206: Owning, Loving, and Growing Your Job with Lisa and Elizabeth McLeod

Pete Mockaitis
Lisa and Elizabeth, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Elizabeth McLeod
Thanks for having us.

Lisa McLeod
It’s a pleasure.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, this is fun. You know, we had a couple of episodes with two folks on the other end, so I think we’re going to have a lot of fun.

Elizabeth McLeod
Us, too. I’m excited.

Lisa McLeod
Excellent.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so now, so you worked together, mother and daughter in the business.

Elizabeth McLeod
We do.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you orient us to that a little bit? How is that wonderful versus aggravating?

Elizabeth McLeod
Ninety-nine percent wonderful, I would say.

Lisa McLeod
Well, that’s nice for me to hear. As the mom, Elizabeth came to work with me right at two years ago. She had been out of college and had a job and I’ve had my consulting firm for about 20 years, and she had done some part-time work for me off and on, but I hired her because I knew if I didn’t get her when I got her that she was going to get hired away by Google or somebody and I’d never get her. So I made my offer while it was good.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’d probably gets expensive.

Elizabeth McLeod
Yeah, the longer you wait.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. Well, cool. So I first bumped into you from your Lynda course called Leading Yourself which sucked me in a bit. So could you orient us, what’s the course all about?

Elizabeth McLeod
Yeah, Leading Yourself is all about taking charge of your own development and setting your own goals, setting your own milestones, evaluating yourself as tough as that may be, and really taking charge no matter who your boss is or where you are in your career.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s a nice summary. And so tell me, what would be the alternative or the contrast as opposed to what do other people do?

Lisa McLeod
Well, you know, one of the challenges, the reason we wanted to write this course, it was actually Elizabeth’s idea because she said so many of her friends were in situations where their managers had 10 or 15 people, or their manager had three other jobs. And so one of the things that she was seeing was that a lot of these young people, and it could happen to any age but particularly to young people, where a lot of them have been, and I was guilty of this myself, kind of over-parented where they’ve had everything under the sun, they’ve had professors organized around them.

And what happens when you get into a job, all the time along when you’re in school, the school is organized around making you successful, everything is served up for you. But when you get into a job, all of a sudden the whole thing flips. You’re there to make some larger entity successful. And a lot of people have a hard time adjusting to that, and so we wanted to do a course to help people step into that in a really successful powerful way.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Well, that sounds excellent, and I’m shocked. I’m thinking about over-parented. I’ve heard some stories of managers receiving phone calls from employee’s parents, it’s like, “What? What is going on here?”

Lisa McLeod
Yup, it happens.

Elizabeth McLeod
There’s Bring Parents to Work Day at some places now.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, intriguing.

Lisa McLeod
Well, on the good side you do have people that are much closer to their parents than they used to be and they’re not just dependent on their 24-year old friends for advice. On the other hand, one of the things I see, because we work with a lot of companies who have a huge number of millennials and young and millennials, and one of the things I see is a lot of these kids have been so over-parented that it’s almost to their detriment.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Noted. So could you give us a couple of examples then of someone who does not lead themselves? What are a couple common mistakes, like, “Oh, don’t do that”?

Elizabeth McLeod
I think the biggest mistake we’ve seen people who don’t lead themselves is relying solely on your boss. And when someone is not getting that one-on-one attention, they’re not getting that learning and development they tend to just sit back and wait for it. And Leading Yourself kind of flips that and makes it your own power to do those things.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Lisa McLeod
So we had one person in a company that we worked with that shall remain nameless, and we were in there, we’re doing some consulting, and as part of the thing we’re doing is a small training program. And one of the people said, “You know, my boss just doesn’t spend the time training me.” And this was a 28-year old person who had been out of school for a while, and it was just stunning to me because I thought, “Your boss doesn’t spend time training you. What are you doing? Why is this all dependent on your boss?”

And so one of the things that we see in really successful people is they don’t wait around for the boss to train them. They go find a peer. They find someone more senior in the company. They take a LinkedIn Learning Course. They go do things on their own because they’re not waiting for someone else to develop them. They know that that’s their responsibility. And that’s a really good example of leading yourself. And what boss wouldn’t love someone that’s going out and soliciting their own training?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, understood. So it’s all about not waiting for the boss or anyone else to make opportunities or learning or training development stuff happen for you. Any other kind of key touch points to kind of cement the mindset between what leading yourself looks like and should be happening versus not leading yourself?

Elizabeth McLeod
I think one of the most challenging aspects of leading yourself, and we touch on it in that Lynda.com course, is giving yourself and honest performance review and learning to look really holistically at your career and be honest with yourself about where you need to build up on your weaknesses and where you can build up on your strengths. And Leading Yourself puts a lens on that that is different than the typical performance review given to you by your boss.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly. And performance reviews, it’s interesting, sometimes those delivered by leadership are very insightful and informative. When I was consulting at Bain & Company, I was blown away by the depth and sophisticity and quality of their views, but others it’s practically meaningless as I hear horror stories. It’s wild.

Elizabeth McLeod
Right. Check the box, makes the donuts.

Lisa McLeod
Yeah. And most of the time they fall more on the side of, if not meaningless, a lot of times, you know, a company like Bain, I used to work for Procter & Gamble, companies like that are notorious for really developing their people, so they’re giving their forward-thinking performance reviews. Unfortunately, in a lot of organizations they’re doing a couple of things. One, they’re just rating you on the task at hand, like, “Did you make enough widgets? Did you meet your deadlines?” And those things are important but they’re not looking at you at your development as a future leader or achiever.

The other thing that a lot of companies do is, because so often the performance review is tied to compensation, is they’re trying to justify the raise that they gave you or didn’t give you, and so people go into these really defensive. And so one of the things that we taught in that Lynda course, which is now part of LinkedIn Learning, one of the things about we taught about giving yourself an honest performance review was really around getting rid of the defensive because it’s only you doing it, and really thinking to yourself, “Am I someone who thinks strategically? Am I someone who would make me a vice president? And why?”

Really looking at not just, “Am I punching the clock and getting my stuff done to keep my boss off my back?” But, “Am I looking at the business holistically? Do I understand how all the departments work together?” A good boss will do that. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t have that so you need to be able to do that for yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
I really love that question, “Would I make myself a vice president? Why or why not?” Because with these self-assessments I think you could be easy to do sort of a cursory job of it, like, “Oh, I’m doing alright.” So do you have any more sort of hard-hitting prompts to make that self-evaluation all the more fruitful?

Lisa McLeod
One thing that is really important that we see in organizations is, “Do you understand how money flows through your company? And do you understand the landscape of your business?” I was on an airplane about a year ago and I was with this very smart young woman. She was telling me she’s on a business trip and she worked in finance for a company and they sold some kind of software. And I said, “Oh. Well, what does the software do?” And she heed and hawed around and couldn’t describe it, and she goes, “Well, it’s really complicated.”

And I felt like myself having this really visceral response because I’m thinking, “You work there. You should know this.” And then I went on to ask her more questions, and I was saying, “So what kind of market, what kind of customers do you sell to? What’s your market? What’s your market share? What’s the economic landscape of your business right now?” And she didn’t know the answers.

And then later in the plane ride she told me, “I’m really hoping to get a promotion next year.” And I remember thinking, “I wouldn’t promote you. You’re nice, you’re personable, and you probably do a good job, but if you don’t understand the economic landscape of your business, and you don’t know how money flows through your organization, what the customer base is, what the market share is, what the growth plan is, then you’re never going to be on track to be any kind of leadership position.”

Everyone in every company should know that, but particularly if you want to move up and you want to be thought of as a leader. You’ve got to know these kinds of things. And a lot of times, if you’re in some siloed job, bosses don’t share that information with you not because they’re trying to withhold it, half the time they don’t know. But also it’s just because it doesn’t seem pertinent to your job but it is pertinent to your development.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s perfect. Thank you.

Elizabeth McLeod
Another thing we touch on a little bit in Leading Yourself, and we dive even more into in Learning to be Promotable which is a course we have coming out later this year, is this preemptive look in asking yourself, “Pretend you didn’t get the promotion or the job, why is that?” And backtracking from this imagined future state can really help you unpack yourself in your development and your weaknesses as opposed to trying to look forward and thinking, “What is it going to take to get to that next step?” So it’s an exercise we use a lot with our clients and on an individual coaching basis as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I really dig that. So these are some great perspectives for the long view and where you’re going and taking those steps upward. Can you share with us, when it comes to leading yourself in the day in and the day out within the muck, if you’re just not feeling it, how in one of those days, or weeks or months, the motivation is low, what are your pro tips for this kind of situation?

Lisa McLeod
So one thing that people often tell us is how frustrated they are with their boss’ moods, and the mood of the department often waxes and wanes with the boss’ mood. I remember something my father told me when I was first became a manager, he said, “Congratulations! You’ve just become the second most important person in your employees’ lives.” And I thought, “What is he talking about?” And he said, “Well, next to your spouse, your boss has the power to make your life wonderful or miserable.” And I was like 25 years old, I’m like, “Please take back the briefcase. I don’t want it.” But the reason I bring that up is in terms of managing yourself on a day-to-day basis, one of the things that you have to be able to manage is your own mood and your own sense of equilibrium.

And so one of the things that we know about the human mind is when you’re just going through the motions and you’re doing a task, you’re not using the most powerful parts of your brain. I mean, even if you’re doing a fairly difficult task. But what we know is if you think about who your work affects directly, who you’re making a difference to, so if you’re working on software, if you have a really clear-eyed view of who the users are going to be and how this is going to help them, if you’re working on a marketing campaign and you have a clear-eyed view of who the ultimate buyer will be and how your product will help them, if you can keep that in the fore of your brain, you actually ignite more frontal lobe activity in your brain because it’s going to ignite more emotions, you will enjoy your job more and you will perform better.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s so powerful. And I resonate with that with the podcast here. So we got over 200 episodes complete and out which is awesome and a joy and a thrill, and I love hearing from listeners, or just even looking at the download stats, I get a kick out of it. Like I’ll see, I’ll refresh it like on a Friday at 8:00 p.m. and I’ll see seven more people within the last minute have downloaded. It’s like people want to listen to this on their Friday night which is awesome.

I’ve been there before. It’s like, “I’d like to learn something and have some fun doing it and try to chill a little bit and not party, party, party for the whole weekend.” And so I think that’s just so cool that, yes, there are real people. But I also fall into the reverse of, “Oh, got to get this out. Got to hurry up. Got to hurry up and get it done.”

Lisa McLeod
Just get it done. Get it done, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a good reminder. Thank you.

Lisa McLeod
Yeah, and I think the thing that we see in Leading Yourself is people turn to outside sources for fulfillment and motivation, and this is true in any situation, particularly a work situation, is you have to find ways to rally yourself. So one of them is picturing who your work benefits in a really clear emotional way. The other is, if you’re very far removed, see if you can get out with users or customers or whoever it is at the end of the food chain in your business. Get out with those people at some point so that you could have that visual imprint.

And the other thing, we have one client, and they’re really public about this that we started doing something with, we worked with a group of customer service reps at a company called GeoVentures which is this really cool adventure company in Toronto. And so the company is super cool, they sell adventure travel, the product is cool, but yet people have to sit in offices for eight hours a day on the phone booking trips for other people and/or dealing with problems, so it’s really kind of easy to lose your mojo.

And so one of the things that we did with their inside sales team was we created this whole theme around music and around them being rock stars, and they have the ability to do silent dance parties, because you can’t blast music out because everybody else is on the phone. But if you want to, you can push a button and your song comes up on the playlist and you can sit there and dance while you’ve got your headphones on, and the other people in your unit can sit there and dance with you. And so it combines music and movement which, if you’re looking to reset yourself during a hard day, that is a really effective technique you can use every single day two-three times a day.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, this is good. This sort of reminds of a young Pete Mockaitis reading Tony Robbins, “Your state, your state,” but, yeah, it totally works. And so I like what you said about that story that really struck me was the word “can,” because I’m thinking, “Well, you know, hey, we’re all human beings. We all have free will. We can do that anytime.” But the social norms in most organizations would be like, “What are you doing? This is abnormally uncool.”

Lisa McLeod
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
So then you just sort of liberated that permission there.

Lisa McLeod
Yes. Say, “I was listening to this class while I listen to a podcast.”

Pete Mockaitis
And the dance.

Lisa McLeod
“These people are business experts.”

Elizabeth McLeod
They said it was fine.

Lisa McLeod
“Our company paid for them for this advice to do a dance break.” We’ve done it with several other companies. With GeoVentures they’re kind of crazy so they were all for it. We have had to sell other companies on that and show them the hard science behind what music does to your brain and what movement does to your brain, to say, “If you’re looking at your people and they are glassy-eyed at 2:00 in the afternoon, you literally need a dance break.” Like we’re telling them this is totally something.

Elizabeth McLeod
Like telling that to a lot of accountants is very different than telling that to a group of people who chose to go into adventure travels.

Lisa McLeod
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Understood. One of my paid speaking engagements was to a group of CPAs and I got some feedback to be less flippant. I was like, “Wait. I think I know what that word means. That’s not good.” And so you’re right, know your audience and adapt. But you said hard science and I’ll take it. If you have any studies or data or numbers or evidence, I eat that stuff up. Is there like a mind-blowing piece of research that comes to mind with this?

Lisa McLeod
There’s a lot of cumulative research around what music does to the brain. And if you look at some of the people that were early on with this, well, obviously musicians, but people that worked with disabled kids have seen what it does. And it does the exact same thing that everybody else, and it’s different music.

I have a personal theory that has yet to be scientifically proven which is if you play the music that you played in your car in high school, and you blare it, you’ll feel more energy. That has not been scientifically proven but that’s my theory and I have tested it on several people and they say it works.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I find it also loosens me up because I was such a goofball in high school and I kind of am, too, but I’ve also been told that I’ve “really mellowed out” over the years. And sometimes I miss just the ridiculousness of a young Pete, and it’s refreshing. It’s rejuvenating to step back into there.

Lisa McLeod
It is. But without all the anxiety and, hopefully, without acne.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good. Can you now talk to us a little bit about peers? I thought you had a really great point in the course when it comes to thinking about peers as competitors or not. And what is an optimal way to think about that?

Elizabeth McLeod
I’ve loved that point too because I think so often high-achieving people, and I’m sure your viewers are listening to this podcast, are after that promotion and are wanting a senior role, it’s easy to view your peers as competition. But when you look at them as someone who can help you or someone who will give you good ideas, it really changes the dynamic on your team, and your whole team becomes more successful because of it.

And if you can implement that as an individual, you will emerge the leader at the end of the day. And we talk a lot about it in the course on how to rally people behind an idea, on how to lead without formal authority, and all of these little strategies, like bringing the customer’s point of view up at a meeting can really elevate the entire team but you the most.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, Elizabeth, for the competitive at heart, can you make the case that, in fact, you will come out ahead by being cooperative, collaboratively sharing?

Elizabeth McLeod
Oh, you absolutely will come out ahead.

Pete Mockaitis
So, yeah, how are the mechanism by which that unfolds?

Elizabeth McLeod
It’s that book Give and Take. Have you read that book? Adam Grant, yup.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I have browsed it. And I want Adam Grant on the show.

Elizabeth McLeod
The givers come out. They always do. And the research proves it time and time again, those who are cooperative and friendly to people and their team eventually emerge the leader. And one thing we say in Leading Yourself is if you stab all of your team in the back on your way to the top, you’re not going to have a very good team that you’re eventually leading, so best to make nice.

Lisa McLeod
One really famous quote on this that I love, which is, “Whoever can articulate reality without blame or judgment will always emerge the leader.” That’s really important.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s strong.

Lisa McLeod
You want to be able to articulate reality without blame or judgment. And with regards to competition, I’ll tell you this was one lesson that I wish I had learned much earlier in my career. When I was at Procter & Gamble as a young salesperson and a sales manager, it was very competitive, “We’re going to hire 10 sales reps. Two of you are getting promoted.”

But here’s the thing that I missed, and I developed some friendships there but I wish I had developed more but I didn’t because I viewed those people as my competition. What I didn’t know is that 25 years later we would all be running different organizations. And if I had developed better relationships with more of those people I would have friends that are the CMO of some company or the VP of Sales of another company. As it was, I just had a small group of friends.

And it was because I took this competitive attitude, now I wasn’t alone, we all did, but I had seen 25 years later the people who really befriended all their peers, they did just as well as we did in the long run, but now they know all these other senior leaders. And so that was the mistake I made. I didn’t understand that at the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s good. Oh, it’s good. Thank you. All right. So I’m convinced. That’s good. And so now I want to think a little bit about when it comes to making that progress toward goals. So when it comes to goal-setting and goal-realizing it starts with a good self-assessment and getting real and honest with yourself and it continues with a solid mindset and a collaboration with folks and managing your emotions well. So how should we think about the nuts and bolts of doing that goal-setting and moving toward it optimally?

Elizabeth McLeod
One of the things we talk about in the course is smart goals and why they don’t necessarily work because they’re not inspiring to people a lot of the times. So when we look at goal-setting you start with your self-assessment and then you go to goals that inspire you, and they don’t always necessarily relate to your role.

So your goal might be to improve your leadership ability or improve your communication, and those goals are a little bit more abstract and they’re not always as “smart” but they can be much more inspiring and generate much long-term results. So when we talk about goal-setting in the course, one of the huge points is to something you actually want to do.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Lisa McLeod
Yeah, because so much of your work is assigned to you, and a lot of things are accomplished by smart goals – specific, measurable, achievable, you know, time-bound, the whole thing, realistic time-bound. But the challenge is so many of your goals are set by others. They tend to be, as Elizabeth said, very uninspiring and they’re also very short-term-ish.

And so if you’re going to set goals for yourself, maybe you have that great manager who sits down with you and says, “I want to improve. Your goal is to improve your financial acumen so that you can accurately describe all areas of the business and understand the P&L.” Okay, maybe you got a great manager like that. But maybe not. Maybe that’s inspiring to you or maybe it’s boring as hell to you.

You’ve got to pick some goals for yourself that aren’t just get the next promotion and that also aren’t just finish the report by Sunday. You look at some of the things like Kennedy saying, “We’re going to put a man on the moon at the end of the next decade.” Remember the clip, he kind of said it kind of funny. And he did put a timeline but he didn’t know how it was going to be done. You look at Steve Jobs saying things like, “I’m going to put a dent in the universe.”

It’s okay. One of the things we really want to communicate to people, when you’re leading yourself, it’s okay to start that vague and to start that big. Now, putting a man on the moon was specific, putting a dent in the universe is kind of vague, but it’s okay to start there. That might not be what you talk about on a day-to-day basis with your boss, but if you’re leading yourself and you’re feeling like something is bubbling up in you, don’t short circuit that process by thinking you have to get it time-bound and realistic. It’s okay to think those things.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. And so I want to hit a final point here. You mentioned a number of times about you may not have a great boss, you may not have a caring, invested boss looking out for your development a few times. So what are your pro tips when it comes to managing up or working with and managing your boss?

Elizabeth McLeod
One of the things we touch on in the course is that even if you do have a great boss and, like Lisa said, even if you have a boss that’s really focused on you and your learning and development, you can benefit from leading yourself. And when you lead yourself you make more goals, you set stricter timelines for yourself, you have a better sense of self. And all of those things you can bring to your boss, it takes work off their plate so the more they’re focused on your actual goals instead of helping you figure out where your weaknesses are.

So in terms of managing up, I think taking everything you’re doing while you’re leading yourself and bringing it to your boss and being really clear about how they can support you is where people will find the most success.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That’s good. Thank you.

Lisa McLeod
Yeah, one of the things my father, it’s funny, it’s the second time I mentioned in this interview, one of the things my father said to me is, “No matter what your job, part of your job is making your boss successful.” And kind of back to that school dynamic versus a work dynamic, in school it’s organized to make you successful. At work, one of the best ways you can manage up, whether you have a great boss or a poor boss, and Elizabeth had a past experience with a great boss who talked about leading himself, and that’s actually where we got the idea for this course.

But one of the things that she did well with that boss was she really thought about what are the boss’ projects, what are the boss’ priorities, what are the boss’ boss care about, and, “How can I help with that?” And it can be something as simple as saying, “Hey, I know you got that big presentation Monday. You want anyone to run it by?” Anything like that, it’s not being suck-up, it’s doing your job because your job is to make your boss successful which makes the organization successful. And that’s one thing a lot of people miss is they kind of suck up to the boss but they don’t do actual things that will make the boss more successful. And there’s a difference between those two.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. And so now I’m curious, to tie a couple of points together, so doing that requires an extra dose of energy and effort and time, and often we just feel so overwhelmed, like, “Oh, I already have enough on my plate and this is overwhelming and too much.” So, I guess, when it comes to leading yourself and doing the emotional management game, any pro tips for navigating those waters, like, “Oh, I should be more proactive but I really feel overwhelmed and don’t feel like it right now”?

Lisa McLeod
Yeah, one tip is use your face time with your boss really well. You don’t need to add more time with your boss. In fact, you should probably, you might even be able to contract the time with your boss, but be really plan-ful and smart when you talk to your boss. And you want to do three things when you talk to your boss.

One, you want to make sure you know what your boss’ top priorities. Two, you want to give your boss an update on the things you’re working on, not an endless, endless list. And, three, you need to talk with your boss about anything that may be coming up that you can, if it’s a problem coming up or anything in the future so that you’re already aware of it.

And a lot of people, when they go into their boss, they let the boss manage the conversation, which is okay because they may want to, but you need to make sure you’re doing those three things. And the day-to-day can feel really overwhelming, and a lot of times there’s no easy quick solution, “Oh, just take five things off your list.” “Oh, just hire this assistant.” “Oh, just stop doing all that’s sucking your life.” There’s no easy solution, but if you’re really trying to lead yourself you always need to be asking yourself, “What I’m doing of the most benefit, is this my highest good for my organization right now? Is this what the organization really wants me working on?” If you’re leading yourself you need to think and look at yourself like the CEO would look at you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. Thank you. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Elizabeth McLeod
That’s a large pool to choose from. I think one I always come back to is, “Be the change you want to see in the world,” which is overused but, to me, it really speaks volume especially in leading yourself. If you want to have a great experience at work, that power is in your hands.

Lisa McLeod
Yeah, mine is similarly inspiring. One of the things that Margaret Mead said years ago, which is pretty famous, and I might butcher it a little bit, but she said, “Never doubt those small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Lisa McLeod
You mean aside from ours?

Elizabeth McLeod
I think the Leading with Noble Purpose is the best book on the shelves these days. In all seriousness, I just read a book called Friend & Foe It was really good and it’s about how to navigate relationships and how to generate trust and part ways peacefully with those who do not serve you. It’s really, really an interesting book.

Lisa McLeod
Yeah, I would say I’ve read a lot, and I’m looking at my bookshelf right now. One book that had a forever impact on me was The Road Less Traveled. And I read it when I was in my early 20s and found it very illuminating. Read it again in my 30s, and again in my 40s, and I got different things out of it each time. But it really does relate to this topic of leading yourself because you really have to unpack yourself and your reaction to things, and how you’re managing it.

I once saw a poster that was hilarious. It said, “The common denominator in all your failed relationships is you.” And what I always think of is, if I find myself saying, “Why doesn’t anybody get it?” or, “Why is it so hard to find somebody who…?” When I start generalizing people, that tells me it’s not them – it’s me. If it’s happening over and over again, it’s me. And so that book really put that into my consciousness in a big way.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Thank you. And now could you share, is there a particular nugget or piece that you convey in your trainings, your workshops, your writings that seems to particularly resonate with folks, it gets them nodding their heads and taking notes or retweeting?

Elizabeth McLeod
There are so many to choose from. But what I think the theme in all of our work is that work has a higher purpose, and it doesn’t mean that you’re in the Peace Corps or you’re saving the starving animals. Work has a purpose because every business has a purpose, and the more we bring that to the fore at work the more emotionally-engaged, the more innovative, the more creative everyone will be whether that’s selling someone a software that really improves their business or whether that’s building homes. Each business has its own unique purpose, and each individual contributes to that purpose in their own unique way.

Lisa McLeod
Yeah, I would say, along similar lines, one of the things I often tell people is, “You can’t spreadsheet your way to passion.” Because we have so many leaders who have been so trained to do an ROI on everything, but at the end of the day work is only as meaningful as human beings make it. And to think that work is an unemotional endeavor is sheer folly. We want engaged customers, we want engaged employees and that starts with emotion.

And so you’ve got to find something, what we call your noble purpose, something that you care passionately about at your work. And you don’t have to change the world but you do need to know that you’re making a difference in your part of it. And if you think that you can create a business merely on a transaction, or you can go to work as a transaction and just go to work for the money, you wait, over time your body is going to rebel against that, and ultimately the market will rebel. So unless you find something that you care about you’re not going to be really living your life the way you were meant to live it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s powerful. Thank you. And now, could you share, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Lisa McLeod
You can just Google Noble Purpose and we’ll pop up. McLeod & More is our website. We’ve got a lot of blog posts, got some videos on there. I do a lot of keynotes. Elizabeth has started keynoting with me. We’re speaking at the LinkedIn Talent Connects in Nashville next month. Hopefully some people will be there.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, very cool.

Elizabeth McLeod
We have a lot of courses on LinkedIn Learning as well. And even if you don’t have a membership, they do have an opportunity for a free trial.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to those seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Elizabeth McLeod
Hmm, a final call to action.

Lisa McLeod
I do.

Elizabeth McLeod
Just start.

Lisa McLeod
Yeah, start. Just start, yeah.

Elizabeth McLeod
Just do one thing to lead yourself.

Lisa McLeod
Yeah, you know, I lost one parent young and one parent more just recently. One of the things that really was clear on me is do not waste your life just… do not do that. Elizabeth’s right. Just start. Do one thing to step in and start steering the reins of your own life. You’re going to spend the majority of your life at work, it ought to mean something.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, there are so many powerful messages here. It’s funny, I kind of just want to stop and sit with each of them but I don’t want people saying, “Hey, Pete, you still there?” So thank you for all this wisdom. It’s so good. I want to be reflecting on it and, hopefully, the listeners as well. I think this is very much worth kind of multiple passes to digest and chew on some of this heavy stuff that hits the heart and really makes all the impact. So, Elizabeth and Lisa, thank you so much for making this time and sharing what you’ve got. I wish you tons of luck with your courses and your books and your keynotes and your media appearances and all that you’re up to.

Elizabeth McLeod
Thank you for having us. This was a great conversation.

Lisa McLeod
I really enjoyed it.