Starter Girlz Podcast

From Gaps to Gains: Leadership Lessons (with Andrew Poles, Three-Time Founder & Executive Coach)

• Jennifer Loehding • Season 8 • Episode 117

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Leadership isn’t something you’re born with — it’s something you grow into. Andrew Poles knows this well. He’s a three-time founder and executive coach who has spent over 20 years helping entrepreneurs and executives worldwide understand the gap to gain mindset so they can move from operator to leader.

In this episode of Starter Girlz, Jennifer Loehding sits down with Andrew to hear about his journey from founder to executive coach, working with over 10,000 leaders, including teams at NASA, Dell, Netflix, and Epic Games. Andrew shares the lessons he’s learned about leadership, influence, delegation, and culture, and how he helps entrepreneurs grow their businesses while maintaining balance and focus.

This conversation dives into the realities of leadership, the mindset shifts required to grow as a leader, and the personal insights Andrew has gained along the way. You’ll hear discussion-based insights on confidence, empathy, influence, building culture, and the gap and gain mindset that transforms leadership.

⭐ What You’ll Learn in This Episode
✅ Leadership is a learned skill, not innate
✅ Growth is about becoming a different kind of leader
✅ Building a business requires more than just hard work
✅ Confidence and presence are key leadership qualities
✅ Empathy is crucial for effective leadership
✅ Influence is about understanding others’ perspectives
✅ Leadership involves continuous learning and adaptation
✅ The gap and gain mindset can transform leadership
✅ Effective leaders empower others
✅ Personal stories illustrate powerful leadership lessons

📘 About Andrew Poles
Andrew Poles is a three-time founder and executive coach who has spent over 20 years helping entrepreneurs and executives worldwide make the shift from operator to leader. He has coached more than 10,000 leaders and worked with organizations including NASA, Dell, Netflix, and Epic Games. He specializes in helping early-stage founders and small business owners grow without burning out by mastering leadership, influence, delegation, and culture.

🔗 Guest Website: https://andrewpoles.com/

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💬 Connect with Starter Girlz Podcast
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🙌 Partner: Walt Mills Productions

📌 Want to Be a Guest on Starter Girlz?
If you want to share your story and inspire others, reach out to Jennifer Loehding on PodMatch:
https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/17044863446695017c1879d7b

Jennifer Loehding:

Welcome to the Starter Girlz Podcast, your ultimate source of inspiration and empowerment. We're here to help women succeed in every area of their lives: career, money, relationships, and health and well-being. While celebrating the remarkable journeys of individuals from all walks of life who've achieved amazing things. Whether you're looking to supercharge your career, build financial independence, nurture meaningful relationships, or enhance your overall well-being, the Starter Girls Podcast is here to guide you. Join us as we explore the journeys of those who dare to dream big and achieve greatness. I'm your host, Jennifer Loehding, and welcome to this episode. Welcome to another episode of the Starter Girlz Podcast. I am your host, Jennifer Loehding, and wherever you are tuning in today, we are so glad to have you. All right, so I am going to open up with this today. Building a business isn't hard because you're not working enough. It's hard because at some point, what got you here won't get you where you want to go. And so I feel like this episode today is going to be so awesome. I feel like we talk about this in so many ways, but I think that this is all for the people that understand that growth is not about doing more, it's about becoming a different kind of leader. And so I'm so excited to chat with my guest today. But before we bring him on here, I do need to do a quick shout out to our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Walt Mills Productions. Need to add excitement to your YouTube videos or some expert hands for editing? Look no further. Walt Mills is the solution you've been searching for. Walt is not only your go-to guy for spicing up content, he's the force behind a thriving film production company with numerous titles in the pipeline. Always on the lookout for raw talent, Walt is eager to collaborate on film and internet productions. With a background deeply rooted in entertainment and promotion, Walt Mills leverages years of skills to give you the spotlight you deserve. Want to learn more about Walt and his work? Head on over to Walt Mills Productions.net and let your content shine. All right. And with that, I do want to make a mention to head on over to startergirlz.com. Tell you guys this every single week and why, because one, if you've missed an episode, it's a great place to catch up. It's also a great place to tune in and you'll keep in the know. You can sign up for our community newsletter. And then also if you are an aspiring entrepreneur or maybe you're a creator, you're in the thick of it, I don't know where you are. And you want to find out what your number one subconscious block is that may be impacting your success right now. Well, got your back. Got a quiz over there that you can take. Two minutes. I built it out, and it's fun. It will tell you exactly what might be stopping you right now from going to that next step. All right. And with that, we're ready to bring our guests on today. So I'm going to go back to talking about that business building. Building a business is one of the highest state games you can play. And talent and drive alone aren't enough to scale it. Today I'm joined by Andrew Poles, a three-time founder and executive coach who spent over 20 years helping entrepreneurs make the shift from operator to leader. Andrew has coached more than 10,000 founders and executives worldwide and worked with organizations like NASA, Dell, Netflix, and Epic Games. He specializes in helping early stage founders and small business owners grow without burning out by mastering leadership, influence, delegation, and culture. So Andrew, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to chat with you today.

Andrew Poles:

Yeah, me as well. Thanks for having me.

Jennifer Loehding:

It's gonna be fun. You had to get through that whole intro.

Andrew Poles:

That's all right.

Jennifer Loehding:

It's like it's one of those things where like somebody comes on and they absolutely love it because they love hearing like all the accolades, right? Or the other people are like, can we just get through the intro and have the dialogue, you know? But my background, 22 years in Mary Kay, we did accolades for every introduction. And so I it's just part of my, you know, like my existence is that when we bring somebody on, we gotta talk about all the cool deeds they have done. So hopefully it, you know, you approved. All right.

Andrew Poles:

Absolutely. But also I think it's I think it's great for your audience because don't you think that one of the biggest challenges of making the move to becoming an entrepreneur? I know this was true for me in at least in the in the in my most recent business. This is my third business in my career, is that it's hard to see yourself for the value that you create in the world. You know, it's hard to see the way other people receive your value because we're so used to looking at ourselves through the critical lens of our own inner critic. So I think it's great what you're doing to start off the podcast because it makes me have to think about, oh yeah, I did do that and I did that. And it gets me present to myself in a different way than how you just come on a podcast and who knows what that voice in your head is telling you. And I think that's important for people who are aspiring entrepreneurs or new entrepreneurs, because you know, we always see the gap, I think, or almost always see the gap between what we're currently doing or what we're capable of and what we see as possible. But we we rarely index on what did it take me to get here? Who have I become? What's the value I create in the world? So I think it's a great way to start your podcast, especially given your audience's intention.

Jennifer Loehding:

Thank you. And no, I agree with you absolutely because we're so in it that we forget, right? Like it's like, I don't know about you, but I laugh at this because I I had a guy on here a few weeks ago that um he taught, he I forgot, it was like mind shifting, but he was talking about how we see things. And we were actually talking at one point about how I hate social media. Like I you believe it or not, isn't that the funniest thing? Like I have a podcast, but I you have a YouTube channel. Yeah, I despise social media. In fact, it's like I've got people helping me, and just this week, I'm like, okay, I've got to figure out how to get this back delegated because I just hate the energy that's into all of that stuff, right? Yeah. But my point, we were when we were having this conversation was that I was telling him about how I had created this post. And I started to like, as soon as I started to do it, I was like, no, I need to put this out there because it's an important milestone and it will actually help somebody. But I was having this moment where I was having that self-talk go, nobody wants to look at this, Jennifer, nobody wants to see this again, like blah, blah, blah. You know, the inner dialogue we have with ourselves, right? To your point. That sometimes it is, it's refreshing when somebody else says something to you because then you realize, yeah, you do have something to contribute to the world or value, you know, or worth to put out there. And we just are so hypercritical of ourselves all the time that we overthink everything, right?

Andrew Poles:

I think that's accurate for most of us. And I think that's one of the critical roles we play for each other. And maybe this will be a springboard into the conversation down the down the road about leadership. But, you know, um when you put something out there in the world and in your your dialogue with yourself about it as, oh, no one cares about this, or um, you know, this is just me tooting my own horn, or it's self-serving, or whatever that might be. Or, you know, if I compare what I've accomplished to this person over there, it's really not that big of a deal. Those kinds of conversations. It's usually someone outside of you who will reflect back to you the value that they get from being in whatever relationship with you they are in. They're a listener to your podcast, they're uh your son, you know, a friend, and they'll say something to you about yourself and it and it allows you to see yourself almost from the outside in. And it's almost always a bigger point of view. You know, I remember when I was starting this business, which I started, my executive coaching business, I started in 2020, the year of the pandemic. And I had just left a company that I had been coaching for at that time for 17 years. Um, and I had kind of moved up all the different positions in that company. And it was an interesting experience, Jennifer, because that company had programs being delivered in over 100 cities. So one of the things that was really important to them was quality control, as you can imagine. Like they wanted the experience of their customers to be universal, universal across all hundred cities and you know, whatever, 10 languages. So it was really um difficult. In fact, it was frowned, it was, it was, it was not difficult, it was not allowed for each individual leader to have a voice in the content. Wow. Because the content needed to be controlled. So the only voice you got to have of your of yourself was maybe the stories that you shared while you were coaching people to elucidate some point, but the content itself, you couldn't, unless you were one of the few people who did that. So when I left the company to go start this business, one of the questions I had for myself, even though I had been coaching for 17 years and I took 10,000 of people, was do I have anything to say? Do I have anything of value to say of my own? Because it had been so long since I'd worked on that after kind of going all in with this company. And although my situation may be somewhat unique in working for a company that controlled that kind of content and for, you know, for good reasons. It's not a criticism or anything. Um, I think a lot of people deal with that question: do I have anything to say? And how I went about addressing that question was I started interviewing people in my life. Yeah. That I had worked with, maybe in other, you know, in other endeavors. And I I worked for that coaching company at the alongside of also running other people's businesses. So I was like working double duty for for many years. And people would reflect back to me things about myself that I didn't see.

Jennifer Loehding:

Yeah.

Andrew Poles:

And where they saw the value in our relationship was not a place I ever looked. And it really gave me a completely different sense of myself and what was valuable about the way that I interacted with people. And so I think, you know, this seeing yourself from the outside in can be a very important tool for people who are aspiring to start a business because it is really hard to see your own value sometimes from the inside out.

Jennifer Loehding:

Yeah. That was good. Well, that was a great, this is a whole great intro right there into leadership, right? That was good. So funny how these these episodes that, you know, I never know like this is why I don't like to like plan anything else. I think the organic is so great because you just never know what's gonna come in the conversation, you know, where it's gonna go. But I you kind of segue into where I wanted to start off with you was really how you got to where you are. So we kind of got the backstory of how you got, you know, when you were coming to this new place. But I want to back this up just a little bit. What led you to the work that you're doing? Because I think that's, you know, really important. So maybe take us back a little bit to what brought you to where you are today.

Andrew Poles:

Yeah. So what brought me to coaching was through one of these full circle transformational moments in my life where I had started off in my early 20s after college, pursuing a PhD in philosophy with the intention of teaching, writing, and finding some way to make a difference. That's where I thought I could make a difference in the world. Yeah. Then two things happened in graduate school. I discovered, like, you know, three years into my program that I hadn't really met any philosophers making a real difference in the world that I could see. It was a lot of sort of like people just debating ideas but not doing anything meaningful in the world, which was disillusioning. But also, I had a daughter out of wedlock unexpectedly. Um, and it was a challenging situation because my girlfriend at the time and I were living together and had decided to not break up but split apart because it wasn't going well. And that's when I found out she was pregnant and I was gonna be a dad. I had no intention of being a dad. And so my whole life got upended. My whole picture of how my life was gonna go got upended.

Jennifer Loehding:

Right.

Andrew Poles:

And um, and so the only way I was gonna get to see my daughter was to start a business where I could take her with me to work because I was gonna be the single dad with an infant like how are you, you know, she's gonna be nursing all the time. How am I ever gonna spend any time with her since I wasn't with her mom? So I started my first business. And um, during the course of that, you know, I learned a lot about business, but man, that relationship with my daughter's mom was super challenging. We had lots and lots of problems, and nothing that I had tried really helped. We had tried uh counseling individually and together, and I tried communication classes and like it nothing helped. And as you can imagine for any parents out there, I mean, if you can't co-parent effectively with someone with whom you share parenting responsibilities, it's super stressful if you're constantly fighting and disagreeing. So a friend of mine recommended coaching to me about um three years into my business. He recommended coaching for my relationship with my daughter's mom. This was 2000, and I took the course that he suggested. And um, or 2001, yeah, 2001, sorry. And that was the moment when I was in that course when uh finally someone challenged me to generate the courage that I hadn't been willing to generate to do what needed to be done in that relationship to have it work, which was mostly in my case, to acknowledge and tell the truth about the fact that I was really intimidated by my daughter's mom. She was an incredible mom. And it was her second time being a mom. And I constantly compared myself to her, and I was like, I just couldn't, I could never, in my experience, I could never match up. I could never, I could never be as great a parent as she was, and I felt completely invalidated by that experience. But I didn't really know that was going on, and so it was sort of like semi-conscious. And so what I did was I just I looked for fault with her everywhere I could. Because if I could find fault with her, it was like I kind of came up on my own scale of comparison, right? It was a really, really damaging thing for me to do. And so in the middle of that course, I called her and I found the courage to admit all this to her in a conversation, which I thought for sure she was going to come through the phone and kill me if I told her the truth. Of course, she probably already knew this, right? She was experiencing it, but we all think that, you know, we we're so clandestine, we're so hidden. So anyway, um, that completely transformed not just my relationship with her, but it introduced me to this whole world of being a courageous and authentic human being and really telling the truth where I had been hiding things. And that changed my life. And the person who had coached me in the seminar I took, I was like, that's what I want to do. I want to be whatever that person is. However, he got to be that way, I want to be like that. And so I remembered at that point, oh God, that's what I wanted my life to be about. And I forgot all about that when I became a dad. Because it all became about provide, provide, provide, provide, succeed, succeed, succeed. Right. And so um, within a couple of years, I shut down my business. I started uh running other people's businesses and coaching on the side. And that's you know how I got started in the coaching business was having that profound experience myself.

Jennifer Loehding:

Yeah, it's always interesting. I love these stories. I'm a store, I'm a sucker for a story. It's why it's why this show is really about the story, because I think that when we have, you know, these I I don't know, I call them like epiphany, epiphany's or whatever, these these breakthrough moments, right? Like it's you know, like you I always love to ask this question if like when you were a kid, if you saw yourself ever doing these kinds of things, right? Like my husband and I were talking the other day, and I don't know, I read something about like when you were a kid, did you think you would the world would be this way? And he's like, No, I think I'm kind of disappointed. And I said, Yeah, because I I I look at, you know, sort of like when I was growing up, you know, like I never thought I would be doing what I was doing. I never I I will say this. The only thing I will say is when I was a kid, I did used to record stuff on a boom box, you know, when you have to hit the play of the record button.

Andrew Poles:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Loehding:

I did use I'm an early 70s kid. I am of your generation. Yes. So I used to record things on my boom box and pretend like I was on the radio. Like I'd pretend like I was really yeah, yeah. Amazing. But I would have never thought in a million years, because I we didn't have internet and podcasting and all of those things. I would have never thought that any of that would have come into fruition. But I think it's really interesting how you know, if I look at even like your journey when you talk about going into the philosophy stuff, right? Like you thought that you were gonna do some kind of educating, some kind of teaching was gonna be in that, right? Ultimately, you're still kind of doing that in a different way, right? So I think I think our, you know, like it's our strengths, our desires, those things sort of find their way and weave their way into our lives, but not always in the way that we intend them to surface, right? And I think that's what's so beautiful about these stories is that there's like this defining moment that really guides us back to what we really should be doing, like what it is that we're good at and what we want to do. Somehow it works its way into our life by some crazy story. You know, and yours happened to be that you had this beautiful child that wasn't planned that rocked your world. And I will tell you this my husband and I, we had we had our first daughter. We were like, I think he was just turned 24 and I was about to be 24. He would probably agree with you on many things because he was a wrestler, and so he always had to keep his weight at a certain you know, weight and all this. But whenever my daughter we got pregnant and my daughter was born, he lost a bunch of weight. Like it was probably the most stressful period of his life was when that baby first came. Little did he know, you know, two more, two more would happen. And that was the easy thing, right? So, anyways, love your story, Andrew. Love the story. It's awesome. So here's what I would like to know. So when founders come to you, because you're working with a lot of these, you know, what are you finding? Like, what are they stuck with? What is the thing that they're coming to you for?

Andrew Poles:

Well, um uh interestingly, one of one of the things that they're coming to me for is something that they would label something like confidence or presence, executive presence. Okay. Um, and again, I think that the earlier conversation about um having a skewed sense of ourselves that we don't know is skewed, yeah, that largely indexes on the gaps that we see between where we see ourselves today and where we think we should be. And by the way, as a resource on this for your listeners, and also Jennifer, if you haven't read this book, you'll love it. It's called The Gap and the Gain.

Jennifer Loehding:

Yeah, now we're seeing I have not read that one.

Andrew Poles:

It's a great, it's a simple short book. It's also an audiobook. Um, and um one of the two authors is a coach named Gay Hendricks, and the other one is a former coaching student, now business partner with him, who's actually a, I think, a doctor of psychology. Uh, anyway, the the prime primary premise of the book, which is relevant to what we're talking about, which is one of the top three things that founders come to me for, is the thing about confidence, is that Gay Hendricks identifies two basic mindsets through which you can view life. And he and he calls them the gap mindset and the gain mindset. And he he defines the gap mindset. And again, this the important thing is this is a mindset, right? So this is a particular mental construct through which you view the world. It's not the way the world is, and it's important to get that. So this mind this gap mindset works by taking where things are today and measuring them against something out in the future like an ideal or um a should. Like I should be this way, the business should be this way, my finances should be this way. So you're measuring what's present today against something and the future that isn't ideal, and you see the gap. Okay. And the gap, the important thing about the gap is when you have a gap mindset, is that the gap occurs to you as something that is. Wrong and needs to be fixed or something that shouldn't be the way it is. So it's a fundamentally disempowering mindset because nothing the way it is today is ever okay, right? It's always being measured against this gap. That's a mindset. Now, the gain mindset, by contrast, takes where the way things are today and it measures them backwards in time against where you started. And it recognizes and appreciates the gains that have been made from there to here. So a gain mindset tends to make you feel things like gratitude, pride, a sense of accomplishment or forward progress, and it builds psychological momentum. So a gain mindset is a great thing to practice, and a gap mindset is a great thing to notice and intervene with because you know the gains are what are real, and the ideals out in the future are not even real. No one ever reaches an ideal. I coach people who have, you know, companies that are worth $70 million. Maybe they have a net worth, some of them, of hundreds of million dollars. And I also coach people who are just starting out. So I coach lots of different people. But I can tell you that even the people who have achieved that kind of success just keep moving the goalposts and doubt themselves and have concerns about, you know, is this good enough? Is that so this mindset doesn't it's never satisfied by accomplishment? Right. And so um, so one of the things people come to me for is the sense of confidence. And one of the things we have to work on for that often is intervening with this gap mindset and helping them build a gain mindset, gain mindset where they can look at where they are against where they started and begin to have some appreciation for themselves, the struggles that they've gone through, what they have accomplished, the value that that's created in their life. So that's one thing. And I think that's probably relevant to anyone who's thinking about starting a business or they started a business, you will always see a gap. Right. And just to put a period on that sentence about the gap in the gain, there is, I have found, and this isn't in the book, but I found this through my own experience. There's a powerful way to see a gap that can empower you as a person that can lead you to being very effective, but without feeling like anything's wrong with you or wrong with your situation.

Jennifer Loehding:

Yeah.

Andrew Poles:

And I think that comes from something like the love of the game. And the person I love to use, and this is an example of this, and I'll apologize to any listeners who aren't sports fans, but hopefully this person is famous enough that people will know who I'm talking about when I mention Kobe Bryant, you know, the very, very famous, successful basketball player who died tragically in a helicopter accident with his daughter during the pandemic. Kobe was a master of this because he was never satisfied with where his game was, but he was never dissatisfied with himself. Yeah. He just loved the game so much. He loved what was possible so much. He just could never get to the end of exploring what else was possible. So he could see a gap between where things were and what was possible that didn't invalidate where anything was today. And I think being as an entrepreneur, you need to build that because entrepreneurship is about looking into the future and seeing something that isn't here now that you can provide and then beginning to provide it. So it is in some way fundamentally, Jennifer, based on seeing some gap, some absence, something that's not here. But there's a way to do that that doesn't invalidate anything. And so that's this third kind of pathway that I work with people on. So that's the first big thing people come to me for. Do you want to pause and double-click on any of that?

Jennifer Loehding:

Yeah, well, no, I well, I guess the question that's coming to mind. So these, when they're coming to you, because you you said something really profound, they're coming to you when they recognize this. So that's my thing. They're they're actually recognizing that there's something, right? That might be because not everybody, not everybody is in that place where they recognize that they need to grow, right? Like a lot of people are not. I have this conversation daily, like a lot of the world does not think they need to. So clearly, they're coming to you from a place of I recognize I need to improve something, right? And I love also that you said this gap and gain mindset because I think this, so many of us in the coaching space talk about this in various ways. So I love that this gap and gain because it puts terminology with this language that we're talking about, because I talk about all this too. It's it's in a different way that we get so wrapped up in, you know, like our achievement that it's hard to be satisfied because we put everything in that. I had a guy come on, I don't know if you caught the episode of Ryan Gonefried, and he is a Cal State professor, psychology major. He talked about this in terms of being versus doing, like the doing is the achievement, which is where we place most of our energy. But he said the problem is the being goes with us. That's the leader. That goes with us everywhere we go, and that's what we need to be working on. Is that so? I love all these tur, these words, like because for so many of us, like I'm a visionary. So even though I always tell people, like, I'm an optical practic. So I can be practical, but I'm also optimistic, which is yeah, weird. You don't find that usually, but you're probably like that too. Those people are not are kind of few and far between because you either got practical and cynical, or you've got the optimist that's like, you know, not very practical, right? Right. And so um, I love these words because I'm like, okay, for my people that are very logical and practical-minded, they can take these concepts and put language on them. And then you got the people that we can speak to, the visionary people that we can paint it in vision to them, you know. And so I love those words. Thank you for that. So, yes, I'm gonna let you continue then. Um, are there more to this pie these pieces?

Andrew Poles:

Well, you mean the question you asked was like, What do they primarily come to me for? And so the first one I talked about was confidence or what they call executive presence or both. Yep. Another thing people often come to me for is about uh when other people become involved. And this this kind of ties back into how you opened up the episode about what got you here won't get you to where you want to go. And why this is this is a critical gap in skill building that I find most leaders, first-time leaders, experience because what usually buys someone the opportunity to move into a position of leadership, whether it's in someone else's company or when they start their own company and they have some early success and start to grow and start to bring people on, then they hit that wall. At that point, is that what it takes to be an effective, let's call it an individual contributor, someone who can produce results by relying on their own individual efforts. What it takes to be effective at that is a very, very different set of skills and behaviors and ways of being, to your earlier point, right, than what it takes to empower somebody else to produce results through their individual effort where you can't directly act on the needles that need to get moved. So you're one layer removed now. So you know, when you're when you're an individual contributor, an individual performer, what you're relying on is you can figure out how to solve problems. You can take massive amounts of action until the result gets produced. You can deal with, you know, a lot of the failures that come along with that or the trial and error, whatever you want to call that. You can grind. Typically, if you're successful, you know how to grind, you know how to postpone satisfaction now for something you want down the road. You get up and you go to the gym even though you don't want to, that kind of stuff. Okay, so you've built this set of skills. None of that has anything to do with leading somebody else, not one bit of it. And so it's a completely new domain for you. And what people do is they try to apply the skills they've got to that domain and they don't work and they get frustrated. And they sometimes will get frustrated with themselves, typically with the other person, sometimes both, but it doesn't go well. So the other thing people come to me with is a concern for or a request around is how do I produce results now through other people? I keep finding myself micromanaging or intervening, or I hire the wrong people, or I hire the right people, but then it doesn't, you know, doesn't work out, or they're not producing what I need, or whatever. So that leadership and management and influence skill set is really critical once you have your first employee or your first key contractor, whether it's a you know contractor or an employee, I think you get the point. When you're growing and it's beyond you, you have to learn how to produce results through others. And so that can be learned. Leadership is a learned skill, but most people think it's supposed to be innate. And they think because they got to the point where they get to be a leader, that means they should already be a great leader. And that's just not true. And so they don't have much compassion for themselves and they don't go to work on the right things because they have this incorrect view or belief that because they got to this point of leadership, now they should already be great at it. So you have to go to work at it. And I know I did. I was not good at it in the early parts of my career. I rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Um, I made all the mistakes. And so I had to learn. And so I'm speaking from experience, you can learn to be a really great leader by studying the right stuff. So that's the second thing many people come to meet for it. Is that something you want to double click on?

Jennifer Loehding:

Or well, I was gonna say, I was gonna say, I we right when you kind of mentioned about it's almost like the view of leadership, right? Like they think that the skill set that got them there, they think that's the leader, that was their leadership, their personal leadership. But they transfer that same thing to mean that's the same type of leadership you need to use when dealing with people. And you're right, it's absolutely not, it's completely different. And like you, I've yeah, I mean, I built teams and all the years I was in Mary Kay. I I laugh, I laugh about this now because I've been in there. I was at Mary Kay 22 years. Okay. I left Mary Kay in in 2022, right in the middle of COVID, because, well, for one, for I I didn't, it was similarly to yours, but a little bit differently because I wanted to have a little bit of creative expression. I didn't want somebody can I first of all, I wanted to be able to have my own thing. I didn't, I okay, makeup's cool and all, that's great, but I wasn't really a big makeup, like I don't care about, I put it on, but I don't care about it that much, right? So it wasn't really that, but it was also I didn't feel like I could have my own creative expression. Like I had to do everything by somebody else's book, right? You know, but I realized I laugh about it now because I realized in all those years that I was building teams, like I was awful. I was like a terrible leader, like I was micromanaging people. I'm so very different now. And it's so funny because I and a lot of it is I'm not building teams anymore, but I do lead a networking group here. And I do, I, you know, I I laugh because one of the things I was always good at getting people to events, I get people to do things. I'm pretty sure. I can tell that about you. I've gotten really good at it, you know? And so I think that that's part of it. You weren't, you know, you weren't, but I think there's so much to this. I mean, it's learning how to work with people and understanding humans and and reading the freaking room, like learn to read the damn room. That's yeah. I'm always like, don't make things so hard and awkward, you know. Read your people. It's not a silver, you know. I mean, it's not what I'm saying. So it's not a black and white kind of thing. There is gray area in this, and and I think part of leadership is learning to adapt to all of that and recognize that, you know, it's like I'll tell you just in our networking group, it's a funny thing. One day we were talking about emojis. It was Thanksgiving weekend, so I always do an icebreaker to kind of get them, and I do fun things like we'll play charades or we'll do mad libs or whatever, because I'm just trying to get them to do something different than what they do at a networking event, right? And connect. And we this particular week we got in there and I said, Hey, we're gonna do a thing. If you had to describe yourself in two emojis, I I don't even use that many emojis, but I'm like, if you had to describe yourself in two emojis, what would you come up with? Well, it was the funniest thing because they started talking about emojis that I did not even know existed. But the beautiful thing in this, Andrew, was that they started just talking about how they could use emojis in conversation with people to like diffuse conversation or to whiten things up. Like it became now we were talking about sort of how to do this with people, right? In a separate conversation, we had it was on the idea of understanding when you need to text, when you need to make a phone call, when you need to the different because we get so talk about leadership, we get so honed in on this. Is the way I do it. I only make phone calls. Right. That is the only way I'm gonna do business with you is if I okay, well, fine, you're gonna lose a big segment of the of the of the entrepreneur space if that's all you do, because our millennials and down don't really like the phone other than texting. And I can tell you, my grown kids, all three of them from millennial to Z, not a one of them will answer the phone. I have to text. So you're dealing with those guys as business owners, you better be okay doing some Snapchat, some Instagram, you know, like doing some texting or whatever. You're gonna lose them, you know? And that, my friend, I think is all just the little weaves and and leadership that we have to learn. Yeah, if we want to work with our people and get them to be effective, you know, because it's not a you and me, it's a team.

Andrew Poles:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's really good. That that um is first of all, so clever that use of emojis and the way that people built on that. That's really cool. And then, you know, you're with your kids and the way that people in different generations want to be communicated with. I think that's a good um uh example of the challenge of leadership and management and producing results to others because if you kind of I like in my coaching, I like to make things as simple as possible because people can act on something that's that's simple and it's it's very hard to act on something that's complex. And so when it comes to leadership, it's ultimately a function of influence. You know, effective leadership is about influencing people to take the actions that they need to take to produce the results that you need them to produce. That's really what it boils down to, and results are a function of actions. So it's about influence. And so to be a great leader, you have to understand influence. And for sure, one aspect of that is being able to talk to people through medium, they'll actually use to your point. But you know, it's but this this cascade, and I'll I'm saying this for you know all the listeners who are maybe starting to think about this. This cascade from um actions to results starts earlier up the stream with the way people see the world. And I think this is the piece about leadership that new leaders either don't understand at all or they have what people refer to as unconscious competence, which means Yeah, I know what that is. Yeah, so for anyone who doesn't know the term, it's something that you can do. You're competent at it, but you don't actually know how you do what you do. And sometimes you don't even know that you're doing it. So most people who get to positions of of leadership have unconscious competence and influence in some domain. You're great at selling, like you said, you're great at getting people to go to places and do things. So you have the ability to influence people in some domain, but you don't necessarily know what it is you're doing when you're doing that or why it works or how to apply it in a different situation or a different context where it's not like trying to get people to show up for a thing. So the third thing that we were talking about was is influence. And um, there's this cascade from actions to results, and everyone gets that. Like, oh yeah, if I could just get people to take the right actions, they can produce the results I need. But there's this earlier step of the process, which is people can only act as human beings in in whatever ways are consistent with how they see the world. Right. So there's this really critical part about influencing people that has to go back to how do people see the world? Um and you know, it's really, it's really interesting when your view of the world shifts, your actions shift. People can only act in ways that are consistent with how they view the world. You know, you you just can't act in a way that doesn't make sense to you. And you you can't see the way you see the world. You can just, you know, you just see it that way. So you just you think if you if you do this thing that people are gonna get angry with you, you know, if if you oh, if I call these people twice in a week, they're gonna get mad at me. I can't do that. And so you can't get people to follow up or whatever, you know, or they're gonna be angry if I ask them, you know, are we confirmed? Whatever it is. So being a leader takes a tremendous amount of empathy. This is the point, and connection. To be a great leader, you have to be able to connect with how other people are seeing and experiencing their life in the world and understanding how the way they see and experience the world either allows them or doesn't allow them to take actions to be effective. And if it doesn't, rather than getting angry with them or thinking they don't care or misinterpreting what's going on, actually helping them create a new way to view themselves and other people and the situation that that they're dealing with. So that takes a lot of empathy. So the third thing people come to me for, they don't know they come to me for, is empathy because that what they are focused on is influence. What they are focused on is being effective to others. And what that often requires is developing empathy, being able to see.

Jennifer Loehding:

Yeah, and I'm glad that you said that because I've said that too. And I think that comes the more, the more that you I mean, I always tell people like everything you ever need to solve in life is in a conversation. I believe that. I believe that through talking to people, you will learn everything you ever need to know. Empathy will be one of them because the more conversation you will have, the more perspective you get from other people, you know? And yeah, I it's even like one day, I don't want to get into all this, but I was I was on the Dr. Phil show back when they were, we were having the election, and you can go look it up. We were on the I was on when they were doing the vice presidential election. I got we my husband and I were on the show, and what do you know it? Dr. Phil calls on me to talk, and so I have to stand up and do my like 30 seconds. Well, the question he asked was, has it has your your economic status basically something around has your economic status changed because of the Biden administration? Well, ours hadn't. We're my husband's a ninja, we were okay. We are, I was telling the truth. Now, of course, yes, I stood up and said someone, yes, like bacon's more money, things are more money, but statistically speaking, we were okay. Yeah, you know, was that. But here's the thing when we got done with that show, at the end, Dr. Phil stayed in, he was talking to the audience, and they were going around, like we had some hecklers in the group and behind us that even at the end of the show made a comment. Yeah. But they were going around about immigration. And what I found so interesting, Andrew, and I don't want to get it like into the politics, but what I'm trying to show you is the empathy part of this, that there were very diverse opinions on this particular topic. Yeah. But listening to both of them, yeah, I could actually found myself torn in the middle between these views because I could see the part over here where this person was saying it's very difficult for somebody to come in. And I was seeing this person over here like, get with the program and do everything, you know.

Andrew Poles:

Yeah.

Jennifer Loehding:

And that's my point is when I say that when you have conversation like you're talking about in leadership, when you're working with people, it allows you to put yourself into their shoes and actually maybe kind of have empathy and compassion for where they're going. And so this is why I will say when I work with people, I don't do a whole lot of coaching anymore now, but anytime I talk to somebody, I will always start off. And say, I am not going to pretend I know what you are going through right now. Because for us to sit there, I don't know about you, but that is a number one pet peeves when somebody goes, Oh, I know how you feel. No, you do not know how somebody feels ever, ever. And don't pretend you do. You can say, I resonate with that, or you know, like I can maybe understand you're upset. Well, but yeah, I don't want to ever assume I know how you feel about something because we don't. And I think that's what is so great about in leadership is that you can't unsee it, like what you're talking about. You can't really unsee what you learn. I always say that it's like it's a very different mindset. Like when you start looking at things from this, the game, you know, or the or the part you're talking about, you see the world very differently because you can still sit in the moment of a bad situation, but you can also recognize the good in it. And you can also you can also recognize also that maybe what somebody else is going through, you may not ultimately understand all the parts of it, but you can be curious enough to ask the questions and maybe learn what they're doing from it.

Andrew Poles:

I find, tell me if if you find this as well, but I find that you can learn almost everything you need to know about how to be a great leader in life from how to be a great parent of a young child. Yeah, that this too.

Jennifer Loehding:

Yes, this too.

Andrew Poles:

What I mean by that is, and I apologize for any listeners who aren't parents or aren't parents yet, but maybe you know you've witnessed what I'm about to talk about. You can relate to it from there. But one thing that really works with parenting younger children, let's say, you know, under the age of 12, um, is that the frontal part of their brains, so the prefrontal cortex where all the thinking and analyzing happens, it hasn't developed very strongly yet. And so the back part of the brain, the limbic area where all the emotions come from, is much stronger. And so when children have emotional reactions to things, they're much, much stronger often than what we have as adults because we are balancing the emotion along with some logic. And so the mistake parents can make with a young child is when they're having this big emotional experience is to try to talk to them logically about, oh no, it's really okay because that doesn't do anything for them because right in that moment, all that they're present to is this experience they're having of being angry or sad or whatever. What really does work well with children is just taking that moment to validate, reflect back to them the experience that they're having. Oh wow, you're really angry. Yeah. Oh, you didn't want me to take the toy away. Yeah. And so you feel angry, yeah. And just taking the moment to do that and having them experience that you see what they're experiencing and you've validated it is all they need to be able to move on.

Jennifer Loehding:

Yep.

Andrew Poles:

Right. And so with this thing we're talking about with empathy, the same thing applies with adults.

Jennifer Loehding:

I was gonna say, bingo, yes.

Andrew Poles:

Giving people the experience of, okay, I see what you're saying, and I see your view, I see how you feel, and validating that. And I'll tell you the the biggest challenge I find that people have with this step of validating. So it's getting someone's view and experience and then validating it before you offer something new is that people conflate or collapse validating someone's view or their experience with agreeing with them.

Jennifer Loehding:

Yep.

Andrew Poles:

Or giving up something that they want in the situation. And those two things are actually not the same at all. I'm gonna give an example of this from my relationship with my daughter's mom that I think is is a good way to demonstrate this. I always had this experience, um, even after this breakthrough that we had, for years after that, that she just felt like I was not a good dad, you know? And um, and I could not get it because I never missed a child support payment, and it was showed up for like it showed up for all of the events and paid for private school and did all the things I thought a good dad was supposed to do, right? I did all things I thought. So one day I was just like, okay, I just want to get to the bottom of this. And I called her and I asked her, I was like, look, I just want you to be honest with me. I'm not gonna argue with you. I'm not gonna take offense. I just really need to understand something. Would you just tell me honestly? It always feels to me after our interactions, like you don't think I'm a good dad. Like you think I'm a bad dad. And I just want to know if that's true. Or am I crazy? She goes, Oh, I'll be glad to tell you. She goes, I don't think you're a good dad. I was like, okay, so I'm not crazy. So I'm like, tell me why you think that. Why do you think I'm not a good dad? And she goes, Because the primary job of a good dad is taking care of the mom. And you didn't take care of me. So I don't think you're a good dad because moms do the lion's share of, you know, this. And she went through her list of things. And I had never considered that before. From my point of view, I was like, okay, we're not in a relationship. I'm married, you know, I'm showing up for my child, I'm paying you child support, and the rest is your job. That's not my job. That's how I saw it. Okay. But I could, but but I don't even know if that's true or right. I just I really considered her point of view. I'm like, okay, from her point of view, you know, what she really needed to be effective with our daughter was more support from me. And I didn't give her that. So in her point of view, that I'm not a good dad. And I was like, okay. I just literally said, okay, I get it. I get it. Thank you for telling me that. And then I just shut up, you know, because she had did what I asked her to do and told me the truth. And she was baffled by that. And she was like, Well, what do you mean? I was like, no, no, I get what you're saying. I get it. It's valid. I can see what you're saying. Yeah. And she goes, Well, don't you want to say something about that? I said, No, I promised you I wouldn't. And I'm not, you know, she goes, Well, I want to know what you think about that. I said, Okay. I said, Well, I think a couple things. First off, I like I said, I think it's valid. I can see what you're saying. I had never thought of it that way before. So I get it. Um, and then I said, and I just think it's unfortunate for you that you can only see me that one way. And she goes, What do you mean it's unfortunate for me? I said, Well, look, there are things that you do, you know, as a mom that maybe I don't agree with. Okay. There are always going to be stuff like that. I said, but there are so many things that you do that you provide for our daughter that I appreciate so profoundly. There are there are ways that you are with her that I don't know how to be.

Jennifer Loehding:

Yeah.

Andrew Poles:

And I'm just grateful that she has you for those things. It makes me happy.

Jennifer Loehding:

Yeah.

Andrew Poles:

That she has you to provide those things because I don't know how to do it.

Jennifer Loehding:

Yeah.

Andrew Poles:

And I'm sorry that you can't see that in me because I know how much joy it gives me. You know, to know that she has you.

Jennifer Loehding:

Yeah.

Andrew Poles:

I feel bad for you, to be honest. And I don't disagree with what you said. And that's all I said. And she goes, okay. And then we got off the phone, right? Let me tell you, that was the first year. I think it was when my daughter was around maybe 10 or 12. She sent me a Father's Day card that wasn't from my daughter saying, I appreciate this about you, I appreciate that about you, I appreciate this about you. You know, I'm so glad that you gave me chills.

Jennifer Loehding:

Yeah, wow. Yeah.

Andrew Poles:

And, you know, all it really took was for me to validate her view and not argue with it. And then in the next moment, because she was interested and she asked to offer her another point of view that, in my from my perspective, was going to be more empowering to her, but also give me more of what I want. So when I talk about influence in a way that is humane and connected and not manipulative, where it's like what I call a win-win, where everyone wins.

Jennifer Loehding:

Win-win. Stephen Debbie.

Andrew Poles:

And that's what I work with them on. Get someone's view, validate their view, and then offer a new view that is a win-win. So that's the third thing.

Jennifer Loehding:

Andrew, thank you for sharing that story. It's so funny. I had the conversation with my son the other day. He is a um a chef at a uh he's been a chef for a little while, but he's young. He's 21. He'll be 22 and May's my youngest. And I just had this conversation with him the other day because win-win, you know, Stephen Covey, seven habits of the highly affected, whatever. Love that to talk about it. I just told him the other day because he was complaining about something at work. And I said, remember, Sean, win-win. If it's a win for them, it's a win for you, it's a win for all. That's the goal, you know? And so I have these conversations all the time. But thank you for sharing that story because that is so important. That is such a big component of not, and leadership is not just in as a founder. It's like you just said, it's in parenting, it's in relationships, spousal relations, friends. It it transcends all over. So that validation, that story was so good because it gave me chills. Because, yes, when you validate, and I love that you said do not collapse the validation. Oh my gosh, do not, that's just another way of like, no, invalidate, whatever. Do not collapse the validation. You cannot offer your point of view if you collapse the validation. Right. And a story. It's never gonna work because the other person's not gonna receive it. So thank you for showing that story because I think that, you know, I'm a big believer that people learn through stories. You know, when we sit here and we talk about, you know, things, we can all do that. That's why I do this podcast because all of these concepts that you guys talk about, I say all the time. But here's what I know I can say them a hundred times and they're love to listen to me talk. Yeah, but you guys come on and you tell your stories. And so all of these stories at the end of the day, get these concepts, they just trickle out in different ways. And so hopefully I feel like, you know, all these resonating messages are really this stuff that we're talking about. You can't unsee it once you know it. And so um, I think as an evolving leader, we're I say evolving because it it's always evolution. It's a continuum, right? It's a continuum. But I do believe that you know, this whole gap game thing is a real thing. And when you can learn what you're talking about to get to that other side, and it's a very different view. You know, somebody asked me the other day, they said, you know, are you are you are you a happy person? And I said, genuinely speaking, yeah. I mean, I've had a lot of bad stuff, and I feel like I've had a lot of really bad things happen in my life. I think that's why I was led to do called to do the work that I do because I've had a lot of really crazy stories, abusive relationships, you know, and different things in my life that I've had to weather through, two rare diseases. I mean, just but I feel like that they've given me the ability to one, gain some of that empathy, but also to speak into people and really find that thing I'm supposed to be doing. And I tell you, you know, the biggest thing you you've said this all throughout this. I will tell you, the things that have allowed me to be happy is that move from what we've talked about, that gap to gain thing. It's really that transcendence over here to be able to, you know, all the stuff, practice the gratitude. You can't occupy fear and gratitude in the same space, and you can't be sad and happy in the same space. I don't believe you're, you know, you can have them all. And I'm not saying you're happy all the time and never sad, right? Right. But overall, when you ask me that question, am I happy? I'm probably gonna say, Yeah, for the most part, I'm a pretty happy person. You know, so great stories, Andrew. This has been so awesome. We could talk forever, but here's what I do. I want to ask you one final question. You've said so many great things. I want to know, and maybe you will tell me. You've said so many, but I just want you to kind of sum this up.

Andrew Poles:

Okay.

Jennifer Loehding:

If I were to say, define success, how would you just sum that up in like maybe a sentence or two for our listeners?

Andrew Poles:

Success is being effective at what you say matters at the end of your life.

Jennifer Loehding:

I like it. That's good. I like it. Good, good. I love that question. Everybody says kind of the same things, but just a little nuanced difference. So all right, well, this has been awesome. So if our listeners, somebody listening to this may want to catch up with you, maybe they want to, you know, follow you, they want to reach out, whatever. I how where do we want to send them so they can get you?

Andrew Poles:

Okay. Uh the three best ways to contact me. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and I do check all my DMs there. So you can DM me or reach out to Connect on LinkedIn. I always love to receive connection requests from listeners to shows on which I'm I'm an interview. And then I'm launching today my Instagram, Andre Polescoach on Instagram. I'm going to be putting out morning walks with Andrew. Just every day I go for a walk. I record myself talking about one of the topics, like what we talked about today for three minutes. They're shorts or on YouTube. Yeah. On my Andrew Pulse Coaching on YouTube. Or lastly, just go to my website, andrew poles.com, and reach out to me through there. There's a connect link on there. You can connect with me there.

Jennifer Loehding:

Perfect. Okay. We'll make sure when we do the show notes, we'll get all that stuff in there. And congratulations on your that I'm impressed because I told you social media and me. Like, I I could you this is like my extent is repurposing content. Like, that's what I got my super. There's so much content on my YouTube. I'm like, just repurpose the content. It's all there. Every time I have to think of something, like just be like, I'm gonna get on and talk. I'm like, oh, I gotta think about this. What am I gonna say today? You know? Yeah. So I want to wish you much success on that. People love that stuff. I mean, they really do. As we know, you go on to TikToks, all video is the is the way to do it now. So I'm sure you will you will do well and and grab you know some followers on that uh that medium.

Andrew Poles:

So thank you so much. And for it was so great to be interviewed, but I love the way your interviews follow the the breadcrumbs, you know, down the trail where they lead. It just makes you really authentic. Thank you and fun to listen to. It makes it real. So thanks for doing the work you're doing.

Jennifer Loehding:

Thank you. Yeah, and same to you as well. And so, yeah, it's been fun. Like I said, I know we could sit on here forever, but everybody's got things to do today. So we'll get to it. But thank you again for your wisdom and the knowledge nuggets. And hopefully somebody here will be listening to this and uh catch up with you at some point here. So all right, and of course, to our listeners, we appreciate you, love you. Hope you found this episode both inspiring and informative. And if you did, you know what to do. All the things like, subscribe, comment, share it so we can keep putting out all this fabulous content. And as I always say, in order to live the extraordinary, you must start, and every start begins with a what? Decision. You guys take care, be safe, be kind to one another, and we will see you next time.

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Jennifer Loehding

Host
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Andrew Poles

Guest