How Effective Communication and Emotional Intelligence Drive Strong Leadership with Bill Tingle, founder of Tingle Leadership

(Josh at 00:00:00) Today, we're talking to Bill Tingle about choosing your words carefully and best practices for delegating tasks. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Modern CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:15) And can you, before we forget, can you put a thing on the calendar or something real quick? We've gotta repair that HDMI cable or replace it.

(Bill Tingle at 00:00:23) Yeah. That goes back to what I talked about. Yeah. You can do it now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:27) You've gotta do it right now. You don't do it now, you forget.

(Josh at 00:00:30) This is true.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:31) Yes. So...

(Bill Tingle at 00:00:32) Now, you made a request of him. Wait. That's part of what I talk about in syntaxions. You made a request. Yeah. Alright. Was there enough information in that request for him to do it exactly like he wanted to do it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:44) Yes. I believe so. You can tell me no. But...

(Bill Tingle at 00:00:47) Well, part of the effective request is understanding the person that you're making the request of. There's background and context, so you make the assumption. If every time you buy, every time you all buy an HDMI cable, it's always this grade, this brand, this length, then you can trust he's probably gonna do it. But if you leave those out, he might buy a 12-foot HDMI cable and you meant that you wanted a 24-foot HDMI cable, and you were not satisfied because he didn't deliver on the condition of satisfaction, although your request wasn't complete.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:19) I agree with that. Yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 00:01:21) Yeah. So that's the kind of thing, and it's the sort of thing I like talking about. One of the reasons there's so much waste, rework, failure in projects is that people aren't complete with their requests. But they don't think about it. We just do it. It's like, hey, could you bring me a coffee on Friday morning? And I'm waiting at 7:30 for my coffee, and you show up at 10. It's like, man, I thought you were gonna be here at 7:30 with my coffee. Yeah. So...

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:45) One of the things that we do have in our culture is we stop in meetings, and we put things in the calendar right away.

(Bill Tingle at 00:01:52) That's what you're telling me about?

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:53) And, for example, that request, I guess it went without... Let's ask Josh. Let's talk about it. Let's give him...

(Bill Tingle at 00:02:01) This is like electricity.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:03) When you were gonna do that, were you going to set the meeting to talk to me about it, or were you going to set the meeting to actually go make the purchase?

(Josh at 00:02:10) I think I would have set the meeting to make the purchase.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:12) Okay.

(Bill Tingle at 00:02:13) Yeah. So, but, you know, you could've said, "Hey, Josh, could you order ABC brand HDMI cable, the model that we usually get, but I want it in 24 feet. I need it by Saturday morning at 8:00. Would you be able to do that, Josh?" "Yeah. I commit. I'll have that done." "Great. We're done." But we didn't set up a meeting to talk about it, but I made a request. I think everything was there. And the conditions of satisfaction are I wanted this brand. What's the top popular brand? I don't even know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:44) There's a...

(Bill Tingle at 00:02:44) Yeah. Yeah. That might not be high quality now. But, I mean, you guys know Monster. You said 24-foot for Saturday morning, 8 a.m. You're both in central time, so you know you have enough information, and then it's just done. Yes. And then if he doesn't deliver, then we've got an issue with reliability, which you're gonna have to talk about because trustworthiness requires reliability. Yeah. So all this stuff just fits. It's just pretty. It's like... And the thing I mentioned earlier, it's like, what are the things we can learn from computers? Right? Because we're always talking about what computers learn from us, but it's like, what are the things we can learn from computers? I mean, and it's really what can we learn from how we've designed and implemented computers. And you start thinking about that. There's a lot of things, actually.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:26) It was a lot of growth and self-development for me in my first serious relationship, which was with my wife, right? I would sit there and write code all day, and then I'd go interact with her. And she does not have debug log outputs. And if I tell her something once, she doesn't continue to loop that until infinity.

(Bill Tingle at 00:03:46) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:46) And so I just had to make these conscious mind shifts that, okay, I'm done talking to computers. Now I'm going to talk to humans. Yeah. That was hard for me.

(Bill Tingle at 00:03:57) Right. Right. And the thing about talking to compute... Are we on?

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:01) Yeah. Yeah. We're recording.

(Bill Tingle at 00:04:02) I remember last time we just started, right? Yeah. Yeah. And you used some of that, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:06) All of it, yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 00:04:06) Okay, yeah. I love it. I love it. So the thing about computers... I mean, I started out as a software engineer, and my first programming job, I was in assembler, which was totally cool. And assembler, any high-level language... I'm not up to speed on all the current high-level languages because it's been a while. But one thing I knew is that every language came with syntax, and there were only so many commands. The language was finite. And if you didn't type in the language as intended, number one, it may not compile. And number two, if it compiled, it doesn't mean it was gonna be correct. And in order to get computers to do what we want them to do, we have to construct language that is our intentions and the computer will accept it, right? And then, you know, if we have bugs, it doesn't know what to do.

Well, think about how people communicate with each other. We have language, and everything we do is in language. We invent, we declare, we generate everything. And in fact, language is action. You make things happen. If you delegate, that's a request, that's action, and you get things done through language. But if we're not complete and accurate and clear and concise with our language, we may not get what we intended, right? And when people don't respond as we want, we can have problems in terms of not getting what we want. We have trust relationships. We have reliability, and we have rework and waste. And so I've just been thinking a lot about that in terms of what I do in my leadership practice.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:35) So let's go deeper with the Josh example. So him and I have been working together for a while, and when it comes to equipment, he is the guy, right? So I defer to him on all things audio, and "you tell me" is the conversation we have all the time. Right?

(Bill Tingle at 00:05:53) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:53) And so we've got this sort of working relationship. And then you bring in this new idea of hyper-clarity or very specific, explicit instructions in how you're communicating. How do you then change that relationship? Is it as easy as I just start doing that as the leader now? That's just something that I put on me to learn and to hold myself accountable to do? Or how does that actually happen when you go and you coach people that aren't doing this and then they start doing this with their team?

(Bill Tingle at 00:06:22) Yeah. Fair enough. And I've done this in organizations for years. In fact, I used to do this as a leader, and then when I started my leadership development program, it's just, well, I've been doing this for years. And so I know that it works. First of all, you pull the team together, and you have to be prepared for what the new rules of engagement are. So you make sure you're prepared to answer questions and specify it. But you pull your team together and say, "Look, I've been thinking about something, and I'd like to change the way we work. And I want to run this by you. I want to make sure that we all own it, that we understand it. And so I want to explain some things to you. And here's what I'm thinking. Here's what I'd like to do."

You know, as we work together, there's five or six sort of language constructs that we can use. First of all, I can declare. And if I say, "Hey, I want to make a declaration. Starting next week, we are going to start looking at a different testing product," or "We are going to start writing these back-end services," I make some form of declaration. If you think about it, the Declaration of Independence was a declaration. So you could make a declaration to your family, "We're gonna move to Tennessee," you know. And look, you created a reality, right? So you say, "So here's how declarations are gonna work." And you have to have the authority to make declarations, but "Here's how declarations are gonna work. And then here's our requests. Here's what a request is. Here's what the construct is." And then there's other language constructs. I won't go into all of them. And we can go deeper if you'd like. But get everybody talking about understanding it, and then everybody making a commitment to do it. And then there's a certain amount of grace to say, "Oh, I made a mistake. Yeah. I know. I'm learning this." Learning takes time and practice and iteration. But over time, as the group commits to it, that's the first thing you want is a commitment to it. They commit to it. They start working through it. And it is so cool because it increases engagement. It increases trust. It increases reliability. And actually it can be kind of fun, like, "Hey, you know, you made a commitment and..." You know, people can start to have fun with it. But you've got to get people together, have the conversation, and then get a commitment to it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:26) Have you written a book on this? These different...

(Bill Tingle at 00:08:28) I've been wanting to. Yeah. And it comes from... I was thinking, in fact in preparation for this call I was thinking about, "Gosh, you know, how do I language this and practice this?" And I was talking to Josh about it, and the day before I was talking to my fiancée. It was like "syntaxions." You know, because I was thinking syntax, you know, for computers, and then syntaxions. And I mainly work with IT leaders. I can work with any leaders, but so I was thinking about that. And I think I have all of the material to write a book on it. I just need to pull the trigger. Maybe I'll do a project where I delegate it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:00) There you go.

(Bill Tingle at 00:09:02) And just pay for it. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:04) That's how I did my book, is I hired somebody and I met with them one hour a week for several months, and then a book came out.

(Bill Tingle at 00:09:13) I need to do that. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:14) Because I'm really good at being present and answering questions and talking things out. But if you give me work that I have to go do in private alone, it's not going to happen. Yeah. My first thing is to grab someone who can help. I don't know why I'm built like that, but I am. Yeah.

(Bill Tingle at 00:09:30) You know, that reminds me. It's so helpful to understand how we're built. I'm in a coaching program. I'm always in a coaching program. I'm always learning and paying people to help me. And I'm in a program now. And we just did a... There's all these assessments and tests you can take, Myers-Briggs and DISC, and so I just did one called Motivational Maps, and it is so cool. And what it is is you find out what your motivators are. And when you do the work that motivates you, it gives you energy. And then I think there's eight categories. I haven't memorized them all. But the ones that are the lower score, that's where you get help. Because if you do that work, it's gonna drain you. And so it's super helpful in building an organization that... I'd like to actually get maybe certified in it because it's just such a great tool. But I appreciate what you said about writing the book because I think that's probably the way that I'm gonna need to go.

Now, these syntaxions, it's all based upon some prior work, right? Like, we all build on each other's prior work. And so it's built upon some of the work that Fernando Flores did, and he called it speech acts, which is based upon some work that John Austin and John Searle... And who knows what they built it on. But it's all around language and linguistics and how we talk and that we do as humans. Fish swim, people talk.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:53) I had to learn how to talk differently. Like I said, when I was at computers, you'd be very assertive, and you would just declare what you would want. You'd be very specific and efficient with how you want them. Yeah. Yeah. But with humans and our emotions, that can be taken as, like, you're a dick. Right? So you kinda...

(Bill Tingle at 00:11:15) Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:16) I don't know what the professional term is, but everybody understands. Yeah. So understanding... I got some feedback after my first year or two of running this business about how I had made certain people feel. And part of it is because I do have a stronger personality. My initial reaction was, "Get over it. Become stronger." Yeah. But I realized it's somewhat of a meet me in the middle thing. Uh-huh. Like, yeah, they could be stronger, but I could also realize that they're not there yet, and maybe I kinda give them a little help along that journey, and I'm not so sharp. And so I really learned how to be aware of that. And I guess the way I would describe it was I was a little flippant, I guess, is the word. After I heard three people in my life tell me that, I was like, "Okay. Maybe I need to go Google what this word means," because I would just react quickly and react fast. And that had worked well for me...

(Bill Tingle at 00:12:10) Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:10) ...to a certain point of maturity. Yeah. But then it stopped serving me as well. Uh-huh. And then I had to change.

(Bill Tingle at 00:12:15) Yeah. Well, with some people, that will still serve you well. And I think what I've learned over the years, and part of it is just having taken so many assessments, DISC and Myers-Briggs and all the other ones, is it's true people can come along to be more like you, but it is also true that people are who they are. You know, a lot of psychologists and psychiatrists have put people into categories for a reason. You know, there are some people that are very just assertive and dominant, Type A, and there's some others that are sort of quiet and but they're analytical, and some are caring and supportive. And I think understanding the type of person that you're working with, letting them be who they are, having expectations and holding them accountable and making sure they're in a space where they can be strong, but... And I think that's what a lot of empathy is, is understanding, okay, if I know that you're driven and Type A, and all of a sudden you're slacking off, you're not really doing your job, and something's up. Like, "Hey, Joel, this isn't like you. Is everything okay?" And we can have a conversation around that. But, you know, for me, care... You know, that care is always been that sort of soft word, like, you know, we care for each other. But to me, all humans require care. And my number one thing is, whoever I'm working with, how can I approach them with care and empathy, which means I'm thinking about their concerns as if they're my own, right? Because so often it's about us.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:50) Yeah. And one other thing I noticed too was, well, obviously, I was very new. So previously, I was a co-founder. I was the technical person. I could build the product. I could build the teams. I knew engineers. That was all really great.

(Bill Tingle at 00:14:04) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:05) But this is the first time these past six, seven years is the first time that I was the only one. So I had to learn the sales side of things, the people side of things that weren't engineers. I knew how to communicate pretty well with them. And at first, one of the mistakes I made was I had people that I didn't trust. And it was definitely because I was hiring the cheapest people I possibly could, and they just didn't have the skills, so rightfully I didn't trust them, and then I ended up doing a bunch of work, and it was just a huge mess. I slowly found that if I get high quality people that can execute in the given area that I need them to execute in, my life becomes beautiful.

(Bill Tingle at 00:14:46) Right, right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:47) And then I just have to care about them. And that's one thing I found that you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I found you can't train that. You can't train people to care. You have to find people who do care and then empower them.

(Bill Tingle at 00:15:00) Yeah, I think, you know, I've had people who seem to have no empathy, and I've worked with them on care. And deep down, people do care, but it's like, what do they care about? And I think some people can develop empathy. I think others, they try to change their behavior, but that's not caring. It's just you're acting like you care. You know what I mean? You touched on trusting people, and I think that's, like, how do you define trust without using the word trust?

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:29) Yeah. Without using the word trust. I'll try to make this up on the spot. I guess when I, like, Josh, I trust him for audio. So it's like, why do I trust him?

(Bill Tingle at 00:15:41) Yeah, yeah. Why do you trust Josh?

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:42) I think there was a very specific moment in time that I trusted him. When I brought him on the team, I had gone through the interviews with him. I had my other audio engineers interview with him. They said he's got the core skill set that we need, and then it was just a time thing. Over time, he delivered. I found that if I left Josh alone, that he would do good things without me having to push him to do good things. One specific example is we often over-record the show, and then he chops it down. And at first, I used to be really worried about, like, which parts he would keep in and, you know, wanting to make sure we got the main thing to be the main thing, and I had sort of forgotten about it for four or five months, and then I went back and I was doing a review with Andrea, one of our marketing people, and I said, oh, look, all the episodes are, you know, this length. That's what I had asked for, and it was something that was beautiful because I had basically mentioned it once, and he just kept it as a constant, very computer-like. And he kept that up. So that was a big plus one credit on the trust ledger that we have.

(Bill Tingle at 00:16:52) Yeah, yeah. And we do so much just automatically. You know, we wake up in the morning and we get out of bed and we get a cup of coffee and we're just not even thinking. Our subconscious is doing it and our mind's going, thinking about the day. And we don't often think about the words that we use. And, you know, in my work, what I do is sometimes people think I'm too picky about words, but words have meaning. And if words bring life into existence, then words are important. And so trust is a big one, right? And most people I say, you know, tell me what you think trust is. I think people, you know, it's like, well, how do I experience it? How do I feel it? But as you work with Josh, you think about that a second. When Josh says something, do you assess that he's sincere?

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:35) Not consciously.

(Bill Tingle at 00:17:37) And sincerity, it's hard to measure sincerity. It's like sincerity is, if when somebody says something, it's consistent with what they're thinking, like their private conversations, because we're always talking to ourself, right? So when Josh says something, you know, do you think, well, he's thinking, I'm sure he's thinking the same thing that he's saying?

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:54) Oh, I believe Josh is in sync with his words and his thoughts.

(Bill Tingle at 00:17:56) Yeah. And you don't think about it, right? But that's part of trust is like somebody is sincere. And then the other one is probably why you're hiring him, is he competent?

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:04) Yes.

(Bill Tingle at 00:18:05) Right. So if you hire somebody that's not competent, you're gonna jeopardize the trust, right? It's like you want to trust people, but you just hired somebody that's incompetent. Like, so you're gonna have a problem. And people will do that, like, oh, I think so-and-so will do a great job, but they're not competent. You can give them time to become competent, but, you know, that's gonna impact trust. The other one is when Josh says he's gonna do something, does he do it when he says he's gonna do it, how you expect it to be done?

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:29) Yes.

(Bill Tingle at 00:18:30) So he's reliable?

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:31) Yep.

(Bill Tingle at 00:18:32) So those are the big, there's other ones, but those are the big components: sincerity, competence, and reliability. And when we're working with people, we can actually make assessments when we select people. Are they trustworthy? And when we interview them, when we ask questions, we can then make an assessment of, you know, do I think this person's trustworthy or not? So it's interesting when you start getting into it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:55) How do you do that in such a short time of knowing somebody, the trustworthy exercise?

(Bill Tingle at 00:19:00) I think several ways. One, behavioral interviewing is always good. You know, because it puts somebody on the spot to, like, okay, this is how I handled this in the past. And interviewing is always interesting because you ask somebody a behavioral interview question and they might say, well, you know, when you do this sort of thing, you know, what you should do is, like, no, I asked you, you know, in your situation, tell me about a time when you did this. And that's why behavioral interviewing is so important, is because they're explaining how they did something. Were they competent to do it? Were they reliable? Sincerity is a hard one. You know, that you kind of have to pick up on. And then I think making reference calls. You know, and that's always a challenge because sometimes those are prepared and planned and that sort of thing. But if you ask the right questions and you just, kind of like a podcast, you know, you forget that the camera's rolling and the microphone's on after a while. Same thing can happen when you're doing reference calls. They sort of just get in the conversation, they forget.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:56) Yeah. I only have one skill with the reference calls that I picked up by accident. I noticed that when I started doing them, so I started doing them based off a recommendation of somebody else that I looked up to, and I said, okay, I'm gonna start doing those. And I would ask somebody, okay, any two people that I could speak to your character, your work ethic that you've worked with or around? They would give me these two people, and I would call and I would ask them a couple questions. And then one of them would be, if this person could work on anything and improve anything, what would it be? And then they always go to that. Their strength is their weakness is their strength and all that. They're great, great, great, great, great. But one time, I found out that I had accidentally said something along the lines of, I'm always working on this. I was working on something at the time, so I said that to the person. I was like, I'm working on this currently. That's what I'm trying to do. What is the one thing this person could work on? And when, for some reason, I don't know why, I haven't questioned it or looked deep into it, but when I offer up the example of what I'm working on and what I'm improving on, and then I ask them versus just straight up asking them, they'll give me the real thing.

(Bill Tingle at 00:21:05) Yeah, yeah. It drops the guard. It makes it, I think it makes it safe. Because people want safety. You know, they want to be assured that it's safe. I think that's a lot of it. You know, on the interviewing topic, I know a lot of your listeners are, I mean, everybody's interviewing, right? One of the things I learned that might be helpful, and some people do not like this, but I learned this during one of my interviews years ago. And there's a firm out there called ghSMART, and they have a whole practice around this. And there's really two questions and a statement. One is, well, actually three questions. One is, Joel, what's the name of your boss? Like, if you had a boss, you'd say?

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:47) The marketing.

(Bill Tingle at 00:21:48) Yeah, yeah. Well, my boss is Susan. Oh, okay. Susan, what's Susan's last name? Smith. Oh, okay. Susan Smith. Yeah. I've heard of her. I think I might know her. And I'm sincere. If I do or I don't, right? Alright. So if I was to call Susan this afternoon and I said, hey, what are Joel's top three strengths and accomplishments? What would she tell me? And then you'd tell me and I say, okay, now, you know, let's say I call Susan this afternoon and I ask her what three opportunities for improvement are, what are they? I almost always get what I believe to be sincere answers. Where normally if you'd ask somebody, you know, what do you think your top three strengths and weaknesses are? They're gonna be like, you know, and these are famous interview questions, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:30) The stump speech they have.

(Bill Tingle at 00:22:32) Yeah. But when you set it up with what's your boss's name? And if I was to, you know, it creates like this psychological context that, well, Joel really could call my boss this afternoon. And some people don't like it, you know, but to me it's like, look, I need answers on this.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:49) People have been resistant to it?

(Bill Tingle at 00:22:51) No. People, well, people always answer the question.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:54) But they don't like it?

(Bill Tingle at 00:22:55) But when I explain it to other people, like, if I'm mentoring somebody and I explain this method of interviewing, they're like, oh, you know, that just, I'm not sure I can do that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:03) Well, I'm in support of it, because that's how humans work. For example, if I said, pretend you're Bill Gates right now, you can do that. There's, all humans that, relatively speaking, 80% of humans can do that. You can just imagine you're someone else as a character. And so if you're jumping into that character of their boss, they're gonna actually answer you through the eyes of what their boss would say. I don't think that that's a weird thing at all. I think that's very good.

(Bill Tingle at 00:23:31) Well, it's, you know, again, for those listening, it works very effectively. And we should all be okay as interviewees answering those questions. Right? Because it's like, no, here's, you know, I got things I'm working on. I got strengths. And, you know, I want to be as transparent as possible. Because you're making assessments of trust in advance. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:51) And it's way easier to live your life just being transparent and open. It's way harder if you're trying to keep checks and balances of who you told what to or what you've exaggerated. And it takes a lot of introspection to figure out who you are, what drives you.

(Bill Tingle at 00:24:07) Yeah, yeah. And there's so much cost in the whole recruiting and hiring process. And don't be that person that, you know, is playing the game and creating costs on everybody. Right? Yeah. So interesting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:20) So what are you seeing right now? You coach several different people. Are you seeing any trends across all the people you're coaching?

(Bill Tingle at 00:24:28) One of the things, so if we, let's talk about my audience, you know, my clientele, if you will. I typically seek to work with people that are at the C-suite minus one. So let's call C-suite n, you know, n minus one, maybe n minus two, you know, and I've got a program for new managers, emerging managers, and I've got a program for, you know, director level. Many of the problems, and I think the pandemic made this worse, and that's around relationship development, visibility, building an identity, building eminence. And that's the thing that's hardest. And a lot of what's required, especially if you're, let's say you're a director of IT, you know, it's really important that you're known. It's really important that your accomplishments are known, your contributions are known. It's important that you make offers of value and help to the organization. And if you don't have relationships with people throughout the organization, the CMO, the COO, the CFO, or one level down, it's gonna be hard to be successful. And so many, and a lot of highly technical people, they struggle with that. You know, I like to say, you know, your functional skills, your technical skills get you hired. And at some level, it's the relationship skills, the communication skills, the emotional management, mood management skills, and more that help you get promoted. And in fact, I think if I think of a lot of people that have been let go, a lot of times it's those, it's those softer, we call them soft skills. And there was a day when I was looking around, this was like right after Y2K, and I noticed senior people leaving the company or getting demoted or marginalized. Like, what's going on? And I think at that point, I started to think, it's gotta be the soft skills. You know, but what are soft skills? And so I started paying for coaching and paid for a teacher and started, oh, okay. You know, communication, relationships, emotional management, empathy, these things are really important. But I think as I look around, the biggest blockers for people are relationship, communication. We should go deeper into communication, but communication and then emotional and mood management.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:50) What can you give me more detail or color around the specific communication things that are blocking them?

(Bill Tingle at 00:26:58) Yeah. With communication, number one, and I think we're all familiar with this, is speaking the language of the person that you're talking to. And some people are good at that. Some people struggle with it. But it's that translation, especially in a highly technical role. If you're dealing with AI or security or cloud computing and you start throwing jargon out, you're gonna, they're gonna shut down right away. And so speaking, you know, one of the things I talk to my clients about is understanding the person that you're speaking to. And this is one of the reasons we want to get out and develop relationships. You know, if you're the CEO, one of the reasons I want to spend time talking to you, asking you questions and getting to know you is not just for visibility, but so when I talk to you, I'm speaking to your background listening. Like when I talk to you, my words aren't going across the air into your ear and straight into your brain. That's just not how it works, right? When I speak, your whole nervous system is triggered. You're listening to the words, you're listening to yourself assemble those words and create meaning of them, and then you process that and then you respond, right? So I try to work with people to speak to people's listening. And when people just talk as if, well, you're gonna understand what I say, and if you don't, you need to figure it out.

(Bill Tingle at 00:28:20) It's like, no, you know, I gotta speak. And so that's why it's so common to use metaphors, create pictures, or maybe explain the meaning of something depending on how much time you're gonna spend with a person. But that is a huge skill. And I often talk, a client will say, "Yeah, you know, I had this presentation or I had this conversation and my message didn't land well," as if there was this place in the body where it was gonna land and it was up to them to take it off the landing pad and process it.

(Bill Tingle at 00:28:50) It's like, no. The reason it didn't land well is that you didn't speak to their background listening in a way that was meaningful and understandable, and they could act with it and work with it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:00) To your point about listening, one thing that I have done, I've seen some other people do it, but mostly learned it from myself. I was early on in my career, I was building some software that helped take a manual process of working with autistic kids and the skills that they would need to work on, and then they would process. They would get government funding through it. Just took paper and just made it digital, nothing special. But it forced me to read all of these assessments that they use with these autistic kids. I had one of them that I checked yes to, and then I was like, well, okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:35) Now I'm gonna research this. So what I noticed that I do, and I actively always am trying to work on it to this day is when I wanna listen and I really, really care, here's the conflict. I would turn my ear towards them, towards the person.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:53) So I'd turn my ear towards them. And in their perspective, the way it looks to them, if I'm looking down and to the left and they're trying to look at me and I'm showing them my ear, it looks like I'm looking away and I'm not interested in what they're saying, but it's exactly the opposite. There's so much stuff going on around me that I need to just completely narrow and focus in on that. And when I learned how I was perceived in that way, I then started noticing that I picked it up from my dad, because after I started seeing him, after I learned that,

(Bill Tingle at 00:30:26) I was like,

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:27) oh, my dad does this. I probably picked it up from him as well. And so it's just been this ongoing thing I've tried to reduce myself doing, but I think that's important because I do see a lot of really intelligent people that do that.

(Bill Tingle at 00:30:41) Uh-huh.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:42) And I don't think that they understand. They're thinking from their angle that they're being incredibly respectful and putting all of their attention on you.

(Bill Tingle at 00:30:49) Let me ask you a question. This would be something that we do in coaching. Right? So do you still think you listen better when you do that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:57) I do.

(Bill Tingle at 00:30:57) Okay. Yeah. And you want to be the best listener possible. So what would be a way that you could speak something to the other person to create a context that it would be okay for you to do that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:10) I would just tell them. I'd say, "Hey, I noticed that I focus best. I'll turn my ear towards you. It's not that I'm not listening. I just want you to know that."

(Bill Tingle at 00:31:17) Yeah. Yeah. And what does that signal to them?

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:21) I don't know.

(Bill Tingle at 00:31:22) That you care. You know, it's sort of like we do this right now since we all went remote and, you know, sometimes I'll have, if I, you know, I got three monitors and if I have one over here and I've got some notes about them that I wanna, you know, this is important to our conversation, I'll say, "Hey Joel, you know, if I look over here, it's because I've got some notes that are gonna be important for our conversation." So I am present with you and I'm working with you. Because that's the thing is we all want to know the other person's present with us. And so if you were to say, "Hey, you know, just so you know, something about me is the way my body works is if I turn my ear, it's going to help me listen better. So that's why I'm doing that." And if you did that to me, I'd be, "Oh, cool. That's different." I'd like that, you know. I mean, you're very self-aware. So that could be a very healthy thing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:03) Podcasting's a great medium for me because when everyone's remote, I'm in ears off. And sometimes Josh has been pushing me to go over the ear in person. I haven't gotten there. Have you done that a lot on podcasts? You do over the ear stuff while you're in person?

(Bill Tingle at 00:32:13) I don't.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:17) I haven't.

(Bill Tingle at 00:32:18) Yeah, I don't. I've thought about it for sure. I just like things more what I consider to be natural. You know, whatever natural is, whatever a person thinks is natural. But I just like it more natural. As long as the quality's there and I don't get any complaints, I tend to like to just, you know, sort of be free with my computer. But what you talked about is one of the things that I work with in coaching is, you know, it's kind of a funny, some people aren't familiar with this term, it's called ontological coaching. And it's like, "Oh, what is it? Ontological?" You know, and I try not to even use the word, but it is so powerful because everything we do, we do with our body.

(Bill Tingle at 00:32:56) And we use language, we have emotions, and in fact every memory we have stored, there's emotion that goes with it that's stored. And we have our bodies. And so one of the things we do with ontological coaching and ontological design is we begin with our body and our way of being. And there's a really cool model, it's called Observer Action Results. And if you think about it, if we want results, we need actions, right?

(Bill Tingle at 00:33:25) And so if somebody is not getting the result they want and they keep doing this same action over and over again and not getting a different result, what's that called?

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:34) Insanity.

(Bill Tingle at 00:33:36) Right? And so then, woah. So, well, that's insanity. I'm not gonna do that. So then what's the next thing we do? Oh, well, I gotta change my actions. And so, you know, then I keep doing that till I get the results I want. Well, what if you were to, we call it take a step back, and you're not getting the results you want, is go back to who you are as an observer. And most people don't really observe themselves. They just are.

(Bill Tingle at 00:34:00) You wake up in the morning, you have cup of coffee, right? It's just we just are on autopilot. But what if you step back and say, "Okay, the observer that I am, how am I observing myself? How am I observing the situation?" And you can shift yourself as an observer. So you can shift your body, you can shift your language, what are you saying to yourself, you can shift your emotions, go listen to some music or something. Shift yourself as an observer, you open up a whole new space of possibilities to design action, to then produce the results you want. And that's called second order learning. First order learning is if I just change my actions to get a different result. If I change, go back and change myself as an observer, then I produce different actions, and I can, I think of so many times where the results I've gotten are so much better because I went back, took the time to go back to myself as an observer.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:49) So I'm gonna give you an example. You can tell me if I'm picking up on it correctly. I wanted to, a few years ago, I wanted to be healthier, and I wanted to start running again. So I had read somewhere that you would shift your identity to start saying, "I am a runner," even on day one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:07) Right? And then all of a sudden, you keep saying that, and then you structure your life about what would a runner do. Well, they would be involved with, I don't know, following running things on Instagram, and they would go spend extra money on shoes that they wouldn't probably normally spend for the best running shoes, and they would probably buy running clothes.

(Bill Tingle at 00:35:24) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:24) And then they would probably wake up and go running, and then slowly just thinking, I would just wake up every day and say, "I'm a runner. I'm a runner. I'm a runner." And then I eventually, I look back and I'm like, oh, I've been, you know, doing three to five miles every day for two years, and I just kinda became a runner from not being a runner.

(Bill Tingle at 00:35:43) It's a great example. It's a great example. You know? And this is really good because whether it's, you know, diet or exercise or picking up an instrument, you know, people, they want these results, and they say, "Okay, I'm gonna do this. You know, I'm starting tomorrow, I'm gonna start running."

(Bill Tingle at 00:36:00) Right? What you did was second order learning or looking at yourself as an observer. And what did you say?

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:08) I'm a runner.

(Bill Tingle at 00:36:09) That's a declaration. You made a declaration that I'm a runner. And then so that's the language part of our way of being, and then how did that affect your emotion or your mood?

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:20) Well, I mean, I felt good about it on the short term, obviously, because a new declaration can feel good in the moment. But the real test came, I think, the next morning when I woke up, and I said, "Oh, that yesterday Joel is doing that whole running thing. Is that gonna, am I gonna do that?" And then I said, "Yeah. I mean, that's my, I'm choosing my identity to be a runner." And then I just said, "All I have to do is not worry about three years or four years. I just have to wake up today and choose it today." Yeah. And I just did it

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:49) for years.

(Bill Tingle at 00:36:49) Yeah. So you were exactly doing that. The way of being and looking at your way of being. And there's it's an interesting intersection. It's actually a Venn diagram when you think of body, language, and emotions.

(Bill Tingle at 00:37:03) And emotions and moods go together, they're different. But emotions, somebody, some people would say emotion stands for energy in motion. And there are certain emotions like sadness or grief that shut down possibilities for thinking and acting. If you wake up and you're really sad about something, it's hard to get out of bed, you know? And there's language that goes along with that, "Oh, you know, I'm so sad today, you know, I lost a pet," or whatever it might be.

(Bill Tingle at 00:37:30) And that's part of being human. But the emotion and the language go together, and then they impact your body. And so I can say things to myself like affirmations that trigger my emotion and shift my mood. Right? And then from there, I can then that'll shift my body. So if I'm backstage and I'm just not, you know, not so sure about my talk, maybe I didn't prepare enough, I'm a little nervous or whatever, you know, "I'm a great speaker, you know, I can do this, I'm prepared, you know, people wanna listen to me," all of a sudden my emotion's getting good, my body's getting, I'm breathing better, and the whole thing just starts to come together in a way that you're just better positioned to do a presentation than if you sit backstage, "Oh, you know, I'm afraid they're not gonna like me, I'm not really prepared, you know, whatever." That's gonna affect body language emotion as you go forward.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:21) I used to think it was stupid. I would see the personal development stuff, and I was like, "Those people are crazy."

(Bill Tingle at 00:38:28) It's biological.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:29) I was like, "This is so stupid." And then I got frustrated enough, and at a point in my life, and some guy, I heard a guy named Jim Rohn say

(Bill Tingle at 00:38:37) Oh, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:37) "For things to change, you've got to change," or the most frustrating thing in the world is, um, "Expecting above average results without being an above average person." And so I said, "Okay. Well, maybe this self development area has some legitimacy towards it." And I actually got to the end of my rope, and I said, "Well, I've tried everything, and nothing works."

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:56) And then I heard someone say, "Did you really try everything?" And I was like, "Well, no. There's a couple areas that I actively avoid because I know that they're stupid." And I was like, "Well, you know what? Life is long. I've done plenty of stupid things. Let's just go hang out in the areas I've been dismissing this whole time

(Bill Tingle at 00:39:10) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:10) and see if there's anything there." And there was. It was the whole personal, I've got on my phone every other day. I'm pretty consistent about it. I have, it's, um, David McGraw, some power affirmations. It's just like a twelve-minute midday break thing where he just says a bunch of different things. And if in the morning I wake up and I'm a little bit not wanting to get out of bed type deal, I'll put those on. If I'm after lunch or if I'm having kind of a rough day and I notice I'm tense, I'll go listen to that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:41) And it, because he's saying the things of like who I want to be. Right. You know?

(Bill Tingle at 00:39:45) Oh, I'm a big believer in it. Yeah. And that language triggers your emotion and your mood, and it affects your body and everything. Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:53) What are people experiencing when they reach out to you? Like, why? Like, what's happening in my life that I'm like, "I need to go work with Bill"?

(Bill Tingle at 00:40:00) Yeah. Most people that reach out to me are feeling stuck. You know, they've been trying to get promoted. It's usually they've been trying to get promoted. They've been trying to make more money, or they've been trying to get a job, and nothing seems to be working.

(Bill Tingle at 00:40:15) And, you know, they'll look at my background and like, "Well, he seems to, especially in technology, you know, he seems like he was able to become a vice president and a CIO, CTO." And so I'm, you know, sort of like, "I've tried everything, you know, I'm..." You know, and so that's often when people reach out to me. CIOs, senior leaders, CTOs will reach out to me if they have a team and they're not getting the results they want. The team's not working well together. There's a leadership gap.

(Bill Tingle at 00:40:43) You know, I mean, there's a lot of people retiring and the there's just a need for leadership development. A lot of companies now, they're not investing as much in leadership development, they're going outside. I know. Yeah. And so like I said earlier, you know when I work with people, people experience a transformation.

(Bill Tingle at 00:41:02) You know, every client that I've worked with has experienced, you know, some form of transformation. And oftentimes, it's personal, not just professional. You know, they're healthier, they're becoming better spouses or partners. They're keeping their commitments, they're becoming reliable, they're becoming trustworthy, they're becoming competent. Like they're starting to value learning and becoming competent because of the importance of that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:32) In my business, the thing that I found very interesting that I wasn't expecting is that most people wanted to pay for it personally. They did not want their company to pay

(Bill Tingle at 00:41:47) for it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:47) Because they wanted to improve themselves and grow themselves, and they didn't wanna go to their company and have to ask for, and, you know, my job is not to tell the market to change. It's just to pay attention to what's happening in the market. And I like how I see the market too, which is highly qualified, experienced people with a group of clients, and then you just really dive into them and work with them directly.

(Bill Tingle at 00:42:12) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Some of my best clients are the ones that pay because they came out of it. And that's, yeah. I spent over $100,000 on coaching over the last twenty years. And I've got a multiple return on the investment, you know, over the course of my career. And so, yeah, I firmly believe that. You know, and if I go into a corporation, which I have corporate programs too, and people are told they're gonna go do it, you know, you get about 30% of the people that are like, "Oh, I can't wait."

(Bill Tingle at 00:42:38) 30% of the people that, you know, yeah, I'm going to do the work. This is going to be good. And 30% are like, oh, I don't know if I have time for this. But when they all come out of it, they're all... Like, I had one program, I had 12 people.

(Bill Tingle at 00:42:49) And companies going global, and four of the 12 took the top four spots in the global reorg. And so, you know, we're getting the outcomes that we're after.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:00) When people come to you, I know this is going to be highly specific to the person, but in general, maybe people out there that are looking for a job, they're making that transition, and you said you've coached some people who are in that spot, and they get frustrated, and they come reach out to you. What do you look at first?

(Bill Tingle at 00:43:18) People that are looking for a job? Yeah. The first thing I always look at is, are they open, teachable, and do they have an ambition? And there's this concept that I learned from my coach from years ago, which is there's plus self, minus self, zero self. Plus self is somebody that they think they know it all, they don't think they have much to learn.

(Bill Tingle at 00:43:43) Zero is when it suits them, and minus self are like, I need help, I know I need help, and I don't know it all. And so I won't take clients if I have an assessment that are a plus self. And zero is like... But it's usually people that they know they need help, they want help, they're hungry, they're willing to do the work. People that come to me in that job search and branding and all, because I have a personal branding and job search program, it's not easy.

(Bill Tingle at 00:44:10) And you might know that one of the hardest things to do, and I've done this several times in my life, one of the hardest things to do is go through that process of who am I, what do I want, what's my brand, you know. And I make people go from a bunch of bullets down to a pair, elevator speech. What's your elevator speech? One sentence.

(Bill Tingle at 00:44:28) One sentence that describes your brand, and it's got to be punchy, right? And then they build all these, like, content, digital assets, like all the narratives and stuff, and then you start putting that together in a resume or LinkedIn profile. It's just like, it's like when people do marketing. And versus a lot of people that go straight to their resume, it's like, okay, I need to update my resume, you know, what are the bullets? It's like, no, that's sort of like writing software. That's the last thing you do, and it's not, you know, it's not all the work. The hard part is doing all the analysis and all that design and upfront work.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:00) Yeah. I see a lot of LinkedIn profiles and a lot of bios. It's on every prep sheet, the LinkedIn bio of the individual I'm talking to, so I've seen north of 600 of them. And there is definitely a difference in quality. There's a huge difference in quality when you see someone who's been intentional about... Often when they get to the stage where they have a book, they typically will have, like, it really well organized, but there are people that don't have books that also are very clear about the problem they're trying to solve and who they help. And they're, you nailed it, they market themselves well. So is that a service you offer, or is that mixed in with your coaching? How does that work?

(Bill Tingle at 00:45:43) Yeah, that's a service I offer. Yeah. Yeah. I don't do as much of it these days just because I'm so busy with the other work.

(Bill Tingle at 00:45:49) But I'm helping somebody. I mean, I actually have two clients right now I'm helping with that. So, yeah, but it's... I make sure they want to do the work because it's a lot of work. And it also goes back to some people like to do different things.

(Bill Tingle at 00:46:02) We talked earlier about some people like to, you know, some people like to do personal reflection and branding and really spend time on who they are and what they have to offer, what they've accomplished and how to craft that. Other people want to phone it in. And if you're one of the people that want to phone it in, get help. It's worth it. You know?

(Bill Tingle at 00:46:18) I mean, it's because, you know, you think about what you're going to make in the future. And I always, when I'm working with people, it's like, you want that starting, if you're going for salary with a package, you want that to be as high as possible when you start because you're at that organization, you're setting the floor there. Right? So you want to set that floor as high as possible.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:35) Yeah. You never have to convince me to get as much money as I have as available. Yeah. That's like a default, you know. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:43) Yeah. Because you can't go, it's really hard to go up.

(Bill Tingle at 00:46:47) Yeah. Yeah. It is.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:48) You know? It's way easier to have something high and then let them figure out where it's at. But, yeah. Yeah. Alright.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:54) So what is your website? What is your LinkedIn?

(Bill Tingle at 00:46:58) Yeah. People can find me at www.tingleleadership.com. And there's some information there, and you can set up a call with me if you want to talk. And then on my LinkedIn profile, I don't know if I remembered it, but Bill G Tingle. I think it's Bill G Tingle. You'll, you just search me, you'll find me.

(Bill Tingle at 00:47:13) And people can DM me there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:16) This is great, man. Is there anything that we didn't cover that we want to get out there to the world? Bill is awesome. Go to Tingle Leadership.

(Bill Tingle at 00:47:22) Yeah. Yeah. All of that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:23) All of that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we made a podcast. How do you feel?

(Bill Tingle at 00:47:27) Great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:27) Nice. Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected].

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:46) Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.