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How To Use Boundaries to Facilitate Success

How To Use Boundaries to Facilitate Success

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Starting the conversation:

Accountability is based on boundaries. How well we define, communicate, and engage with them will determine how well we do achieving our goals. Boundaries and constraints help with finding common ground and the right solutions for right now. Jan Yuhas and Jillian Yuhas, Relationship Capital & Conflict Resolution Strategists, discuss how healthy relationships catapult our ability to succeed.

One step at a time not only helps us stay present and engaged, each step allows for integration of the information you experience. With information from doing, you can integrate the role of values and coping skills to improve your relationship with yourself. The deeper your self-understanding, the more able you are to keep commitments to yourself.

In this program, you will hear how to negotiate a solution from common ground, how to be accountable, and that leaps are made when everyone has a voice and can move forward together. Jess Dewell talks with Jan Yuhas and Jillian Yuhas, Relationship Capital & Conflict Resolution Strategists, about using boundaries to reach your goals more effectively.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: Jan Yuhas and Jillian Yuhas

What You Will Hear:

0:50 Accountability can be built one step at a time.

2:12 How to be self-accountable.

  • The journey is not a straight line.
  • It takes understanding the way we cope with stress, coping skills hold us back.
  • The way we show up has the same foundation — professionally and personally.

5:50 It is a process to discover your values.

  • Communicate from a place of value.
  • It is possible to meet everyone’s goals by having boundaries.
  • You know what your values are when they are tested or ignored.
  • Action Tip: Notice every day where frustration, fear, and anger pop up. Your values are not being met in those instances.

9:10 Negotiate solutions from common ground.

  • Boundaries create connections to reach a common goal.
  • New situations can illuminate new and deeper expressions of your values.
  • There will be overlap between professional and personal values that influence operations, reputation, and attract like-minded people.

19:40 There are boundaries that businesses are already good at.

  • The expectations of working hours.
  • Operationally in contracts with employees.
  • How streamlining and decision-making occur.

22:20 It is your responsibility to regulate your emotions.

  • This is challenging. Anger, resentment, and fear may cause overreactions which cause overreactions from others toward you.
  • Getting to know yourself includes knowing your triggers and how to de-escalate yourself.
  • Figure out what you can do for yourself when stuck in a situation.
  • The power of discovery questions.

27:44 Get to calm. Speak with confidence and conviction.

  • Ask open-ended questions.
  • Questions may start with: can… how… what… and when…
  • Be curious: help me understand…

30:40 Moving forward together happens when everyone has a voice.

  • Be able to be open-minded, in a business this approach starts at the top.
  • Be ready to do what it takes to get there.
  • Example: right person in the right role.
  • Do everything you can to see other perspectives.

38:50 Boundaries require ongoing work.

  • It gets easier with diligent practice.
  • Know the depth of your own triggers, hold space for the triggers that impact others.
  • Your self-advocacy deepens your connections.
  • How you say it matters to moving forward and repairing trust breaks in relationships.

46:10 It is BOLD to create boundaries to reach your goals more effectively.

How To Use Boundaries to Facilitate Success - Jan Yuhas
How To Use Boundaries to Facilitate Success - Jillian Yuhas
How To Use Boundaries to Facilitate Success - Jess Dewell

Resources

Transcript

Jess Dewell 00:00
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 reinvention, the conversations we are having will help you at each of those stages.

Jillian Yuhas 00:49
Calmness can seem it makes them feel uncomfortable, and so the chaos is what they thrive in. It stimulates and motivates. Yeah, to be successful.

Jess Dewell 00:57
Yes, it’s time for the chaos.

ANNOUNCER 01:03
You are listening to the Bold Business Podcast, where you will hear first-hand experiences about what it really takes to ensure market relevance and your company’s future.

Jess Dewell 01:15
Our boundaries evolve as we do, the way we show up in the world, the things that are important to us, the things we expect from other people, all come from our own value set. I was talking with Jan Newhouse and Julian Newhouse about this, and what I will tell you is that our conversation had three key takeaways. The first was we have to recognize in our negotiations the goal is to get to common ground to find the best way forward and the right solution for right now. The second thing is, well, that requires accountability, and how do we be accountable? And a third thing is that, when we all have a voice and we all are open to receive the perspectives of those around us and their voices, that’s ultimately how we will be able to move forward together. So when we talk about things like being assertive, when we talk about transparency and honesty and communication, we just have to recognize ourselves first. And how do we take care of ourselves in the moment? How do we prepare and show up. How do we recognize the distance which we have come to get to where we are so that we can keep going forward, not only on our own journey, but also what the journey is of everybody who is on the path with us right now, and of course, over time, that will change, and maybe our paths cross in different ways, or maybe they cross once and they move on. Whatever it is we have the ability with our boundaries to create that win-win, to create the best possible outcomes, valuing each other, valuing ourselves and really working toward how can we get to that common ground to make an impact. And Jan and Jillian share their experiences and are coming with the viewpoint of conflict resolution strategies and their international best-selling authors. They have a book called Boundary Badass, a powerful method for elevating your value and relationships. They coach highly ambitious entrepreneurs. They coach businesses. They have been working with over a decade with them to understand how to resolve conflict, apply business psychology to negotiate agreements for overall lasting success that makes everybody feel good and accomplished. I’m excited for you to see this show.

Jan Yuhas 03:43
When there’s business goals, what we tend to see is there’s usually a lack of self-discipline in place sometimes, or a clear plan of action and how that goal is going to be achieved, and then making sure that we have step-by-step accountability or integrity within that plan of action in order to meet deadlines and achieve the end goal. But I think a lot of it boils down to, yeah, it could be a lack of transparency from multiple people involved and team members, of not defining having defined roles. But a lot of it can also boil down to, I think that lack of strategic planning and accountability.

Jess Dewell 04:26
I actually just saw stat, 80% of companies feel like they plan well. 44% of those companies feel like they execute well. And I thought that was fascinating, and that’s actually one from this year, and I went back over time, and that’s actually similar for the last 20 years, give or take five points in either direction, but it’s usually about half right. However good you think you are, you’re half as good at actually doing that execution. So you hit a lot of keywords here, transparency, accountability. I’d like to start there. Accountability. How do you start accountability?

Jillian Yuhas 05:01
I think that begins with being aligned to your inner truth and your value system because if you’re not aligned to who you are, it’s going to be much harder to maintain that account accountability through the ups and downs that you’re going to face along the pathway when trying to achieve those goals, because it’s never a straight line, as we all know so in one way to be accountable is understanding what that value alignment is to your inner truth, and that’s what’s going to help you stay steady through that pathway as you keep striving towards the goal. If you’re not getting your goal, and you feel like you’ve aligned your values, what then? How do we dig deeper into this

Jan Yuhas 05:41
If we are not meeting our goal and we are aligned to our values, you ask, you think you are? Yeah, there’s actually a lot of people can think that they have a lot of integrity in terms of who they are and their character, but what happens is, sometimes, when we have setbacks or trying to reach our goal, these maladaptive coping skills we might have might overtake the process, and that’s where we start to lack integrity within ourselves because we revert back maybe to old behaviors. A lot of these behaviors actually come from us, learning to deal with problems growing up in childhood, believe it or not, and so when we develop those maladaptive coping skills such as maybe perfectionism or procrastination, or maybe there’s a lack of time management, so all those different maladaptive coping skills that we might have developed as defense mechanisms or perfectionism, maybe we don’t feel like we actually deserve to reach This goal. So then we start self sabotaging by perfecting things over and over and so that’s where we get off in terms of our integrity in terms of reaching that goal.

Jess Dewell 06:49
So do you have a tip or an activity that we could do by ourselves? Probably first that would help us understand, am I truly aligned, or did I accidentally get off track here?

Jillian Yuhas 07:07
So usually, we help people identify their top five personal values and their top five professional values. If you can find overlap in those areas, that’s really great. For example, time is one of my communication integrity, those are my top three, and those are across my personal and my professional life. So what I would do is write down an activity or an action step I take each day around those values to hold myself accountable each and every day, so I can reflect on my own behaviors and making sure they’re aligned to my value system as I navigate each day towards my goal, and that can really help us see if we’re staying aligned because we’re holding ourselves accountable by and we’re also reminding ourselves of those values and who we are and what’s important to us, as well as we go through different conversations we might have with team members or through clients, whoever we’re actually Communicating with, making sure that we’re doing our job to make sure that we feel good about ourselves, but we’re also heading towards the direction we want to go.

Jess Dewell 08:08
What was your journey to discover your own personal values? Let’s start there.

Jan Yuhas 08:15
She and I grew up in a rural farm town in 900 and moved to metropolitan city of 3 million and went through a huge culture shock, and that experience in itself made us realize that communicating from a place of emotion left us feeling unheard or misunderstood or undervalued in our relationships, and that experience is what became the catalyst for us realizing that emotions don’t work to be heard and understood that it’s values, when we communicate from place, articulate our needs from place of value, that it’s universally understood by others. And through our first entrepreneurial endeavors, we had discovered that setting boundaries from a place of value allowed us to keep the relationship intact with our clients while still meeting everybody’s goal within a respectful manner.

Jess Dewell 09:05
Jillian, you are sharing some of your personal and business values. I’m curious how you separate them, only because similar work and mine looks different than yours, and I think it’ll be fun to talk about I also love the methodology and the thoughtfulness that goes into, how do we get to this place where we can articulate and we can have this and I think our audience would want to know a little bit more about that. Is there a tool that you’re using to help articulate those five personal values?

Jillian Yuhas 09:33
How we identify our values, is thinking about our limits or our triggers in our life, so where people may cross us wrongly, or things that may emotionally upset us or make us frustrated or angry, whatever that looks like. The opposite of that trigger or limit that we experience, for example, is our value. Yeah, for example, if you’re being dismissed or ignored, you might value communication where you have place. Of dissonance. Are the places to look and say, This is frustrating, this is weird. This doesn’t feel right. It makes me feel any negative emotion, and then from there, okay, so what does that actually mean? What did I want to have happen? Where do I feel like I was either lacked or where I lacked showing up, or somebody didn’t see me right, or complete?

Jan Yuhas 10:27
Because sometimes when people are expressing themselves, they either can choose to stay silent and not show up so the other they think the other person can read their mind, but they’re not expressing that need in that moment, because maybe they’ve gone into a free trauma response and just shut down and went silent altogether, or maybe they overreacted and became emotionally heightened and went into a fight trauma response, and so then the other person may not have heard what they said, either, because they were just trying to protect themselves in that moment.

Jess Dewell 10:54
Once you have these elements of self-reflection, this is what’s showing up for me, and there’s some work that has been done to go so here’s what I actually wanted or desired or felt like would make the situation complete. That’s the value statement. And then what do you do with those value statements?

Jillian Yuhas 11:13
The goal is to show up every single day according to your values, because that’s what holds you accountable and maintains integrity, and that’s how we feel good about ourselves. So in a way, it’s a form of like self-care and self-love, which we need in order to be a great performer be able to reach our goal. So if we’re not aligned to those values, it’s going to feel much more challenging because we’re going to feel anxious or frustrated because we’re not aligned to our truth. Also, we can’t really set boundaries with others, so if we say we value time management, yet we constantly keep missing our deadlines of when something is due, we that’s showing that we don’t have integrity, or we’re misaligned to our authentic truth. And I think a lot of times when people they want something they desire and that’s a need, that they might value time management, but then they’re lacking that integrity within themselves to reach that deadline. And I think too a lot of times people will expect other people to meet a certain deadline, but yet, the fact that they’re not meeting their own deadlines or not showing up in a way, in terms of if a team is working together, it’s really hard to ask for something if you’re not already honoring it in your life and it’s important to you, or they’re projecting blame onto somebody else as to why the project didn’t get done according to that timeline.

Jess Dewell 12:27
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.

ANNOUNCER 12:45
Focused on growth? Listen to more programs like this, which support the challenges and opportunities you are working with right now. Search Bold Business Podcast for the key terms at Reddirection.com, or your preferred podcast listening app.

Jess Dewell 13:01
I’m glad you brought up the time piece because I will tell you what I hate, linear time. There are very few things in this world. I will say, H, A, T, e2, linear time is one of them. I know people talk about Island time or something like that, but I was like, No, when I show up, that’ll be right. It’s supposed to be whatever it is. It’s the authentic part of me. I’ve got my own system, and that can work, but that also has an edge that doesn’t meet other people in their value of time. So that was actually what the breakdown ended up being. Was, oh, so it’s okay for me, but if other people are not okay with it, or I’m not able to communicate it, or it doesn’t fit to the common goal, then I was having this problem, and this coach was able to help me identify that. And to your point about accountability, she gave me a task. She said, What are you going to do every day to make sure you own up and meet somebody or something for yourself or another in linear time? And it took a little while when it clicked, it really clicked. Jillian and Jan, it really, really clicked, and it made a huge shift all at once. We can talk about this, and we can practice it, and it can be hard, and I took a little while, but when it happened, it was, boom, done shift. And if there’s ever a linear time problem, usually to your point, stressor, trauma response, something that put me back into just time instead of shared time.

Jillian Yuhas 14:32
Yeah, and I’m glad you brought that up because most of time when we have a shared, common goal with two people. Now as an entrepreneur, if you’re just working on solo, you can have that flexible time of to when you’re going to get things done because you’re just in your own space and time, but if it’s a shared goal, and we have two opposing perspectives of how they view time, that’s when we have to negotiate a compromise in resolution, which is how we set boundaries based on the value. You have time, so that way each person can come together and find common ground, and the connection is the boundary set, so that each person is getting their needs met, but with the shared common goal. At the end of the day,

Jess Dewell 15:12
I’m curious, was there a big aha, that was this huge shift, that there was nowhere to go but forward, and it left behind what needed to be left behind

Jan Yuhas 15:22
In terms of our personal lives? Yeah, personal just your personal values. Yeah, the personal values? Yeah. We, we realized when we had moved from such a role farm town, we were always used to being heard and understood or getting our needs met. We quickly learned that a lot of and we had a, we mindset as well, growing up being twins. So before we made decisions in business or in like that, if it impacted the other person, we would run it by the other person the same way you do usually with the business partner. You don’t make a major decision or unilateral decision that’s going to impact the business if you haven’t ran it by your business partner. And so she and I have always had this we mindset being twins growing up. And I think when we went to this big culture shock, we experienced a lot of people who had more of a me mindset because obviously they didn’t have a twin growing up. And that was a big aha moment for us when in terms of setting boundaries, it’s having a we mindset versus the me mindset that’s going to allow you to achieve the end goal and get to the same be on the same page. Either person should be sacrificing their own self-worth or value, but we still have to compromise or negotiate that solution that meets the relationship goal as well as a whole.

Jess Dewell 16:35
Were talking about negotiating solutions. We were talking about our self versus other, right? And this, we mindset that does seem to miss the mark. Sometimes it might be thought it’s there, but in practice, it is not. So how does that differ? Now, to your to this concept of business values, right? So I was thinking, let’s take a stock really honor where we’re at this moment. And then, so how do we show up in business that way? And you started to go there, Jan, with a business partner piece, you started to talk about that, that going from the Me to We, and where does that show up in bit in business, I’m thinking about the Okay, so the frustrations that we have individually, I get that for about what the value actually is. How does that translate into a business setting to define business value sets?

Jillian Yuhas 17:22
I think if you think about your business values or professional values like you’re thinking about what’s important in order to have operations and foundations in place, to have the company be able to operate on a day-to-day basis, and what that also looks like with maybe client relationships or team members, and so you’re having these conversations around values in order to have shared common groundwork, but so you also understand each other, because if we don’t open up the communication channels around these values, then lots of misunderstandings or disconnects can happen, which is where then we get problems start to rise, and then we have disconnects and more discord amongst others. So yeah, you want to think about your business, what the reputation of your business is going to be based on? If you don’t have a reputation of your business doesn’t have integrity, you’re going to start to see a drop off in your clientele, probably because you’re not creating a trustworthy business where people are going to keep coming back to you or referring you. So your values are, also come from your reputation and brand of what you want to be known for, in terms of mission as a company. I also think too, when you have these values, you’re more likely to attract clientele that have similar values too, and people that you want to thrive and work with. Otherwise, if you’re, let’s say you have a growth mindset, and then you also are attracting people they want to, you know, change their business, the director of their business, but they don’t have a growth mindset. They just want someone to do the work for them, like a turnkey. That’s gonna be frustrating if you don’t offer that type of service, and you’re trying to work together collaboratively to reach their goals. But interaction, more or less interactive process. I think it’s we want to work with people who are like us, which makes it more likely to attract those people by honoring those values on a day-to-day basis.

Jess Dewell 19:11
In general, when you look at companies, what do you think they’re getting right when it comes to boundaries?

Jan Yuhas 19:18
I think having professional business hours is important, in terms of operations, to have that positive lifestyle balance within our lives, knowing when to shut everything off and attend to our personal needs, whether it’s self-care, family time, whatever that may look like. So professional business hours is important. I also think having very clear operation contracts with clients or operations within a company is also very clear in terms of establishing boundaries of operations and clear, clear roles of each defined what each person employers role is. Yes, yeah. I think too, like in terms of employees responsibilities, I think a lot of times tasks can get put on to somebody else. And I think if those responsibilities aren’t clear, it’s going to be hard to know how to set a boundary, if you feel like you’re constantly being asked to take on somebody else’s roles and responsibilities. And so that way, a lot of times I know nowadays where companies are shifting and trying to get away with less employees, people are doing two jobs versus one, and so knowing what that is clear when you’re hired from the beginning can be very helpful. So you can advocate for yourself in terms of raises or bonuses as well.

Jess Dewell 20:35
I don’t think we celebrate enough wins. So when I hear boundaries that businesses do right when they’re trying to do more with less. It’s easy to just let certain things fall and then the assumption is it’ll still get done, but it doesn’t. And if the wrong things are falling by the wayside, it becomes apparent very fast. It becomes apparent in a lot of different ways. Usually it’s turnover first, then it might be sales, and then it might be some other things that are related or unrelated to that show up when we’re trying to do more with less. Assumptions were made. There’s a lack of clarity and yes, the constant pressure of wanting to grow, needing to grow, expected to be growing, whatever growth looks like, can be tricky. And that’s one of the things that if we’re if, in general, those are the things that make a company able to do it right. You had mentioned earlier the power of the pause. And I think this is the time where, anytime there’s a thing, anytime there’s a disconnect, or people are feeling off track, it’s time to I don’t know if you learned this in elementary school, but I did stop drop and roll, and realistically, that’s the first thing. You gotta stop and take a look around and then decide what you’re gonna do next. And you had mentioned power of the pause. So let’s talk about that a little. Tell us about the power of the pause.

Jan Yuhas 21:52
When we’re in an emotional, triggered state, we are responsible for our own emotions, and so in order to resolve disconnects or conflicts within the workplace, we need to be able to emotionally regulate our own emotions, and the power of pause can either mean, you know what? This, it doesn’t seem like we’re on the same page right now. I need to take some time to think about this. Let’s talk about this an hour from now or tomorrow morning, first thing at 8 am so you’re letting them know that you need time to process, and you’re taking that time away because you’re feeling emotionally triggered, and more than likely, a positive outcome is not going to come from that conversation. If you’re not an emotionally collected place, you mean,

Jess Dewell 22:31
and I’m going to totally go at home now, because I do this at work, it just looks different. I remember when my son was four, and we would get to a place where I’m like, oh, okay, well, if I’m gonna either start acting four years old or I need to take a quick break here. So I would look at my son, and I’d be like, I’m taking the time out. I’ll be back. And he would be like, but you’re not in trouble. I said, we’re not in trouble in timeout. We’re taking a time out because we need to know what’s what, so that we don’t get in trouble. That’s how we did it and, and that’s actually something that I know it’s easy to overlook as adults, or we assume that we all have the capacity with which to regulate our own emotions, when even if we held up the mirror, maybe sometimes that’s a little less than true.

Jan Yuhas 23:20
I think emotional regulation is much more challenging. And so I think a lot of times it’s not that people are even emotionally regulated. I think a lot of times they’re either biting their tongue because they don’t know how to respond in that moment, and so then they’re suppressing their whatever is happening, which only then creates further frustration or anger resentment within that dynamic, or, like I said, or they overreact, and yeah, emotional regulation is not is definitely a learned skill that does take time, and everybody can benefit from doing it. You just need to know what your triggers are, and then what is your plan of action to take that power of pause. It’s different for everybody. It might be like you need to take a walk around the block. You might need to do some deep breathing for a five or 10 minutes. So it looks different for everybody in terms of regulating their emotions before going back to the drawing board and getting to the more or less resolving the problem.

Jillian Yuhas 24:17
I also think too, if you are stuck in a meeting, and you can’t leave it, and people are really going at it. Sometimes it’s good to ask a discovery question to the other people to get them talking, which buys you time to create that power of pause for yourself, so you have time to think thoroughly more about what it is that you want to say. So we ask other people, can you share more about x or help me understand more about why that’s buying you time, which also gives you time to collect yourself in that moment if you cannot leave the situation, which also, like I said, allows there still to be a positive, collaborative outcome, but you’re buying yourself that power of time and pause. I think it’s also important that. We want to make sure we’re not we’re assessing and we’re not assuming, because we could be emotionally triggered, but we could be assuming the wrong thing has been said, or the wrong intention has come from the other person. So when we assess, we’re also clarifying to make sure there’s not any misunderstandings in what we heard.

Jess Dewell 25:16
This is so cool. I’m thinking about this, and I’ll bet you, I’ll bet you, every single person listening knows can think of a time that they were in a meeting. It could been a one-on-one meeting. It could have been with your superior or somebody who reports to you. It could have been at a meeting that you thought was going to be one thing and turned out to be another, and all of a sudden you wanted to be able to crawl under or run out or become the fly on the wall and not actually be involved. That’s a really great time to just quickly reflect and say, Hey, okay, pull that up. And what would have made me feel calm in that moment, to punt it right, to kick, kick the can down the road a little bit to tomorrow. I heard you share that, to be able to just breathe while other people are still doing what other people are doing. Maybe ask for a five-minute break to get some water or to change. Hey, how about if we all stand up something that would just allow a I hear a break in the energy with which to decide, do I can I stay? Or do I go? I actually might have just quoted a song.

Jan Yuhas 26:20
The whole point is to get yourself to a calm demeanor so you can actually have a constructive conversation. Because if we aren’t calm, it’s gonna be very challenging to find our resolution that we’re and bridge the gap between two different mindsets or perspectives. And I think too, people are more inclined to listen to us if we speak with confidence and conviction, and they’re more likely to hear us out and take what we’re saying, you know, in a way, and apply it or digest it, versus ignoring us if we’re coming up from emotional way or perspective because we’re feeling emotionally triggered in that moment.

Jess Dewell 26:54
So what do you do with the people who do that? Because that’s where they find their calm and everybody else’s stress?

Jillian Yuhas 27:00
Yeah, the way to manage a challenging personality type, or someone who likes to create drama per se, is to use discovery questions, because then you’re indirectly guiding the conversation to an outcome, or a way to help them see other perspective outside themselves. If they are set on having their way, and they operate more from a fixed mindset or more from the egocentric sort of thinking process. In our values is more about heart-centered thinking. But when we use discovery questions, we’re asking them questions of putting it back on them. But you can ask strategic questions that gets to where you want to go, and discovery questions are open-ended questions that do not end in a yes or no answer. So you might say, can, how, what, when, help me understand. So you’re really trying to get them to you’re really asking these questions to get them to do more talking, but you’re asking them to basically break down what they’re saying so they actually reflect on what they just said, if it’s especially if it comes across as offensive or disrespectful or isn’t creating connection or collaboration or Yeah, is a huge growers now reaching the end goal.

Jess Dewell 28:13
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 28:26
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 possible. Schedule a complimentary consultation to find out more. At Reddirection.com.

Jess Dewell 28:57
How do you create a working culture that allows anybody to, to question, are we still working toward the goal?

Jillian Yuhas 29:06
This is where I think true leadership comes in. Everyone should be able to have a voice, and you want your employees to feel like they do have a voice, because, honestly, that’s what makes a company feel collective and allow everyone to want to be a part of the greater mission and work harder and perform well. And so I think a lot of times a true leader is more inclined to want their employees to give them feedback because that’s where people are going to thrive. If you have a leader who’s just about dictating and demanding, that’s not really a true leader, which is what’s going to create that toxic culture,

Jess Dewell 29:42
And can that type of a culture be shifted?

Jan Yuhas 29:47
Think, as long as people are open-minded, and you have at least one or two people who’s on board in the C suite that’s willing to say, Listen, we got to make it change if we actually want to beat out our competitors, or if we actually want to. Reach our end goal by the end of the year. So you definitely need someone on that team that’s willing to inspire or make an impact, to get those people and other people on board.

Jess Dewell 30:09
And is there a time that you helped a company do this? Because I’m trying to imagine, trying to imagine the steps and the milestones of that, and I’m like, I be honest with you, I think that I will have gotten people down the path toward that, but I couldn’t get them everywhere they wanted to go because of the roadblocks in their way. What they were really willing to commit to that came up, of course, over time, right? That commitment versus what they’re actually willing to do to get there.

Jan Yuhas 30:36
So sometimes, when you have challenging personalities that are more in the say in the managerial role, if they have these psychological blind spots because they’re thriving on control rather than what is best for the Creative Collective in order to reach that end goal, if they’re not willing to see outside of themselves and not willing to hear or and understand their colleagues and co-workers. Then sometimes that person may not be the best that may being a manager of everybody else may not be the best role for them within a company. Maybe there’s another role that they might thrive in, but being the leader or overseeing other teams or whatnot might not be their best role, because to be a best team leader, you need to be able to listen to outside perspective. But yeah, there was a situation, and unfortunately in that situation, we had to make recommendations where somebody knew had to come in regards to the manager role that was willing to listen to everybody else, in regards to colleagues,

Jess Dewell 31:46
That’s tough getting the right people on the right seat, especially when there’s tradition, especially when there’s credibility, or perceived credibility, or a huge amount of organizational Knowledge, right? That knowledge of everybody that resides in sometimes in that one person can feel stressful, and that’s actually it’s really interesting because there’s an element of being comfortable in turbulence too here and or comfortable that turbulence will exist. I don’t know if you can ever be comfortable in turbulence. I’ve yet to find a I’ve yet to find a time in my world where I’m actually like, yes, it’s time for the chaos and the trip.

Jillian Yuhas 32:24
No, there are people who thrive in chaos, and that’s usually the challenging personality types who have that very fixed mindset, because they grew up in a home that had a lot of chaos, and they were dismissed. They didn’t have a voice, and so they learned the maladaptive coping skills. And so for them, calmness can seem it makes them feel uncomfortable, and so the chaos is what they thrive in. It stimulates and motivates. Yeah, to be successful,

Jess Dewell 32:51
Sometimes there will be people who don’t seem to want to be collaborative, and it has nothing to do with the fact that they do or don’t, because the want is an assumption here, because they may not know how.

Jan Yuhas 33:05
True. And it can be a very sub. It can be subconscious that they’re sabotaging the relationships they have with others.

Jess Dewell 33:13
Yeah, okay. And so then I’m going to be like, hey for everybody who’s listening watching and going, ooh, I can name those people, or I don’t know anybody like that. Either way, we all might have a little bit of closed-mindedness in us. We all might have that place where we do close down and we can’t be open anymore, and just to be able to, with grace, acknowledge that in ourselves. I think it’s a huge piece of going okay, so I’m going to run into this okay. And sometimes I might be in the middle of a conversation, go, ooh, look, I became that okay, and to the end then the common goal. So in the midst of this, in the midst of figuring out how to get calm, taking that power of the pause, going back, and actually saying, okay, so I want to be accountable to my values. I want to be accountable to what we’re trying to do here in our common goal, and we may not be able to get to a place of calm. If we can, that’s great, but if we can’t get to a place of calm, how do we proceed?

Jan Yuhas 34:10
Hopefully, in a professional setting, you’re going to be able to get to a place of calm, then we can have a constructive conversation. I’ve never seen it where there are individuals that I’ve seen that who are very blindsided and refuse to see outside of their perspective and are very adamant about having things their way. But it’s, it’s almost bit, it’s not that they’re not calm, but they’re when you’re sometimes when individuals are operating more from, like I said, the ego, or if they’re actually an emotional state, and that that emotional is basically blocking the rationale of how to move forward and but it doesn’t mean that they’re not calm. It’s more or less that we have to get to the underlying factors that are impeding the success. Right?

Jess Dewell 34:59
And is that usually personal, or is that related to their specific role in the organization?

Jillian Yuhas 35:05
Could be either or both. It could go both ways on that, to be honest with you.

Jess Dewell 35:10
Okay, so how do I do this? And I will tell you, I will bring another personal experience into this. I have a 13-year-old and talk about difficult personality, and I actually sent him the other day. I said, I gotta take a break, because my best 13-year-old self is showing up here, and she will win. And he looks at me, and I go, I don’t want to act 13 years old. I don’t want to do this. And so I had to take a break. And I think being able to say something like that, and by the way, I’ve also had, I wish I could have said that to and when I said that, I will say, Oh, I immediately do I do self-reflection every single day? What did I learn today? What did I learn today? And what came up week? I do a weekly deep dive. And in that, I went, Oh, I can think of five specific situations that still to this day hurt my heart. They could have done, they could have gone differently, and I couldn’t get to the resolution that I wanted, that I felt was the win would either stalled or petered out, or we had to do something totally different to start over. And I went, Oh, she showed up. Then, okay, so here we go. And it was a point of with which look. So this is a place where something is happening, and I get to what you were saying before I get to look and see what is this dissonance and why is it causing me this stress? And I’m, this is ongoing. I don’t do you ever stop this? I haven’t. Have you, will you?

Jan Yuhas 36:32
There’s always gonna be situations that might seem triggering to us. But then, for example, if your child is doing something I don’t know, it’s a specific behavior that they’re always engaging in that’s triggering to you, or what was gonna bring out your more getting disconnecting from your heart-centered guidance as a parent in that moment, but it could be something that they’re triggering within you that could relate to, something that’s deeper from your own childhood that was not resolved.

Jess Dewell 37:01
Now tell me this. I believe everybody is doing their best that they can. I always believe that, right? And so if I always believe that, but I still have this dissonance. And I could say, Sure, it’s childhood related. I don’t ever want to make blame for somebody else. It’s my responsibility. I chose to react that way. I chose to have the value, or was born with that value, and it’s all me, and they just helped me find it.

Jillian Yuhas 37:24
Yeah, no, absolutely, I think too. We can all grow up in different homes, but you could even grow up with the most loving, caring parents, and it could been a teacher or coach who said something to you that hurt you, that still weighs on your mind, or your heart, or your parents could have said something, but not realize how it impacted you, because it didn’t affect them or it made me they’re used to hearing that from their grand, you know, their parents and grandparents and stuff, and so a lot of times those family generation things get passed down, but we don’t realize it’s going to impact people differently through each generation. So it’s not to say we all know everyone’s trying to do their best job, but it’s just some things weigh on people more than others, and we just don’t know what that’s going to be until later in life.

Jess Dewell 38:08
Well, and that’s true. And we are all presented with different scenarios, with different resources, with different learnings, and we came here to do different things, and that’s one of the beauties of and so I see we’re talking about boundaries, and I’m really glad that this is coming up because there is no Shangri La, there is no Kumbaya, there is no peace all the time, because we’re all doing our best work, and we’re all discovering new things, and we’re all wanting to make it better. And there’s always more than one way to do that.

Jillian Yuhas 38:40
Absolutely. And I think then that’s why, knowing how to advocate for yourself and have these conversations with people in your personal or your professional life, this is what allows us to bridge the gap between those differences and form greater, deeper connections, so that way we can have more synergy and more, like I said, healthy relationships that allows us to thrive and build and grow and evolve.

Jess Dewell 39:06
It’s so neat to to be able to think about this and advocacy has come up a lot. How do you define self-advocacy?

Jan Yuhas 39:14
I think voicing my value if somebody crosses my limits and I speak up and let them know, or ask more questions or clarity around the behavior that I’m experiencing, so I can understand where they’re coming from, and then let them know that what my boundary would be in that moment, if it’s something that’s triggering me so some. So I think a lot of times I we’re we were also really shy, so once we learned to voice our value, then that kind of became our thing, that we didn’t stop voicing our value, and I just needed the tools or the approach in order to be articulated in a way where I was going to feel heard or understood, and I didn’t have that approach back then.

Jillian Yuhas
Yeah, because it’s not always what you say, it’s how you say it, that’s going to make that impact, and whether or not that. Our relationship could be, you know, repaired or evolved. And the whole thing is your, you have personal boundaries with yourself on a day-to-day basis, but then we have these relationship boundaries with people in our personal professional lives that we have to actually set with people and open up those communication channels and find a way that we’re going to collaborate. For example, if you take communication and I’m not receiving I haven’t heard back from someone in over a week, I would say it seems like we’re on two different pages when it comes to email responses, I value communication. Can we agree to respond within a timely manner, knowing we have a timeline to meet X, Y, Z? In a way, I’m advocating for the value of communication, but I’m also addressing that disconnect, but I’m ending on Discovery question with a we mindset, where I’m trying to get them to also share their perspective in regards to email response time.

Jess Dewell 40:53
Julian, you shared your personal values and how they related and overlap. Jan, I want to hear yours.

Jan Yuhas 41:01
I would say my top values are communication. Integrity, when it comes to trust, is up there too, but trust integrity can go in hand in hand, because if someone doesn’t follow through on their behaviors, they don’t have integrity, they don’t have trust, probably also honesty. I really appreciate someone being forthcoming and very blunt. And I don’t care how blunt it is, I appreciate the bluntness because you’re not gonna hurt my feelings. I rather hear what it is the truth, and so we can work through anything up from there.

Jess Dewell 41:32
And so which one of those do you typically carry forward, and do they overlap into your professional world?

Jan Yuhas 41:37
I usually don’t use the term honesty in my professional world because I don’t want to make anybody feel like they’re not being honest. I usually use transparency when it comes to professional relationships. So if I’m feeling blindsided by somebody’s actions or something, then I would clarify transparency, not saying that they’re like betraying me or lying to me, but rather clarify the lack of transparency.

Jess Dewell 41:59
I decided I couldn’t remember too many values. I have three for myself. My family and my household has three, and my business has three. And as long as my three are able to work into the family values, I’m like, Cool. I can show up in my whole self here, maybe awkwardly, sometimes, maybe I’ll miss staff sometimes, but it’ll be in good effort. And same with red direction, that we all have that and that actually comes one of red directions is bold. And how do we be bold? And so I want to hear from both of you, what makes it bold to create boundaries, to help you reach your goals and achieve your biggest successes?

Jan Yuhas 42:36
I think being bold, to me, is like being courageous. And I think sometimes we need to be courageous when it comes to setting boundaries. A lot of times, people may not want to rock the boat in their connections, but on it, if we keep shoving stuff under the rug, eventually it’s going to explode in other areas. So being courageous and being bold and setting boundaries is being a true badass to me.

Jullian Yuhas
Yeah, and I think to play on the boldness. I think it’s all about being brave enough to speak up and that you don’t need to shout to be heard, but you really do need to use assertive tone of voice, and know that, because people are more inclined to listen to you when you’re assertive, if you come across as submissive or aggressive, you’re not going to be heard. So I think it’s all about being assertive and showing up in a way that you speak with conviction, so people know that you mean what you say, and you say what you mean, and they’re going to take you seriously and know that when you speak up, this is a time to listen because this is really important to you.

Jess Dewell 43:36
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-tos, 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 44:27
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.