Breaking Down Diversity of Thought and Innovation

Starting the conversation:

Trust your gut! Your instincts are a culmination of experiences and silent calculations. When it nudges you, take a moment to pause and listen — you might uncover insights you hadn’t consciously realized. Elizabeth Bieniek, Author, Speaker, and Consultant, shares her thoughts on how to leverage the diversity of thought to find true innovation.

“No egos are welcome here.” To be able to work together, experiencing healthy conflict builds team trust and camaraderie. The experiences and creativity of everyone on the team allow for innovation while staying focused on the project’s finish line. More creativity and more problem-solving approaches result in the desired outcome.

In this program, you will hear how to tap into your gut feelings as part of the decision-making process, how embracing constraints leads to true innovation, and the art of leadership transparency to protect the team from unnecessary stress yet provide as much as possible to excel. Jess Dewell talks with Elizabeth Bieniek, Author, Speaker, and Consultant, about why it is BOLD to listen to what your gut is nudging you toward when making decisions.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: Elizabeth Bieniek

What You Will Hear:

05:50 Everything is about marketing.

• Marketing involves reframing situations and products to show abundance, not lack.
• It’s crucial to present products and ideas in a way that resonates with the customer’s values and limitations.
• Success in business often comes from positioning your product as unique and valuable.

10:10 What if we did it this way? What if you turned it sideways?

• Innovation thrives on diverse perspectives and the willingness to see things differently.
• Teams benefit from a mix of backgrounds to challenge the status quo and drive creativity.
• Fresh approaches can lead to groundbreaking solutions, moving beyond traditional constraints.

23:15 You need diversity of thought in your group.

• Mixing different thought processes and experiences fuels creative problem-solving.
• Diverse teams are not just about variety in people but the range of ideas they bring.
• Collaboration leads to innovative strategies and improved solutions to business challenges.

28:10 We had to get to not just camaraderie. We had to get to trust really quickly.

• Rapid team integration is essential in high-pressure, innovative projects.
• Building trust and removing egos is necessary to achieve shared objectives efficiently.
• Team-building exercises can fast-track cohesiveness and effectiveness within the group.

30:05 I’m a motivation junkie.

• Recognizing and responding to personal motivators can sustain long-term productivity.
• Balance between work and personal life aids in managing energy and focus effectively.
• Leadership involves adapting strategies to maintain enthusiasm across different contexts.

35:20 A lot of times, you’re trying to shield them from that [unnecessary stress].

• Effective leadership involves protecting the team from unnecessary stressors.
• Sharing the right amount of information helps maintain team focus and morale.
• Leaders face the challenge of balancing transparency with strategic filtering.

38:40 If your gut is screaming at you, it’s like, I gotta go a hundred miles this way.

• Trusting one’s instincts can guide decision-making in uncertain situations.
• Gut feelings often incorporate subconscious knowledge and experiences.
• Pausing to listen to intuition can uncover overlooked opportunities or risks.

41:15 It is BOLD to listen to your gut and make decisions based on informed intuition.

Resources

• Cake on Tuesday: 25 Lessons to Unlock Corporate Innovation
• Follow These Principles to Make Your Company Stand Out From the Crowd

Transcript

Elizabeth Bieniek 00:00
If your gut is screaming at you, like, I got to go 100 miles this way. I don’t have time to break. I don’t have time to do this. We got to hit this milestone. This is coming up. And your gut’s like, slow down. You should probably at least listen to it, to pause and think, what am I missing?

Jess Dewell 00:14
One of my favorite entrepreneurs, his name is Mike Finessy. He said to me once, just how am I going to know how good my filet mignon tastes if I don’t eat Taco Bell once in a while?

Jess Dewell 00:27
I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks for stopping by. At the Bold Business Podcast, we are normalizing important conversations. Yes, there are tips. Yes, there are ways to solve problems. More importantly are going to be what do you need for yourself to be able to solve those problems and make the most of the education, the training, and the programs that you are already using? This is a supplement to that. It can sit on top of it. Fuel your soul, fuel your mind. And most importantly, regardless of where you’re at on your journey, maybe you’re starting out, maybe you’re ready to scale, Maybe you’re going through a reinvention. The conversations we are having will help you at each of those stages. So hang around, see what’s going on, and I look forward to seeing you engaging with our videos.

Announcer 01:18
You are listening to the Bold Business podcast, where you will hear firsthand experiences about what it really takes to ensure market relevance and your company’s future.

Jess Dewell 01:29
I just had a fantastic conversation with Elizabeth Bieniek. She is somebody who’s like me. We’re both operating from our gut, primarily. First, we know something and we’re curious to figure out. Who do we need, what do we need, and how do we want to approach it? You might relate even if you don’t. If you start intellectually from your heart, you might relate. When we’re thinking about innovation when we’re, when we’re thinking about how we want to change, what is the difference for us between iterating to stay competitive and innovating to create something brand new? It’s going to look different for each of our organizations and what we’re attempting to do. There are three things that came out of this conversation that set the cornerstone for what Elizabeth and I talk about. We’re talking about the fact that diversity of thought matters more than we tend to give it credit for. So can we slow down and really understand how we think and how another thinks, and then each of those others on our team thinks for that diversity of thought. The second thing is friction and conflict is necessary until you move through that first phase, there is not as much trust. When we need to get to a project with a short timeline, we’ve got to get to that trust fast. Elizabeth talks about how she’s done that with her teams. And then the third thing is a leader sets the tone and that can be lonely. So what does that mean? How do you get yourself your own support? How do you make sure that you are empowering your team to do what they want to be doing in the role that they have ascribed for this common outcome? How can you help them achieve that without overwhelming, without instilling fear in them? In the end, we’re talking about building self-trust, being okay, being different with others around us, and the importance of reframing so that we can communicate well. This is Elizabeth Bieniek. Her new book Cake on Tuesday, 25 Lessons to Unlock Corporate Innovation, talks through her unconventional story and shares how we can learn from her experience to bring more innovation and disruption into our worlds. We can say what really needs to be said or we can say what really needs to be said in a way that’s actually received well by people. Have you experienced the difference in that, Elizabeth?

Elizabeth Bieniek 04:07
So you have to translate things to the audience that you’re speaking to. Nobody cares until you make them. You have to say it in a language and currency that they can receive.

Jess Dewell 04:14
And it doesn’t matter our age, it doesn’t matter our experience, it matters that we’re busy.

Elizabeth Bieniek 04:19
My five-year-old responds very highly to food marketing.

Jess Dewell 04:25
Oh, I still do homework. Cookies the other day that said the simple ingredients. The best cookie ever. I looked on the back when I got home. I should have done it in the grocery store store. I should have never brought them home.

Elizabeth Bieniek 04:37
I’m a label reader. My eldest daughter has celiacs, so I have to be a label reader. My sourdough is gluten-free sourdough, which is a whole other thing.

Jess Dewell 04:44
That’s awesome. So you have that strand of sourdough that makes that possible.

Elizabeth Bieniek 04:48
So I made my own starter from sorghum flour. I have my own random flour mix I use now. I’ve been perfecting it over time. I had to make my own starter to ensure that it was gluten-free and go that route.

Jess Dewell 04:59
We were talking about currency translating and now we’re talking about starter and sourdough. They’re really related. And here’s the thing, and this is so great because we have constraints. We have the way people can eat in the house that we’re cooking and baking for and at work, we have the way that we can do this, and this is all we have to work with. Then we have to get that buy-in. We have to come up with crafting that message so that people can come back to it. And then it takes time. We’re still talking about sourdough and rising bread, but it takes time sometimes, doesn’t it? We can’t just throw it out there and go. We just have to let it sit it.

Elizabeth Bieniek 05:30
It’s also positioning it not from a point of lack. It’s from a point of abundance of you get artisanal, custom-made sourdough. This is amazing and unique. Everything’s about marketing.

Jess Dewell 05:41
And we all want to feel abundant.

Elizabeth Bieniek 05:43
We don’t want to, of course, we’re lacking.

Jess Dewell 05:45
Yeah. Have you had experiences where you’re like, why am I feeling lack here? How do I make this shift?

Elizabeth Bieniek 05:52
I think realizing how much you reframe things, you have to reframe things in your mind of looking at it. Just looking at my life up till now, if I put it in three paragraphs and write it from a position of victimhood, of lack, these are all the things that happened to me. This is where I came from. What does that look like? And then reframe it and write the same thing, three paragraphs about my life up until now from a point of blessing and prosperity. And they would not look like the same person, but they are the same person. And to me, that’s just so telling and powerful of this is just me and my own life and my own experiences. I could look at it this way or I could look at it that way. And you know, they were both 100% true. But which one do I want to choose to focus on and identify with?

Jess Dewell 06:38
Do you find that regardless of which one you focus on, you need the other one to really understand who you are and where you’re at?

Elizabeth Bieniek 06:45
Ying and yang, right and wrong, up and down. You need balance. Because prosperity and wellness and goodness don’t mean anything if you never experience low. So you do have to have that balance.

Jess Dewell 06:58
One of my favorite entrepreneurs, his name is Mike Finessy, he said to me once, how am I going to know how good my filet mignon tastes if I don’t eat Taco Bell once in a while?

Elizabeth Bieniek 07:10
I get it.

Jess Dewell 07:11
I can do it right.

Elizabeth Bieniek 07:15
My husband makes the best steak. We go out and order steak just so we can be reminded.

Jess Dewell 07:21
And when it’s made with love and you get to choose where it comes from that comes back to that balance piece. What are my resources and what can I actually put here in that same vein of things coming back to? And then you can see I have to choose this or this versus how amazing it is. I have choices. Just as one example, I’m like, really? We’re gonna have that again? Yes. Because it’s nutritious and it’s delicious. Makes everybody in my household fueled in the way that they need. Right. I need a lot of protein at my age. My K. It needs a lot of protein at his age. My husband just wants to eat a lot right now. That’s his goal for the things that he’s working on. I think it’s big to be able to acknowledge all that. Sometimes, to your point, it’s like, oh, we’re eating this again. That kind of comes up again. And that happens at work too. Oh, I have to do that again.

Elizabeth Bieniek 08:06
Yes. Rather than I get to do that again. Yeah. My five year old and I argue about that. The whole we’re eating that again. But it’s good and it’s nutritious and it’s hot and it’s yummy and we all like it and it’s here and we have it and we can do it together. Reframing. All about reframing.

Jess Dewell 08:23
Do you remember a point you went Reframing will help me in my personal and professional life.

Elizabeth Bieniek 08:28
I think there was always some element of subconscious reframing that occurred before, but I don’t think I really looked at it as a tool that I could do on purpose until way too late in my career. It’s like, I could actually rethink this in hindsight. There’s certain times where I realized, oh, that’s what I did in that scenario. I remember having a crappy attitude about it, and then I was like, all right, we’re gonna do this. I was reframing. I just didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t know the word to give it. I didn’t know the voice to give it. I didn’t know how to structure it. Changing my thoughts, changing my focus, changing my care abouts. And if I look back, oh, yeah, I’m a glass half full kind of person.

Jess Dewell 09:09
Hey, what can we put in the glass?

Elizabeth Bieniek 09:12
We gotta put glass. It can hold something. Yeah. There’s no holes in it.

Jess Dewell 09:21
That’s interesting because when you look around, you can see people like, okay. And this is interesting when we make the right team makeup, because every team, it’s likely if it’s not the actual Status of being for a person. We will all hit these stages. The, ugh, I have to be here. Or why do we have to be doing this? I don’t understand what this is all about. Right. But then there’s the optimizer of cool. We have paper clips and a keyboard and two colors of pen. What can we draw to try rebuild anything? Exactly. And then there’s the. Even though we don’t have it right now, what could we have? And how do we use what we have right now to get there? And then the people of. This is the way we’ve always done it. Right? We got past future and everywhere in between.

Elizabeth Bieniek 10:13
When you put all these people together, that’s when you get these great, interesting, wild and crazy collaborations. Because you have all these different perspectives and people are all looking at it from a different angle. That’s when you start getting real brainstorming. I like talking about that whole idea of diversity of thought. You need diversity of thought in your group. We focus a lot on diversity of all other kinds, which is also very useful. But a lot of times the reason you’re trying to get diversity of all other kinds is because you’re trying to get diversity of thought. People who had different backgrounds, different experiences, different approaches, and so they’re going to look at things from a different angle. That’s when you get really creative. And I spend a lot of my time living in the world of innovation, and specifically corporate innovation. When you want to innovate. Innovate is just a fancy word for doing things differently, doing things new. So when you want to do that, it really helps to have people who aren’t encumbered by all this. This is how we’ve always done it. This is the way I learned in school. It’s great have people like, I’ve never seen this problem before. What if we did it this way? What if you turned it sideways? What does it look like? That’s when you start getting into real innovation, really creative approach. So I love it when you get the group together that has all these different backgrounds. That’s when it gets exciting.

Jess Dewell 11:25
Share a time with me that you’ve experienced that and all of the things that go through. Because while it’s exciting, it’s not always easy.

Elizabeth Bieniek 11:32
Yes, that is true. My entire career, up until now, pretty much everything I’ve ever done in any project, we’ve always been the underdog. I’ve never been on something that was the flagship product or the top thing. It was usually always the skunk works thing. You can have a few morsels to make. See if you can make that work here. And I think because of that it’s literally been every experience I could ever think of. I worked in some smaller organizations before. I’ve worked in different industries. I worked in education, I worked in publishing, I worked in marketing many lives ago and obviously a lot of technology in corporate America. I think I always gravitated towards those experiences where we’re trying to build something new or different. But risk is scary. Usually management and executive sponsors only want to risk so much. The farther out, out you get with your ideas, the less they want to risk. You have to have these small wins and get creative. For example, if you have only a toothpick and dental floss, you find a way to wrap it around and suspend it to show what you can do and then you might get a little bit more. Show me what you can do with that and then you do a little bit more. I think that’s literally been every experience in my career. But starting small and showing proof points is universal. You can should apply that to everything. When you have big resources, you forget that scrappiness because you’re not forced to do it based on your funding and timeframe. You can start to get a little lazy and sloppy. We’ll wait till a year from now, we’ll do a big reveal. But if you live and die by the day, you’re gonna show something cool every day of what you created.

Jess Dewell 13:13
Regardless of the point of view and the diverse people and experiences that we want on teams, we can also go, oh, there is an element or a theme that everybody that chooses to work in these projects, they’re a little scrappy. If there’s only one way forward, why. And innovation within the known really isn’t innovation. And I’m a big believer of calling out, no, that’s actually not innovation. No, that’s not what’s different here. And that’s hard.

Elizabeth Bieniek 13:46
It’s like micro and macroevolution to any extent. Like there’s value in those small adaptations, you absolutely need to be doing that. But that is not ground-shaking innovation. That’s going to keep you at the top of your game and bring something new to the world. Those are two very different things. And I think a lot of times we do a disservice by lumping them together and just saying it’s all innovation. Anything that’s new or different, that’s innovation. I’m like, okay, making a slight tweak on it. Yes, that’s constant improvement, but that’s not necessarily the innovation that you need for long-term sustainability and growth. And I think when we separate those and realize these are two distinct efforts, you might have two distinct types of personalities who are attracted to and good at those type things. But both are valuable. You need both. They should be complementary.

Jess Dewell 14:33
You’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast. I’m your host Jess Dewell. This is your program for strategizing long-term success while diving deep into what the right work is for your business right now.

Announcer 14:45
You’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast hosted by Jess Dewell, a nationally recognized strategic growth consultant. She works with business owners and executives to integrate just two elements that guide business through the ups and downs of growth. Number one, know what work is necessary. Number two, do all the work. Schedule a complimentary consultation to find out more at reddirection.com.

Jess Dewell 15:19
I overheard a conversation and I’ve heard this conversation at every age. People a little more our age Elizabeth, where they were conversation about being a really good team like Batman and Robin and then they were arguing about who’s Batman and who’s Robin. That’s how I feel about iteration and innovation. Everybody wants the thing they think is the coolest because it happens to be the buzzword, but it’s actually not necessarily.

Elizabeth Bieniek 15:41
Some of the best innovations are not shiny. There’s flashy innovation and then there’s real innovation, which is usually a little dirty. People get less excited about it because it’s not so sexy. It might not be front page news, but it could be transformational. Great innovation can be hard work coated in grime, which can be unattractive to some people. It’s really exciting when you can uncover something. I like the idea of thinking of it as uncovering something. It’s kind of like archeology. You’re digging through the dirt, you’re going to find some buried treasure in there, some nugget of truth. It’s not just gold nuggets laying on the ground out there. There might be something really cool in there, but you got to dig through some rock and dirt and mud to get to it. I agree with gravity, the willingness to do that. That’s part, part of the sense of adventure. I do think people that are really good at innovation are people that just love adventure. And maybe that’s why I like to ask people in interviews, what do you like to read? What’s your favorite book? What are you reading now? I think I always gravitate towards people that have nice business books or hearing events and it’s some big fiction novel or old classic that I’M trying to find a nugget of truth and I’m trying to find the adventure. I’m following the story because it gives a little glimpse at the way their brain works, what they get jazzed about, and where their heart lies. I’m always reading some sort of epic adventure at the same time. I’m reading some business books.

Jess Dewell 17:00
Talk to me about what you’re reading now. I’m curious.

Elizabeth Bieniek 17:02
I’m currently reading Elantris, which was his first published book. I’ve read a bunch of his other books and wanted to like what’s the first one? It’s interesting. I love seeing how writers evolve. His writing is not quite as polished as some of his later ones. I really like the Stormlight Archive, which is a much later one. I love the character development in those. I just finished Tress of the Emerald Sea, which is another Brandon Sanderson, but I love classics too. I just read Last of the Mohicans. I might have read it when I was younger, but so long ago I forgot it.

Jess Dewell 17:29
I’ve only seen the movie. Okay, I’ll add that one to my list.

Elizabeth Bieniek 17:32
Because it’s great to read something that was written so long ago. I’ve usually worked on global teams and my favorite parts were always around the holidays talking about what do you do for the holidays? How do you celebrate this season? Everybody has some holiday. They celebrate in the winter. Regardless of religion or geography. Everybody celebrates something. I love talking about that and finding the differences and similarities. I think that’s what I love about older books as well. If you’ve ever read War and Peace, I wanted to read that because it always has a stereotype of being the biggest book in the world. So I’m like, all right, I’m gonna read it. But it’s about war and peace and it’s about people and there’s so much that’s relatable in there to today. I really like looking at those similarities and differences and realizing that people are constantly growing and changing and everyone is unique, but at the core we’re all the same.

Jess Dewell 18:21
I am not familiar with Brandon Sanderson, so I’m gonna have to check out because I don’t read a lot of fiction. One of my go-to’s is actually called Hope for the Flowers. Have you ever heard of this book? It’s not a graphic novel, but it has pictures and it is not a kid’s book. I found it on the bookshelf when I was a kid, so 50 years old. And it’s about transformation and all of the things that come with a little bit of revolution. And one day I was talking about it and the person I was talking to said, let’s see if she’s still here. So we did and she was. And her phone number was on the Internet. So I called her and we became friends. How’s that?

Elizabeth Bieniek 18:56
Awesome. Very cool.

Jess Dewell 18:58
Yeah, so that’s one of my go-tos that I will read once in a while. I’m also a big fan of things like the Power of Now and the Four Agreements. I really like both of those. Outside of business books, I like anthropology. I like understanding all the different things. How civilizations have occurred and where they have been. Archaeology in the sense of how do we date things and how do we know that the way we do it is right or not right. And there’s a lot of controversy around that. If you want some good conspiracy theories, there’s some great works around that.

Elizabeth Bieniek 19:28
What’s your top one? Give me one.

Jess Dewell 19:29
I’m actually reading the Encyclopedia of Giants in North America. I really like the Cahokia Indian Mounds, which are on the Illinois side of the Mississippi river outside of St. Louis. All up and down the Mississippi, there are all kinds of mounds that have been made. I always thought the people who lived here before we settled were the ones who made them. The stories collected in this book suggest all of these things were here before us. Who we thought lived here and did commerce here and ended up having wars with over settling the land actually were not the people who built these things that are still here. So it’s an interesting experience.

Elizabeth Bieniek 20:04
This other book I’m reading right now is called For Good and Evil. The History of Taxes on the Civilization of the World or Development of the World, something like that. It’s a big book and I’m slowly making my way through it. But it’s talking about every civilization that we have any records on since the dawn of time. The Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, everything. And the impact of taxes on how that society grew or ultimately was destroyed. And it’s fascinating. I’m a latecomer to history and I’ve been eating it up lately. I think because history was my least favorite subject in school, because I suffered a poor backlog of teachers that were just one after another was constantly memorizing dates and names. I thought it was the worst subject until I was in college. I took a class on Western Civilization and my teacher was fantastic. She would just sit down, she’s like, all right, let me tell you what happened there. And it was like a soap opera. And she got into all the things. And this person didn’t like that person and this person like that. She made it come alive. And I was like, wow. History is about people. It’s interesting. Why did nobody tell me this? So I’m late to the history game. But now I read a lot of history.

Jess Dewell 21:14
I do too, if you want a really good one that’s about history. The history of Salt is probably 15 to 20 years old. It was before my son was born that I read this. And I was like, what am I reading? But it was such a good book on what creates commerce and salt used to be the currency. So it’s the history of how we together geographically, locally, guns, germs and steel.

Elizabeth Bieniek 21:36
Like the whole. It’s all about commerce.

Jess Dewell 21:42
Yeah. And I’m a big Stoicism fan. I don’t know if I’m good at practicing it, but I sure do read about it and think I bring in a little bit here and there. And I love Ryan Holiday. Anything Ryan Holiday. It’s the quickest way to get doses of the Roman Empire, actually, is what I have found.

Elizabeth Bieniek 22:04
We can talk about books all day.

Jess Dewell 22:05
Where we have started. If we’re willing to recognize and show up with the expectation that there are differences to be found. It opens up a lot of opportunity.

Elizabeth Bieniek 22:17
The fact that differences don’t meet, we tend to fall into who’s right and who’s wrong. I’ve never been one that sees the world in black and white. I’m very much all the shades of gray. I see everything in between. So when you start getting into these differences, you just understand from a point of understanding. Like, that’s fascinating. This is not better or worse than the other. It’s just different. And I think that’s what you get into on the business side too. And all these different personality approaches or all these different tests of your best optimal working style or communication style, you start understanding all the nuances of the people around you and the way that you work with them, the way they communicate. And realize most of the friction and conflict comes from a point of not understanding the other person. Not necessarily that one is right and one of them is wrong. Just you have two valid opinions, but you’re communicating in a way that you can’t understand. So you’re talking past each other. And if you can find a way to solve that communication gap, you could do something pretty amazing together.

Jess Dewell 23:11
How long does it take a team to get past those types of communication gaps?

Elizabeth Bieniek 23:16
Depends on how often you can get together in person. When I first formed the team that ultimately became the project team that built what later became WebEx hologram. It was a small team, around a dozen to 15 people spread across nine-hour time zones, four different countries, many of them had never met before. And we had a really small Runway for the first phase. When I pitched for funding, I wanted this team, this timeframe, and I think I can deliver this. I need this budget. And the answer I got back was like, you can have the budget and the team, but the 11-month time frame you gave me to show this, if this is technologically feasible, we need it in four months. Like, alrighty, let’s go everybody. We had to get to exactly what you’re asking about a minute ago. Like, how do you build that camaraderie and how do you gel together as a team? We had to get there really fast. So we immediately did a virtual kickoff and then as quick as possible, we planned an in-person kickoff, two and a half days, something like that. It was the first time a lot of these people were meeting together and we had to get to not just camaraderie, we had to get to trust really quickly. That is so hard to build and so hard to build fast. I spent a lot of time planning that off-site with my ops manager, Ashley. And we were just talking about how do we get past everyone trying to posture and position for power. How do we get past all the BS and just get to, guys, we gotta build something in a really short timeframe. We don’t have time for egos, let’s just get into it. And so we had a short time frame, tight agenda. We started with what we thought was the most important thing we could do. Got everybody in the conference room and we said, stand up, you’re on this team, your job. You have to race this drone through this hoop as fast as you can. We spent the first hour doing drone racing inside of a conference room. And it was the best possible icebreaker because it was a team of primarily engineers. So you think about it as it’s problem solvers, people that want to like, how do we do this? Also very competitive. So it was great to see people and we very carefully hand-selected these teams. So everybody was on a team with people they didn’t know or hadn’t worked with before. But you real quick got past it. Like, you’re the expert in this, you’re a PhD in that. You’ve got a paper posted on that. Nobody cares. Can you get this little like tiny drone through that hoop faster than they can do it? That’s all that matters right now. And it was really cool. We have these pictures from that that are still on my phone that I love. I just look at them every now and then. It’s just. It was a great season and a great time and experience. You just see these people diving right into problem-solving. Can I tweak my drone? Then you start figuring out who’s better at speed and who’s better at navigation. All right, we do it together. Okay. You real quick get through this part, then hand to that person. They can navigate. You get to this team building so fast, and I think that’s a lot of what it is. How do you get to camaraderie? And building trust is you have to as quickly as possible tear down these facades and these masks that we’re all fronting and just get to. We are here for a common goal, and the only thing that matters is how can we help each other to achieve that goal. It’s not this positioning. Nobody cares about title. Nobody cares about seniority and years of experience. We are all trying to do our part to get to this goal. Whatever you can do to achieve that is going to help whatever project you’re on move forward. And that’s a lot of what I talk about in CAKE on Tuesday is what I learned through that process. Some things worked, some things didn’t, and some things we figured out the hard way. But anything you could do to help build up camaraderie, that’s amazing.

Jess Dewell 27:01
So that trust and camaraderie, that’s what really makes a team competitive. Like externally?

Elizabeth Bieniek 27:07
I think so. Because you have to go. I’m sure you’ve heard this before about people in armed forces. You’re fighting for the people next to you. You have to build that team feeling like you are all moving towards a common goal, but you are arm in arm with the person next to you. And that factored into our hiring process. Everything we were doing in positioning, structuring teams. I was very clear, anytime we brought somebody new on, we don’t have time for egos. This is a no ego team. So it’s whatever needs to be done at the moment to get the job done. If you think you are at a point in your career where you are above sitting on the floor stripping wires, this is not the team for you. Sometimes you have to run to Home Depot, mail that package at FedEx, roll up your sleeves and futz around with nuts and bolts. It’s whatever needs to be done in the moment. Being careful and making sure that we had people who are okay. With that attitude right from the get-go, creates this inertia and breeds then team so that everybody else sees that they’re jumping like, wow, he’s got more degrees than I do when he’s just jumping in, doing, I can do that too. And it starts feeding itself and it becomes this thing thing. And then you add somebody new to it and they’re like, wow, this is cool, this is different. And they just get sucked into that culture and it becomes their culture too.

Jess Dewell 28:21
So a team dynamic can be influential to integrating somebody quickly and it can benefit from that new addition at the same time finding different ways of healthy conflict. Oh, look, there’s this new person. Oh, there’s somebody we haven’t worked with before. Oh, there’s going to be some dissonance here. That’s healthy because it keeps us all here and reminds us what are we doing. No egos are welcome here.

Elizabeth Bieniek 28:45
Yes, but you have to also carefully foster that. And I talk a lot about leadership of as a leader, you have to set the tone. This is something I think a lot of times not to poo on a bunch of leadership books out there, but I think there’s a lot of things to talk about. Your team should do this rather than you should change your approach and you should model it first. You can’t create a culture that you yourself don’t fully live because people only listen so far to what you say. You have to put it into action. So if you want this team that has no egos, you can’t have an ego. You want this team who wants to throw ideas and be okay with other people building on their ideas. If you throw out a thought and somebody tells you exactly why it’s not going to work and throws out a different one, you have to be okay with that. If you model that to your team as a leader, they’ll very quickly get on board like, all right, this is the space we’ve created. They’re doing it. It must be okay, I can do it too. But if don’t do it and you just say it, that has the opposite effect. Translates, okay, so the boss is saying this. So when they’re around I gotta act like this, but they don’t actually mean it. So I’ve got to play these manipulation games that will kill your culture like that.

Jess Dewell 29:53
And the teams will never create commonality, which means everything will be missed. Have you ever had to catch yourself, whoops, I’m not actually living what I want. How do I make a change?

Elizabeth Bieniek 30:06
We’re all screw up. We all make mistakes? Yeah, 100%. I think part of it too is being the willingness to be vulnerable as a leader. I took a long time in my career. I feel like I learned lessons really late. I spent a lot of my younger career, I would say compartmentalizing. I’m a natural. Compartmentalized. My husband will joke, you didn’t see that pile of laundry. You literally had to step over it. I’m like, yeah, but I was thinking about something else. No, I physically did not see it because I’m thinking about this other thing and there’s no laundry in the thing I’m thinking about. So why would I see it so compartmentally? Comes natural to me. And I think I spent a lot of my early career thinking my success will come from compartmentalizing. When I’m at work, I’m fully at work. I never think about anything personal. And when I’m outside work, I keep my life separate. I don’t talk about personal things at work. It’s just we’re here for just work. And later in my life and learning a few things and having kids is a big thing. Realizing that there’s no such thing as separating your personal and your work life, you get to work and like, oh, there’s spit up on my pants. You just realize these worlds Collide. Maybe my 3-month-old is not plotting this, but it seems every time I have a big presentation, they’re up all night. Worlds collide and you don’t have the luxury of compartmentalizing as easily. Later in my career, I realized these worlds are not separate. And, and that’s important when I’m interfacing with my people too. Their world’s not separate. If they got in a fight or their kid is sick or something else is going on in their life, it will impact them. Maybe they’re going to have an off day or need a little bit more grace. It’s important to realize that we’re all people. We’re all going to screw up. You’re going to have on days and off days, realizing I am a motivation junkie. I respond to certain kinds of motivation very positively and I’ll just go. Other things can be very draining. So I have to be mindful. I’m also an introvert and I spent a large part of my career in very extroverted functions. Speaking, leading partnerships, relationships. I’m always interfacing with people, usually presenting in some facet. I need to find that balance of time where I can think and plan and calm things down. You do have to hack your life and find what works and what doesn’t. Some of it’s trial and error that comes with time, age and experience. Later in my career I found I have to balance things. I can only do so many back-to-back presentations or talks, pitches or off-sites and then I need to supplement that with a certain amount of time that’s brainstorming or just thinking, writing, going through. Are we prioritizing things correctly? And I need nobody around. You get better at those with yourself and I think as you get better with yourself, you get better with how to apply that to your team too.

Jess Dewell 32:49
I’m your host Jess Dewell and we’re getting down to business on the Bold Business Podcast. This is where we’re tackling the challenges that matter most to you with actionable and achievable advice to get real results. That lead to your success. Don’t forget. Press that bell icon so you never miss a program. And it’s time to subscribe as well.

Announcer 33:08
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Jess Dewell 33:22
I think about it in relationship to energy versus behavior or actions only because I know if my heart is full, my brain isn’t as on and if my brain is full, I discern less well and my gut actually says, hey, there’s probably more here, but I’m a little timid today. I’m a big risky risk taker. So I live in the how much risk can I take? Do we have enough to go? Or even if we don’t, cool. At least I’m recognizing we don’t have what we need. Yeah, that’s exactly that mantra of my life that if I’m full someplace else, if I have heartache because of something, or if I have a brain full of things that need to be done, I can’t discern all of the things that there are to discern. I just learned that in the last few years, with all of this success and failure that I have had over time, how cool would it have been to know that I have this on my mind or on my heart? So it’s going to impact my ability to think here or show up for something. How much can I actually be there to help remove the obstacles of the people that I am trying to remove the obstacles for so they can be their best?

Elizabeth Bieniek 34:33
Oh, the things we could have told our younger selves. Somebody asked me who my audience for Kicking Tuesday is. Who’d you write this book for? I’m like me 20 years ago, right? I wish I had this.

Jess Dewell 34:43 J
I was gonna say this is a really great thing because my past self leaves me $5 and $10 in my pockets. I don’t give good advice from my past self. Could I go back? Maybe I could impart that too. So have you ever found a time where you were all of this work and effort to create dynamic teams that move fast, that are truly innovative and will let their egos aside to get to this common goal? Have you ever found yourself lonely in that?

Elizabeth Bieniek 35:22
Yes. I think leadership can be lonely because by the nature of it, you have to be out front, specifically leading in innovation. You’re helping to find the way through. There are times where you purposefully cannot clue your team into everything that’s going on because protecting your team and shielding them from the noise is necessary. Biggest roles of leadership is enabling and empowering your team to do what they are meant to do so you’re not trying to encumber them with all the hassles of leadership. Are we going to get that funding? Are we going to make that deadline? Is this deal going to come through? They don’t need to know that. A lot of times you’re trying to shield them from that in many ways, like parenting. My kids can only handle so much information. We just had a snowstorm here in Austin and we had to prepare for that because Austin doesn’t really do snow. So there’s things my husband and I are doing about do we have the generator, do we have some extra propane, do we have the firewood, do we have extra water in case we lose this? My kids will see some of that preparation. They’ll ask, why are you doing that? And so I might explain. All right, we’re having a snowstorm and we don’t really have structure for that. When it’s snow on the ground, we can’t drive somewhere to get something for maybe a day or two and we might lose power and might get cold. We’re just doing some extra things to be careful. My kids don’t want me to say the generator wasn’t working and we’re not sure of this and we need a new cable. They don’t need to have those stresses because their main job is to go out and play in the snow because it never happens in Austin. I don’t want them encumbered by these other things. Things. And the same way with a team, you hire great people who are better than you at what they do and you want to enable them to do that. So you don’t hire somebody who’s awesome at Skill X and Then say you’re at it. Also worry about Skill Y and all these other things. Let me deal with those. You focus on skill X. I’ve got these other things covered. If you need something, let me know. If something changes, I’ll let you know. But in the meantime, you’ve got your path, I’ve got my path. We’re good. So protecting them from that I think is really important. And that can be lonely because there’s only so many people you can share those things with.

Jess Dewell 37:36
I wish my past self knew. That was actually something that I learned late in my work. I end up working with founders and executive teams that have never experienced that before, that they try and share too much and that’s hard to come back from. You really have to trust yourself to go, whoops, that was a little too much.

Elizabeth Bieniek 37:54
Sharing is a problem.

Jess Dewell 37:55
Sharing is a problem because we want everybody to feel empowered and we forget just TMI doesn’t. Empowerment doesn’t include.

Elizabeth Bieniek 38:04
Yeah, it’s easy to wrap your head around it when you’re talking about something like parenting and your kids and realize, okay, my child doesn’t have the life exposure to understand that this is just a risk and something you want to plan for in them. It’s just going to create fear. It’s harder in a work environment because we’re all grown adults. We all have lives and pay mortgages and have life experience. So realizing from their vantage point, they don’t need that extra fear and they might not be able to see all the other moving parts that you have. They might not get all the updates. Are you just throwing fear on them? Is the one-time data dump of information and now you’ve created this fear that’s going to grow and distract them without a good resolution. Yeah, that’s not a healthy environment.

Jess Dewell 38:44
So we have to trust ourselves to keep our mouths closed and that we know what we’re doing and we chose that leadership role.

Elizabeth Bieniek 38:51
Now the flip side of that is you should have a good mentor cabinet. You should have people outside of your job function that you can dump on. It really helps if they are nowhere near your reporting chain, nowhere near your organization, possibly nowhere near your industry. Sometimes it helps to have an outlet to venture. Sometimes that’s your spouse, sometimes that’s someone in a completely different space. Sometimes it’s somebody in a similar role in a totally different industry. And you can just share back and forth. Could be great idea. Sharing could just be getting something off your chest. I also talk about this idea of huckleberries going back to books. Huckleberry Finn is where that term comes from. But if you trace it back, it goes to Arthurian legend where a knight used to drape a huckleberry garland over their lance as a symbol of allegiance to a lord or lady. The whole concept was I will fight for you. I will go into the fire with you. I love the idea of finding your huckleberry. I mentioned mine earlier. Who was Ashley? My ops manager who helped me plan drone racing. She was my huckleberry through thick and thin, through this project. She was my one person. I don’t share all of my fears and concerns with her because she was my employee, but she was my partner in crime that would go into these unknowns with me. I compared her a lot to in the Lord of the Rings. She was my Sam. She was the one that went with me into everything. I think it’s important to find that one or two people in your environment, in your team who can be your huckleberry. It might be a different person for different scenarios. It might be my chief of staff, my admin or my ops manager. They all have different roles. It could be different for different things. But you need that person that’s going to go with you into the fray and help you with that battle. Because if you’re doing everything alone, that’s also a problem. You need to make sure that you have help and support. Yes.

Jess Dewell 40:44
That’s the only way to continue to trust. I think we erode our own trust if we don’t have those outlets you’re talking about. How do we continue to make sure that we’re letting go? But we’re also having an opportunity to grow and sift through things so that we can reflect and whatever we want to take forward, to be able to, to take forward.

Elizabeth Bieniek 41:03
And sometimes they have to hold you accountable too. One time where Ashley messaged me and said, go get yourself a coffee, take a break. And she text me a picture. So no, he actually did it. I sent her like I’m taking a break.

Jess Dewell 41:17
That’s good.

Elizabeth Bieniek 41:18
Sometimes you need that.

Jess Dewell 41:19
We do need that. And that external accountability builds our self-trust. So this is my question then. We have to be able to listen to ourselves too. What makes it bold to listen to ourselves as we keep taking that next step?

Elizabeth Bieniek 41:30
That’s a big one. Because listening to yourself means you have to value your own opinion. When you start getting that, you start getting into imposter syndrome and self-doubt. Am I the right person? Should people be listening to me? When going gets rough, it can be really hard. But I do firmly believe in that gut feeling, that gut check. I really like Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink because it validates that whole idea of gut reaction and saying it’s. There’s science behind that. There’s a reason why you should listen to your gut. And I’ve always been somebody that really relies on my gut. And there’s been times in my career where someone’s asked, what is your proof for that? I’m like, I don’t have proof. It’s just a really strong gut feeling. And I’ve had cases where leaders, I need more than that. I need proof. Okay, I don’t have it. And there’s been other scenarios where leaders saying, your gut’s been right in the past. I’ll let you go out and ledge in this one. And. And when it comes through, it’s great to be able to say, oh, my God, was right on that. And it gives you some confidence to realize, maybe I should listen to that inner voice. But like I said, I really like Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink because I did feel like he unpacked that a bit and went deep on it. Of it’s not just this random feeling and emotion of the day. There’s usually a scientific response to that, and you don’t realize that your subconscious is processing all these other things and information that maybe you’re too busy or stressed to realize, but you are actually making a computation in your brain and a good guess based on inference from all these pieces of information that you’re bringing together, even if you don’t realize you’re doing it. So there is value in your gut. So I think getting comfortable with listening to that and realizing, if nothing else, it should be a pause. If your gut is screaming, you slow down. You should probably at least listen to it to pause and think, what am I missing? Take that little step back. Even if the mini pause, what am I missing? What else could be going on here? Let me ask for some advice here. Let me check my mentor cabinet. Let me just pause and look at the industry. Is there something going on? Because it’s rare that your gut is going to start screaming if there’s not something that you’re missing that you should be mindful of.

Jess Dewell 43:38
Every single time I have a conversation, I take away something that I want to share with 25 people. I know when you’re listening to this podcast, you’re also listening for that and will have something that you want to share in the comments. I would like for you to engage with us. What is that thing that you want to tell 25 people from this program, here’s why it’s important. It’s important because yeah, there are going to be how-to’s. Yes. There are going to be steps. Yes. You’re going to be like, oh, I wish I wrote that down. I wish I wasn’t doing this and I could actually take action on that right now. But guess what? You’re not so engaged right now because that one thing you want to share with others will be the thing that you can figure out how to incorporate in your business, in your workflow, in your style tomorrow.

Announcer 44:28
Jess hosts the Bold Business Podcast to provide insights for building a resilient, profitable business by deeply understanding your growth strategy, ensuring market relevance, and your company’s future. It is bold to deeply understand your growth strategy with your host Jess Dewell. Get more information about how to drive solutions and reset your growth mindset at reddirection.com thank you for joining us and special thanks to our post-production team at the Scott Treatment.