for you.

I’m so glad you joined us because we have Dr. Charlene Walters and Andrew Lee here. Charlene is an entrepreneurship coach, corporate trainer, and author of Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur. Andrew is Associate Director of Talent Management at Collins Aerospace. He’s a TEDx speaker. We are going to talk about all kinds of things that deal with entrepreneurship leadership and HR.

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Entrepreneurship Skills For Women With Dr. Charlene Walters

I am here with Dr. Charlene Walters who’s an entrepreneurship coach, business and branding mentor, corporate trainer and author of Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur. I’m so excited to have you. Charlene, welcome.

Diane, thank you so much for having me on.

You are welcome. I was looking at some of the things that we have a lot in common. I have developed MBA programs at different things. We have taught a lot of courses at different universities. I was looking forward to this. You have done quite well with this book. It’s interesting because you focus on some of the things that women have to deal with to be entrepreneurs. I want to get into that but I want to get your backstory because it’s always nice to find out how people get to the point where they are. Can we get that little backstory on you?

I started undergrad as an English major. My goal was to write but I grew up in Connecticut where it was super cold. As soon as I graduated, I move to somewhere warmer. I went down to Miami. I’ve got a position in sales. With that position, I started to develop this love of business and wanted to learn more, eventually went back to school to get my MBA, and then on to get my PhD in Marketing. I was involved with higher ed, business and marketing positions on and off through the years. I specialized in a curriculum, which was my passion in higher ed. I created a digital entrepreneurship MBA program, got super involved with entrepreneurs who were developing their businesses. I worked on all of the curricula, picked our books, I help them with their plans to move their businesses forward.

Around that same time, I also started doing some work with Entrepreneur Magazine’s Ask an Expert platform where I was working with entrepreneurs. I started my own side hustle in speaking, writing and decided at some point that, “I want to write that book that I would always think about writing.” I was looking at other books on the market and saw that there was a need for books that were centered on entrepreneurial mindset for women. That’s how I ended up with that. I took my side hustle full-time and I’m here talking to you.

I have seen a lot of things that you have done. You mentioned Entrepreneur Magazine but I noticed that you were also on Randi Zuckerberg’s business show. I’ve got to see her in Arizona. She got on stage with Joe Polish’s group the Genius Network and she did burpees in stress. I can’t even do one burpee, she’s doing a ton of burpees, I had to give her credit. She was cool to listen to. Some so many amazing women doing things that stand out in your mind but it’s not that easy for a lot of women because it has been skewed male as I was reading the promotion for your book. Another thing you wrote was that 36% of all small business and franchise owners are women. Thirteen million female-owned businesses are contributing to more than $1.8 trillion in revenue. Why do you think there aren’t more books about this?

Entrepreneurship is becoming a popular option for women. They can take control over their career, their livelihood, and their schedules. Click To Tweet

They are becoming more popular. The percentage of entrepreneurs keeps going up in terms of women. In 2020, we had such a mass exodus of women from the workforce for a variety of reasons, whether they were laid off or furloughed, some just chose to leave voluntarily maybe they were overwhelmed. Entrepreneurship is becoming a more popular option for women. I have seen it, they can take control over their career, livelihood and their schedules, which are also important. Historically, it has always been a male area. Women are getting in there staking their claim and it will become more of the norm as we move forward.

We could all use more help with this. You cover what real-world advice that you think is necessary to create opportunities that we need to have mind shifts. Did you come up with ten of them? Let’s go through some because the first thing I saw was embracing the entrepreneurial attitude. What does that mean to you?

The entrepreneurial attitude is the attitude you need for success because as we all know in anything that we want to do in life, mindset and success are correlated. It has to do with thinking like an entrepreneur embracing risk-taking, which can be difficult for some of us. When we first jump into entrepreneurship, that’s a giant leap. We are starting with that risk-taking there. It has to do with building confidence, as you probably heard and it’s quoted often there’s a confidence gap between men and women. Men will put themselves and apply for positions when they only have said 60% of the qualifications but women wait until they have 100% when they are feeling perfect or close to perfect.

As an entrepreneur or any new project, we are not going to be perfect right away. We’ve got to get over that and start doing those things we can to boost our confidence. It’s also about becoming more persistent, developing that belief in yourself. Another important aspect of an entrepreneurial mindset is becoming more patient. A lot of times we look at these entrepreneurs who look like these overnight success stories but we don’t see the ten years of hard work, rejection and failure that they’ve got before they’ve got to that position. It’s about doing all those things, finding a way to become more resilient. Fighting any feelings of self-sabotage and being able to handle haters or anything that derails you along the way.

There are a lot of people who will try to hold other people’s back. Whenever I have had the women conversations, a lot of women will bring up other women, sometimes try and hold them back because there are limited positions. There are limited this and that and they have to fight tooth and nail. Do you think that’s getting to be less?

I was talking about this with someone else. I liked her idea about it. It’s that a lot of women struggle to get to that top position. They don’t want to jeopardize that position by pulling other women up. I don’t think that they are necessarily combative but I do think we are seeing more women trying to help women in general. In my position, I’m a primary breadwinner and a single mom, I like to help other women like I know what it’s like. I know how challenging that can be. The more we all start to band together and talk to each other and support one another, the more it will bring us all up as a whole.

You had mentioned confidence before but one of the other mindsets you talked about was cultivating financial confidence. Do you think that women are less financially confident than men?

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They can be and a lot of times it has to do with getting over whatever their psychological influences are from their child or maybe some past experiences. Maybe their parents told them that money was the root of all evil, maybe they have run into bankruptcy or had a lot of credit card debt. Women, in general, can do well building those finances and with a money mindset. Sometimes it’s a little more difficult for them in situations like selling, budgeting and negotiating. Those are the areas that they struggle with more than men. That sales mindset is so important as an entrepreneur because you are selling all the time. You are selling yourself and your business.

We are taught as women that we don’t want to bug anyone, bother them and annoy them. We have to reframe the way we are thinking and think of it in terms of helping people. We have a product or a service that is worth being sold. Our message is worth being heard. It’s important to make those adjustments and to get more comfortable with pitching. Often women will ask for less funding than men or they will go after it less. It’s all of those things combined. It’s not that we are not capable, it’s just that sometimes we are a little bit more hesitant to put ourselves in those situations.

It is challenging to have that sales background. That’s one thing I was grateful for. I spent decades in sales, which helps you. I wrote a brand publishing course part of my running MBA program at Forbes School of Business. That branding and building a presence is a huge thing that a lot of people don’t like that part. They don’t like the, “Look at me,” aspect. They are humbler. There’s the Susan Cain quiet type. They are introverts who have other things that they offer and they don’t like this, “Look-at-me stuff.” What do you tell people to make them feel it’s not the wrong thing to do or to showcase yourself to some extent?

I had that same experience. I remember a colleague of mine was always great with personal branding. She was putting herself out there. At first, I saw all the stuff she’s doing and I didn’t know quite what to make of it. Sometimes women are judged differently than men for bragging about their accomplishments. I’m right there with her and can do all of it. It’s getting over those initial nerves. Starting small with one thing at a time. Maybe it’s a blog, maybe it’s you create a podcast, maybe you do some hot how-to videos, maybe you start writing a little bit.

Begin to identify those areas you want to be known for and start putting yourself in the conversation. I remember I wrote an article on personal branding and somebody reached out to me on Instagram and said, “Your article helped me so much because I was afraid to begin.” I remember being that way too when I would think about anything I was publishing and I do it all the time and don’t give it as much thought or worry about what other people are thinking. It’s getting started, and then continuing from there and becoming more comfortable with it.

A lot of people want to be somebody else. Not everybody is going to be Zig Ziglar on stage. There’s the Mel Robbins who can do her own thing. It is cool to watch her. You have to look at what works for you. That comes in when you are leveraging social media options. You’ve got to play to where your audience is if you are selling certain things. For me, LinkedIn is a big platform because I’m selling to business leaders and different people who would be on LinkedIn. What do you tell them or teach them about leveraging social media options?

The entrepreneurial attitude is just the attitude you need for success. Click To Tweet

I tell them to think about where their target audience is and then hang out in those places. That will vary depending on the product. I also tell them, “Start small. If social media overwhelms you, just start a little 1 or 2 platforms at a time that makes sense for you. Keep going, build your following, get to know other people, find out who are the influencers in your area, try to join their conversations and continue to build from there.” There are also a lot of ways we can re-use content and put it across platforms but it comes down to understanding your target audience. Where they are hanging out, and then developing your brand message around that so that the people that you are trying to attract will respond to what you are saying.

It’s hard because there are many new platforms. You can be in Clubhouse, every day there seems to be another one. I have seen Millennials going to TikTok to get their financial advice. I’m like, “I wouldn’t have called that one.” You just don’t know. You have to check out these different platforms. When I was looking at some of these other mindset shifts, you also say leading your startup. What do you mean by that?

There are a lot of studies that say women have a more challenging time developing leadership skills because maybe they are not given as many opportunities in the corporate environment. In terms of leadership, I hear from a lot of entrepreneurs that I work with that they hate managing people. They would rather do anything else. They want to lead into the more innovative creative aspect of their day. It’s about supporting them to develop those leadership skills. For me, I have always been fortunate. If you lead with empathy and flexibility particularly during the pandemic, as we emerge from the pandemic. Everyone is going through so much emotionally, financially, with their families, with sick relatives in some cases and just adjusting to the changing environment. That’s always done well.

I also think it’s important even that we are working remotely to have that balance between being a micromanager and being checked out. You don’t want to over be with people, you don’t want to overburden people but you want to be clear with the guidelines and the parameters and what the expectations are. It has to do with balancing all those things, beefing up your soft skills, your communication skills and getting to know your team and not making it all about yourself and what you want but supporting others. The more you support people as a leader, the more that will come back to you and your business in the end.

As you are listing these things, I was wondering if are you talking about the lifecycle of the company because you were starting with leading your startup, then you are going to growth mode, then you are going to rebooting, repeating and avoiding burnout along the way.

I tried to set up the mindset set that shifts in a way that would make sense. In my mind, it could happen for somebody else. With that background and creating the MBA program as you have as well, I couldn’t help but start with the basics. Get your planning done, identify your target and then move on from there. Leadership does come later on as you are adding employees. A lot of times we start as a solopreneur.

A lot of people have a hard time when they get to about the $1 million sales mark. There are a lot of advice that comes as things go along. You have created a special bonus section I noticed in your book the Femprenuer Action Plan. I’m curious what that entails.

It takes all the mindset shifts from each chapter and gives you a little plan to implement that into your business. There is a business concept planning worksheet. As having a background and creating the MBA program I felt it’s very necessary. A lot of times people are reading this book, they are already into business but just in case that they can plan and make their business concept and develop all those things, they need to get going. There’s an action plan to work on their attitude and a plan for improving their money mindset and their budgeting. Budgeting is big for entrepreneurs not only for their business but in their personal life because they have to cut back all-around when they first getting going.

Others having to do with branding and building presence, thinking about and planning for what you want to be known for. What you want your brand to look like and where you will insert yourself in terms of social media. What groups you will join, where you are going to find people that you can interact in-network with. It goes on from there into social media basics and then plans for resilience and leadership. Most importantly, trying to reboot when you hit a tough time or trying to avoid burnout because that’s common for entrepreneurs. A lot of times, we are working so hard that we become overwhelmed. It’s important to be able to reset.

It’s fascinating what you wrote about because we have a lot of similar things that we have done, with running MBA programs, writing programs or teaching in different universities and being an author, speaker, thing that we do. I’m curious just from your background, you have a PhD as I do, what was your doctoral dissertation?

It was understanding consumer behavior online specifically. It was groundbreaking at the time with why consumers choose to buy from one website versus another. I also broke it down by gender. Men and women are the same in that study. The number one thing was customer ratings. That was what everyone relied on most men choosing to buy one product versus another.

The sales aspect of why people do certain things or successful is what interested me so I ended up writing about sales as well for my dissertation. As far as looking at the factors that make somebody successful and that’s why I looked at emotional intelligence. This is an interesting little topic and then it turns out to be this big major thing. A lot of what we have in our background has been helpful. It sounds like teaching can help you learn some of these things that you learn from all your classes. When you are teaching marketing courses and some of the stuff that you are teaching, do you get a lot from your students because they are bringing in real-world experience?

You can learn something from everyone particularly students. You learn new things all the time. I have a lot of students following me on different social media. They will start making comments and telling me things about what’s going on with them and talking to me about new technology or they found this new tool. It’s rewarding and amazing. Another thing about both of our journeys and I try to get this and tell everyone about this as well, you just never quite know where you will end up as an entrepreneur it’s not a straight line. We have done a lot of different unique things along our journeys but they come together in this beautiful way at the end to make us the people we are and they add value all around. You never know where your path will lead but no matter what you are doing, adds a lot of value to what you are doing in the end.

If you are leading an organization, you have to first lead yourself. Click To Tweet

You don’t want to have all your eggs in one basket sometimes too in multiple different things. A lot of people learn that in 2021. If one thing goes down you have other things to rely on. One of my favorite books was Range knowing many different things can contribute to such a much more interesting experience and in value of what you can offer. We covered a lot from the book I want to make sure I covered everything. Is there anything that you wanted to talk about that I didn’t ask you because I want to make sure I get everybody the top things to look for?

We talked a lot about different things. Maybe one thing that we didn’t hit on a lot that’s important for women is work-life balance because a lot of times that’s something that women struggle with more than men because oftentimes, they have more responsibilities for their family. I always put a caveat in there because I know guys are helping out but we have a more challenging time with that. There are a lot of support in there for time management becoming more productive, balancing your time and many things that entrepreneurs can use to move their business forward. It’s the combination of all those things but ultimately as we said at the beginning, success is determined by your mindset. You have to be resilient to keep moving forward.

I’m glad you brought that up because it’s coming up a lot with everybody trying to do everything. Everybody is getting a good taste of how hard it is to do everything. That was a great way to end. A lot of people probably want to know how they can follow you, get your book and find out more. Is there anything you want to share?

You can find my book it’s called Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur, it’s on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Walmart, anywhere books are sold. If you want to learn more about it you can go to LaunchYourInnerEntrepreneur.com. If you want to find out about me you can find out more at CharleneWalters.com and I am on social media everywhere @CWaltersPhD or @CharleneWaltersPhD. I would love to connect.

You’re also the author of a memoir. Has this come out yet?

It hasn’t come out yet. It’s pre-publication. I’m excited for that one to come out. I’m also working on another one that has to do with how we will change as we emerge from the pandemic and in terms of business. What’s the future of remote work? What does the future of women in the workforce look like? As entrepreneurs, what are the changes and opportunities that we can take advantage of? A lot of cool things happening. Stay tuned for those other books.

You are getting a lot of writing in. I bet that English degree came in handy. I enjoyed having you, Charlene. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Diane it was a pleasure.

You are welcome.

Hiring The Right People With Andrew Lee

I am here with Andrew Lee who is the Associate Director of Talent Management at Collins Aerospace. He’s a talent acquisition and talent management expert and has a great TED Talk, TEDx that’s titled, How To Interview and Find a Rockstar. It’s nice to have you here Andrew.

Thanks a lot. It’s great to be here.

I was looking forward to this. I’ve got to watch your talk. Being in sales, interviewing and speaking to HR, so many different ways in my job and my sister being a recruiter or AKA headhunter. I have had a lot of experience in a lot of the stuff you are talking about. It’s a struggle for companies. I’m looking forward to chatting with you about this but I want to get a background on you because it’s challenging to get up there and do one of those TEDx Talks. I’ve got to give you credit. I have had a lot of people tell me it was horrifyingly scary. Before we get to that, tell me your backstory so people know a little more about you.

I was born here in Charlotte, North Carolina where I reside. As people who watch the TED Talk. My first job was at a barbershop. I went to school at Old Dominion University in Virginia. I never thought that I would come back to Charlotte. I found myself in a nice little marketing career working for a home builder, and then the financial crisis happened. That made me look at a different career. I found myself in recruiting. I found my wife and live in Charlotte with twin girls. We have another little girl on the way. That’s a little bit about me.

Try not to go into meeti ngs back-to-back. If you can't help it, put a 10-minute buffer around each meeting. Click To Tweet

I have two daughters, nothing better. I worked for a company based out of Charlotte before the crash of the whole market. I was working for a subprime company called EquiFirst. It was based out of Charlotte. I’ve got to go there once. It’s beautiful. That was an interesting time when all that was going on. When I look back at some of the things, I have learned from my experiences. Every time I have worked for it taught me a little bit about who fits jobs in certain ways and who’s good at doing things. When I worked for that company out of Charlotte, they made us take a personality test that does tell you if you are red, blue, green or yellow. They made a put our results on our cubicle so other people knew if you like to be right to the point, if you want to data or whatever your personality preferences were.

They made you take that test after they hired you. I have worked with companies that gave me a personality test before they hired me. That was interesting as well. I have worked for this major company that would say, “Here are all these resumes. Screen them.” I was a secretary without any training back then. I go, “This one sounds okay.” As a recruiter, you know how challenging it is. You don’t have much time with people. You don’t have a lot of exposure to who they are. You will give them a piece of paper initially. What made you want to get into recruiting and how challenging is it to determine good people?

I was the absolute worst recruiter when I started. I tell this story with all the humility in the world. There was a time when I didn’t think I would make it and I had a connect conversation with my boss at the time and we laughed about it. It is difficult. You are sitting there in a cubicle looking at a piece of paper and a job description that someone else put together. You may or may not have talked to the manager and you are trying to figure out, “How do I match these two things up? I haven’t talked to the person. Should I give this person a call? Should I even continue with a conversation?” It’s very difficult. I find a lot of people look at recruiting, “I can do that.” To do it well, you’ve got to connect the dots. You’ve got to have a little bit of that salesperson in you. To want to call again and a little bit of that psychologist counselor person, “Tell me a little bit about yourself.” That natural curiosity where you want to know about not only the person but about the company to see if you can make that match.

I’m sure you brought up curiosity because of my background and I love it that you did. After all, that of course is what I speak about every day. In your TED Talk, you mentioned the lack of proper evaluation that goes on. A lot of that is the developing curiosity to find out about people. When I’m interviewing people, I want to see how curious they are and what they are asking me. Are they asking me, “How many days off do they get it?” Are they asking me, “What do you guys have in the pipeline?” It’s two different questions. What questions do you think are important? What do you look for from coming out of potential hires?

If I’m talking to someone, there has to be a curiosity about the company. They should have done some research coming in. It’s so easy if you are coming into a large organization that’s publicly traded. You get annual reports out there, you can learn everything about the company and then try to weave those questions in. At the end of every interview, it’s the standard. “What questions do you have for me?” It’s a little disappointing if someone says, “I have nothing.” Talk to me about where do you see your department in the next 3 to 5 years? What are some of the biggest challenges that you have faced? Hiring managers, what keeps them up at night are the challenges and difficulties that they are facing. The person coming into that job needs to be curious about what those are because they are being hired to solve those problems.

That does tell me a lot about people what they ask and how they respond in different situations. I was thinking about something you said in your TED Talk that was interesting about how you need to put applicants in situations to see how they perform. Before I became a pharmaceutical rep, I was in that job for fifteen years, they had us right in the field with other reps before we took the job to see, “Is this something you would even want to do? Is this something you can stand doing?” I rode with 2 or 3 different people before I was hired. In the first person, it was horrible watching her. I thought, “I can’t do this job. It’s miserable.”

The second one, I’m like, “That’s how you do it.” The third one was fine. Sometimes seeing it in one light can make a whole difference because this one was unorganized. It was painful for me to watch this I’m like, “If I have to do this, I’m going to shoot myself.” You can’t always put applicants in situations without paying them. How do you get around some of that when you’ve got limited money, limited time, you need to get people on the job?

I’m glad you brought that up because that has been one of the questions. As I have gone around and spoken with various companies and put on workshops. People have said, “How do I get around this?” The opportunity for obvious fraud is, “Come in here and make a bunch of the sales calls for me and we will see what happens later.” The best thing that companies can do in ways to get at it, let’s take for instance if you are looking to hire someone for a finance opportunity. The persons in finance if you bring the person in, you create problems. The hiring manager has a spreadsheet. They intentionally put problems in the spreadsheet, things that should stand out to that finance person. They have that person right there to analyze it. It’s very simple. Tell me, “What is the story going on here?” Have them look at a balance sheet or cash statement and have them analyze that. Maybe that goes back either to a problem that person had seen previously.

What I think people misunderstand what I have said about having people show you what they can do is that people think, “I only need to hire people who can do the job.” This is true in a way but my thought is that, if someone doesn’t necessarily have all the experience laid out on their resume but they can do the job, putting them in the position to do the job allows them to show you what they can do. Everyone isn’t a great resume writer. If a recruiter is talking to them on the phone and the recruiter says, “They have done this in the past, let’s give them the opportunity.” They can do this work. It gives people the opportunity to shine in front of the hiring manager where if you didn’t do this work, it might never shine.

I feel like I can do anything if somebody told me how. There’s something that Ken Fisher said, a billionaire behind Fisher Investments when I interviewed him that stuck with me. He says, “When you are hiring people, they are going to tell you what they can do but you don’t know what they will do.” Just because you can do something, how do you determine if they will continue to want to perform at a high level?

What I tell people is, “Put people under as much stress during the interview process as possible because more than likely, that’s the best version we are going to see of them.” In the old days, you come in for an interview free COVID. You would be dressed to the nines for most of your interviews. That’s when you need to put that person under stress, they are generally nervous. They have the butterflies in their stomach and you hit them with scenarios and situations that they don’t expect.

It’s in those situations right then and there where you can see that flash of competition, whether they want to excel or do they back down. They let the moment get too big for them. You can tell a lot by how people react at the moment to pressure but we are dealing with the most unpredictable asset in the world, people. You can do a lot of due diligence on the front end to mitigate risk on the back end but at the end of the day, people are people.

You don’t know too much. I have to agree with Ken on what he said, “You are not going to hit a bull’s eye all the time because you don’t have enough time. You see a limited amount.” I was thinking of some of the questions. Here’s a question that is a hard one for a lot of people of knowing what recruiters or HR people or whoever is interviewing them how to answer, “Andrew, tell me a time that you didn’t get along with someone and how you handled it.” What do you say to that? Is there a good answer for that?

You can tell a lot by how people react at the moment to pressure. Click To Tweet

I talked about this in TED Talk and I say, “The, ‘Tell me about a time,’ question is something that a lot of people do. It’s the start method.” I work for a large recruiting organization. That’s a part of it but the, “Tell me about a time,” all it evaluates, is a person’s ability to either talk very nicely about a story that happened or maybe didn’t happen. There’s no way to evaluate, whether that story is true or is not true or their friend who you talked to on the reference check is their boss. You don’t know all these things. If you want to get that question, one of the best ways to do it is to provide them with a scenario. Provide the candidate with a scenario that we have all dealt with and see how they would handle it. Ask them, “How would you deal with this specific scenario?”

Can we get an example? I would love to hear a negative one.

“You are on a call. You are in a staff meeting. You are trying to build a strategy. You are on the supply chain team trying to build out the 2022 strategy. You’ve got a team member on the supply chain team who is difficult. This person is interrupting people. They are super aggressive. They only want their side of the story out. They cut people off. It’s preventing open discussion. People in real-time are starting not to say anything because they are afraid of being ridiculed by this person. How do you handle that?”

It comes down to see how many questions they ask about that scenario. In my mind, is this something that only happened once? Is this a continuous problem? For me, if they start asking questions, then I’m more interested in hiring them because they are not just talking at face value, they want to know more.

Depending on the level that you are hiring for, you now able to then see their thought process. Are they solution-oriented? Are they root cause-oriented? What is the cause of this? What happened previous to this meeting? Did this person have a run-in with someone previously? Let’s dig down or if they go straight to the solution, then that tells you something that they are not very inquisitive, they are not very curious about what’s going on.

For me, that’s a big flag. A lot of people know that there isn’t a correct answer because every situation is so unique. If you don’t explore different alternatives, that would worry me that somebody doesn’t even think to go beyond the status quo. This is how everybody should handle that kind of thinking. It’s not that easy in the real world. You’ve got people that might be the first time this has ever happened. It might be that it’s the managers’ fault for letting it happen forever. We don’t know a lot about this.

What’s interesting is the flexibility. I interviewed Olin Oedekoven who’s the CEO of Peregrine who was telling me that when he hires people, he doesn’t even have necessarily a job in mind. He sees something in somebody and he hires them and has them do a bunch of different things. He finds out what they are good at and then designs a job around them. I’m thinking, “That would be wonderful.” I can’t afford to do that though. It’s a hard thing. I love that idea. Do you see others doing that? Is that unique?

That is unique. Large enterprise organizations, through their talent processes, identify skill gaps. They tried to proactively interview. I have benchmark organizations around and I take a look at what they are doing. Is that something that’s happening all the time? Not really but it does happen in pockets. That’s what you want because what you want to do is to place people in positions where they excel and they love the work because then it’s going to feel to that person like they are not doing work. They are going to ultimately increase the bottom line of the company and excel in that category for you.

It is unique but one thing I keep hearing is people are expected to work 70 hours a week like, “We were going to have Zoom meetings from 8:00 AM until 5:00 PM back-to-back and then you can do your work at night or on weekends.” Are you seeing a lot of that? I keep hearing a lot of that.

Yes. People are fatigued. They are burned out. If you start to look at the numbers, there are increasing attrition throughout industries and businesses that are starting to happen. If you are on straight Zoom calls from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM or 5:30 PM even later and if you have an international business, you are going to have later calls. When can you do the work? There’s no break. When can you eat? Is there time for you to process the meeting? What I like to tell people is, “You have to shoulder your meetings.” In other words, try not to go into meetings back-to-back if you can help it. Put ten minutes buffer around each meeting.

What that does is it allows you time to first stop, reset and be able to prioritize the information you just received. You can go into the next meeting a little more prepared and not feeling as though you are worn out. What happens is, you end the day and you feel as though you didn’t accomplish anything. You probably didn’t other than sitting in the meeting. You are faced with the fact, “I’ve got ten deliverables. I’ve got to have this done in a certain amount of time.” If you have children, put the kids to bed, let’s crank the computer up again and start them.

Everybody is getting burned out. I have seen a lot of leaders who don’t even follow the Zoom time. Everybody has got back-to-back Zoom meetings but then this guy or this girl keeps talking.

That’s another conversation. It’s about etiquette. One of the problems that many people are facing is that there’s a lack of time management on the part of the leader. It affects everyone’s day because everyone is coming into the next meeting 5 to 10 minutes late. It’s basically because no one prepares. If you are having a formal meeting, you are a leader and have a large span of control, the meeting needs to be timed. All discussion points need to be timed. We don’t need to be taken off subjects in but that requires leaders to lead. If you are leading an organization you have to first lead yourself. It’s self-organization, then you can organize the meeting. That’s another topic but a lot of that doesn’t happen because you are at home. Things get messy. I will just continue talking but the unintended consequences ruin days and increase burnout.

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I have done enough of the Zoom breakout sessions that the timer times down and then when you are done it just kicks you out of the room. I almost wish they would do that or at least play the Academy Award music like, “We are going.” Zoom needs to add those features. I have an executive from Zoom on long before COVID. I was thinking, “If we could just have the music play or the breakout room ending for the regular meeting. Can everybody see you too bad? Can you snooze, you lose, you are out?” That would be a good solution. We have talked about your TED Talk and I love the title How to Interview and Find A Rockstar. What made you want to do a TEDx Talk?

I have interviewed thousands of candidates. I have talked to hundreds of managers at all levels and organizations. I felt that I had something to offer. I talk to my group of friends or talk to my wife and her hearing me every day, she’s like, “Go tell someone else.” I wanted to get the message out. I thought it would be a good message to get to the masses on how to interview someone to get the job done. A lot of us work for companies. We were all trying to meet our objectives. How can we do that the best way possible? That’s why I decided to do it.

It’s interesting how you try to get a job and a lot of people would try to get on radio shows and podcasts. It’s similar because you are putting out your data, bio, accomplishments and saying why you want to get on. I am always interested in seeing what people submit. It’s like a resume screening for me. I get to do that a little bit. It’s fun to see what people put out there and to compare what everybody is doing. I’ve got a lot out of your TED Talk. I love that you included the link to that and anybody who is trying to get on podcasts and do shows always include stuff like that. There’s a certain way to showcase yourself. I talked about this with Dr. Gilda, we do this video called Your Media Docs about how to get seen and be seen and do does different videos and podcasts. What we are talking about here is not that different in that respect. Are there any other sites or any other information you would like to share for people to find out more?

You can find me on LinkedIn, AndrewLee and also follow me on Instagram where I post information once a week, @AndrewL.Lee. I’ve always got either some humorous post or a video where I talk about talent management issues, leadership development and career development.

Andrew, this is so much fun. Thank you for being on the show.

Thanks so much, Diane. Have a great day.

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We would like to thank both Charlene and Andrew for being my guests. We get so many great guests on the show. If you’ve missed any past episodes you can catch them at DrDianeHamilton.com. There are some tweetable moments. If you find something that stood out to you, please tweet it because we would love to hear from you. If you are interested in finding out more about my consulting, speaking and everything that I’m doing outside of the radio show, there are all kinds of drop-down menus at the top and the bottom. Scroll down to the bottom if you are looking for extra testimonials and different things that you can’t fit all at the top. You can also access the Curiosity Code Index and The Power of Perception book and The Perception Power Index. Make sure you check that out. There are a couple of different areas where you can find the radio show. The radio button is at the top and the blog button so different areas to listen to and to read on the site but the radio button you can also find where we are playing live as far as am FM stations. You can pretty much find us on every station out there but an update of what you can find on the site because there are so much great content, a lot of free information, free chapters from books and free stuff there. Please take some time to explore. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I hope you join us for the next episode of Take The Lead Radio.

About Dr. Charlene Walters

Charlene Walters, MBA, PhD is an entrepreneurship coach, business and branding mentor, corporate trainer and author of Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur. She serves as a mentor on Entrepreneur magazine’s “Ask an Expert” forum and through her own consulting business (Charlene Walters, MBA, PhD, LLC), is featured among other CEOs, influencers and celebrities on the BAM Network and was recently selected as one of 150 Marketers to Follow by Rubicly.

Charlene also developed a digital entrepreneurship MBA program and is an entrepreneur who enjoys combining her knowledge and love of marketing and business strategy with her passion for innovation and desire to help others succeed.

About Andrew Lee

Andrew Lee is the Associate Director of Talent Management at Collins Aerospace.

He is a talent acquisition and talent management expert. He has a TEDx talk titled How to Interview and Find a Rockstar.

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