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Webinar: Managing Up! Developing Effective Relationships at All Levels

Tuesday July 21, 2020
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
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Murray Resources has partnered with our sister company, ResumeSpice, to bring you the following free webinar: ‘Managing Up! Developing Effective Relationships at All Levels’

In this webinar, author, keynote speaker, and trainer, Margaret Johnson, will bust the myths surrounding boss/subordinate relationships. You will gain tips and create a plan to manage these relationships to obtain the best results for you, your higher ups and the organization. By understanding each other’s strengths, weaknesses, working styles, and expectations you will create effective, productive working relationships. Lessons learned from great and not so great bosses will also be examined.

You do not want to miss this webinar. We hope you will register and join us!

If this event has passed, you can still click here to view the recorded webinar.

View Full Transcript

The following transcript was auto-generated from the video version of the webinar. Please excuse any typos / inaccuracies.

Keith Wolf:

Hi, everyone. We’re gonna get started in just a minute. We’re going to give folks about another 30 seconds and then we’ll get started. All right. Welcome everybody excited about another webinar. I’m Keith Wolf on the managing director of Marie resources. We’re a Houston based recruiting firm and I’m also the CEO of resume spice. We’re a career coaching and resume writing service. Now, before we get started, just have a few housekeeping items to go over. So the webinar is going to be 60 minutes.

Keith Wolf:

We’re going to do our best end at 3:00 PM central. We want to make sure our speaker has all the time. She needs to go over everything she’s prepared without having a rush. And we’re also going to try to answer as many live questions as we can. So please put them in the Q and a box and we’ll answer them at the end of the presentation. Okay. This webinar is being recorded and you will be able to watch it later if you miss anything. So don’t worry about that. And we are in a webinar format, so we cannot see you. And we cannot hear you. There are over 400 people on this call, so we’re going to do our best to get through everything, but we’re going to need everybody on mute. So that way we can make sure we can hear our speaker. We’ll be sharing the slides from this webinar, with everyone who registered.

Keith Wolf:

And lastly, we’re going to have two drawings at the end. We haven’t done this before. But our speaker today has donated a couple of guests at the end. So you must be present and on the call to win one, speaker will sorry. One winner will get a signed copy of our speakers book and one hour free coaching session with the speaker. And the second winner will get an Amazon gift certificate for $35. Okay. So I’m excited about today’s webinar because there is so much out there about managing your employees, even managing your career, but not as much about managing up. How do you manage your boss? And I don’t know many professionals who really think about that. They might think about how to deal with their boss. Maybe they like their boss, maybe they don’t, but being strategic about managing up is really it’s critical to your professional success.

Keith Wolf:

So today’s talk is titled managing up, developing effective relationships at all levels. And our speakers, Margaret Johnson. Now Margaret is an author trainer and keynote speaker on creativity, risk taking and leadership. She partners with our clients to bust assumptions, apply creative genius to tackle issues and develop courageous risk, taking to assist in solving problems. Margaret received her bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from Michigan state university. And then as she says, she moved to Texas as fast as she could. She has her MBA from the university of Houston clear Lake, as well as her professional engineering license and corporate coaching credentials. So with that, she inspires people and organizations to move from SOS or same old stuff to wow, well, on the way to where they want to be. She’s a published author from SOS to wow, your personal coaching adventure. And she enjoys golf beaches, volunteering, and is also a certified group exercise instructor in indoor cycle, yoga and weightlifting. And she loves spending time with her growing family. So thank you Margaret, for taking time out of your busy schedule to speak with us today. And with that, the floor is yours.

Margaret Johnson:

Welcome. Hello everyone. How do you guys and how do you, because I’m in Texas and you guys, because I’m from Michigan, but I’d like to ask each of you to do right now. If you put in the chat where I use zooming in from, we’d like to see where everyone is coming from this afternoon. So just write in the chat, go glue Houston, Dallas pear land, lots of Houston nights here, Seabrook India, West Austin. All right. We are from all over the place. Yes, that’s great. And we all do many different things, right? Some of us right now, we might not have a job. Some of us might be starting a new job. Some of you might be a small business owner. Some of you might be a CEO in a huge corporation. It doesn’t matter where you are in your career. Right now that managing up is going to be a very important thing for you to focus on, to paraphrase Daniel Bradford, the coauthor of influencing up those people that are at higher levels in the organization.

Margaret Johnson:

They tend to go deaf and those at lower levels of the organization, they tend to develop laryngitis. So I believe that these afflictions can be cured and it’s all about relationships, which is what we are exploring and managing up, developing effective relationships at all levels. And as I like to call it affectionately, busting the bus. By the time we’re done this afternoon, you will have busted assumptions laying all over the floor. I hope you have room for those. And you will also have some tips and techniques that you can use right away to help you with better boss bossing. Now, since we’re trying to work from where we are to where we’d like to be from our SOS, same old stuff too. Well, the first thing that you’re going to need to do is be ready for change, to change something. So what I want you to do right now is I want you to physically change something about your appearance. I’m taking my ring off of my left hand and putting it on my right, which is uncomfortable for me. I’d like each one of you to change something physically about your parents. Now, remember you can only take off so much and still remain professional. Please remain professional. Even though you’re not on video. And, and Oh, originally from Lansing, Michigan, I just saw that. So also what I’d like you to put in the chat is what did you change? What did you just change?

Margaret Johnson:

And I invite you to keep whatever you changed up your glasses. How are you getting to see bracelet? Tuck my shirt in. Okay. Took off earrings. I invite you to try and keep this new way of being for as long as you can. We will check in with you later. Okay. So managing up, what does that mean? It’s, it’s a process. It’s a continuous process. It’s not just a one time event where you’re consciously partnering with the periods that are inside your organization. And sometimes we forget also externally like vendors or people that you work with outside of the organization, connecting with them at all different levels. And you’re looking for the best results for you, for them and for the organization. Now, why would you care about that? Why would it matter to you? Well, part of it is it can make your work and your life easier.

Margaret Johnson:

If you’re partnering, connecting at different levels. I know one time when we were doing some reengineering and the power industry, and we were all a big group of us were sitting in a conference room, in a meeting and we were asking us questions about what did the executive, what do you think? You know, maybe you be want us to do this, that, and I kind of looked at them as a new engineer. Like, why don’t we just go ask him? So if you already have connections with them and Navy, weren’t afraid of them, then it would be very comfortable and easy to go down the hall and ask some questions and clarify things managing up can also give you opportunities when people know what your skills are. When I know what you’re capable of, then they can offer you some opportunities. You might not have gotten if they didn’t know about you.

Margaret Johnson:

So I need crazy creative. I’m an engineer, but a crazy creative. And one of the executives in our company, when deregulation was coming through for the power industry, he invited me to help the accountants come up with a training class so that everyone could understand profit centers. So I made a game where everybody on power, plants, things happen. They made decisions. They got some see their bottom line and I would never have had that opportunity. And maybe it even led me into speaking and training too. If this executive didn’t know me a little bit better and know that I was a crazy creative, your leadership skills are also highlighted. And it also, we know that a lot of times people leave a company because of the manager. So if you are connecting to those at all different levels and people encouraging those underneath you to connect to, they will have a better experience with their manager and maybe they will stick around. So there’s a lot of good reasons to do this. Now I wants you all to take your either right or left hand, doesn’t matter and bring your thumb and index finger together. I’d like you to bring your hand to your chin, bring your hand to your chin.

Speaker 4:

Okay?

Margaret Johnson:

No matter if your hand is still up here or you’re actually on your chin, there’s nothing wrong with you. It just means you’re probably more visual than you are auditory. So if you would put in the chat box, are you a chinner or a shaker? I know when I got this first done to me that I just had my hand up here and I kept going, my hand is on my chin, my hand on my chin, but it just means you’re more visual than you are auditory. So nothing wrong with you. Oh, we’re getting a lot of visual. If we’re getting a lot of gingers. Ah, have you seen this before? Maybe you just are auditory. So I’d like to knowing that a lot of you are visual to use some pictures to help us illustrate some of these topics. Now we’re talking about going from SOS to wow, with managing up where you are.

Margaret Johnson:

I want to illustrate that. And then I’m going to ask you to do a little exercise. So I’ve picked a picture here of the totem pole, and this is my situation. As far as my managing up now, granted I have my own business and I am the only one at the top of that totem pole that in the fitness industry, I’m at the bottom, I’m a group exercise instructors. So if I have any ideas, it’s got to work its way up club manager, my fitness manager, all the way to the CEO, if it ever gets there. Right? So how I like things to be the wow, the, well, on the way is I like it to be just like a box of chocolates where each one of us has different qualities, but we’re connecting with everyone in the box and we can suggest ideas. We can talk to people.

Margaret Johnson:

We can all work together this way instead of having to maybe never get my idea to the top. So I want you to start thinking about what does managing up look for you personally right now and another yeah. For yourself of what you would like it to look like. So I have quite a few pictures that I’m going to show. You have some possibilities for you of what it might look like. Maybe it’s like butting heads all the time relationships aren’t too great. That could be a possibility for you. Maybe it feels like you’re walking alone on the sand and that you don’t have any support from anyone. Right? It’s all about all on you. Or it could be like a vertical wall where any of you rock climb to get forward. It’s pretty difficult. It feels like you’re just climbing up and up, up and up all the time.

Margaret Johnson:

So those are some possibilities for where you are and where you’re stuck. And here’s a couple of possibilities for how you’d like it to look, you’re all on it. You’re all at that different talents and skills and different places on the boat. And you’re moving in the right direction. The other boat appears to be going in a different direction, but isn’t that true all the time. And here we have era artists tools. So it’s like you have a lot of connections. You’ve got a lot of tools that you can use and you’re managing up. And also here is making connections with people, sharing information, partnering, seeing how you can work together in the future. So what I want you to do right now is to pick two pictures either by going on your computer and Googling, there’s a pixel Bay at about there that has free pictures in there.

Margaret Johnson:

And you can look through, maybe you’ve got some magazines or something around you. You could draw a picture. I want you to do, to have where you are and where you would like to be with managing up. You can also just write, you can just write a sentence or a phrase or two of how things look for you and how you’d like things to look. I’ll give you a minute to do that. And I would also, as you get that, as you find your picture or you describe your situation, I would like you to put SOS equals in the chat box and wow. Equal. So SOS, or you can put now in future, but I’d like you to share either what’s on your picture or what is your phrases that you’ve used. So we’ll give you just about a minute or so to look for your description of SOS and your description or picture of wow.

Keith Wolf:

He may have missed that.

Margaret Johnson:

Okay. So the SOS is the same old stuff. The place you are right now with managing up, maybe you’ve only connected with your boss, your immediate boss, but you haven’t started to develop relationships at any other level. Maybe you’re so buried in your work that you don’t even have time to talk to other people. So, Ooh, I led teamwork and dreamwork is the ultimate goal. And so, and the wow is where would you like things to be? That would be very easy to knock on the door of an executive and ask a question or, or get some time with them. So this same old stuff is where are you now? And wow. Is how would you like things to change? What would you like to see differently as far as your managing that situation? Well, with various arms, that’s the interesting SOS I’m currently stuck in having mud walking lonely. Wow. And like to be making connections and networking a traveling world.

Keith Wolf:

Wow. It’s collaborative.

Margaret Johnson:

Wow. On the same page supported and paid fairly would like collaborative prestige doing well in relationships and the relationships from firefighter to future strategist. Very good. So you’ve got a good idea of where you are and where you’d like to be. I want you to keep that visual. And as we go through the different exercises and techniques, see how that you could utilize those to make move to. Wow. So who really, really, really wants to move from SOS to wow. Who really wants it, who would love for that to happen? First person that chats me up there is desailly James. Definitely. James was the very first one email me and I will send you a prize. Okay. I’ll send you a copy of my book and another little prize with that. So you were the first one D I would. I’d love to see that.

Margaret Johnson:

So let’s do this. How are we going to get there? Here’s the plan first look at the assumptions. Cause I believe that this is where most of us struggle is the stories we tell ourselves, hold us back. We’ll look at who are we partnering with and who might, we need to partner with that? We aren’t, we have basis a great foundation for any relationship is trust. How does your trust look? What things could you do to build trust, then getting to know the other person with their strengths and their weaknesses, their work styles, their expectations. If we don’t do anything, then nothing’s going to change. So we’ve got to take a risk. We’ve got to take her. You’re welcome, Leslie. And Kay. So we will also be looking at risk taking. And then the last piece I’m trusting or not trusting. I’m hoping that a lot of you haven’t had to deal with, or aren’t dealing with less than ideal bosses that we will target that.

Margaret Johnson:

So I know there’s been some questions coming in before this webinar and we will address those. There are a few less than ideal bosses. So the first piece is assumptions. Think about the stories that you tell yourself like, Oh, the executives don’t have time for me. And I try to share my ideas, but they never listened to me or it’s true. We just have opposite personalities. It’s never going to work. I don’t need to manage up all the way I’ve got my work to do. And I just connect with my boss and that’s all I need. So there’s some stories that you tell yourself about managing up. What I would like you to do right now is take out a paper and pen or on your computer anywhere you’d like to, I’m going to ask you to make a list of all the stories that you tell yourself, all these stories, you hear other people like we can’t be friends with them, all those kinds of things.

Margaret Johnson:

And we’re going for the longest list. I don’t start yet. So get ready to write or type in your computer. But we’re going for the longest list of all the stories that we tell ourselves or that we’ve heard other people say about managing up. Remember their ones. There’s examples right here. You can use some version of mine or you can also you know this, right? All those things like vote. They don’t have time for me, whatever it is. So on your Mark, the longest list of assumptions we have about managing up, get set, go. You don’t have to put them in the chat just on your own, making your own list.

Speaker 4:

Okay?

Margaret Johnson:

We’ll give you about 20 more seconds. 20 more seconds. Five, four, three, two, one. Count the number of items on your list. Enter that in the chat box. The number that’s, the highest will win a prize for me.

Margaret Johnson:

Eight is the highest number I’m seeing right now. Three with a sad face. I mean, that’s a good thing. Okay? So it looks like we’ll let a few more people in there. It looks like eight from Rashida, Kali, OSHA at you might be the winner. So rich. If you win anything, you need to email me so I can send you your prize. Now I’d like you to post one of your assumptions in the chat box posted one of your assumptions in the chat box. My email address is margaret@margarethjohnson.com. And Margaret is spelled M a R G a R E T. So I’m seeing that I’m an introvert. I don’t like to talk, but when needed, like they can’t relate. They don’t have the time. Everything has to go through the supervisor. I’m too new on my job to manage up. I’m not sure if they’re having a good day, I’m just a worker.

Margaret Johnson:

I can easily be replaced. Okay. So there’s a lot. They’re not accessible. Like I don’t want to draw attention to myself. Oh, these are super. These are great. Okay. So what I want you to do is hold on to your list for a minute. Hold on to your list. You can also, maybe you’ve seen somebody else’s and you’re like, Oh, that’s for me too. All right. Let’s see how true these assumptions might be. I’m posting a story up here on the screen. I’m going to leave it up here. And what I’d like you to do is read through these sentences, read through this story, and then I’ll ask you a few questions about this story. Okay. So take a minute to read my story about the businessman.

Margaret Johnson:

Okay. I’m leaving it up there. You’re all reading the same story. When I make a statement, I want you to put in the chatbox. Is it true? So put a T for true. Is it false? Put an F for false or put a question, Mark. If you don’t know. So T for true F for false or question Mark, you don’t know. All right. Okay. Here we go. The first statement is a man appeared after the owner had turned off the store lights. A man appeared after the owner had turned off this store lights and seeing true false question, Mark. You don’t know. Okay. The actual right answer is you don’t know no way. Nowhere does it state that the man who turned off the lights was the owner. Okay. Let’s try just a couple more. This second one is the robber was a man. True?

Margaret Johnson:

False or dunk? No, the robber was a man. True question Mark. Question Mark. True. True, true, true question Mark. A couple of don’t knows. All right. Actually you don’t know because it doesn’t state directly that it was a robber. It doesn’t say the reason that yes. For cash, right? Didn’t say that it was a rubber we don’t know. And then let’s go with one more question. Last one, the man who appeared, did not demand money. The man who appeared, did not demand money to false. All right. I’m seeing a lot of false ads on this one and that’s correct. He did appear and demand money. And there’s a bunch of more questions. But the point of it is, is we don’t really know. We’re all looking at us. A false is coming in. Good job. We’re looking at the same information. We kind of filled in the blanks.

Margaret Johnson:

Right. And when we’re asking these specific questions, we really don’t know. So I’m not trying to tell you that. We don’t really know anything at all. That’s a lot of time, if we can make up some stories and look at, you know, what we see and make, you know, fill in the blanks. So there’s a medulla, hijack, unconscious bias. There’s all sorts of brain theory that we won’t get in deep into today, but I’m betting it. Some of you have seen the ladder of inference. So we observe some data. We have some experiences. We select data from what we observe. Then we start to make assumptions, right? We put meaning on to these. And from our assumptions, we draw conclusions. And then our beliefs about the world are adopted from these conclusions. And we take action based on our beliefs. So here’s an example in the fitness world, in my cycle class, those classes are typically sold out, right?

Margaret Johnson:

Everybody is trying to get in there. So there’s usually a waiting list. And one day when I came in to teach my class, had a waiting list, a brunette with standing by the side, watching a Mons, get onto a bike. And she said, I’m higher up on the waiting list. That’s my bike. She’s taking my bike. Well, I needed to go check the list at the front desk and see who was supposed to have the bike. But she says she made some comment about ones and entitlement or something. And at the time it was like, Whoa. And she said a few more things, but it really wasn’t that bad. But it was very obvious that some blonde had done something to her. Now she had this observation right here. Another blonde was taken her black now. And, and this is what we do. We all do it.

Margaret Johnson:

Well, it turns out the bond was supposed to be on the bike and the brunette apologize and always get, and we all got to ride. But the point of that is that we do this all the time. So these assumptions that we have about managing up, we might’ve seen one thing. We might’ve had something happened to us before. And we start to believe that when I first started working in the park company I was from Michigan. I’m down here in Texas. And I was the first female engineer and I was from Michigan and I talked funny. So they all wanted to meet me. So executives were coming in to meet me. And I was just, Oh, hi Tom. Hi, Mark, whatever. And hi Susan. And this guy that worked with me after the executive would leave a rundown. Did you know who that was now this time or that Susan, he goes there, the executive, whatever.

Margaret Johnson:

And I’m like, I didn’t know. I was supposed to be scared. Right? So in the beginning, it didn’t know. And then you develop these ideas. So what I want you to do with your assumptions, you can pick someone else’s that you saw on the chat or with yours. I want you to pick one of those and think about what if that wasn’t true. What would you do differently if it wasn’t true? What would you do differently if they really had the time for you? And I’ll show you in just a little bit of how you can get time with them. I got an hour with the CEO.

Margaret Johnson:

So looking at your assumptions right now, we need to look at who do we need to partner with? Who are you partnering with right now? Who are you managing up to? Are you just working with your immediate boss? Because they make all the connections above where you are, you trying to partner with people, but it’s not going very well. Who do you need to be connected to? Now there’s three areas to think about for connection. There’s personal. So like the people that you work with enjoy maybe your lunch buddies, something like that, your personal connections. The second part of it is operational to get work done. You’ve got to have connections. And the third piece of that is strategic revision for your ideas, for where you can see the organization, yourself, anything going so on a personal level and operational level and a strategic level.

Margaret Johnson:

This is where you want to start to look for. And my partnering on those levels, who am I partnering with? What I want you to think about is isn’t one person that you’re not partnering with right now that you’d like to partner with. So write that down or put that in your brain. My husband and I have been married 36 years. And when we got married in the Catholic church, we had to go through premarital counseling. So we had some time with the priest and then we met with a sponsor couple for four sessions. We go over a questionnaire and then we would do the questionnaire ourselves. And then my husband and I would get together and look at our answers. And then we’d talk with the sponsor couple. Now, one of those was on finance and they asked you how much money would you spend without, without consulting your partner?

Margaret Johnson:

And I had like, I don’t know, 1000, $2,000. And I cut it down to 500. My husband had, he had like $25. He changed it and cross it out to 50. So when we got together, right, there’s this big difference. Right? And so it was very important to get together and know those differences and how we were going to work together. And it’s working and it’s been working for 36 years, but one time he called me up and he’s talking about this software. And I was like, Oh gosh, he goes, can I get it? And I go, how much is it? I thought it was going to be very expensive. And he goes $25. And I just laughed because of that premarital counseling. So you want to partner with people, you want to have the designed Alliance, you know, how are you going to work together?

Margaret Johnson:

You know, what are your quirks? And you know, how do you work your personality styles, all that, get to know that, but first pick out who you want to work with. And remember, it’s not always just an executive, right? It can be the admin, the connection to the executive. If you can show them how your information or what you want to meet with them is valuable. If they can understand that, you’ll get the time, think about champions or you think about other people that can connect you and think about, look at influencers in your organization or in the industry. So make sure you’ve got somebody picked out for your, for partner of who you’re going to think about after you leave this session that you’re going to start connecting to the foundation for partnerships and relationships is trust, or at least I think so.

Margaret Johnson:

And there’s a country Western song. Now I’m from Michigan. I’m a rock and roll Bob Seger and Motown girl that I’ve been in Texas a long time. You can probably tell by the little drop in my GS and is a man Warren song. That’s Marin Morris song. If the bones are good. So if the trust, if a foundation is good. So I believe for me, these are very important, consistency, integrity, communication consideration. Now I know of another fitness instructor who works with lawyers and they will come to her office that, you know, five to five in the afternoon when she’s got to leave and go teach, you know, her other job and they’ll dump things on her. And so she’ll sometimes have me back her up cause she’s never sure. So there’s kind of no consideration for that. So this trust is so important. And I have, when I was working in the power industry and deregulation was coming through, I was asked to find a tool, a financial model tool that we could use to understand the new market.

Margaret Johnson:

And I was given that project until good luck, mission, impossible. They didn’t think it could be done. I put together a team of individuals and I had to give reports. And when I did my first report, I wanted to, you’re familiar with mission impossible. It pulled out a tape way back then out of an envelope and play the tape. And then the tape would self-destruct. But there’s that music dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. And that’s how I wanted to start my presentation to these executives and directors. But I know about trust and I knew about my manager. So I check with him first told him when I was going to do and he okayed it. So then he knew that in the future, if there was ever a question like that, I would check with him. He didn’t have to worry about it. So those are some of the ways that we can build trust and we can build trust through character.

Margaret Johnson:

Your competence, this information up here is from Stephen, mr. Cubby, from the speed of trust, some of you may have read that there’s character attributes, competence, attributes, and a category that includes both, you know, like, do you talk straight when you make a mistake? Do you write you’re wrong? Are you always trying to tell people, you know, be so right? Or are you listening to them first? So what I’d like you to do with this trust page right here is think about for yourself, which one of those, which one of those, what if upper executives are not interested in gaining the trust of certain people? Yeah. That’s what we’ll get into that one. Okay. We’ll hold on to that one. That’s a good question. And I think that that’s true. There’s politics. There’s there’s little cliques, there’s little groups, there’s little empires. And there is a lot of that kind of thing going on. And it’s all part of work. Like it’s the other side of your work, but for you, I want you to look at this list and think about one of these that maybe you need to work on a little bit more.

Margaret Johnson:

Is there one of these that, you know, might be you know, for me, I’m a very on a driven kind of person, but I’m also this very charismatic personality, right? And so I’ve always gotten, you talk about something. I’ve got something to say too. So as a coach, I went through professional listener training instead to listen first because in our head, we’re always trying to think of something else. So I want you to transparency. Yes. A good one. So I want you to think about which one is important for you. Do you need to work on that a little bit and then think about what do you need from other people? What’s the most important thing and what kinds of things can you do to build trust a little bit more for other people so they can see that you are trustworthy and what might you need to ask some people for so that you can trust them more. So a lot of this is about some conversations.

Margaret Johnson:

Okay. So think about that and what you might do and what you might be looking for in other people, clarify that as we’re starting to develop these relationships, have these connections and have conversations. We need to understand what our strengths and our weaknesses are. And also what the strengths and the weaknesses are of the other person, other people, so that we can partner. I know that one of my son’s friends in college, when she started working, she was super organized and amazing researcher. She got to partner with the executives and one of them, a great speaker, but not so great on the research and the organization. She did that part and helped him with his presentation. So of course now she’s making the presentations, but when we can look at what our strengths are, what their weaknesses are, that’s a great way to partner. If any of you have ever heard of now, discover your strengths are the strengths finder.

Margaret Johnson:

This is a great book for those of you that like assessments and want to look on and work with, how can I use my strengths more? How can I work around some of my weaknesses? It’s an assessment. You can do it online. You can also, if you buy the book, make sure you don’t buy a used copy. Cause the secret code will always be taken. But they look at, we have natural strengths. We have things that we just, maybe you’re a great organizer. Maybe you can see where something could be improved just a little bit. So you’re a maximizer married, maybe you’re charismatic and you can connect people, whatever it is. You’ve got these strengths and look at the other person or that person you want to partner with. You can find out from other people that are connected with them. You can find out by observing what they are really good at or where they might need some help. But remember our triangle from the beginning about the best for you, them and the organization. So kind of tie these things, the strengths, how you can help them with making things better for all three of those, looking at the goals and the values and the mission of the organization.

Margaret Johnson:

When I was up in technical sales and my first job in technical sales, after the power company, and one of the executives asked me, uh, he says, you’ve done this and that and this, and you’ve got this kind of background. How can you help our organization be better? What can you do for us? And I had never gotten that question before in my entire career, never been asked, what are you good at? And how can you help us? That’s a beautiful question. Then I want to invite you to ask that of other people and also share that with higher ups too. So thinking more strategically thinking more strategically,

Margaret Johnson:

And now there are things that you want to look at is how do their work styles and their expectations. And I know someone asked a question about how do I get people to take the personality style assessment? Well, you could show them the benefit of knowing you know, how to work with people differently. Are they a driver? Are they a, you know congenial person? Are they data oriented? Are they more to people or more into results? Are they assertive? Are they non assertive? And all that information is very helpful. So one example is I was working in technical sales and there was an invoice that needed to be paid. And Gary, the manager asked me if it should be paid and me, the storyteller says, wow, there’s a story behind it. And in order for you to know that it should be paid, I’ve got to share this story.

Margaret Johnson:

So I started to tell this story and he let me go for a little bit. And he goes, Margaret Michael. Yes, yes, Gary. And he goes, should I pay the invoice? And I said, yes, boom. That was it. It’s all he wanted to know. He trusted me. Right. He just had a question Mark the answer. So way back when, when there was still a lot of email before texting, I mean, I would just send one question to that kind of person and get that one little quick, short yes or no. Never give him more than a few questions. So knowing their work style, are they a texter? Are they an in person? Are they a Zoomer? Are they, you know, we can’t really do a whole lot of in-person that maybe you do have some opportunities depending on what’s going on with your work, find out their personality.

Margaret Johnson:

You can really probably usually tell a little bit about that. I know when I first when I was coaching and I had an executive client, I tend to be a late night person. And I was up till about four in the morning, working on a book and doing all sorts of other work. And I was just about to shut my computer down at four o’clock in the morning. And, but I had a thought to send to this executive client and I sent it off thinking, I’ll shut my computer down and she’ll read it tomorrow morning or in the morning. And all of a sudden, before I could shut my computer off, I got an email right back. And it was this executive mode and was like so excited because I’m like, God, you’re all ready to start the day. Just like me, what are you going to do?

Margaret Johnson:

And I said, I am going to sleep, have a good run. So knowing those kinds of things can be part of this, help you to connect better and develop these relationships. Another thing is values. I have a values exercise. If any of you are interested in that, I will be happy to share that with you for free. And we can do a short little call about it, or it’s pretty obvious. You can just work through it, but knowing what’s your values are, and what’s important. And what is important to these executives and higher that you want to connect with. And it’s really a lot of fairly easy to tell because we had a CEO at my technical job, technical sales job. He would walk up and down the hallways, you know, yelling, are you making any money today? What are you doing that’s making us some money? Go make some money. It was all about money and you knew

Margaret Johnson:

Making money was his value, right? Well, it should be for a company, but so I had some ideas of what we could do at the company to improve things, maybe to make some more money. So I just caught him in the hallway one day and I said, Don, I’ve got some ideas on how we can make some more money. If you want to know, just, you know, catch me. That man did a 180, turned right around and told me to get with his admin to set up an appointment. And I got an hour with him. An hour with someone who you think doesn’t have time for you, but if you can connect to their values, connect to what’s important, take what you have in your idea and connect to their values, then you’ll be very successful. It’s also important to think about not just you managing up, but the people that report to you, other people helping them manage and support you.

Margaret Johnson:

If they’re not having conversations and asking you write things down, can we sit down and talk about, you know, working together better or looking over this process, or if they’re not doing that, then they might be afraid to so encourage them to do that, encourage it, not with just you, but encourage them and help them to also make connections at other different levels. So people know what they do and they can get some opportunities to so help support them. Now, I know I’ve had a question from the group before this webinar started was, but what about remote? How can I manage up if we’re all remote and these people aren’t walking in the hallway and I can’t catch them in the elevator? Well, my point to you is there is a another speaker who works. I work with creativity and risk taking and possibilities and mindset.

Margaret Johnson:

And she also works with creativity. What she’s done is she’s connecting all the people that she works is connected to on LinkedIn and little 15 minute networking, random groups. So she’ll like ask people, if you want to do this, send me a note, sign up for an appointment. And she randomly connects them with another person she gets in on the call. And so they’re connecting in that way. So even though it’s remote, even though it’s remote, I think that’s something that you might be able to do in your organization. You know, maybe suggest that they do that with people that don’t know each other. So everyone can get to know each other, some teams that you might work with, some kind of little random networking connection. Also when you get into zoom meetings and if you’re there early and you’re not on mute, well, like even if you’re on mute, you could chat, right? That you could just chat with some of the other people that are in there and then invite them to have a conversation after or if there’s executives in your meeting, your, your work meetings that you could kind of connect in that way or give them a phone call, call them up and ask them if they might have time to or could take it on their calendar, work through their, their assistant or something else. So even though it’s remote, there are some ways that we could also connect this way.

Margaret Johnson:

Alright. If you don’t do anything, nothing’s going to change. You’re still going to be an SOS, right? You won’t get to, wow. I had to change something at the beginning of our session, right? My ring is still on my right finger. It started on my left. If you did not change back, if you were able to stay for this whole time with this uncomfortable position, email me, I’ll put you guys in a drawing, okay. Email me. And I will put you in a drawing for some gift certificates or gift cards or whatever, but I have hoped for you because you stuck with something that was uncomfortable, but you found a way to be comfortable with that uncomfortable. And what happens a lot of times that my boots are still off. Okay, Steven, great. I kept the change. So email me, Margaret, and they are G a R E t@markethjohnson.com.

Margaret Johnson:

And I will get you guys in on a drawing if there’s not a lot of you, I’ll give you all the price. If there’s a whole bunch of you, I will, I have to do a drawing. I’m like ring. Is that a lot of times when you know, we’re talking about managing up and for a couple of days, you’re going to go, Oh yeah, I’m going to try that. I’m gonna, you know, do this, call this up executive, or I’m going to connect to this person or whatever you’re going to do. You know, you’re all excited about it. And then a couple of days later you go, I don’t have time this week, maybe next week. And then at three weeks, you don’t even remember who I am. And you’re just back to, you know, CESO S the same way it was. So I want you to stick with uncomfortable.

Margaret Johnson:

And I want you to think about before we finish, what is that one thing you’re going to do? And we’ll do a five second rule and make sure you get yourself set up to do that. So if you don’t do anything, I said, we’re stuck in SOS. You need to send, you need to email me, okay? Email me your, your email address that way. All right. I may not be able to get the whole chat. We’ll see. So to be able to have a change, you’ve got to take a risk. You’ve already got your goal. You’ve got your goal. You’ve had your SOS where you were, and you had your wow, what you want things to look like. So your goal is to move in that direction, but take enjoyment and enthusiasm and reward yourself. As you go along the journey, you’ve got to look at different ways to accomplish a goal.

Margaret Johnson:

So you could start with a little bit, you know, maybe just a unmuting before meetings started and start to chat with people. You could maybe start to do some different things with the LinkedIn. You could start to email some people. I send letters all the time to executives and I always get answers back. Okay. So there’s different ways that you could do accomplish your goal. Now, I know some of you have said, I’ve never, what if I’ve worked with these people for 10, 20 years, and I’ve never even tried to introduce myself to anyone at a higher level. It’s never too late. And I know some of you may get tongue tied. Some of you may get don’t know what to say. So there’s a little trick that I used when I was a young grade school girl. I had a crush on a guy named Phillip.

Margaret Johnson:

And every time I ran into him, I was very nervous. And, you know, sometimes with the all tongue tie. So what I did is I started to write down some questions and things I could say to him if I ever ran into him. And then when I update my list, depending on what was happening in the world. And then when I did run into him, I was ready. I had a question in the end, if I could just get over that first little hump. So I encourage you that know when you’re getting into these meetings and there’s going to be some people in there that you’d like to connect with, that you haven’t connected with. You, you probably have an inkling of who’s going to be there, right? A few questions that if you ever get caught off guard or see someone that you weren’t expecting, that you’ve got this little thing in your back pocket, ready to go.

Margaret Johnson:

Okay. So there’s different ways to accomplish the goal. You’ve got to think about what kind of a risk taker you are. I do work with risk takers. I have an assessment called the create tricks where you can actually assess where you are and you can increase your creativity and risk taking. Did you know that if we were in person, we’d actually be playing red light, green lights, and some of you, I don’t think it’s just a Michigan thing, but it’s a game we played on the sidewalk where one person is it at the end of the sidewalk and the rest of the neighborhood is at the other end of the sidewalk and the person who’s it. For example, me turns my back to the rest of the buds. And whenever I say Greenlight, they can run toward me. Whenever I say red light, they have to stop.

Margaret Johnson:

And I turn around and if they were moving, they go back to start. And the goal is to be the first person to get to it. So I like to use this in person. I have video, if you want to see it, because it’s a risk model. There’s some baby steppers. There’s some people that are bad out of hell, right? So some of you are just going to maybe read up on this or take some baby steps for this. Some of you are going to call up some executive and ask for a meeting. So think about your risk taking tendencies, which which ones have you you know, what are your tendencies and what is going to really work with your tendencies best, and then start to increase your reward and risk ratio by one, maybe practicing conversations with your buddies that you want to have with an executive or testing, right? Testing something out, being a little prototype. There’s also safety and numbers. So maybe a bunch of you, or several of you, or two of you could ask for something, ask for some meetings, ask for some type of connection and get that. And then it’s all about, then you got to take some action.

Margaret Johnson:

So think about that month thing that you are going to do, that you are going to take action on. And this last piece right here is our less than ideal bosses. Now I worked for a few. The first thing is right here. Remember we talked about assumptions. So understand their incompetence, what you think might need their competence. It might just be maybe one time you hadn’t experienced. And so you think that that’s what’s wrong with them. Maybe they were overwhelmed and you don’t even know what they’re dealing with. Maybe they really aren’t you know, deficient and emotional intelligence, but just because of the pressures that they’re under, they’re never able to really connect. So first you really gotta do a little research, understand the incompetence, make sure that you can check with other people. Is that how they see things to check with people that know them really well, whenever you go in and talk to them, make sure it’s about you, not the boss saying for me, you know, when you know, here’s what I need when I’m doing this, this is what I need.

Margaret Johnson:

I would be more effective if I could add this, those kinds of things. So naked about you. Don’t when I say you don’t do this, you need to stop micromanaging that dot that’s out, right? To make sure it’s about you. Can you step up and you lead up. If the other, if the manager, if they aren’t doing their job, I had a coaching client, Shannon who got promoted and her manager was not a very effective manager. What she did very tactfully, very carefully without insulting them and actually helping them was able to connect with higher ups, work it so that she had like a, not a free reign, but opportunities to connect with other people and get things done. But she also in a whole process kind of helped him to become a better leader. So it’s not stepping on their toes and bypassing them all the time, but it’s a very beautiful, intricate dance of stepping up and leading up when they aren’t.

Margaret Johnson:

Should you rat them out? I don’t recommend it, but I have done it. And I have been successful. One was at the gym where they had a supervisor manager that was harassing than some of the instructors. In fact, a lot of the instructors. And it wasn’t a good thing. I was having a few issues too, but I just organized the instructors, connected with HR. All the instructors had their, their, and everything written down. And I didn’t even have to say anything about the issues I had and HR took care of it. And that supervisor was out. But in the corporate world, when I was a leader, a manager or an engineer, I did say something, what time I asked to be moved and I did get moved because I had a reputation where I, they knew me and they trusted me. So it’s really all about relationships.

Margaret Johnson:

I don’t recommend writing them out of politics and everything can really be a dangerous place to dance, but it is possible. So connect with HR, connect with your buddies, be careful about that. And the last thing is, if you do have a if you do have less than ideal bosses to make sure you’re taking care of yourself, eating right, exercising, doing some of those things that bring you joy that so that you’re not so stressed out. So those are some tips there. If you do have a less than ideal boss, what I’d like to ask you to do is to put in the chat, what you are committing to do. What is the one thing that you are taking away from this that you are going to start doing? Maybe it’s what you’re already doing, but you haven’t. Now there’s a speaker called Mel Robbins.

Margaret Johnson:

I love her. She’s got the five second rule. And she says, okay, if you don’t actually do something right way, you might never actually do anything about it. So I recommend that you take your phone and you go to your alarm and you set a time where you’re going to actually do one of these things. Cause if you don’t promise, if you don’t start within five seconds, you don’t decide to do it might never happen. So let’s reach out to more people and connect self care is critical. People manage what they can’t master and master what they can’t manage. Okay. So Keith, let’s go ahead to some questions and answers that I might not have addressed. Oh, start your own business. Congratulations. Plan on listening first. Very good.

Keith Wolf:

All right. As those come in, here’s a question, Margaret. How do I encourage those? Who reports to me to develop a strategy toward developing these kinds of relationships with me and those above me? So I’m trying to get people who report to you to open up and embrace this sort of philosophy of, of managing, which I think is an interesting question.

Margaret Johnson:

So one is to actually invite them to have some conversations with you so they can see the example of how that might work kind of sit down with them and have them pick someone besides you that they might want to connect with and help them make a strategy. I know someone had asked for a strategy and some of the questions and the strategy really is here is look at your assumptions, right? Figure out who you want to partner with. How are you building trust? Look at strengths, weaknesses, personality, so whatever, and start, have a conversation with them about I can do that. So being an example to those people and biting some conversations between the two of you that are examples of this partnering or designed Alliance, and then help them strategize with who do they want to connect to? You know, are they looking for someone for operations, for strategic or whatever, what might be some of their ideas that they want to move up in the organization and kind of get them some help and some champions and connections. And I think you can also help them understand the importance of it because they’ll miss out. Like I said, on opportunities and work will be easier if they do make those connections, even for introverts, there’s different ways for introverts to do it too.

Keith Wolf:

Got it. That’s great. Okay. couple people have asked about office bullies and a strategy for dealing with them. Any thoughts there?

Margaret Johnson:

I mean, that’s, that’s such a, it’s such a deep tangled mess of whatever. I think you have to step back and look at it from a logical standpoint, which is very hard to do because there’s a lot of emotions involved in that involved in that. So there’s a process called the six hats by DeBono and it looks at the situation first, you know, stepping back, look at what assumptions are you making about this, this person stepping back and looking at, what are the facts? What are the emotions? What do you really want from them? You know, what behavior change do you want from them? What behavior change are you willing to make? Sometimes it’s very difficult to have a conversation with them because they are a bully, a needs to be looked at as far as, is this an issue that the supervisor needs to address?

Margaret Johnson:

First? I know I’ve had a lot of people sometimes when I’m working with them in my classes that the supervisor’s not doing anything and the supervisor allowing it to continue. So I mean, it’s, my answers could go all over the place depending on the specific situation. But I would look at first of looking at the emotions and the facts behind it, what’s happening, what do you want different? What would you be willing to do in connection with that and figuring out is it safe or wise or best for you to have that conversation or for you to first go to another person, your supervisor, or somewhere else that you can get some help in them during the conversation, or you

Keith Wolf:

Got it? Got it. We’ve got several questions coming in. I’m going to try to get to as many as we can in just a couple minutes that we have here, but advice on managing up, if you have a less than ideal boss and you’re new to our role. So this person is one month in and they’re doing some shadowing before they go fully remote. So a lot going on there, but new they’re remote. And how do they manage up with a less than ideal boss?

Margaret Johnson:

Well, I’d start by first kind of writing down some of the things that are going on that aren’t working for you and writing down all the things that you like to see and like to have just so you have that kind of on the side, but no, as new is best to just kind of observe for a little bit before you start coming in and trying to ask for certain things, but I’m also look at, are these assumptions, is this just happening to me? Are these happening to other people too, but start to make a list of things that you need to have that you would like to have and start to see if you could pick out the one thing that you need and start to have little conversations, like get to know that person, things that you have in common start to develop that relationship so that when you bring up that kind of first thing, you’re already comfortable talking to them.

Keith Wolf:

Got it, got it. We have a somebody asking about the name of the book. Was this a StrengthsFinder? So,

Margaret Johnson:

Oh yeah. There’s actually the original book was called now discover your strengths, which is more focused on a manager managing people’s strengths. And they a latest version of the same thing as called strengths finder. 2.0 by Tom Rath IRA, T H. Now you can do the assessment on online, or you can buy the book, but this one is more focused on, I believe on the personal, utilizing your strengths. Whereas now discover your strengths is appears to be more of if you’re managing people, having managed their strengths.

Keith Wolf:

Got it. Okay. Here’s another one. How do I, and you talked about this a little bit, but any other thoughts? How do I build relationships when you’re a, telecommuter, it’s hard to raise morale when you’re working from home?

Margaret Johnson:

Yeah. We talked a little bit about that. I think one that I mentioned was having, you know, connecting people for a little 15 minute talks to just to get to know each other. I know as coaches in the clear Lake area, we’re having a lesson month meeting a coffee where we just get together and, you know, talk. And there’s usually a topic that is brought up that we want to talk about, but it’s getting to know people and things like that. So if you’re a telecommuter, I think that to reach out in some different ways, you know, send some physical notes to people since then emails to, or offer and invite them to just a virtual coffee.

Keith Wolf:

Alright. Can I, can I ask one more question here? How do you handle a boss who did not hire you? So they were, they got you through a merger acquisition, but they weren’t the person who hired you any tips there.

Margaret Johnson:

Okay. It’s very important for you to find out what they need, what their goals, mission values are. So you know how to support them and to let them know what your strengths are right in the beginning, because you want to make sure they know how valuable you are. So I would reach out to them immediately with that. You can start the conversation that way. I know that through this merger and acquisition, you know, we’re brand new to each other. I would love to have a conversation around, you know, what your mission and, and what you are really trying to work on. So I can share with you my strengths that were really helping make that happen. So I would reach out as soon as you can and not, not wait.

Keith Wolf:

Alright, perfect. Is now a good time to do the drawing. Sure. Okay. Well, I confess to have already done the drawing. I was prepared not doing it on the spot, but I put it into this random result generator in there. And if I call your name on to call out a name, and if I call your name, just put your name in the chat to us. And I will know that you’re here. And if you’re not here, then we’ll move on to the next person. Okay. Ariane Tillman. If you’re here, say you’re here. Give you a few seconds and if not, we’ll move on to the next person. All right. Ed, I’ve asked, they’re asking me to repeat the name again. Ariane Tillman. Alright. The next person, if, if they’re not here, is ed Falwell Ed going once going twice. All right. Up. There we go. Ed is here. Okay, ed. So ed gets the book and then one hour of coaching. Very good. Alright. And then we’ve got the second drawing for the $35 gift certificate to Amazon. And the name is Michelle sieve. Is Michelle on Going once going twice? That’ll Michelle. Okay. Alright. If you know Michelle, don’t tell her about this. It’ll hurt her feelings. Okay. Michelle is here. Okay. There you go. So we’re not gonna hurt any feelings. Okay, Michelle you get the $35 Amazon gift certificate. Very cool. Alright, so Margaret, I know you’ve got a couple of things to wrap up with here.

Margaret Johnson:

Yes. I wanted to invite everyone. If they’d like to stay connected with creativity and risk taking ideas and get a little guide on moving on up in the workplace. You can either use the QR codes right here, or you can go to my website at Margaret H. Johnson. you also as a gift for you being in my session, if you’d like to have a little strategy call with me, that’s free. You can sign up on my appointment desk. I want to invite everyone to go in a second drawing for these same things we just gave away. If you email me at Margaret at Margaret H. Johnson by July 31st with what you’ve tried based on what we’ve done today, if you email me with what you try and if you know whether it was successful or not, doesn’t matter, you tried something you’ll be in a joint for another book coaching and an Amazon, or if you want some other different gift card, I’m more than happy to switch out the gift card. So by July 31st end of that midnight email me what you’ve done.

Keith Wolf:

Alright, perfect. And thank you so much. Fantastic presentation really enjoyed it. I know everybody got a lot out of that, so thank you very much and thank you everybody for attending. And if you enjoy these webinars that we do, the, the best thing you can do for us, we really appreciate it is just spread the word for the emails when you register, when you get those emails to friends or colleagues or anybody that you think might appreciate them. So we appreciate that. All right. So thanks everybody. Thanks again, Margaret. Thank you. All right.